Heller

by JD Nixon

  “Why did you do it, Heller? It’s so unlike you.”

  He avoided my eyes, lowering his own to gaze intently at his motionless fingers resting on his desk. I thought he wasn’t going to speak, but then he did. “After the other night between us, I felt . . .” He sighed heavily. “I thought it might help me feel better if . . .”

  He stopped and remained silent for so long that I knew he wasn’t going to say any more. I guess he wasn’t a man who liked to examine his emotions. I didn’t push it and instead let my eyes linger on the hickeys on his throat. That woman had had her fun with him last night. They’d obviously done a bit of rough.

  His hand crept up to his neck and his expression wasn’t quite embarrassed, but more annoyed. “I don’t know how to hide them. They’re so ugly.”

  That made me smile. “I have some concealing makeup. I’ll go get it.” I ran up the stairs, grabbed the makeup and ran back down again, noticing with delight that I wasn’t even out of breath. I closed Heller’s door and spent five minutes covering up the bruises. “There! It’s not perfect because you’re browner than I am, but at least you won’t scare Niq now.” I handed him the concealing stick. “You’ll need this for tomorrow.”

  He looked pathetic, which I’m sure he was doing on purpose. “Can’t you do it for me every morning till they go away, please Matilda? I wouldn’t be any good at this.” I gave a resigned sigh and agreed.

  “There’s more. My back is stinging.”

  “She scratched you?”

  He nodded. “I remember she had these long red nails.”

  I stared at him, suddenly tense. “Did she have blonde hair too? And was she tanned?”

  He nodded again, frowning slightly. “How did you know?”

  “Oh man, that’s creepy.” He was puzzled, but I didn’t see how I could tell him without sounding completely crazy.

  “Take your shirt off.” He unbuttoned it and stood up with his back to me. Eight deep gouges rent his smooth skin, four down each shoulder blade. His shirt had fresh blood seepage on it.

  “Holy shit, Heller! Are you sure she was human?” He shrugged ruefully, which caused him to grimace in pain. “You have truly suffered for your pleasure. I hope it was all worth it.”

  “I gave as good as I got. She’ll be feeling sore this morning too.”

  I held up my hands in protest. “Please, no more details. I really don’t want to know what you got up to. Sit down. I’ll be back in a minute.” I went out to the main office and retrieved the small first aid kit from its spot in the kitchenette.

  “He needs first aid?” Daniel whispered in surprise. “Must have been a wild night!”

  I nodded at him emphatically, rolling my eyes, and returned to Heller’s office. I made him sit, leaning forward, while I stood behind him and gently patted the blood away, dabbing on disinfectant, and applying dressings where I could. The pain would have been palpable and personally I would have been bawling my eyes out by then if someone had doused my raw wounds with that much disinfectant. But he showed absolutely no reaction at all. He didn’t even blink.

  “Tough guy, huh?” I smiled. He glanced up at me and held out his hands. I placed mine in his, regarding him affectionately. He closed his fingers around mine and rubbed his thumbs gently across the backs of my hands.

  “Do you forgive me, Matilda?”

  “What for?” I asked, surprised.

  “For asking you to sleep with me even though I knew you weren’t sober. I promise it won’t happen again. I don’t want you to be afraid to be alone with me,” he answered quietly. “I’m not a rapist, Matilda. Women have always agreed before I’ve slept with them.”

  I was momentarily stunned and had to think fast before I opened my mouth again. “I told you before, I’m not afraid to be alone with you. I asked you to stop and you did. That’s a lot more than some men would do. Besides, I wanted to sleep with you and I’m sure it would have been wonderful. But it just isn’t a good idea, Heller. It would be too intense. And, I’m your employee. We’re better off the way we are.”

  “Which is?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a relationship like this before.”

  “Me either.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to make up the rules as we go.” I dug up a clean shirt for him, gave him a couple of paracetamol tablets and then shooed him off back to bed to recover from his excesses.

  I sat at my desk for ages that afternoon thinking about Heller and me. There was definitely something between us, but what was it? The only thing I knew was that whatever it was, it would never be any normal kind of relationship. Then I remembered that I still hadn’t called Will.

  That night I helped Daniel cook a real meal in his own kitchen. He finally chose to make corn and zucchini fritters with a simple salad. And although his kitchen looked like a warzone afterwards, he proudly dished up his meal to Niq and me. It was pretty good, to be honest, and I don’t know who was beaming with more pride afterwards, him or me.

  Chapter 24

  After dinner with Daniel and Niq, I returned to my flat and flipped on the TV. I caught the end of the news and the newsreader was summarising the main stories for the day. A photo of a toothy, over-brown, heavily made-up woman with brassy blonde hair flashed onto the screen.

  “And a woman was found murdered in a room at the Chancellor Hotel late this morning by hotel staff. It is believed she was strangled. She has been identified as Grace Owens, a mother of three. Police have declined to comment on the progress of their investigation. Tomorrow’s weather will be fine with a maximum of –”. I didn’t hear any more as I flew out of my flat, up the stairs to bang on Heller’s door.

  He opened the door in surprise and I pushed past him, inviting myself in.

  “What hotel were you at last night?” I demanded.

  “The Chancellor. Why?”

  “Have you seen the news?” I grabbed the remote to his giant TV and flipped through the channels until I found the tail-end of another channel’s late news. The same photo of the woman flashed briefly on the screen.

  “Was that the woman you were with last night?”

  “Yes. What’s going on?”

  “Heller! She was murdered, strangled! This morning! Her body was found by hotel staff this morning!” I shouted at him, waving my arms wildly, half-hysterical. “How rough were you with her?”

  “It wasn’t me, Matilda,” he said calmly. “She was definitely alive when I left. She tried to persuade me to stay by offering to . . . Never mind, you don’t want to hear that. But when I left she was sitting up in bed. Definitely alive.”

  “I saw you coming up the stairs this morning. It was about five o’clock. I was up early to go to the gym. Do you remember that? We crossed paths on the stairs and you said ‘Don’t look at me like that Matilda’.” I hoped I wasn’t coaching him.

  “I remember.” He stood up, went to his phone and punched in some numbers. “Corby, I need you over here immediately. I have a problem. Thanks.” He hung up.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My lawyer. I want him with me when I go to the police.”

  I stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “You can’t go to the police! They’ll arrest you.”

  “Matilda, I don’t have any choice. My DNA will be all over that room, everywhere over that woman. In her, on her, all over the bed, the floor, the bathroom, everywhere. It’s better if I go in voluntarily. It looks bad for me, but it will be okay because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Heller, didn’t you use condoms?” I was embarrassed asking him, but my anxiety drove me to.

  His expression was as neutral as usual. Talking about his sexual activities didn’t seem to embarrass him at all. “I know. It was foolish. I always do normally, but I really was very drunk last night and I didn’t use them.”

  I waited with him until his lawyer arrived, a trim, smartly dressed, intelligent-looking man in his early forties, with sharp gray eyes an
d a serious face. Heller introduced us and gave a brief outline of the situation. Corby questioned me closely about my meeting with Heller on the stairs – the time, what he was wearing, what state he was in and what he said, making quick notes as I spoke. Then Heller asked me to leave so that he could discuss things in detail with Corby. I grasped his hands and squeezed them tightly, feeling slightly desperate.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured me with a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be okay. I’ll come and see you when I get back from the police station.” I nodded unhappily and returned to my flat.

  I couldn’t settle that night, waiting to hear some news. I spent the night pacing back and forth in my living area. I tried to distract myself with the TV, a book and then the internet, but it was no good. Nothing helped me loosen up. Night turned to dawn and still I hadn’t heard anything. Heller had been at the police station for over eight hours by then. What the hell was happening? I was going insane with worry.

  There was a gentle knock on my door. I flew over and flung it open. Heller stood there, completely exhausted, strain lining his face. I threw myself on him, hugging him tightly and promptly but stupidly burst into tears of anger, stress, relief and tiredness. He pushed me gently inside and closed the door with his foot, holding me close against him until my sobbing subsided and I was spent.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, snuffling loudly. “I don’t know where that came from.” He handed me his handkerchief. I mopped up as best I could and we sat on the lounge, me gripping his hands tightly as though he might be snatched away from me at any moment.

  “Your brother was the lead detective in the team that interviewed me,” he said grimly. His accent was prominent again so I knew he was exceptionally angry. “And I could tell that he enjoyed every second of it. He played games with me, Matilda.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He knew I hadn’t done anything before I even said a word. The woman, Grace, she rang room service after I left and had some breakfast delivered. She was definitely alive at five-thirty when it was delivered, by which time I was fast asleep on my bed, after you had seen me.”

  I blinked at him dumbly for a moment. “But why would he put you through that? I don’t understand. It’s cruel.”

  “Because he’s a sadist who enjoys power games. He made me spell out every last detail of my night with her. Everything I did to her, everything she did to me. In explicit detail. It was unnecessarily humiliating. Your brother was very upset to hear that it was you who could alibi me. He didn’t like that little detail at all. You’ll probably have to go down to the station to make a statement to him later today. Sorry, my sweet.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind.”

  “There’s also CCTV footage of me in the hallway leaving her room, in the foyer heading for the carpark and in the carpark itself driving away before she even rang room service. And that time gels with the time you saw me walking up the stairs.”

  “Sounds cut and dried.”

  “But worst of all was that while I was being interviewed for hours and hours, going over and over the same information, another set of detectives was processing her estranged husband who had already confessed to stalking her to the hotel and strangling her after I left.”

  “They had a confession from him but he still kept interviewing you? That’s unbelievable!”

  “Your brother made a big mistake today. He thought he was being clever, top dog wielding his power, but he’s made an enemy of me.” Heller cut me with his icy eyes. “I will have my revenge, Matilda. At some point, maybe in the future, your brother will pay for today.”

  A knot of dread settled in my stomach. “What do you mean, Heller? I won’t let you do anything to Brian. He’s my brother.”

  “I don’t care. This is between him and me. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s everything to do with me. He’s my brother! I’m going to warn him.”

  “Go ahead, but he won’t take you seriously. Corby wants me to lodge an official complaint about both his and his partner’s behaviour. But I prefer to get my revenge in more creative ways.” He wore the most evil expression I’ve ever seen on a human being, teeth snarling, eyebrows drawn together in a frightening angle. I was afraid of him again, remembering what he’d done to those men at the bikie bar.

  I threw away my dignity and begged. “Please don’t hurt him. He has a wife and small children. You met my nieces. The girls are so young. Please don’t do anything that will hurt his family.”

  “He should have thought of them before he decided to mess around with me. I’ve got nothing but contempt for people like him who abuse their official position. People like him give the police a bad name.”

  I wanted to defend Brian more, but the truth was that even as a child he would abuse any power he had over others. I used to dread the nights Mum and Dad would leave him to babysit Sean and me. He would make us fetch and carry, treating us as his personal slaves, threatening all the while to tell our parents that we had misbehaved if we didn’t do everything he demanded. Sean was always so much more eager to obey than me, and being more defiant and prone to talking back, I copped the bulk of his punishments. I could easily imagine Brian holding back information that would have cleared Heller instantly so that he could extract as much discomfort from him as possible.

  Heller stood up and with a quick kiss on my cheek, left to get some sleep. I tried to do the same, but kept worrying over his words. He wouldn’t really do anything to Brian, would he? It wasn’t as though he was a cold-blooded killer, although Daniel thought he might be. All I could do was to warn Brian to keep his wits about him. But for heaven’s sake, he was a cop and if a cop can’t look out for himself then what chance have the rest of us got?

  Later that day after I managed to get some sleep, I rang Brian to tell him I was coming in to make my statement. He was curt on the phone and said no more than necessary to make the arrangements. I told Heller what I was doing and he insisted that I take someone with me. I think he really wanted to go with me himself, but it would have been apparent to anyone that was a terrible idea. In the end it was Tysen who was free to accompany me. We chatted about self-defence and security on the way to the station and he was pleased to hear that I was going to be training for my licence soon. I had the strong impression that he had worried over setting me loose on the world with the limited knowledge he’d been able to impart to me at that training session.

  At the station, Brian kept me waiting for forty minutes. It was another typical ploy of his. I sat patiently, not showing any of the increasing anger I was feeling. Tysen paced around like a caged animal. Being at the police station seemed to make him nervous and I wondered if he’d done some time in the past. Then I wondered if you could even be a security officer if you’d done any time, which only reminded me how little I knew about the whole career.

  Eventually Brian came sauntering out, thumbs hooked through the belt loops in his trousers. I watched him indifferently. There is no one person on earth less likely to be impressed with a man than his own sister. He jerked his head, presumably to indicate that I should follow him to the back of the main reception area.

  “Nice to see you again too, Brian,” I said sarcastically, standing up. Tysen fell in behind me as I walked towards Brian.

  “Not him. Just you.” I raised my eyebrows slightly to tell Tysen to stay at the reception area. He didn’t look happy about it. It was probably contrary to his orders from Clive or Heller to keep a watch on me. Brian led me to a small interview room, windowless, minimally furnished and smelling of desperate men. I sat down without being invited and stared at Brian belligerently, my arms crossed.

  “Tilly, how did you get mixed up with a man like Heller?”

  “He’s my boss.” I sounded sullen, even to my own ears.

  “I know that. But surely you’ve got the good sense to see that he is not the kind of person a girl like you should be associating with.”

  I remained silent, arms
firmly crossed. I really hated being called a girl. I wasn’t twelve anymore.

  Brian sighed and ran his fingers through his short dark brown wavy hair, which was a mere shade or two lighter than my own hair colour. We also shared the same big, light brown eyes. He was a nice-looking man, not stunning (Sean was better-looking), but nowhere near the unattractive side of the ledger either. He had an unexpected and disarmingly sweet smile, not that anyone ever saw it. His job as a homicide detective didn’t naturally predispose him to sunny smiling, and a lot of that spilled over into his personal life. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw him smile. But I wondered if living with Gayle all these years had killed his joie de vivre, and immediately gave myself a mental slap for that bitchy thought. We were a tall family and he was taller than me but not as tall as Sean, with a tight, average-sized body. He worked out regularly, always an advantage for a cop. He was smart, suspicious and generally untrusting. He could also be a complete bastard, as I knew from growing up with him. This was my first encounter with him in his professional role.

  “I’ve been led to believe that you can alibi Heller at approximately five o’clock in the morning yesterday. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” And I made my statement, watching carefully as he laboriously typed it into the official format, correcting him on multiple occasions. When I was satisfied, he printed it off and I signed it with a flourish.

  “Are you sleeping with him?” Brian asked me bluntly when I handed the form back to him after signing it.

  I shook my head in disgusted disbelief. “Why is everyone so interested in my sex life? No, I am not sleeping with Heller. He’s my boss! How many times do I have to tell everyone?”

  “You stay away from him, you hear? Do not get involved with him.” His eyes were burning with intent. “Do you know what he did to that woman? He’s no better than an animal.”