02 Heller's Revenge - Heller

by JD Nixon

  “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 autho
rity, 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.

  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 n
osed 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.