by JD Nixon
I rang Heller immediately, but he didn’t answer. I left a message asking him to ring me back urgently. I fired up my laptop and searched the internet for mentions of Violet or Vanessa Langmore.
There were quite a few hits for Vanessa, who was indeed an experienced art dealer working for a large auction house in another city. But frustratingly, all the pictures were grainy shots from newspapers of her at events or celebrating important sales of famous paintings. She certainly looked like the Vanessa I’d met, but I couldn’t be completely sure.
There was little for Violet. A brief mention, without a photograph, of her as part of a graduating class from the police academy. A story about police liaison in a community paper where she posed with three other cops, all in uniform, in a tiny photo that made it impossible to see any facial feature clearly. She wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter. She didn’t have a blog. Nor apparently any hobby that left a presence on the internet. It was frustrating.
And then I found what I needed. It was a group photo that had been taken a year ago at the opening of a new private art gallery. It wasn’t from a newspaper, but hosted on the website of that gallery, so had good resolution and was a decent size. According to the caption underneath, Vanessa was in the middle of the group, smiling and holding up a flute of champagne, relaxed and beautiful. And off to one side, slightly behind the others as if reluctant to be photographed, was the elusive Violet, also holding a champagne flute, but unsmiling and bored.
The two women looked very similar but not identical. The caption identified Violet as Vanessa’s older sister. I studied the two women’s faces and tried to recall what the Vanessa I’d met looked like exactly. It was hard to say. Either woman could be her. Did she have any distinguishing features? Think, think, think.
I remembered her crooked little finger.
Excited, I rechecked the photo. My heart stopped beating for a second. Vanessa’s right hand held the champagne flute, but her left arm was slung casually around the neck of the woman standing next to her. Her hand hung down loosely, all fingers straight and aligned. My eyes switched to Violet. She also held the flute with her right hand, her left dangling at her front, clearly showing the bent little finger.
Violet was pretending to be her sister, Vanessa.
But why?
I rang Heller again and left another clamant message, telling him what I’d discovered.
Where was he? Maybe I could drive there to warn him in person. What if he was with Vanessa/Violet right now? What if she became angry with him again? Maybe this time she would try to hurt Heller himself, not just damage his property. I dashed across the hall to Daniel’s place.
“Sorry, Tilly. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“Is he with that Vanessa woman?”
He shrugged. “No idea, sorry. He didn’t say. Have you tried ringing him?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
I summarised what I’d found out about Violet. It left Daniel scratching his head as well over a possible motive for the deception.
“Maybe she thought being an art dealer would attract his attention more?”
“That’s what my brother said too. But that assumes she had this whole charade ready to roll on the chance of picking someone up. She’s obviously pinched her sister’s licence and credit cards and business cards.”
“Maybe she likes to pick up men for dirty one-nighters, but doesn’t want them to know who she really is. Because she’s a cop.”
It sounded feasible, but I wasn’t convinced. “Using her own sister’s name? It’s a bit too close to home if she wanted to remain unknown. And with all those different forms of fake ID? Heller went through her bag when she was in the shower and he said there was lots of corroborating ID. That’s so much effort to expend just to pretend to be someone else. And another thing, if she likes casual pickups, why would she pay to stay at one of those expensive top hotels? Brian said she’s a constable – I don’t think they’re paid a lot. The hotel bill must be killing her.”
Daniel shrugged helplessly. “I can’t answer any of those questions. Are you thinking that she deliberately targeted Heller? Did all this to pick up him?” He thought for a moment. “Oh shit! You don’t think this is some sort of police sting?”
“Nah, I think it’s personal. Deeply personal,” I said, remembering Heller’s Mercedes. “But there’s something really off about this whole situation. I’m worried about Heller. I’m worried she’ll do something to him.”
“He can look after himself, Tilly. You don’t need to worry about him.”
And although his words were sensible, my feeling of dread wouldn’t go away. With nothing I could do until Heller chose to ring me back, I reluctantly went to bed for the evening. I lay awake staring at the ceiling thinking that even though I was unbelievably angry with him, the thought of anything happening to him clenched my stomach tight with fear. Maybe I cared about him more than I was willing to admit to myself. And on that troubling thought, I fell asleep.
In the middle of a delicious dream where I was amorously trapped in a man sandwich between Bick and Farrell, I was shaken roughly awake. Slow to rouse, a sharp blow across my temple knocked my head sideways.
“Shit,” I moaned. Something was snapped tightly around my wrists and someone climbed onto me, sitting astride my legs.
“Wake up, bitch-face,” snarled a voice that I didn’t recognise.
I opened my eyes, struggling to sit up, but constrictive plastic straps restrained my arms and a hand on my chest pushed me back down to the bed. My brain kicked into gear.
Oh, dear God. It was my worst nightmare. Looming over me was the bunny boiler, her face ugly with hatred, a gun pointing at my heart.
“How did you get in here?” I spoke, hoping my voice sounded calm and not as frightened as I felt. The Warehouse was a security fortress. There should never be an intruder in my flat.
“I’ve been watching this place for months, every spare second I had. And every time someone opened the garage door or front door, I took photos of the interior. I memorised everything, working out the blind spots in the security camera range. I crept in through the garage when the door opened to let a vehicle out. But as for finding out exactly where man-stealing, bitch-face Matilda Chalmers lived in the building – that was too easy. Remember those workmen who installed your panic button – and yeah, I know all about that, so you can forget it. I fucked one of them and picked his brains. He was very helpful, even drawing me a mud map of everything he could remember about the inside of the building and your place. It’s surprising what some men will do for the promise of some hot, rough sex.”
“There are cameras in the hallway. They’ll see you entering my flat,” I blustered. “There will be men here any second.”
She smiled and it wasn’t a friendly smile. “I think you’ll find that particular camera is temporarily out of action.”
Surely someone will notice that? I thought, panicked. But in truth, I had no idea how regularly those cameras were monitored or even who was responsible for the monitoring, if anyone.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s all because of you,” she stated, her voice low and menacing.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I had no idea what she was talking about. She didn’t care for that response and backhanded me across the face, flinging my head sideways. I groaned in pain.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re the fucking whore who’s stolen Heller from me. God, I hate you.”
I tried to reason with her. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a surprise to me. Whatever’s happened between you and Heller has nothing to do with me. I thought you were still going out.”
“He won’t answer my calls or texts or emails. He won’t see me. When I follow him and try to speak to him, he blanks me. It’s like I don’t exist for him any more. I love him. I need him. I can’t live without him. Do you know what that’s like? To have that hunger for a man, that
need? And then to have him taken away from you by some cheap whore.”
“I haven’t –”
“All I ever heard the whole time was fucking Matilda this and fucking Matilda that. You seduced him, didn’t you? With your hair and your eyes and your lips and your tits. Your long legs and your tight arse. Living here with him day after day. Flirting with him. Parading around in skimpy clothes in front of him like the whore that you are. Flaunting yourself. How the fuck am I supposed to compete with that?”
She poked me in the chest with the gun.
“You’ve got it all wrong. He’s not interested in me. I just work for him,” I insisted. “He’s all about you. All the time.”
“Really?” She stopped the poking for a second. “What’s he said?”
I quickly weighed up my options. She was medium height and slim, but I didn’t underestimate her. She’d been trained to subdue people and probably knew the same moves I did. I didn’t know if I could psych her out, because she was already so disturbed. I found myself secretly begging for a white knight to arrive.
I bluffed. “He says how exciting you are. And sexy. He’s never been more satisfied with a woman. You’re everything he’s ever needed. He told me that he loves you.” And I bullshitted on in the same vein for a good couple of minutes. She drank it in ecstatically before turning her full attention back to me.
“That just confirms that all I need to do is to get you out of the picture and he’ll come back to me.” Another poke with the gun. “Get out of bed.”
She climbed off me and I took advantage of that momentary diversion in her concentration to spring out of my bed, elbowing her roughly in the face. She staggered backwards, grunting. I reached for her gun, but was hampered by my hands being tied together. She flung herself at me, spinning me around and clamping her arm around my throat. She jabbed the gun into the base of my neck.
“If I shot you right now, you’d be dead in an instant,” she laughed. “Is that what you want?” She poked the gun harder. “Is that what you want, bitch?”
“No,” I replied faintly. Tears pricked my eyes. She was scaring the shit out of me.
“Get moving,” she ordered and marched me out to my living area.
She pulled one of my dining chairs out from under the table and told me to sit down, the gun on me the whole time. I planned on taking advantage of any chance of her being preoccupied to run to the door to seek shelter with Daniel. But she was swift and deft, undoing my restraints to roughly jerk my hands behind the chair and re-securing them.
My sole attempt to make a run for it was abruptly met with a crack to the side of my skull that left me groaning, my head hanging in pain. And before long, she’d tied me tightly to the chair, my mouth firmly gagged. Pain jackhammered in my head and nausea rolled through my stomach.
I tested the bindings on my arms and legs, but they were fastened professionally. Violet busily tapped on the keypad of her phone with her thumb. She was probably harassing Heller again. My own phone rang from the bedside table where I’d left it last night. Was it Heller? Was he back home? A small whimper of distress escaped me and she looked up from her phone.
She dropped her phone carelessly onto my coffee table and stalked over to me, as lithe as a predatory cat. She stood in front of me, smugly regarding me with her black eyes, flicking her long black ponytail back over her shoulder.
“Do you know what little sluts who steal other women’s men need?” she asked, her head on one side. “They need to be taught a lesson to keep their whoring hands to themselves.”
She crouched down and rummaged through a small black backpack she’d brought with her, smiling when she produced a Stanley knife. My heart, already doing a maraca solo in my chest, beat even faster. I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack. Maybe that would be a mercy for me.
She leaned over and gently pushed my hair back from my neck. She bent down and kissed me on the side of my throat, then bit me hard in the same place. I flinched, not able to cry out because of the gag. She stood up and contemplated me before she leaned down and bit me again on the neck, followed by another five quick bites on my shoulder. She sank her teeth into my flesh, licking the last bite, which must have drawn blood.
“There. That should warn other women that you’re a whore. Who else but a whore would have bite marks on her neck?” She brandished the knife. “But I need to make sure that you never forget that you’re a man-stealing whore.”
She licked her lips and began to carve into my neck. If I hadn’t been gagged, I would have been screaming as the sharp blade cut into my yielding skin. The blood rushed from me, pouring down my pyjama top. She admired her work and cut another three incisions. I was almost sure she’d cut a ‘W’ into my neck. She smiled with pleasure at her handiwork.
“Excellent! Now every time you look in the mirror, you’ll remember to keep your hands off other women’s men.”
My heart leapt. Was that it? Could it be over already? Was that the lesson I was supposed to learn? Was that my punishment? Because although it hurt like hell, I was still alive. But she killed my hopes immediately.
“And now,” she said calmly, “the other side.”
No! I screamed in silence, but had no choice but to endure while she carved a ‘W’ into the other side of my neck. When she’d finished she left me bleeding, the white of my singlet top drenched with red, while she texted again. What was she writing? Was she confessing? Was Heller on his way, ready to burst through the door and save me? I wanted to believe so much that it was true that when nothing happened in the next minute, tears of disappointment pooled in my eyes. I blinked them away because I didn’t want to cry in front of the bunny boiler.
She looked at me with scorn. “Heller’s full of shit. You’re not so tough. Look at you – about to cry at a little pain. How about we see how tough you really are?”
She went into my kitchen and ransacked my pantry, throwing food on the floor carelessly. She came back holding a familiar white container.
No! I thought desperately to myself.
She poured a huge handful of salt into her palm and rubbed it first into one side of my neck and then another palm full into the other. The pain was intense, excruciating. I’d never experienced anything like it before – on a scale of one to ten, it was ninety-nine. I screamed through the gag, tears flooding my cheek. I struggled ferociously against my restraints, twisting and turning, trying to stop the pain. My chair tipped over and I crashed to the floor, achieving nothing with my struggles except chafing my wrists cruelly against the bindings.
With great effort she righted me, laughing in pleasure at my pain.
“That’s just the beginning, bitch,” she promised me, a wicked little smile on her face. She leaned down until her face was mere centimetres from mine. “You caused me a lot of suffering by stealing Heller from me with your slutty body. You need to suffer twice as much to make up for it before I take him back from you.”
I couldn’t think of any escape from my situation. I knew this flat like the back of my hand, but nothing at all sprang to mind to help. The knives were in the kitchen, out of my reach. I had no gun myself. My capsicum spray was in my handbag, which was thrown on my dresser in the bedroom, a whole ten metres away from where I was. I was in my pyjamas, just a singlet top and some boxer shorts, barefoot. No pockets with weapons, nothing. The panic button was nowhere near me, tucked under one of the kitchen benches. It became my holy grail. I thought about its black shininess with longing. If only I could reach it, within seconds there would be dozens of brawny, angry men swarming my flat with guns. It was so far away though. I was left with nothing to defend myself but my teeth, which were useless with the gag in my mouth, and my fingernails, which were equally useless with my hands tied to the chair behind my back.
I started to lose control. Silent tears poured down my cheeks. I would never see Mum or Dad again. Or my brothers and their wives. Or my nieces. Or my grandmas. Or Dixie. Or Daniel or Niq. And they were only a
few metres away. They’d be devastated when I died. They’d tear themselves apart thinking they should have known I was in trouble and could have saved me. But no one was psychic.
I guess I’d always thought that Heller would know if I was in trouble and would rush to my rescue.
But I guess I was wrong.
Chapter 29
“Oh God!” she said with contempt. “Look at you blubbing like a baby.”
Her sneering words did the trick for me. I hardened up and brought myself under control. Crying wasn’t going to help me survive.
She untied my left hand and pulled up a chair in front of me. She studied my hand, turning it over to look at my palm. She traced along one of the lines on it.
“These are the hands you can’t keep away from my Heller.” She glanced up at me. “Do you know how hard I worked to make him mine?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I remember the first time I saw him. He was with you at the time. I was on the counter at the police station and you were called in to identify a suspect in a murder case. It was love at first sight for me when I saw him. I knew I had to have him. I knew he was my soul mate. I heard you calling him Heller and it didn’t take much detective work to track him down. I started following him, learning his routine, learning about his pick-ups at hotels. So I put myself in his way one evening. Oh God, it was heaven.”
She pulled a hammer out of her bag. And then a table tennis paddle.
“Cost me a fortune staying at that hotel, pretending I was in town on a buying trip. Cleaned out my bank account actually, but I couldn’t take him back to my tiny little hovel.”
She tied my wrist to the handle of the paddle, so that my hand rested on its oval surface.
“I pretended I was my sister. We look alike and she lives in another city, so that made my story authentic.”
She laid the paddle and my hand on her lap and picked up the hammer.
“You really ought to keep your hands off my Heller.”
She raised the hammer and brought it down on my hand with force, over and over. I screamed again, my whole body jerking in agony, but only a muffled groan forced itself through the gag. Bones snapped in my hand and fingers.