Heller's Revenge (30 page)

Why would someone so alive be
so resigned to dying?
I wondered and that dark thought clouded
my mind for some time.

He shouted me lunch at a cafe in
the city, where most of the women in the near vicinity checked him
out and awarded him a giant tick of approval. But he didn’t seem to
notice, paying polite attention to my inane chatter instead and
bathing me in the warmth of his lovely eyes. I was struggling to
maintain my professional demeanour with him, he was so charming and
interesting.

Back in the hotel room, he asked
if I minded if he caught up on his emails. I urged him not to think
about me, but to do what he needed. And while he set up his laptop
at the wall bench, I rummaged around in my bag for the thriller I’d
packed, learning from my experience with Clarrie. I propped myself
up on my bed and read, while he tapped busily on his keyboard for
an hour or so.

Finished, he shut down his
computer and twisted in his seat to face me. “I hope you packed a
nice dress or two?”

“I did,” I assured him.

“Good. Because I want to take
you out to dinner.” I demurred because he had taken me to lunch,
but he insisted.

“Thanks Meili, that would be
nice,” I agreed, giving in. I bundled my clothes into the bathroom
with me, where I had a quick shower, applied my makeup in record
time and did the best I could with my hair. I wore a close-fitting,
long-sleeved burgundy knit dress with a V-neck and a slight flair
in the skirt that I teamed with matching high-heeled sandals. When
I exited the bathroom, he smiled.

“You look lovely, Tilly,” he
said as he entered after me, but there was no lust or special
meaning or anything sinister in what he said or the way he said it.
It was a simple compliment and I breathed a sigh of relief and
thanked him nicely. While he was in the shower I rang Heller and
convinced him that I was still alive and unsullied. I told him our
plans for the evening and promised to ring him before I went to
sleep.

Meili came out of the bathroom
dressed in a dark gray suit with a light gray shirt that matched
his eyes, his longish hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked
simply wonderful. That was the only word for him. I had to force my
eyes from devouring him, sharply reminding myself, once again, that
I had a boyfriend.

He took me to a chic tapas
restaurant where we shared a number of small dishes. Our tastes
weren’t completely compatible, but we were both willing to try
dishes that the other wanted to order, and in the end we ended up
enjoying each other’s choices.

“Where are you from, Meili?” I
asked as I nibbled on a spicy king prawn (his choice), almost
expecting him to fob me off the way Heller always did.

“Norway,” he answered readily.
“I’m from Oslo.”

“Were you and Heller speaking
Norwegian today?”

“Yes.”

“Um, this might sound a little
strange, but did he seem to you to be a native Norwegian speaker?
Do you think he’s Norwegian?” He raised his eyebrows at me, so I
felt I had to give him a little more. “Heller’s a bit mysterious
about his origin and I’m trying to find out where he’s from.”

He considered for a moment.
“Hard to say, Tilly. His accent is so neutral that I think he’s had
a lot of practice in shading it. I usually find that’s the case
with people who’ve been trained by the government to do . . .” He
glanced at me. “To do certain extra-curricula projects.” He smiled
disarmingly. “I’ve run into one or two of them in my time and it’s
never a pleasant experience.”

“What do you mean by that?” I
asked.

He avoided my question. “To me,
Heller only has the slight accent he’s picked up living here. But
that doesn’t mean anything. All the Scandinavian languages are
fairly similar and it’s not difficult to learn the others. But I
couldn’t say for certain that he was Norwegian.” He shrugged
apologetically. “He’s not from Oslo in any case though. I’d know
that straight away. He didn’t use any typical Oslo slang when we
spoke.”

Damn!
I was really hoping
he could tell. “Could he be German or any other nationality?”

“I don’t think so,” he
hesitated. “Because in that case he’d have an accent that would be
difficult to conceal when he spoke Norwegian. But sorry, I just
can’t tell you for certain that he’s Norwegian. Does it
matter?”

“Only to me,” I said, and smiled
at him. “I’m very nosy.”

He gave a bark of laughter.
“He’s an interesting person. I’ve never met someone so eerily
beautiful before. He’s almost supernatural.”

“I agree heartily with that
sentiment,” I smiled, and dished some more garlic and chilli
chickpeas onto both our plates. My choice.

He continued to muse. “He’s a
very intense man with some very intense feelings towards you.”

“He’s just over-protective at
the moment,” I dismissed, telling him briefly about my car
accident.

He sympathised. “And you crashed
because you were shot at? Your life sounds as dangerous as
mine.”

“Well,” I considered, “since
I’ve worked at Heller’s I’ve been shot at, stabbed, beaten up,
kidnapped, and almost raped twice.”

“Good God! No wonder he’s so
protective! This assignment should be an easy one for you
then.”

“It’s not the physical trauma
I’m worried about with this job, it’s the emotional trauma,” I said
honestly, looking directly into his eyes. He grasped my hand and
squeezed it before letting go, but didn’t say anything. I decided
to change the subject to lighten the mood. “Now, I’m certainly no
expert on Scandinavian etymology, but surely Meili is an unusual
name in your parts? I would have expected a Lars or Erik or
Sven.”

He chuckled. “On the contrary,
Tilly, Meili is an ancient Norse name. My father is obsessed with
Norse mythology. In fact, he’s a professor of that very subject at
the University of Oslo. His first name is Odin, which may have
influenced his career path. I’m not sure if you know, but Odin is
the chief god in Norse mythology. I don’t know what my grandparents
were thinking calling him that – it’s like calling your kid Zeus or
Buddha or God. Not really the right thing to do, but my
grandparents were early hippies, and what can you say about them?”
He smiled. “Anyway, Odin the god had many sons and my father, Odin
the professor, has three sons, so guess who we were all named
after?”

I laughed. “Poor you.”

“My oldest brother was given the
name of Thor, which is actually a reasonably popular name in
Norway. My second brother is called Baldur, much less popular. And
I received the name of one of the more obscure sons, Meili. Not
popular at all. I’ve spent my life explaining it to people and
spelling it for them. It means ‘the lovely one’, which isn’t very
masculine, is it?” He laughed.

I laughed too, but I secretly
thought that the name suited him. He
was
lovely, in every
way. “And I thought I was hard done by because I was given my
great-grandmother’s name, Matilda. I hate it.”

“But Heller calls you that.”

“Yes, he insists.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? Heller is a man of
many mysteries.” We shared a lemon pepper squid dish. His choice.
“What’s your PhD in? Or are you a medical doctor?”

“PhD. It’s in chemistry, if you
can believe it.” He threw his head back for a moment and I caught
an enchanting glimpse of the brown expanse of his neck. “My first
job was with an international petrochemical company making plastics
in India. When I realised how they were disposing of their waste
material in the local water supply, and getting away with it by
bribing local officials, I was inflamed with fury. It was a
revelation to me, a real eye-opener. I’d been a naive young chemist
truly believing in my company’s pretty words about caring for the
environment and the local people.”

His eyes darkened with passion
as he spoke and for the first time, I glimpsed the hard and
determined activist spirit that drove him to risk his life. “They
didn’t care about the precious eco-system that supported those
people – some of the poorest people on the planet. Those people
depended on that water for their livelihoods, for their
lives
. But all that company cared about was its profits. So
I agitated my bosses and harangued the board of directors until
they grew sick of me and started bringing in security to eject me
the minute I turned up to meetings.” He laughed, but there was no
humour in his voice. “They ended up firing me, of course. Then I
started publicly campaigning against the company. Like-minded
people joined me. We organised, we lobbied, we wrote to newspapers,
gave hundreds of interviews to anyone who would listen to us and
report about us. We created blogs and forums and podcasts. And you
know what?”

“No,” I said in a small voice,
deluged by his passionate onslaught.

“We won.” He smiled at the
memory and his smile was every bit as unpleasant as Heller’s could
be when he was relentlessly focussed on bringing down a rival. “We
beat them. There was such an international public outcry over that
company’s practices that the government couldn’t take any more
bribes to look the other way without suffering electoral and
diplomatic repercussions.” He smiled that frightening smile again.
“That company doesn’t do business in India anymore. That company
doesn’t exist anymore. And I consequently found myself with a new
career.”

“Oh,” was all I found to say,
rather alarmed by his overwhelming intensity. I think Heller was
spot on when he’d described Meili as a fanatic and it would be in
my best interests to remember that. I distracted him with a
fragrant capsicum dish that fortuitously arrived at our table at
that moment. My choice. “Try this. It has a wonderful smoky
flavour.”

It proved a successful ploy to
dissipate the tension and we enjoyed the rest of our meal together.
After dinner, we sauntered back to the hotel, not hurrying, taking
time to enjoy the evening sights. He answered another phone call
and stepped away momentarily, walking some distance from me while
he spoke animatedly. I waited patiently by myself near a brick wall
for him to finish.

While he was occupied, a drunken
man spilling out from a nearby beer garden lurched towards me,
drawn to my boobs like a moth towards light. He nudged up against
me, trying to chat me up, but his repulsive breath and boorish
behaviour annoyed me right away.

“Piss off,” I said to him
bluntly, elbowing him out of my personal space. And was it possible
to give a man a more direct and clear message than that?

Apparently it was, because he
didn’t take the hint. He stood in front of me and stared up at me
in disbelief, as if I’d just given up the chance to shag Robert
Pattinson (which I wouldn’t, by the way).

“Who you talking to?” he
slurred.

“You. Who else? Piss off.” He
wasn’t worth a second thought – one of those small, energetic dudes
who appear to be the salt of the earth until they have something to
drink. Then they turn into loud-mouthed, aggressive jerks, cruising
for a bruising. You know the type.

“Nobody talks to me like that,”
he added.

“I bet everyone does, dickhead,”
I said condescendingly, staring down at him. If he’d had one
functioning brain cell left at that moment, he would have cut his
losses, tossing a very insulting and hurtful comment at me behind
him while storming off. But he’d obviously drunk even that last
remaining cell to death because he didn’t move, staring up at me
belligerently.

“Are you a lezzo or something?
Not interested in a dose of good hard cock? Because I’ve got a
pantsful of it!” And he thrust his crotch towards me in a very
inappropriate and unappealing gesture.

I rolled my eyes and was about
to say something extremely patronising about the size of his
manhood that would have certainly escalated the situation, when a
restraining hand snaked around my waist and a hard, masculine,
Nordic body sidled up to me.

“Are you bothering my
girlfriend?” Meili asked smoothly, his bulk overshadowing the
little creep in front of us.

The man assessed Meili’s height,
his weight and his muscularity, before staggering away, muttering
under his breath. When he was at a safe distance, he spun around to
yell, “She’s all yours, mate. And good luck with the bitch!”

When he had finally disappeared,
I turned to Meili. “I could have handled him.”

“I know, but why ruin your
beautiful nails?” We smiled at each other and continued strolling
towards the hotel.

“Heller was right.”

“About what?”

He laughed. “You’re a trouble
magnet.”

I opened my mouth to protest,
but before I could he had another phone call.

Chapter 20

I brushed my teeth, changed into
my pyjamas and was hoping to read for a while before sleeping, so I
rang Heller as I’d promised, to get it over and done with. When he
answered, I didn’t even bother saying hello before accusing him of
being Norwegian. He laughed, but refused to confirm or deny the
claim. I told him that Meili had said he was definitely
Scandinavian in origin.

“I
will
find out,” I
threatened. “And then you’ll be sorry.”

“Why will I be sorry?”

“Because I’ll know more about
you. And you’ll have to admit that I’m pretty good at finding out
things.”

He smothered a shout of
laughter. “Matilda, I’m so glad I hired you. My life was very dull
without you.”

“Stop making fun of me! Anyway,
knowing that you’re Scandinavian has now narrowed it down to only
three countries.”

He laughed at me again,
unconcerned. “Four countries, my sweet. There are four countries in
Scandinavia.”

“Oh. Okay. Four countries.” I
pondered for a moment. “What’s the fourth one?”

Yet another laugh at my expense.
“That depends on which three countries you’re already
including.”