Heller's Revenge (38 page)

Brian sped to the scene with his
partner, whose name I later discovered was Detective Robbins. I
didn’t find out his first name. On arrival, Brian gave me the
once-over and pointed a finger at me, “Don’t even think of going
anywhere.”

He and his partner turned their
attention to the bike cops for an initial report and brief summary
of the witness statements. And before long the whole area was
crowded with cops. They glanced over at me curiously a few times as
I stood by myself, off to one side. I was in total shock, trying to
keep it all together and stem the tsunami of tears that were
threatening to spill at any second. I shifted my handbag to my
other shoulder and crossed my arms defensively.

Suddenly I felt a jerk and
someone grabbed my handbag off my shoulder, running off.

“
Hey!
” I shouted in rage,
giving chase immediately. “That’s my handbag!”

My petty thief was a jogger with
dark glasses, wearing a singlet top and running shorts. But I
recognised the curly brown hair that I’d previously seen spilling
out from under a Nike cap, and the white runners with green fluoro
stipes. I threw a glance back over my shoulder at the cops who’d
looked up when I shouted.

“
It’s him!
” I screamed at
them. “The shooter! He’s stolen my handbag. It has my camera in
it!”

I knew what the man was after
and I couldn’t blame him, because both of us realised what was in
those last few photos I’d taken of Meili. Fury and grief gave my
feet wings and I pounded after him, despite the agonising pain of
my wound. I could hear others following behind me and I hoped the
bike cops had sprung into action. They were faster than any of us
could ever hope to be.

I pumped hard after the man.
He’d already done some jogging that day as we both well knew, but
he was strongly motivated, running for his freedom. I caught a
lucky break a few minutes later when he carelessly tripped over an
uneven brick in the path as he turned behind him to check on my
progress, falling to his knees. He scrabbled quickly to his feet. I
didn’t think twice, but dove towards him in a tackle move to grab
his ankle, bringing him down to the ground again. I reached out to
retrieve my handbag, which he’d dropped on impact.

My grip on his ankle was
tenuous. He wriggled around like a maniac, kicking out at me,
attempting to shake off my hand. I knew I wasn’t going to be able
to hold him for much longer. I used my lovely manicured nails – the
nails that Meili was concerned about me ruining only a few nights
ago – and raked them down the bastard’s left calf. I gouged into
his skin, drawing blood and gathering lots of his beautiful DNA
under my fingernails. He shouted in pain and kicked back, knocking
my hand off his leg. He scrambled up and went running
helter-skelter through some shrubbery, now limping slightly. A
couple of cops rode past, continuing to chase him, but I stayed
where I was, lying on the ground, staring up at the blue, blue sky,
drawing in bottomless breaths to replenish my body’s depleted
oxygen supply. I clutched my handbag to my chest as I slowly pushed
myself to my feet. A quick check confirmed that my camera was still
in my handbag. The shooter hadn’t had time to remove it.

I limped back to the crime
scene, grimly triumphant. In my absence, Heller and a team of his
men had turned up but I ignored them, marching straight over to a
forensics officer.

“I have the assassin’s DNA under
my fingernails here if you could make a scraping of it.”

The officer called Brian over
and I explained what I had done, although I lied and said it had
happened accidently in the struggle. I showed them both the gunk
under my fingernails. Brian grunted and allowed the technician to
take the scrapings. I took what I needed out of my handbag and
turned it over as well.

“You might be able to find his
fingerprints on my bag too. He wasn’t wearing gloves.” The
forensics officer carefully took my bag from me, while I turned to
Brian and said, “I have photos of the killer only seconds before
the murder.” Impatiently, he held out his hand for my camera, but I
refused to hand it over yet. “In a minute. I want to ask Heller to
copy the photos for me first. They’re not just evidence, they’re my
personal memento of a friend.”

He wasn’t happy at the news of
Heller’s presence. “Is that fucker here? You better tell him to
stay the fuck away from me if he knows what’s good for him. You
have five minutes to copy the photos or I’ll arrest you for
obstructing police work,” he grunted, then yelled out to one of the
uniforms. “Get your arse over here. Take her to copy her photos and
watch her the whole time. Don’t let her delete, erase or alter any
of the photos. Got it?”

The uniform nodded sullenly, not
appreciating Brian’s attitude. He accompanied me over to Heller,
who had worked out for himself what had happened, confirmed by my
tear-stained face. I fought hard to bite back any emotions and held
out my camera to him.

“I have photos on here that are
evidence, but I want to copy them first. Otherwise, it will be
forever until I get my camera back.”

He thought for a moment and led
the cop and me over to his Mercedes, which he’d illegally parked in
a gardens’ maintenance vehicle spot. He rummaged in the back seat
and pulled his laptop out of its case. I had the cable to connect
my camera to a computer in its case, so I plugged it in and
downloaded every photo I’d taken of Meili, some of them just a mere
hour ago when he’d still been alive. I couldn’t stop fat tears from
rolling down my cheeks when his happy face flashed up on the screen
as the photos downloaded.

“Tough day?” asked Heller
softly, gently pushing some hair behind my ear.

“The very worst,” I replied
shakily, digging around in my pocket in a futile hunt for a tissue.
He handed me the monogrammed handkerchief that I was convinced he
only kept in his pocket for my exclusive use. I’d never seen him
ever use one.

“I’ll take you home,” he said.
“You need attention, my sweet. You’re bleeding.”

I checked over myself in
surprise. I had grazed my elbows when I’d tackled the assassin and
I had smears of Meili’s blood on my clothes after cradling his poor
dead body. And then I looked down at the wound on my leg, noticing
for the first time that blood was soaking the side of my jeans. I
must have broken the stitches during the desperate sprint after my
handbag.
Oh well, nothing I could do at the moment
, I
thought with resigned weariness.

I straightened myself then and
wiped my tears away. “No Heller, I won’t go home yet. I was hired
to do a job and that was to bear witness to Meili’s murder and I’m
going to see it through to the bitter end. In fact I’m going to go
one better than that and I’m going to make sure his murderer is
caught.” I handed my camera to the cop and marched back with him to
scene, Heller following unhappily in our wake. Brian had told me
not to go anywhere and I wasn’t going anywhere until he or his
partner told me I could.

I watched Meili’s covered body
being wheeled to the silent ambulance, which then nosed its way
from the gardens silently.
No need for a siren for him
, I
thought sadly. I supposed that he would be taken to the morgue for
an autopsy. I didn’t know who to ring to tell them the bad news
about him. His lawyer was Alex, who had also been murdered. I
couldn’t even remember what firm Alex had worked for, so couldn’t
ring someone there to ask them to ring Meili’s parents. I
approached Brian, risking his further displeasure.

“What?” he snapped when he
deigned to notice me.

I took a deep breath and faced
him. “Meili told me that he was Norwegian. He had parents and two
brothers living in Norway. In Oslo, I think. His lawyer was Alex
What’s-his-name who was killed with his wife in the boat explosion
the other day. The only other person I’m aware of who knew him well
is Professor Maria Kavinsky, head of the ecology department at the
city university. They seemed quite friendly. She might know who to
contact. I’d like to ring someone to tell them what happened, but I
just didn’t know him well enough.” A thought struck me. “Oh, I
remember now – his father’s name is Odin Eriksen and he is, or was,
a professor at the University of Oslo. And his brothers are called
Thor and Baldur Eriksen.”

He glared at me for a moment,
before asking me to repeat my information while he wrote it down in
his unreadable scrawl. “We have his phone and camera and we’ll
collect his belongings from his hotel room. He had a laptop?” I
nodded. “We’ll find all the contacts we need in those.”

I nodded again and went over to
stand with the
Heller’s
men. “Heller? Can you send a team to
my hotel room and ask them to gather all of my things, please? The
cops are going to collect Meili’s belongings soon and I don’t want
to get messed up in all of that.”

I looked up at him and he
nodded, calling over two men. I stealthily slid them my swipe card,
told them the hotel, address and room number and off they went.
Nobody had noticed. It wouldn’t take them long to collect my
possessions. One of the things that Heller and Clive knocked into
our heads regularly was the importance of being prepared to
evacuate a place with no notice. I always kept everything in my
suitcase, ready to leave at any time. And maybe asking for a team
to clear out my things was the wrong thing for me to do, but I
didn’t want to be explaining to my brother why I had been spending
a week alone in a hotel room with a gorgeous stranger.

There wasn’t much for me to do
at the crime scene. I was only hanging around because Brian had
told me to. Heller decided to stay with me. The pair of men he’d
sent to collect my things reported back in and he told them to take
my gear back to the Warehouse. Then he dismissed the other men as
well and the two of us waited patiently for me to be noticed by the
detectives.

“What happened?” he asked. He
was very hands-off, which was unusual for him, but I was glad for
it. I didn’t want to touch another man right then, reinforcing that
subconsciously by hugging myself.

“It was so fast. Unbelievably
fast. Meili was doing up his shoelace, kneeling down. We were just
chatting, having a laugh, and this jogger came up and pretended to
do a stretch next to him, which made me suspicious. But by the time
I called his name, there were two little popping noises that I
didn’t even realise were shots. Then that cold-hearted bastard
smiled at me and ran off. And Meili was dead. Just like that.” My
voice broke and the tears sprang to my eyes again. I mopped them up
with Heller’s hankie.

“Cool and bold,” he assessed,
nodding. “But not professional. Too many witnesses around here. Too
public. He let himself be photographed. Didn’t wait for the right
moment.”

“A professional hit?” I
sniffed.

“I don’t think so. Probably just
an amateur hired-gun.”

I told him about my handbag
saga.

“Matilda, he will try to kill
you if he thinks you have evidence against him.”

“Heller, there were two other
witnesses who saw him and now I’ve handed over my photos to the
police like a good citizen. There’d be no point in trying to kill
me now.”

“I hope not.”

We were sitting on a low fence
when Brian stalked over, followed by Detective Robbins. Brian
ostentatiously ignored Heller as he said, “Those fucking useless
uniforms lost him. Let’s go. Down to the station,” he grunted at
me, giving me such a sour, unsympathetic look that I snapped right
back at him.

“Why are you being so horrible
to me, Brian? You’re treating me like a criminal. I just witnessed
a terrible murder, for God’s sake. Don’t you have any heart? Not
even for your only sister? Is this how you treat everyone who’s
gone through such a trauma? If you do then I think you’re a bloody
awful homicide cop!” I paused and took in a gulping breath, my nose
running in earnest. “You just wait until I tell Mum how you’re
treating me!”

And I burst into tears, pulling
out the already sodden handkerchief for some more mopping duties.
Detective Robbins threw me a concerned glance, but neither Heller
nor Brian moved to comfort me in the slightest, too engaged in
exchanging venomous glances, Heller’s fists clenched, Brian’s mouth
snarling. They would have had a go at each other right there in
front of everyone if I hadn’t intervened by grabbing Brian by the
arm and forcibly removing him from the situation.

He shook off my arm and stalked
ahead of me, leading me to one of the uniformed cops. “Take her to
the station to one of the interview rooms,” he ordered and when the
uniform lagged for a second in jumping to his command, he screamed,
“
Now!
” The uniform shot him a toxic look and laid a gentle
hand on my arm, urging me forward.

“Hold off, Brian,” interrupted
Detective Robbins in protest. “Can’t you see that it’s not a good
time to interview her? She’s too upset. Leave it till
tomorrow.”

Brian even snarled at his own
partner. “I want her down at the station now. We need that fucking
evidence from her while it’s fresh in her mind.”

His partner rolled his eyes, but
Brian was clearly the senior detective in the pair and had his way
on the matter. The uniform led me away.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s an
insensitive arsehole,” she soothed, unaware that he was my brother.
“Imagine treating you like that after the shock you’ve just had.”
Her kind tone was poison to me because it made me cry like Niagara
Falls, instead of shoving steel into my spine. I pressed Heller’s
soggy hankie into more disaster relief. “Was the victim . . .
excuse me . . . the deceased your boyfriend?”

“No, he was only a friend. But I
was very fond of him,” I managed to say.