Heller's Revenge (37 page)

I waited patiently in the
reception area while they interviewed Meili first. I rang Heller
quickly, hoping that he couldn’t tell what I’d been up to that
morning from my voice. Evading his insistent questions, I hastily
cut short our call. Replacing my phone in my bag, I looked up just
as Brian strode out from the back offices, obviously on his way to
a job. Accompanying him was a tall, rugged, hard-faced detective
who I hadn’t met before. Brian looked terrible, his skin pasty and
spotted, and he had piled on some kilos since I’d last seen him.
Separation from Gayle and his two little daughters wasn’t agreeing
with him. He pulled up short when he noticed me sitting in
reception.

“Heard you were blown up,” he
said in a hard, uncaring voice, not bothering with any
salutation.

I crossed my arms and stared at
him. “That’s right.” Equally hard.

“What are you doing hanging
around that Eriksen anyway?”

“He’s my client. I’m working for
him.” And doing other things for him for free, but Brian didn’t
need to know that.

“Well, you better be careful.
They’re out to get him by the looks of things and they won’t care
if you get in the way.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant he
was concerned for my safety or not. “Okay, thanks Brian. How are .
. . things?”

His face reddened with anger.
“How do you think they are? They’re fucking shitarse.”

And with that he stalked off to
the front door, trailed by his partner. Guess he still hadn’t
forgiven me for being the bearer of bad news. His partner turned to
look at me curiously as they exited the building. I smiled at him
briefly and he smiled back.

Meili came out and then it was
my turn to be interviewed. I took the two detectives through the
day and night as best I could, and they nodded with animation when
I mentioned the firework that I thought I’d seen being released
from the other boat. I read and signed my statement and we were
free to go.

“Is that bunch of hyenas out
there waiting for you two?” asked the duty sergeant from behind the
counter, indicating the still-present media scrum. We glanced out
of the glass doors with dismay.

“Yeah,” confessed Meili. The
sergeant called over one of the uniforms.

“Take them out the back door,”
he instructed, and we followed the young constable down a winding
corridor to a small rear door where we made our quiet escape. She
gazed up at Meili, struck dumb with being in such close contact
with a famous person. He smiled at her in a friendly manner,
thanking her personally and leaving her with a blush and a nice
memory for the rest of her life. I stared at his lovely face,
thinking how much I really, really liked him. He caught me gawking,
and took a moment to lean down to kiss me, not caring if anyone was
watching.

We grabbed a quick bite for
lunch and spent the afternoon doing nothing more strenuous than
strolling around the botanical gardens, my ability to do much
severely hampered by my leg injury. We sat by the harbour as the
sun set and watched the boats coming and going, which struck me as
a strange thing for us to do, considering what had just happened to
us.

He told me more about Inge; how
they’d met, what they had in common, what he loved about her, the
engagement ring he had bought just before she was killed that he
had buried with her. It was all so touching and I squeezed his hand
tightly. I told him about Will and how lovely he was but the
difficulties I had managing his expectations and living my life
according to the Rules of Heller. I told him about Daniel and Niq
and the twins and my work. We talked about our families. I hoped he
didn’t notice that I avoided talking about Heller.

We dined at a place we came
across on our way back to the hotel and spent the evening quietly.
He made a series of phone calls and checked his emails. I checked
my text messages, rang Heller, dodging all his questions and
hanging up as soon as possible. I read my book for a while.

“I’m extending my stay, Tilly,”
Meili told me after concluding his phone calls. “I want to be here
for Alex and Sali’s joint funeral. Will you stay with me
longer?”

“Of course, Meili,” and I rang
Heller again to inform him of this new development. He reluctantly
agreed, admitting that he didn’t have a dedicated assignment lined
up for me, and that I’d only be allocated to routine team work on
my return. I thanked him prettily, but extricated myself from his
questions the second I could.

“I can stay,” I told Meili
afterwards.

“Great. Come over here,
beautiful.”

I joined him on his bed and we
didn’t talk much for the rest of the night.

Chapter 24

We slept in very late and went
out for breakfast, having missed the opening hours for the hotel’s
breakfast buffet. Then we went to see another movie, a crass comedy
that I’m ashamed to say made me giggle throughout.

“Tilly, I think you enjoyed that
movie a little too much for propriety’s sake,” he teased. I poked
out my tongue and he leaned down to kiss me. We were walking around
trying to find somewhere nice to have lunch when we crossed paths
with a couple of Heller’s men. Luckily I saw them in the distance
and released Meili’s hand before they noticed.

“Hey guys,” I greeted,
high-fiving them. They regarded Meili with great interest, so I
introduced him and he shook hands politely with them.

“I’m a big admirer, Dr Eriksen,”
one of the men divulged. “That was a great stunt you pulled on the
cultural centre. Top job!”

“Thank you,” he said modestly,
smiling at both of them.

“You all right, Miss?” asked the
other. “Saw about that explosion on the news. Must have been
frightening.”

“Sure was. Got a wound on my
thigh. Thirty stitches. Only good thing about it was that I caught
a tuna.” They were suitably impressed. “With some help from him,” I
added, nodding towards Meili, thinking I’d better give credit where
it was due. He smiled again.

They made their farewell, off to
a job after lunch. Meili shook hands with them again and I slapped
their hands again and we went our separate ways. Meili and I found
a small cafe for a late sandwich and coffee before heading back to
the hotel room.

We didn’t mean to, but somehow
we found ourselves back in bed together, giving the flexibility and
support of the expensive mattress a robust testing. And as Meili
kissed my neck and caressed my breasts, the thought crossed my mind
of ringing Heller to let him know just what he was currently paying
me to do. But I didn’t think that he’d be amused at all. In fact
such a phone call would almost certainly result in a
Heller’s
team bursting into the hotel room to rescue me. Not
that I wanted to be rescued at that moment. Nope. Not one little
bit.

Afterwards, blissful grins on
our faces, we showered and changed. He suggested that we go down to
the botanical gardens again so that I could take some photos of him
for his website.

“People like to see photos of me
wherever I am and I haven’t posted any from here so far,” he
explained.

“Do you have a lot of followers
on your website?”

“A humbling number. Hundreds of
thousands of people also read my blog and my Facebook page. I
updated it last night to tell everyone about the explosion and Alex
and Sali. I’ll have hundreds of responses to that. It will take me
a while to read them all; maybe tonight I’ll spend some time doing
that.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’m going
to bring my camera as well for some shots of you for my personal
album.”

It was a lovely afternoon and
the gardens were fresh and green, the happy chirping of birds
filling the air. We strolled around and I took a few candid shots
of him and a few posed shots up against the greenery, so that he’d
have a good number to choose from when he decided which ones to
post. Then I handed him back his camera and took mine out of my
bag. I set up the timer and took a number of photos of us smiling
together, and then some more candid photos of him.

“I feel like a supermodel,
you’re taking so many photos, Tilly,” he protested, laughing.

“You are a supermodel to me,” I
smiled and clicked again. “And anyway, I need something to remember
you by, in between visits from you.” I searched around for a new
setting and noticed an elderly fig tree nearby. “Go and hug that
tree for me, you big tree-hugger.”

“No!”

“Go on,” I pleaded. “It’ll be
funny. Your followers will love it.”

“The things I do for you,” he
complained and walked over to the tree, waited with embarrassment
while a couple strolled past, then quickly gave the tree a small
hug.

“No, not like that! You
love
the tree. Show the tree how much you love it,” I teased
and he gave the tree a bigger hug, facing the camera, eyes closed
with affection. “Perfect!” I giggled and took some shots.

He made some suggestive
movements against the tree. “
Meili!
Stop that! That’s rude!
You don’t love the tree
that
much. It’s wrong to do that to
a tree,” I giggled helplessly. “I’m going to film you if you don’t
stop and I’ll put it on YouTube. You’ll be known as Meili the
tree-humper, not tree-hugger.”

He came over to me laughing and
gave me a quick hug and kiss. “I just thought the tree and I were
ready to progress our relationship to the next step, seeing as I
loved it so much.”

“You’re a botanical pervert,” I
joked.

We held hands and ambled down
the path towards an open, grassy area dotted with families,
tourists and a couple of joggers. I forced him to stand still while
I stepped back and took some more photos, trying to fit in as much
of the beautiful landscape as possible.

“Your shoelace is undone,” I
noticed and he bent down to tie it up and I even took some photos
of him doing that. A jogger in a green tracksuit trotted towards
us. I waited impatiently for him to move out of the way because he
was spoiling my photos of Meili.

He jogged closer in a direct
line towards us and I thought for a moment that he hadn’t seen
Meili kneeling down and would trip over him. But he swerved at last
minute, stopping briefly to stretch his arms above his head. He
brought them down again, jogging on the spot the whole time,
standing next to, but slightly behind, Meili.

The whole scene struck me as odd
and I opened my mouth and said, “Meili.”

He looked up at me smiling and I
walked towards him. I heard two little pops and the jogger flashed
me an evil little smile before suddenly sprinting away in the
opposite direction.

Meili keeled over onto the
ground.

“
Meili!
” I screeched in
alarm and ran the last few metres over to him. I waited for him to
sit up and right himself, but he didn’t move.

I couldn’t comprehend what was
happening, until I saw the thin trickles of blood making a slow
path around his neck from the back of his head. I rolled him over
slightly and saw two little entry holes at the top of his neck. I
knew what a bullet entry wound looked like after Niq had been
shot.

I laid him down gently and
checked his pulse and breathing.
Nothing.

Meili was dead.

Just like that.

One minute he’d been tying up
his shoes, the next he was dead. I slumped back on my haunches and
screamed, “
No!
”

I fell heavily onto my butt on
the grass and gathered his lifeless form to my chest, screaming
aloud again and again. I didn’t know if I would ever stop.

Kind people raced over to see
what had happened, shocked when they realised a man had just been
murdered in broad daylight.

“Oh my God, isn’t that Meili
Eriksen?” one of them whispered loudly.

I tried to compose myself,
remembering what I’d been hired to do, what Meili had wanted me to
do. I took in a deep shaky breath and looked directly at a young,
curly-haired blond man who already had his phone out, who may or
may not have been a tourist.

“Can you ring Emergency, please?
The number’s 000. Ask for the police. For homicide. Ask them to
send Brian Chalmers. I don’t want anyone else. Brian Chalmers.” I
spelled Chalmers for him. “Got it?”

He nodded, and I took my own
phone out and punched in Heller’s number with shaking hands.

“Everything okay, my sweet?”

“N-no,” I replied, my voice
wobbly. That was all I needed to say.

“Where are you?” he barked
out.

“Botanical gardens, the park
area,” and I hung up.

Someone had managed to track
down two police officers, part of the regular beat that patrolled
the gardens on mountain bikes. They immediately took control with
reassuring authority, checking that Meili was in fact deceased,
pushing the crowds back a decent distance, corralling a picnic
blanket from a bystander to cover his body and rounding up
witnesses to anything that had happened.

There were several people who
had vaguely noticed the incident and another couple, besides me,
who had directly witnessed the puzzling events. There was general
consensus amongst us that the man had been wearing a green
tracksuit with a black Nike cap, white trainers with green fluoro
stripes and black sunglasses. But after that the descriptions
varied enormously – he had black hair, brown hair, firm chin, round
chin, was 170 centimetres, 180 centimetres, 190 centimetres
tall.

The paramedics were the first to
arrive but had to wait for the forensic officers to do their work
first. It was a nightmare of a crime scene – a big, open, public
space, a number of people trampling the near vicinity, me holding
Meili after his death, the picnic blanket thrown on the body. The
bike cop who did that received a right bollocking over that broken
protocol. He turned away muttering something about not wanting the
kiddies see a dead body, and I took a minute to thank him
tearfully, grateful for his thoughtfulness. The forensics team took
photos and searched the general area but it was useless. They
didn’t discover anything helpful.