Heller's Regret (42 page)

“Thanks for your time, Ms Chalmers. I’m sure
we’ll track down this Malefic man soon.”

“Just make sure you don’t arrest half the
town while you do,” Corby said sharply, rising from his chair and
leading me out of the room.

“You don’t like cops much, do you?”

“That’s not true. I’m a lawyer. When it comes
to a case, I don’t like anyone.”

I laughed, changing the topic. “Does Heller
ever tell you where he is when he goes on these special jobs?”

“No.” His answer was quick and decisive. Too
quick? “He contacts me if he needs me. Otherwise I just carry on
with business as usual. He doesn’t meddle with my work much because
he trusts me.”

“He doesn’t meddle with me much these days
either,” I said sadly.

Corby patted my shoulder. “Tilly, Heller’s a
complex man. I wouldn’t dream of trying to provide a potted
analysis of him, but let me say that he’s looked out for you very
well in the future.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said, waving
away his hand in irritation. “I don’t want any of his money. I’m
never going to take any of it.”

“Perhaps that’s why he’s so insistent on
providing for you. You may be the only woman he’s ever met that’s
cared about the man inside. Not his great beauty or his money, but
him
.”

“I don’t even know him,” I said with a
bitterness that surprised me.

“I bet you know more than anyone else about
him.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “And that’s how he likes it.
Nobody’s ever going to control Heller. He made that decision long
before any of us entered his life and I don’t think any of us will
ever know why.”

His words gave me many things to think about
during what turned out to be a sleepless night.

Chapter 31

“Any jobs for me?” I asked Clive hopefully a
few days later. “I’m bored.”

“None available,” was his predictable
reply.

“When?”

“Who knows?”

It was a routine we went through every
morning, each of us memorising our lines to perfection, though
improvising now and then to keep the other’s interest piqued.

“Are you ever going to have a job for me
again?” I demanded one day, after being fobbed off by him five
times in a row.

“When you’re better.”

“I
am
better. Ask the doctor.”

“When you’re better,” he repeated, hanging up
his phone.

“Grrr!” I shouted to the dial tone.

As I ate my lunch that day, I watched the
midday news. One of the headline stories caught my attention
immediately. The black van used in the abduction of the teens had
been stolen from the police forensic yard, a matter of high
embarrassment to the senior officer forced to confront the media.
The station showed grainy security camera footage of the theft,
making me really sit up with interest. The police spokesperson
cautiously named the two men in the footage as possibly the man
wanted for questioning in respect to the abductions and his
assistant.

The news presenter went on to say that the
van was later discovered in flames, after crashing through a
guardrail and over the edge of a steep drop on an isolated, rural
road. No survivors were found.

I sat there stunned, the remote in my hand.
Was that the end of Malefic? Burned to death after a car crash?
Wasn’t the power of his demon magic enough to save him from such a
tragic, all-too-human demise?

As I puzzled over these unanswerable
questions, the ringing of my phone made me jump out of my skin.

“Tilly, it’s Brian.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yes, don’t panic. I’m at home at the moment.
Can we meet for coffee somewhere?”

“Sure.” We agreed on a time and place and I
had to rush around to get there without being late.

Battling to find a space to park, I still
ended up being a little late to the patisserie Brian had chosen. He
hadn’t waited for me, but was halfway through a flaky, cream-laden
pastry that would have constituted half his daily kilojoules and a
huge latte that would have taken care of the rest.

I ordered a much smaller skim latte, but no
food as I’d just eaten.

“It’s so good,” he enthused, taking another
huge bite, covering himself in icing sugar like the first dusting
of snow on a mountain peak.

“God, slow down. You’re going to choke
yourself,” I warned, smiling at the waitress as she delivered my
coffee.

“Gayle won’t let me have things like this
anymore. My cholesterol was a bit elevated during my last physical,
so she’s cracked down on any sort of treat.”

“She’s being a good wife, caring about your
health.”

“I know. But sometimes I need a sugar
hit.”

“I’m with you there. Heller’s a health freak.
I have to sneak chocolate biscuits into the place.”

“Maybe we need to have a secret assignment
each week to stuff our face with chocolate and sugar?”

“There’s no such thing as a secret with
Heller around.”

“Or Gayle,” he said glumly.

“So, what’s up?” I asked, taking a sip of my
coffee.

“I heard something interesting about that
Malefic car accident that’s not being released to the public.
Thought you might want to know about it. You did see the news about
the crash?”

“Yep, but only just before you called. Has
his body been formally identified?”

“One of the bodies in the van has,” he said
cautiously. “But that one appears to have been one of his
disciples.”

“Acolytes. That’s what he called them.”

“Whatever. Bunch of whackos, if you ask
me.”

“What about the other body?”

He drained his coffee in one gulp before
answering. “Only one body was found in the wreck. That’s what we’re
not telling the media.”

“What? How is that possible? Malefic was in
the van when it drove away. That was on the footage from the
forensics yard. It was definitely him.”

“My first thought would be to say that the
other guy dropped him off somewhere on the way. But the weird thing
is that the van, with the two men clearly identifiable in the
cabin, went through several traffic camera spots. Our forensic guys
reckon the timing through the cameras was consistent with the van
not making any stops along the way.”

I thought for a moment. “So? The acolyte
dropped Malefic off somewhere
after
going through the
traffic cameras.”

“Another reasonable thing to think. But the
problem is that we’ve tracked down several witnesses who swear that
bare minutes before the crash, they passed the van and it contained
the two men. Two of those witnesses are cops themselves, their
onboard traffic camera confirming their statements.”

“Is it possible that Malefic still got out of
the van after those people saw him, but before the crash?”

Brian shook his head. “That road is windy and
barely fits two lanes between a steep cliff face and even steeper
drop. There was literally nowhere for the van to stop or for him to
go. But the real clincher was a witness who saw the van plunge over
the edge. She’s a very lucid, reliable witness, a JP in her small
town that’s located about ten kilometres away from the crash site.
She’s the one who rang us in the first place and set up her car
with the hazard lights to warn oncoming motorists.”

“Could his body have completely incinerated
from the fire?”

“Not according to forensics. The fire was
enough to kill the occupants, but the body of the other guy was
able to be identified even though he was badly burnt.”

“Maybe he was flung out of the van. Could
anyone have survived the impact if they weren’t burnt?”

“Again, forensics say nope. I’ve seen pics of
the van. It was completely wrecked, barely recognisable as a
vehicle. And the uniforms searched the surrounding area thoroughly,
even bringing in the dogs. It’s dense bush there, so it’s highly
unlikely a body could remain undetected. It would have been caught
by the trees and stopped from rolling any further down the cliff.
Forensics even used crash test dummies once the wreck had been
cleared. They were trapped by the bush or trees in each and every
experiment, no matter the velocity at which they were flung.”

“So what the hell happened to him?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You can see why
the brass don’t want to make it public. A reasonably high profile
illusionist and demon-worshipper, with quite a cult following,
disappears into thin air? No police service wants to deal with that
shit.”

“Wow. I don’t want to think of him lurking
out there somewhere. I prevented him from participating in some
ceremony that was important to him. I hardly think he’ll be
forgiving if we meet again.”

“I don’t know what to say to you, Tilly. The
guy should be dead. Unless you believe he had some supernatural
powers that saved him, I’d advise you to think of him as dead and
gone. Perhaps he was just one of those freak cases we have to deal
with now and then. Perhaps he spontaneously combusted at the point
of impact, leaving no trace of him. I’m not sure we’ll ever
know.”

“Did you discover what the drug he used on me
was? My doctor said it was unusual.”

“It is unusual. He used it on the teens too,
and God only knows how many other people over the years. It might
be a plant extract of some kind, but it’s too exotic for our labs
to analyse.” His phone beeped with a text message. “I have to run.
Gayle thinks I’m looking at spare parts for the mower and wants me
to pick up some groceries.”

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know all this,
Brian. I think.”

Back home I called up my internet to search
for any information on annunciation. The first three billion hits
related to Christian stuff, but I finally found an obscure link to
a no longer active website that detailed a ceremony performed by an
archaic demon-worshipping cult religion thought to have become
extinct several centuries ago.
Not extinct
, I thought,
but perhaps merely gone deeper underground
.

The annunciation ceremony, I read, took a
minor master in the religion to a higher level by travail through
fire, symbolising rebirth, regeneration and regrowth. Successful
completion of the ceremony committed the supplicant to a lower
level of hell, something desirable to followers of the religion.
This unlocked greater power, elevating the supplicant to
independent master status, a huge leap in authority, freeing them
from their own master. The website skirted guardedly around how
this annunciation could be achieved, hinting it could be either by
the ‘offering of innocence into the flames’ or the ‘offering of the
supplicant into the flames’. The supplicant would then be ‘reborn’
into a new form with greater powers.

I felt sick skimming this information,
believing that Malefic had planned on burning the teens alive. When
he was thwarted in this, he’d gone with the second option. Did that
mean the crash was deliberate? Had he hypnotised his acolyte into
driving off the cliff, or had that man willingly sacrificed himself
for the greater good of his master?

I rang Brian, who answered immediately.

Hearing background traffic noise, I asked,
“Did you answer your phone while driving?”

“Maybe.”

“Geez, you cops are the worst offenders when
it comes to traffic violations, but you don’t mind pulling everyone
else over and giving them a fine.”

“Yeah, yeah. Save me the lecture. I can’t
pull over because I have ice-cream in the back. I need to get it
into the freezer ASAP.”

“I don’t think ice-cream’s part of a
low-cholesterol diet.”

“Shut up. Did you ring for any other reason
than to needle me about my food choices?”

“I’m going to send you a very interesting web
article I found on annunciation. It might make the detectives
handling the van crash rethink their theories. Just out of
curiosity, was there any evidence of heavy braking, swerving or
anything indicating the driver tried to prevent the accident?”

“That’s one thing I forgot to mention to you.
There was nothing to show any avoidance of the accident. It was as
if they deliberately drove over the cliff.”

“Maybe they did,” I said enigmatically.
“Don’t forget to check your email when you get home. And perhaps
you better use your siren and lights to get the ice-cream home
safely.”

I hung up before I heard his caustic
response.

Later, he rang me again. “That’s a very
interesting article all right. What a ceremony. Burn some virgins
to death or yourself. Your choice. Nice religion.”

“It’s pretty crazy, that’s for sure.”

“The article doesn’t say what happens after
this ‘annunciation’.”

“It just says something vague about being
reborn.”

“Just for laughs, let’s say this is even
remotely possible, does that mean he’ll now look different? Be a
baby again? Have disappeared back into hell?”

“How would I know? I’ve sent you everything I
found. Maybe those detectives should contact some professor of the
arcane or something.”

“I can’t mention this to any of them. They’d
all think I was nuts.”

“But the innocents and the self-immolation –
it all fits. How can you
not
mention it?”

“It’s the police service, Tilly. We deal with
facts, not superstitions.”

“But even if none of this annunciation stuff
happened for real, the fact that Malefic believed it would happen
provides the motivation for a possible murder/suicide. Wouldn’t the
detectives be interested in that?”

“Facts, Tilly. Not superstitions. It’s just
too whacked out a theory to convince anyone. Especially based on
one small article on the web.”

“So that’s it on Malefic? He’ll just become a
cold case to join the thousands of others?”

“Yep, I’m afraid so.”

“I’m depressed now.”

“Try working here for fifteen years.”