Until the Debt Is Paid

by Alexander Hartung

  The first image Max showed was of a big, burly man. The guy’s sparse hair was combed back with gel. A wide grin split his flabby face, which captured a mix of arrogance and lechery. His shirt was open. Almost lost among his thick chest hair was a gold chain.

  “That loser washes less than you do,” Zoe commented.

  “Thanks for that expert criticism.” Max pointed to the picture. “Allow me to introduce—Michael Josseck. Former building contractor, now harp player in heaven. Was sent from this life to the next with concrete in his stomach.”

  “You going to tell us something new while you’re at it, Maximum Nerd?”

  Max pressed the remote and the image of a tube appeared. The gray plastic was smeared with concrete. He gestured at the wall with both hands. “Ladies and gentlemen—the murder weapon. A plastic tube, found with Jan’s fingerprints on it.”

  “Ha!” Jan sprang up from the couch. “That’s good news.”

  “Doing all right there, Janni?” Zoe asked, mystified.

  “Yep.” He sat back down wearing a satisfied grin.

  “I think maybe you didn’t quite get all that,” Chandu said to him. “Your fingerprints were found on the murder weapon. Which means you’re the main suspect in not just one murder case, but now two.”

  “Not a big deal.” Jan waved away the thought. “The main thing is, now I know that I’m not Judge Holoch’s murderer.”

  Zoe and Chandu exchanged telling glances. Max, unsure, scratched at his head.

  “My God. Do I have to explain everything?” Jan moaned. “I had a mental blackout lasting about thirty-six hours on the weekend that Holoch was murdered. From Friday night till Sunday morning, I was blacked out. I have no idea what I was doing. I would swear on my life that I’d never kill the judge in a sober state, but clearly I’d been drugged. They found ecstasy in my body, something I would never take, so it’s possible other drugs were put in me too. All this means I couldn’t be fully sure that I was not at the judge’s house on the night he was killed. But now that my fingerprints were found at this builder Josseck’s place, it’s clear that someone’s trying to put the blame on me. I haven’t had any blackouts the last few days. Most importantly, I was of sound mind and body on Tuesday night when Josseck was killed.”

  “So where is this person getting your fingerprints?” Zoe asked him.

  “No idea. The perpetrator was planning both murders for a long time. When he got my blood and fingerprints for the first murder, he must’ve pressed my hand onto that tube there too.”

  “Huh,” Chandu said. “Your hunch might sound logical, but I’m guessing it’s not going to be enough in court.”

  Jan waved it aside. “Not important right now. At least I wasn’t completely berserk last weekend.”

  “That’s nice for you,” Zoe remarked. “But this doesn’t get us any further.”

  “But it does help, because now we know that the murderer was planning to pin both crimes on me all along.”

  “You must have really stepped on someone’s toes,” Chandu said.

  “Not necessarily. Revenge is the obvious motive, but maybe the murderer was simply able to get at my fingerprints and blood easily. Add my connection to Judge Holoch and I’m the perfect fall guy.”

  “This does narrow down the possible suspects,” Zoe said.

  Jan turned to Max. “Write this down.” He raised a finger. “First off, the perpetrator comes from my environment. That can mean my circle of friends as well as my fellow cops, but also persons nearby like neighbors, the baker around the corner, people at my local bar.”

  “Second, he must have insider knowledge,” Zoe interjected. “Your relation to Judge Holoch wasn’t the talk of the town. Just your circle of friends and your lawyer knew about it.”

  “And your fellow cops,” Chandu added.

  “There’s more than a few wusses on the Homicide squad,” Zoe said. “Plenty in Forensics too. I have a hard time imagining any one of them as a serial killer.”

  “You know the hammer murderer?” Max asked them.

  “We haven’t been introduced yet,” Zoe replied.

  Max’s fingers flew over the keys. Soon an image appeared of a black-haired man with a full beard. He wore a dark suit and tie. His piercing glare was directed sideways.

  Max pointed to the picture on the wall. “Allow me to introduce—Norbert Poehlke. The hammer murderer. Good old Norbert was a police sergeant in Stuttgart, got deep into debt and saw no other option than to start committing murder-robberies and holding up banks. He killed three people total. Once they were hot on his trail, he murdered his wife and his eldest son. After doing that deed, he fled with his youngest kid to Italy. After they’d finally cornered him, he went and killed the kid too before blowing his own head off.”

  Max clicked the image away. “What I’m saying is, we should disregard no one. Even Jan’s coworkers in Homicide. Who knows what depths this person will sink to?”

  “I’m telling you, the guy has gone nuts,” Andreas whispered, exchanging secret glances with the colleagues who’d joined him in the investigations room. Every photo of Jan’s apartment had been painstakingly pinned to the wall. Most of the photos were sharp, but some looked like shots taken with a disposable camera. Yellow Post-it notes were attached to some photos taken elsewhere, bearing titles such as Potsdamer Platz, Oberbaumbrücke, or Tiergarten. Others had red Post-its with probable locations. The rest of the photos were unmarked.

  Patrick stood before a shot showing Jan and a friend in front of a cabin in the forest. The identity of Jan’s friend and the location of the cabin remained unknown.

  “Where are you, Jan?” Patrick muttered. The detective’s dark hair hadn’t been combed in some time. His eyes were rimmed red, and he was chewing his fingernails. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his gray suit bore a big coffee stain.

  “He didn’t go home last night,” Andreas whispered to the female detective next to him.

  “I’ve never seen him like this,” she responded. “He’s even wearing his sidearm, like the murderer’s going to ambush us in here.”

  “It’s his first case as head of a homicide squad. Up till now, Jan was always standing in the way. Now he doesn’t just get the chance to solve a highly public case, he gets to remove his biggest competition.”

  “But why is he so . . . fanatical about it?” The detective raised her eyebrows. “The evidence in the Holoch case was damning enough. Now we’ve got fingerprints on the murder weapon used on Michael Josseck. At some point, Jan’s going to turn himself in or get caught in the dragnet. Then Patrick can celebrate.”

  “I don’t know.” Andreas shook his head. “I just don’t feel right about this. Something’s off.”

  “Let’s turn to Michael Josseck,” Jan proposed. “What’s the investigation turned up so far?”

  “Like with Judge Holoch, everything centers on you. They found your fingerprints, which makes you the main suspect. Now they’re looking for a motive, trying to figure out why you’d kill the builder.”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to any of them that I don’t have a motive?”

  “It looks like any leads that didn’t point to you were put aside.”

  “Oh, man,” Jan said. “Patrick is even stupider than I thought.”

  Max clicked the remote. “I concentrated on the leads that they tossed.” A list of e-mails appeared. “These are threatening hate e-mails Josseck received in the last few months,” he explained. “They range from threats to kick his ass, to murder.”

  “We know who sent them?”

  “Partly. Your fellow cops didn’t try too hard. I went rummaging around and figured out a few of them.”

  A new list appeared. Jan scanned the names.

  “I don’t know a single one. Who are they?”

  “All had done business with Josseck, either as partner or as
the builder’s client. I searched for any connections to you but found nothing.”

  Jan sighed. “So that’s a dead end. We got anything else?”

  “Only Josseck’s notebook.”

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t know, not exactly. I could only find a comment in the investigation files saying that Josseck had written down incoherent stuff, in some little book.”

  “Incoherent?” Chandu asked.

  “Probably some type of code. No one had bothered to decipher the entries.”

  “What’s this code look like?” Jan asked.

  “That’s the problem. There’s only a photo of the notebook, of the cover.”

  Jan folded his hands together. He had to find out more about Josseck’s crooked business dealings, about his connection to the judge. If he nailed that piece, the murderer would emerge from the slew of potential perps.

  “We need that notebook,” Jan declared. “Or at least we have to know what’s in it.”

  “I hate to tell you this,” Chandu said, butting in, “but you can’t exactly go back to your old workplace.”

  “I’m not getting the book. Zoe is.”

  The blonde medical examiner coughed. “Excuse me? Are you on something?”

  “You’re the only one who can go prowling around CID without it looking suspicious.”

  “I work in Tempelhofer Damm,” Zoe said. “I get over to your offices maybe twice a year.”

  “Then take some evidence over to CID,” Chandu suggested.

  “I’m a medical examiner, Mr. T, not a courier.”

  “Maybe the courier will be busy, so you’ll have to bring something by in person.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Jan said.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Transferring evidence has a procedure. People have to sign for it, keep a list, stuff like that.”

  “It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

  “So what do you propose? That I go marching into Homicide, wave nicely to everyone, then make myself copies of the murder victim’s little book?”

  “We’ll have to proceed with subtlety,” Jan said. “You’ll have to go there at a time when they’re all out. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I propose the evening. By seven, few people will still be hanging around, since there’s no new evidence that really needs going over.”

  “What do I do then? Just walk up to a copier and lay the book on it?”

  “You can take good photos with that cell of yours,” Chandu said. “Our computer freak here can edit them how we want them.”

  “You did want to get out of Forensics,” Jan added. “Now you have your chance.”

  Zoe blew cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. “Bad fucking idea.”

  Zoe took an evidence bag from Forensics and filled it with fibers from an old sweater. She put on a white lab coat with her name printed on it, and she slipped into white clogs. She looked like the perfect stereotype of a scientist. She hadn’t felt this stupid since she was eight and wore a pointy princess hat and veil for Mardi Gras.

  Still, she felt okay about the plan as Jan had laid it out. She strolled past the guards at the entrance, giving a little wave, and made for the investigations room. A light was on, and Patrick was looking at a photo. He looked exhausted, but the energy drinks on the table told Zoe he wasn’t intending to go home.

  She cursed to herself, fighting an urge to just toss the evidence bag on the floor. She had to photograph that notebook. With Patrick in the room, it was impossible.

  She caught her breath, disappeared into the next room, and called Jan. He picked up after the second ring.

  “What’s up?”

  “I got a little problem. It could be solved, if you tell me what kind of car Patrick drives.”

  “Why you want to know—”

  “Quit babbling. Model and color.”

  “Audi A3, metallic blue. Rear right, there’s a Coldplay sticker.”

  “Thanks,” she said and hung up.

  “Coldplay,” she grunted. “Then it won’t be too bad about that clunker.”

  She left the station and made her way into the neighboring park. For this, she was going to need a little help.

  Patrick laid photos out on the table. He sat down and was taking a sip of the nasty-tasting energy drink when a car alarm went off. He went to the window and pushed the curtains aside. The lights of a dark-colored car were blinking wildly. With horror, he saw why. A skater was using the Audi’s hood as a ramp. Only now did he realize it was his car.

  “Damn bastards,” Patrick hollered. He ran out of the room and sprinted down the corridor for the exit, his fatigue totally gone. At the entrance, a young woman in a white lab coat held the door open for him. She held an evidence bag in her hand and had on weird shoes.

  He sputtered a quick “thanks” without stopping. Then he was out on the street. The skater was about to make another jump. He’d show the little shit. This would be his last run.

  “Say again? You got a few kids to trash that detective’s car?” Chandu said.

  “It wasn’t that hard,” said Zoe. “I told them the pig had nabbed my brother skating, just because he’d bumped into a pedestrian on the Ku’damm. They started freaking out about it. I had to hear about the surveillance state, skaters being oppressed, and the fascist police structure; by then they were all piss and vinegar. Once I added in a few more euros for a case of Red Bull, the deal was done. Barely ten minutes later Patrick came flying out like Superman and ran after them in hot pursuit.”

  “Then what?” Jan asked.

  “CID offices were as good as dead. In Homicide, the book was lying there in a box along with other evidence.”

  “Did you take photos of all the pages?”

  “Yes,” she said with pride, holding up her cell. “In color and in focus.” She tossed the phone to Max and stood. “Now, I gotta get to work. I’ll be here tomorrow at nine. Pretty early for a Sunday, but I can hang.”

  Before she left, she turned to Chandu. “Buy some croissants, will you? Without breakfast, I get cranky.”

  With that, the door shut. Silence reigned for a moment.

  “Well, guess I’ll get after it,” Max said to break the silence. He connected the phone to his laptop.

  Chapter 11

  Jan stirred his coffee, half asleep. He’d spent the night looking over the illegible writing in Michael Josseck’s notebooks with Max and entering it all into the computer. The hacker had eventually cracked the code. It had been a simple character shift.

  A loud knock on the door made Jan jump. Chandu came out of the kitchen and opened the door.

  “Morning,” Zoe said. She tossed her jacket on a chair, opened a window, and sat in an armchair.

  “Black with a spoonful of sugar,” she shouted after Chandu. “Hopefully you remembered my croissants.”

  Chandu’s response was a crabby growl.

  “Well, Maximum Computer Freak,” Zoe said. “Find out anything?”

  “The photos were good ones,” Max replied wearily. “You do seem to have certain talents.”

  “I’m about to smack you upside your—”

  “Please, no fighting,” Jan broke in. “I’m too tired.

  Before Zoe could talk back, Chandu handed her a cup of steaming hot coffee. “Here, Sunshine.”

  Zoe took the cup without responding and took a sip. The coffee clearly calmed her.

  “So,” Max began, turning on the projector. A photo of Josseck’s notes appeared. “That notebook was packed. After we deciphered the code, it turned out to be a bribe log, including cash amounts and dates of payment. That’s the bomb right there, but it doesn’t help us find the killer. Anyone he was bribing wouldn’t want him out of the game. Who would murder a cow he could milk?”

  “Maybe Josseck wanted to take the bribes public,” Zoe
said.

  “Unlikely,” Jan said. “Evidently, a large part of his jobs came via bribes. If he’d made that public, he would have gone broke immediately. Not to mention he’d be under criminal investigation.”

  “More interesting were the addresses and phone numbers,” Max continued. “I haven’t had time to check the background on each one, but they don’t seem to fully match the list of people he paid off. So who do they belong to? Maybe our murderer’s among them.”

  Max clicked his remote and a list with names and phone numbers appeared. “Do these names mean anything to you guys?”

  Jan added, “I looked through the list but—”

  “Goddamn it,” Chandu interrupted. Their eyes found the big man.

  “You know someone?”

  He nodded. “Nathan Lefort. Better known as French Nat.”

  “What’s his deal?”

  “A goddamn son of a bitch. Lefort comes from Algeria originally, I think, or maybe Tunisia. He was a pimp in Marseille for a long time before coming to Berlin. Assembled himself a little gang of buddies, running a prostitution ring with illegals who could only be booked over the Internet. Exclusive, for people with special requests.”

  “Special how?” Zoe asked.

  “Any and every sexual deviancy, most of which you can’t even imagine.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Then we should talk to him,” Max said.

  “It’s not that easy,” Jan interjected. “If Nat is some underworld big shot, he’s never going out the door without a bodyguard. It’s not as if he’s going to provide us the info like it’s his civic duty.”

  “I got an idea,” Chandu said, looking at the clock. “I just have to make a call, but what do you guys think about a little café breakfast? We might just meet a few interesting people.”

  Jan sat in a wicker chair, sipping an espresso. It was a lovely morning. The sun warmed his face and the wind caressed his cheeks. Only the smoke from Zoe’s cigarette disrupted the harmony. He watched as the medical examiner coated a croissant with Nutella, poured cherry jam on it, and then ate it with her scrambled eggs.