Very shortly after morning broke, Mister Richard Belmont received a knock at the door and was greeted by several police officers. He was arrested on the charges of suspected murder, but he was not taken to the police station. This was a farce, as he was instead taken to the headquarters of the HELLSING organization and promptly escorted to an interrogation room.
"Mister Belmont," began the interviewer, a woman with dark skin and an all black suit apart from a yellow shirt, "I need to ask you a few questions. We'll start simple. Is this your property?" She slide him a photograph of the house in Manchester. She already knew the answer.
"Yes." stated Mister Belmont, oblivious as to where this was going.
"Alright. You also reportedly went there recently, didn't you? Did anything appear… out of place?"
"No."
"Mister Belmont, there was a corpse found in the basement last night." The statement was abrupt, getting straight to the point of things without dancing around the subject. There was no easing Richard Belmont into this idea. The only way to present it was to thrust it out into the open. Yet, even then, Mister Belmont tried to deny it.
There was a delay in his response, shortly followed by a scoff. Yet he averted his gaze and refused to meet the interrogators again while he chuckled in an attempt to diffuse tension.
"I find that unlikely." the man stated. "It wasn't there when I was there last."
"Would you like to see pictures of the crime scene?"
Belmont's response was "strange," to say the least. He only continued to try and laugh away his anxiety while shaking his head. "No." he said. "I don't need to see that."
"We have already identified the body, Mister Belmont." spoke the HELLSING agent, unintentionally causing the laughter to come to a complete halt. The man seated across from her froze entirely, putting a hand over his mouth like he was thinking in order to conceal his expression. He was quiet for a long time, but eventually asked:
"Was it a woman?"
"Yes."
Silence. Richard said nothing. There wasn't a shred of guilt on his face. There was shock as he tried to process this, but he just simply didn't want to believe this. Shaking his head, he stared blankly at the wall while trying to control the wetness of his eyes. Swallowing harshly, he built up the nerve to confirm what he already could guess.
"Is it Betty?" he asked, surprising the interrogator. "It's my wife, isn't it? She didn't make it?"
"Yes..." replied the stunned agent, blinking at the unexpected response. This was not at all how anyone expected this to go. This was no cartoon villain who experimented on people for fun. This was something completely different. "When we found her, she was dead from sta-"
"I don't want to hear it." choked Belmont. "I… I don't need to know that..."
"Are you saying you knew that she was in danger?"
Slowly, the man nodded. His face contorted in pain as he did his best to blink away tears. It was a useless venture, however. His tears fell freely beyond his control and his breath became shaky. Without meaning to, he uttered a small whimper before biting his lip.
"Mister Belmont, I-" the woman began, only for the other to shake his head. As she had begun to suspect, now was not the time. With a sigh, the woman stood up and gathered her things.
"I will come back to finish this when you've calmed down." she said before excusing herself. That was one of the most bizarre interrogations that she had ever performed. Once the door was shut behind her, she turned her attention to her right, finding an angel propped against the wall, eavesdropping.
"Why did you cut that short, Canary?" Elizabeth questioned.
"He's in a heightened emotional state." the interrogator replied. "Tears, choking up, the whole works. Either he's genuinely remorseful, or he's the world's greatest actor."
"It could be both."
"Maybe. I'll need more time to find out." Spoke Canary while tucking her files underneath her arm. "He seemed to not be aware of his wife's death. It's all so strange… There's many possibilities, here. He could be faking it, he could be oblivious, he could be the mastermind, or he could be the puppet. Hard to say."
"What if he isn't the mastermind?" the Hellsing entertained. "Then where do we go from there?"
"There's other alternatives. He still has family. Or it could be somebody just using his name and money to get what they want. Or it's all just him."
"Get it out of him as soon as you can." instructed Elizabeth. "I want this concluded as quickly as possible."
"Yes, ma'am." answered the other woman, knowing full well that this might take some time. Both of them knew this. It was simply tedious to deal with rival organizations, especially ones that were this dangerous.
With that, the Hellsing woman turned and started making her way down the hall. She had many other things to check on, including seeing to the passing of Alois' ideas for Pyestock into official policy as well as babysitting her cousin to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. She also had to check on the psychics and supernaturals that were currently undergoing therapy and medical treatment within the facility. She would just check in with their doctors and pop around to see how they were doing. The road to recovery was a mixed bag, and some didn't seem to improve much.
One such person was the girl known only as "Martyr." She didn't get any worse, but she didn't get much better, either. Her room had to look as little like a hospital as possible and she often lashed out when doctors came in to check on her. Sometimes, she appeared to be in a dream-like state, but at others, she was completely lucid. That said, she often had trouble speaking and when she did, her messages were often strange.
"How are you feeling today?" Elizabeth questioned while entering the room.
"Aloneness is hard work." nodded the girl while tearing a page out of the book in her lap. "This man ruins everything he touches. He can't love. They never do."
Upon further inspection, the book that she was currently defacing was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, a Victorian romance with connotations that were somewhat questionable when viewed from a modern standpoint. It is about a man named Heathcliffe who is adopted into the family of his newly adoptive sister Catherine, who soon fall in love. Catherine, however, knowing what was best for her, chose to marry another man, and Heathcliffe took exception to that, becoming hellbent on a so-called "revenge" with no target.
"He likes making everyone suffer. He always has. He's selfish and gross." Martyr continued, tearing out another page. "Brothers are disgusting. If they died, I wouldn't care."
"That's a rather nasty thing to say." the Hellsing pointed out. "Many people have brothers who are perfectly normal and pleasant people."
"You can't make this stuff up. They'll take your mum, your dad, and even you. They don't care. They never did and never will."
There wasn't much else Elizabeth could say after that. Mostly, it was because everything she did say was promptly ignored. The mysterious and Herculean-like tasks just kept piling up. Elizabeth wondered if it was possible for her to drown.
