Until the Debt Is Paid

by Alexander Hartung

Jan started talking. About his escape. How Chandu had put him up. How Zoe and Max had teamed up with him. How they had tracked down the serial killer. He left out no details.

  In the meantime, a coworker came in with a box of donuts. Jan scarfed down several without pausing his story. His stomach and his circulation thanked him. His account ended with the death of his former girlfriend. Then he turned to Bergman.

  “I have a hunch, but it would be nice to know why Betty did it all.”

  The chief of detectives sighed and laid a stack of notebooks on the table, all inscribed with the word “Diary.” Jan recognized Betty’s handwriting.

  “We found them in her car,” Bergman said. “We’ve been analyzing the passages the whole night. In these journals, we found a life of misery for one Bettina Esel, who you knew as Betty Windsten. Many of the entries are horrifying. One of your coworkers puked his guts out after reading it.”

  Bergman ran his fingers through his hair, as if he didn’t know where to begin.

  “The sexual abuse started at thirteen. At first, only Bettina’s father was assaulting her. The mother knew about the rape but was too weak to get Horst Esel to stop.

  “At fourteen, Bettina was sold for the first time. The client was Judge Holoch, who was into little girls. Her description of the rape is hard enough to bear, but it also gives some insight into Holoch’s true character. He had a great time beating her up. What started with a few slaps in the face turned into this orgy of beatings. Holoch let himself loose a little more with each visit, eventually putting her into the hospital. The parents, they just called the injuries an accident and got away with it.

  “Then the writing style started to change. It became dry, almost matter-of-fact, as if she was some impartial third party, observing events from a distance.

  “She had barely recovered when a new client came to her bed.”

  “Michael Josseck,” Jan said.

  “She described the building contractor as a fat stinking swine, though he didn’t hit her. Compared to Holoch, he was bearable.”

  “So Holoch wasn’t coming to her anymore?”

  “No. Our guess is that around this time he was taking it out on other girls, the ones you found in his photo album.”

  “Did anyone find out who the girls were?”

  “It’s still too early for that. I’ve formed an investigations team to find the women. I’m not too confident, though, since some of the photos are ten years old. Also, the facial injuries in the pictures are going to make it tough for any recognition software.”

  “That explains why she beat Holoch to death, but why did she choose concrete down the throat for Josseck’s murder?”

  Bergman hesitated again. Their discussion was clearly putting a strain on him. “The builder, he was into oral sex.”

  “What was with those wood swords in her dad’s body, and flashy costume rings in her mother’s eyes?”

  “Playthings.”

  “Playthings?”

  “When Josseck was satisfied with her, Bettina got a present. After one especially nasty rape, Bettina’s father gave her a wooden sword and her mother gave her some cheap rings.”

  Jan shuddered. He was having a tough time keeping the donuts down. Who treats their own daughter like that?

  “A year later, another client came,” Bergman continued. “Father Anberger.”

  Jan groaned. He knew it.

  “Father Anberger had been a friend of the Esels. He’d even baptized Bettina. But at some point he lost control of his sex drive and started doing things to her regularly. The really sick part was that he blamed Bettina for her sins. She was this devil in the flesh, come into the world to seduce him. What religious bullshit. Before getting raped, she would have to pray with him. After the rapes, he’d read from the Psalms.”

  “What a life,” Jan said, shaken.

  “A life is not what I’d call it,” Bergman added.

  “How did she escape this living hell?”

  “Thanks to her superior intelligence. Despite being sexually abused, she was an outstanding student. As the head of her class, she received a stipend to study medicine.”

  “And her parents just let her go?”

  “The journals don’t say exactly. But once she’d reached legal age, Holoch, Josseck, and Father Anberger lost interest in her. She was probably too old for them by then. If I had to guess, I’d go with her taking off for good in the dead of night. One day she was gone, and then she began her studies. By then her name was Bettina Windsten, though she doesn’t mention why she chose that last name.”

  Bergman paged through his records.

  “Over the next few years, she lived the life of a medical student and, in her free time, worked on planning the murders. She was going to make her rapists and her parents pay for her suffering. She went about it with mechanical precision. She made a list of subjects and skills she needed to learn in order to commit the perfect murder. These included certain medical techniques, and also criminal skills like scoping out weak spots in secure homes and opening locks.

  “She picked out her male lovers for their usefulness to her. These included doctors and police officers but also small-time criminals, anyone she could learn something from.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself, Jan. She could act the part perfectly. Before you, countless men fell for her charms, and not one doubted she loved them.”

  “Cold comfort.” Jan still couldn’t believe that it was all pretend. “So, I was just another thing on her list.”

  Bergman paused. “Yes. With all you know about homicide investigations, you filled in one last blank.”

  “Did she choose me because of Judge Holoch’s ruling as well?”

  “She describes it as an ‘unexpected bonus.’ She hadn’t dared hope to get so lucky. With her homicide detective having a possible motive, she killed two birds with one stone.”

  “That’s why she was so interested. The girlfriends I had up till then? Didn’t want to know a thing about what I did—but Betty used to ask me about it every night. One time I even gave her a tour of the Homicide offices.”

  “According to the list in her journal, she had compiled everything she needed for the perfect murder before she got started.”

  “Faking her death with a farewell note—was that part of the plan too?”

  Bergman nodded. “She was waiting for a burn victim to be delivered to Pathology, one roughly her size. Then she stole the corpse from the Charité and brought it home.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Actually, no, but Bettina was working it out for a long time. She had reconned a way of stowing the body into her car without getting caught. She had factored in security staff as well as the cameras. Falsified documents were perfect too.”

  “So how did she get the body into her apartment?”

  “She had that figured out from way back. Her apartment had to have an underground garage without surveillance inside, along with an elevator.”

  “Unbelievable,” Jan said. “How long did she work on her murder plans?”

  “Three years.”

  “And once the corpse was in the apartment?”

  “One of her first boyfriends was a gas-line fitter. She knew just what she needed to turn to make the apartment blow to pieces. Her knowledge of forensics helped her prepare the corpse in such a way that no one would ever doubt that Bettina Windsten had committed suicide. The piercing and your necklace were clear identifying features. Along with the suicide note, no one had any idea that she’d faked her death. So. From then on, she wasn’t on the detectives’ radar at all. The dead don’t fit the criminal profile.”

  “Was I supposed to die in the explosion?”

  “No. Apparently you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Where was she hiding out the whole time?”

/>   “At the home of a girlfriend who’s studying abroad in South America for half a year. She was to water the flowers and feed the fish. The big building was impersonal enough that no one was surprised at seeing a new neighbor. At that point she knew everything about her victims. Their habits, the route they took to work, all their little everyday rituals.

  “I’ll spare you the gruesome details about George Holoch’s death, but she describes murdering him as the first orgasm she ever had in her life. From then on, she wasn’t of sound mind any more. Plenty of people dream of killing someone. Some plan it, but only the insane ones carry it out.”

  Jan felt a pang in his heart. He couldn’t believe Betty was responsible for all of it.

  “Does it say in her diary how she dragged me into the whole thing?”

  “It was planned so perfectly,” Bergman continued. “The body had to be stolen on a Sunday evening. At that time, there’s fewer hospital staff. She calculated, based on your body weight, the amount of knockout drops and drugs to put you out for all of Saturday as well as rob you of your memory. According to her notes, you two took some aspirin after going out drinking Friday. The water she handed you had the first dose of knockout drops.

  “She kept you drugged until that evening. Then she pressed your fingers to the murder weapon, took your blood, and removed your shirt—the one we later found to have Judge Holoch’s blood on it. Then she gave you a major dose of ecstasy.”

  Bergman clutched his coffee. The long night had left its mark on him, too.

  “Bettina wore black overalls that she’d outfitted with padding on the shoulders and chest. Together with military boots, she looked like an athletic male. An observer would never have taken her for the dainty woman that she was.

  “She packed up her murder weapons, took your keys, and parked the car so that Holoch’s neighbor would be bothered by it. She climbed over the balcony of Holoch’s house and lay waiting for him. Then she paralyzed him with a stun gun and broke his leg, which made him more or less helpless. From there she proceeded quite methodically. She chose spots on Holoch’s body that would not kill him before she bashed in his skull.

  “She spotted your shirt with Holoch’s blood, dispersed your blood around the scene, and drove your car to your apartment. Down in the basement, she tossed the main murder weapon into your neighbor’s poorly locked storage room. She went back home, removing any clues, and waited till you woke up from your drugged-out delirium. That’s where Patrick found you and brought you to the station.”

  “Did she ever consider that I’d bolt from custody?”

  “Actually she didn’t, but her faked suicide made her think she was clear of you, custody or no.”

  “For the most part, it was going perfectly,” Jan said. “Until Michael Josseck died, I wasn’t even sure myself whether I might have killed the judge.”

  “She used the time to observe her next victim, updating her notes as she went. A few days later came the chance to murder Michael Josseck.

  “She broke into his apartment and spiked his cognac with drugs to put him under. The contractor came home and had a drink, just like he did every night. When he woke up, he found himself tied up tight down on the floor. She kept Josseck’s mouth open with a spreader and poured the concrete down his throat.

  “Even that, she didn’t leave to chance. She’d tested different types of concrete beforehand, mixing them with various amounts of water until she had the ideal formula for carrying in her pack for the right length of time. When you were blacked out, she’d pressed your hand around that tube for pouring in the concrete. That’s what set us on your trail once and for all.”

  “Which worked too,” Jan said. “But that’s when I was sure I wasn’t the murderer.”

  Bergman shrugged. “Minor detail, from her point of view. The evidence alone for Judge Holoch was already so clear-cut that nothing you could have said would have helped you.”

  “And if I had ended up in custody? Then it would have been obvious I couldn’t be the murderer, not once Michael Josseck was murdered.”

  “She didn’t count on us connecting the dots so fast between the victims. Worst-case scenario, she would’ve just shot her parents and Father Anberger.”

  “But the Esels saw the link, so they went underground?”

  “Betty didn’t think her parents capable of that. It threw a wrench into her plans. But the Esels didn’t know their own daughter was the murderer, so they fled to their vacation home. It wasn’t registered in their name and was really the perfect hiding place. Except for the fact that Bettina knew about it.”

  “I had to listen to her parents dying. But what did she do, exactly?”

  “Bettina’s account reads like a lover’s poem. From the way she confided in her diary, you can tell she felt joy in committing these murders.

  “She took her parents by surprise. She immobilized her father with the stun gun and tied him up. Her mother panicked, fled into the bedroom. Bettina described her in the diary as a ‘hysterical cow who goes into shock from the slightest strain.’ She had expected Sarah Esel to go hiding under the bed. That she’d call you, she didn’t expect that.

  “While her mother was on the phone with you, Bettina went to work on her father. She had sharpened three wooden swords, and she drove them into his abdomen. Here again, she picked out spots that didn’t cause immediate death, but rather let him die slowly.

  “Then she pulled her mother out from under the bed, beat her, took her head between her legs, and carved out her eyes. It thrilled Bettina to see her crawling around the room blinded. When that stopped being fun, she killed her mother and inserted the costume jewelry rings into her eye sockets. It was only then that she noticed the phone.”

  “Now I know who stabbed me outside of Chandu’s building,” Jan said.

  “You had massive good luck. Seems you had told her about your friend’s hideout.”

  “That’s how she knew where I was.”

  “She was waiting for you, wanted to slit your stomach open.”

  “My leather jacket saved my life.”

  “Actually, it was you staggering out into the street before she could deal you the lethal blow—and luck. You almost got run over by a car, and being seen felt too risky for her, so she took off. She knew you weren’t dead, but she’d neutralized you long enough for her to continue with her plans.”

  “It never would have entered my mind that she was the murderer. And if Chandu and Zoe hadn’t carried me out of the hospital, I’d have ended up in police custody. Then we never would have caught her.”

  “It was the little things that brought her down in the end. We were lucky. Her plan was too good to go wrong.”

  “Where did it fail, then?”

  “The fun she had tormenting them. If she’d just murdered the priest in his apartment and taken off, we never would’ve caught her. But she gave herself too much time with him.”

  “If Zoe hadn’t found that secret room at the Esels, we never would’ve thought of it.”

  “Why she hauled him into the church is not clear to us. From earlier entries, we can conclude that she liked to go to church as a girl. After her father abused her for the first time, she stopped going altogether because she felt impure. From then on, her sheltered childhood was over. I guess you could say she wanted to put brackets around a whole life. There, at that very point where she’d experienced her last happy moment, she was going to close it off.”

  Bergman held up one of the journals and showed it to Jan. On the cover was a drawing of a woman, depicted like a white-marble statue, clad in a white toga. Cloth covered her hair. She cradled a little flame in her hands. The glowing light illuminated her face, contorted in sorrow. Tears ran down her cheeks, as if she carried some insufferable burden.

  “Do you know who that is?” Bergman asked.

  “It’s Hestia,” Jan replie
d. “The goddess of the family, home, and the hearth fire. Betty told me about her, about how significant she was in the Greek pantheon.”

  “So why is she crying?”

  “She’s mourning for lost innocence.”

  Chapter 19

  Jan sat next to Zoe’s hospital bed. She had a sling on one arm and was hooked up to a lot of blinking machines. She’d taken a direct hit of shotgun fire, but the bulletproof vest under her leather jacket had stopped the worst of it. Still, a broken rib had damaged her lung. After the operation they moved her to intensive care, but the doctor had reassured them that she was out of the woods.

  In bed, the small woman looked fragile. Considering how self-confident she always acted, it was hard to imagine that anything at all could knock her over. She opened her eyes, weary, and turned to Jan.

  “Shit,” was her first word. “I almost bite the big one, and you’re the first person I see?”

  Jan laughed. A huge weight dropped from his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Zoe. I just needed to see for myself that you’re still alive.”

  She looked around the room. “You seen my cigarettes?”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke in intensive care.”

  “Don’t care.” She pressed and pressed at a button on a remote. A moment later a nurse came jogging into the room. Zoe started explaining to the woman, in her less-than-endearing way, that she needed something to smoke at once, otherwise she would pull all the tubes out of her arms and make a run for the nearest kiosk.

  At first the nurse tried arguing reasonably. She explained to Zoe why smoking after surgery was not a great idea, but soon she saw how pointless this tactic was and resorted to Zoe’s level. When two doctors came running in and Zoe threatened them with a horrible death if she could only get near a scalpel, Jan took the opportunity to exit the room. Zoe was back again. He wouldn’t have to worry about her at all.

  It was a strange feeling, returning to Homicide. Jan stood a moment before the old building, looking over the facade. He absorbed every detail. That antique stonework that reminded him of an old castle, with its four statues carrying baskets on their shoulders. He’d always noticed how the modern, green police shield affixed to the building didn’t really fit in.