Chapter 8

Now everything gained momentum. Shortly after Seiko brought the file to the investigating judge, who happened to be a woman, a warrant for Ben’s arrest and a warrant to search his premises was issued pronto. It was not an easy arrest, when they arrived at his house the next morning at 6 am and rang the bell, nobody answered, although the car that had been described by Joe was in the driveway telling them he was home.

As you can imagine they didn’t come alone, when there was no one opening the door the team broke it down and as they entered the premises they found him snoring completely drunk in his bed. He was taken into custody and put to rest in one of the detention cells at the station to sleep it further off, awaiting questioning. Jeff was excited with the prospect of finally having a serious suspect, or maybe even a group of suspects. Finally, around 10, when he sobered up, Ben was led to the interrogation room.

In the meantime, the team had been extremely busy, now that we knew the license plate of Ben’s car they could see exactly when and where he’d been during the time of the murders checking all the traffic cams and the footage they had from the cameras from the club parking. They even found it entering the club’s parking lot, especially on busy nights and always together with other cars, telling them Ben did everything to be unnoticed and stay inconspicuously.

They now also started to check the cars that had entered together or just before or after Ben drove in or out to see if it were always the same cars, maybe from his homophobic club members. He had even entered the parking lot on the night of the first murder.

Also, the team doing the home search had found a number of interesting items with which they were going to confront Ben during the interrogation.

“Good morning Mister Janssen, have we sobered up a bit?” No reply, he just sat there looking hostile.

“You are Ben Janssen, right?”

“Yes, and who wants to know?”

“I am Inspector Seiko Tashima and the gentleman sitting next to me is chief inspector Jeff Baines and we would like to have a word with you about your wife.”

“You mean that cheating lesbian bitch that left me a couple of weeks ago, have you found her?”

“Yes we have Mister Janssen, and she’s doing OK after the beating you gave her.”

“Did she say I beat her? I didn’t beat her, the bitch fell down the stairs because she had been boozing it up with our lesbian neighbor.”

“That’s not exactly what she told us.”

“What lies has she been telling you? I love her, despite the fact that she digs women.”

“You have a strange way of showing your love, I’ve seen photos of her when she arrived in the hospital.”

“Is that where she’s hiding, telling them doctors I beat her?”

“It doesn’t matter for the moment where she is Mister Janssen and it’s not about her that we want to speak with you, but about something entirely different.”

While explaining that to Janssen Seiko had placed the pictures of both murdered women on the table in front of him, asking him if he knew them. Of course, he denied knowing any of them. When they then confronted him with their knowledge of his relationship with Rose he became rather nervous.

“Mister Janssen, if you don’t know any of these ladies, there must be something seriously wrong with your memory. Although she was badly mangled, you should be able to recognize the woman you had a relationship with some years ago.”

“Oh is that Meredith?”

“Yes it is, so can you tell us maybe where you were the night of Saturday, May first?”

“I don’t know anymore, but most probably in bed.”

“Is there anybody that can confirm that?”

“Hey, maybe you should ask my wife, although most of the time she is in bed with one of her lesbian friends.”

“Could it be that you were cheating on her and were in bed with another woman?”

“What is a man to do when his wife loves women more than her husband, and besides I don’t keep a list of all the women I fucked once.”

“Could you try a bit harder sir, your ex was murdered that night, and we have reason to believe you, and even your buddies with whom you regularly visit the strip club, were involved, or are you going to tell us you didn’t go there?.”

“I had nothing to do with that, and neither have they, we all love women very much, especially when they’re taking their clothes off.

“Then why was your car spotted at the club on the night she was killed?”

“It was probably someone else.”

‘Driving your car?”

“I regularly lend it out to friends.”

“OK, then can you give us a list of those friends?”