Heller's Girlfriend (38 page)

I didn’t even need to ask who
was responsible. I berated myself for not realising what he’d meant
when he had told me that he had more than one man to sort out.

“How did he find out?” I asked.
“I swear I didn’t say a word to anybody.”

He pointed to several places in
the ceiling. “Security cameras. Here and in the hallway of your
floor. He saw me enter and leave your flat. Saw us here in the
gym.”

I looked up and could just make
out the cameras, professionally and discreetly installed.

“I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” I
was beyond upset that my ignorance had had such devastating results
for him.

“It didn’t all go his way. I
managed to get in a few good shots. But he’s so strong and
focussed. I knew I’d pay one way or another for that night,
sweetheart. It was too good to be true.”

“I want to give you a hug, but
I’m afraid to touch you in case
he’s
watching again. I don’t
want you to suffer any more.” I looked up at a camera angrily. I
wanted to rip it out of the ceiling and smash it into a million
pieces. Preferably over Heller’s head.

“It was worth it. I told him
that too. It was the best thing that happened to me for years. I’d
do it again tomorrow, even with the same result.”

I smiled at him tearfully.
“That’s such a lovely thing to say, Hugh. I feel the same way, but
I’m not going to risk you getting hurt again.”

We sat down together on a bench,
him flinching as he lowered himself. I took his hand gently.

“Did he just attack you, or was
there some conversation first?”

“I knew what was going to happen
as soon as I saw him. It was in the bottom basement. I was going
home. He came down the stairs and told every other man to clear
out. He had a determined angry look on his face. He told me that he
had asked me and trusted me to train you, not to sleep with you,
and that I had stepped over the boundary and broken his trust. He
accused me of taking advantage of you when you were emotionally
vulnerable.” Farrell glanced down at our clasped hands and lifted
his poor eyes to me. “That’s probably true. I shouldn’t have done
it when you were so upset. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.”

“Oh Hugh, I wanted to. It was my
decision. And it wasn’t wrong, it was right. It made me feel so
much better.”

He squeezed my hand. “Heller
said there were two things stopping him from killing me. The first
was that he respected me in all other aspects and didn’t want to
lose a good man, and the second was that I’d made you happy. I
believed him, but is that true?”

I gave him a watery smile at him
and nodded. “All my anger and pain seemed to melt away after our
night together. I felt calm for the first time in ages. You were
like a miracle drug for me.”

He nodded, looking down at our
hands again.

“You still have your job?” I
queried.

“Yeah. Thank God.”

“You actually
want
to
keep working for him after this?”

“Sure. It’s a good place to
work. I don’t take this personally. He’d have done the same to any
of the men who’d slept with you. He’s the boss here, and I respect
him. I couldn’t work for someone I didn’t respect.”

“
Respect
him? After what
he did to you?”

“Yeah. He’s honourable. I
respect that. A lot of men would have ordered someone else to
handle their dirty business, or would have ambushed me without
warning. But he dealt with it himself in a fair fight. He told me
what I’d done wrong and what he was going to do to sort me out. I
had a fair chance. If I’d been the better fighter I would have
pounded his arse, and he would have had to take it.”

I shook my head despairingly.
“Men! I’ll never understand you.”

“I can appreciate him getting
angry about me breaching his trust. He’s very protective of you. He
loves you a lot, Chalmers.”

“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know
how to love anybody.”

“Maybe you need to show him
how.”

I stood up, uncomfortable with
the turn the conversation had taken. “You should go home, Hugh.
You’re no use to me tonight, although I’m very tempted to take you
on. I reckon I’d have a good shot at bringing you down.”

“In your dreams. I could break
both arms and legs and you’d still struggle against me.” He stood
up painfully and started to shuffle towards the door.

“Do you want some help?” I
offered my arm to him, but he brushed me away impatiently.

Just then we both noticed the
huge bulk of Heller standing in the doorway. He glanced between us,
his face stripped of any emotion.

“Farrell,” he acknowledged
curtly.

“Boss,” mumbled Farrell, nodding
his head briefly. He turned to me. “Next week, Chalmers. Don’t be
late.”

“There won’t be any more
training sessions between you two,” Heller said coldly.

Farrell looked up at him and
Heller stared him down, as if daring him to question his order. His
jaw bunched with tension, Farrell squeezed past Heller and
departed.

Heller and I were left facing
each other.

“Have you come to beat me up
too?” I asked flatly. “You could make it three for three. I won’t
be much of a challenge for you after Will or Farrell. You could
sort me out,
personally
, and still be back home in time for
dinner.”

“Matilda –” he started.

“Or even better, what if I give
you a list of all the men I’ve ever slept with and you can sort
them out at your leisure. You’re not on it, of course.”

“Stop it.”

“And then, just to make your
life easier, I’ll also give you a list of all the men I plan to
sleep with in the future, so you can pre-emptively beat them up
when you find a spare moment. You’re not on that list either.”

“
Stop it!
” he yelled, and
before I could react he’d closed the gap between us, his hand
snaking around my throat. He didn’t squeeze or exert any pressure,
his touch was caressing, but if anything that scared me even more
than if he’d been violent towards me. He leaned down until his face
was right in front of mine, our noses almost touching, his blue
eyes burning a hole into mine.

“You will
never
sleep
with another one of my men again, because if you do, I won’t let
the next one off as lightly as Farrell. Do you understand?” His
voice was icy cold.

I nodded, heart pounding, which
he must have felt through the beating pulse in my neck. We stared
at each other and his eyes softened, his fingers loosened, gently
stroking.

“You torture me, Matilda,” he
said quietly, almost as if to himself.

I stepped away from him, and to
my surprise he let me.

“I’m going now,” I said
defiantly, despite my trembling legs. “I’d tell you what I’m doing
this evening, but you can just bloody well watch it all in the
comfort of your home, like you’ve been doing the whole time I’ve
been here.”

“There are no cameras in your
flat. I would never do that.”

“I’m sure you’ll understand when
I say that I don’t believe you.”

I walked out of the gym leaving
him watching after me, frustration written large on his face. At
the door, I turned back.

“I’m not sorry I slept with
Farrell. At least he was there for me when I needed him.”

And I left.

Chapter 28

I cried myself to sleep again
that night, however the next day and the weekend passed peacefully.
I spent the days messing around with Daniel and Niq, trying to put
the whole mess behind me, giving them all my attention. Although we
privately acknowledged that Niq had definitely started the process
of turning into a man, Daniel and I located a magnifying glass to
search for the moustache that he insisted had sprouted. We teased
him that it was a chocolate milk line on his lip, not facial hair,
but hastily stopped when he began to become very offended with not
being taken seriously. There’s only so far you can tease a teenager
before hormones take over and he stormed off in an emotional huff,
refusing to talk to anyone for ages. We’d learned
that
the
hard way.

Heller was nowhere to be seen,
and I was grateful for that. He’d done so many objectionable things
recently that I wouldn’t have been able to even look at him without
remembering poor Farrell’s broken face.

I cooked Daniel and Niq dinner
on Sunday night. Afterwards we watched a disgusting blood-drenched,
gore-splattered movie that almost had me heaving up my dinner. They
laughed at my green gills, so I shooed them out when the movie
finished. That was when I noticed my memory stick, half-buried in
paperwork next to my laptop. With everything that had happened, I’d
forgotten about those rude photos of Vanessa I’d downloaded onto
it.

After a few minutes thinking, I
rang my brother Brian and told him that I wanted to run someone
past him to see if he recognised her. He’d been a cop for a number
of years and had come across loads of dodgy people.

Yeah, I knew it was a long shot,
but I had to try at least.

He agreed impatiently, reminding
me that it was the weekend and he was off duty. I chose the photo
that gave the best view of Vanessa’s face, the one where she sat on
the chair. He rang me back almost immediately.

“Jesus, Tilly! If Gayle saw me
looking at that, she’d have my balls on toast for breakfast. Where
the fuck did you get that photo?”

“That woman sent it to
Heller.”

His snigger was low and nasty.
“Lucky bastard! I suppose he’s porking her. I’d love to circulate
that pic around the office. Lots of blokes would pay to look at
that. Especially a photo of her.”

“You know her?” I couldn’t
believe my luck.

“Yeah, she’s a uniformed
constable. She’s a nice piece of arse, but a stuck up bitch.
Wouldn’t piss on any of us if we were on fire. Like I said, lots of
blokes here would love to get a look at her naked. Got any more
photos?”

“A
cop
? Are you sure?
That’s not what she told Heller. She told him she was an art
dealer. He looked into her. She’s on a legitimate website and has
business cards. She has a driver’s licence.”

“Look, she works the counter a
lot. I walk past her every single day. It’s her, unless she has a
twin sister.” He gave another nasty snigger. “Maybe she’s played
him for a sucker.”

“But why would she lie about her
job?”

“Maybe she didn’t think being a
cop was glamorous enough to attract Mr Hot Stuff. I don’t fucking
know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Violet Langmore.”

“She told Heller her name is
Vanessa Langmore. And that she lives out of town.”

“I don’t know, Tilly. The one at
work is called Violet. Maybe she
does
have a twin?”

“So strange. Okay, thanks for
your help, Brian.”

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?”