Heller (33 page)

A knot of
dread settled in my stomach. “What do you mean, Heller? I won’t let
you do anything to Brian. He’s my brother.”

“I don’t care.
This is between him and me. It’s nothing to do with you.”

“It’s
everything to do with me. He’s my brother! I’m going to warn
him.”

“Go ahead, but
he won’t take you seriously. Corby wants me to lodge an official
complaint about both his and his partner’s behaviour. But I prefer
to get my revenge in more creative ways.” He wore the most evil
expression I’ve ever seen on a human being, teeth snarling,
eyebrows drawn together in a frightening angle. I was afraid of him
again, remembering what he’d done to those men at the bikie
bar.

I threw away
my dignity and begged. “Please don’t hurt him. He has a wife and
small children. You met my nieces. The girls are so young. Please
don’t do anything that will hurt his family.”

“He should
have thought of them before he decided to mess around with me. I’ve
got nothing but contempt for people like him who abuse their
official position. People like him give the police a bad name.”

I wanted to
defend Brian more, but the truth was that even as a child he would
abuse any power he had over others. I used to dread the nights Mum
and Dad would leave him to babysit Sean and me. He would make us
fetch and carry, treating us as his personal slaves, threatening
all the while to tell our parents that we had misbehaved if we
didn’t do everything he demanded. Sean was always so much more
eager to obey than me, and being more defiant and prone to talking
back, I copped the bulk of his punishments. I could easily imagine
Brian holding back information that would have cleared Heller
instantly so that he could extract as much discomfort from him as
possible.

Heller stood
up and with a quick kiss on my cheek, left to get some sleep. I
tried to do the same, but kept worrying over his words. He wouldn’t
really do anything to Brian, would he? It wasn’t as though he was a
cold-blooded killer, although Daniel thought he might be. All I
could do was to warn Brian to keep his wits about him. But for
heaven’s sake, he was a cop and if a cop can’t look out for himself
then what chance have the rest of us got?

Later that day
after I managed to get some sleep, I rang Brian to tell him I was
coming in to make my statement. He was curt on the phone and said
no more than necessary to make the arrangements. I told Heller what
I was doing and he insisted that I take someone with me. I think he
really wanted to go with me himself, but it would have been
apparent to anyone that was a terrible idea. In the end it was
Tysen who was free to accompany me. We chatted about self-defence
and security on the way to the station and he was pleased to hear
that I was going to be training for my licence soon. I had the
strong impression that he had worried over setting me loose on the
world with the limited knowledge he’d been able to impart to me at
that training session.

At the
station, Brian kept me waiting for forty minutes. It was another
typical ploy of his. I sat patiently, not showing any of the
increasing anger I was feeling. Tysen paced around like a caged
animal. Being at the police station seemed to make him nervous and
I wondered if he’d done some time in the past. Then I wondered if
you could even be a security officer if you’d done any time, which
only reminded me how little I knew about the whole career.

Eventually
Brian came sauntering out, thumbs hooked through the belt loops in
his trousers. I watched him indifferently. There is no one person
on earth less likely to be impressed with a man than his own
sister. He jerked his head, presumably to indicate that I should
follow him to the back of the main reception area.

“Nice to see
you again too, Brian,” I said sarcastically, standing up. Tysen
fell in behind me as I walked towards Brian.

“Not him. Just
you.” I raised my eyebrows slightly to tell Tysen to stay at the
reception area. He didn’t look happy about it. It was probably
contrary to his orders from Clive or Heller to keep a watch on me.
Brian led me to a small interview room, windowless, minimally
furnished and smelling of desperate men. I sat down without being
invited and stared at Brian belligerently, my arms crossed.

“Tilly, how
did you get mixed up with a man like Heller?”

“He’s my
boss.” I sounded sullen, even to my own ears.

“I know that.
But surely you’ve got the good sense to see that he is not the kind
of person a girl like you should be associating with.”

I remained
silent, arms firmly crossed. I really hated being called a girl. I
wasn’t twelve anymore.

Brian sighed
and ran his fingers through his short dark brown wavy hair, which
was a mere shade or two lighter than my own hair colour. We also
shared the same big, light brown eyes. He was a nice-looking man,
not stunning (Sean was better-looking), but nowhere near the
unattractive side of the ledger either. He had an unexpected and
disarmingly sweet smile, not that anyone ever saw it. His job as a
homicide detective didn’t naturally predispose him to sunny
smiling, and a lot of that spilled over into his personal life. In
fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw him smile. But I
wondered if living with Gayle all these years had killed his
joie de vivre
, and immediately gave myself a mental slap for
that bitchy thought. We were a tall family and he was taller than
me but not as tall as Sean, with a tight, average-sized body. He
worked out regularly, always an advantage for a cop. He was smart,
suspicious and generally untrusting. He could also be a complete
bastard, as I knew from growing up with him. This was my first
encounter with him in his professional role.

“I’ve been led
to believe that you can alibi Heller at approximately five o’clock
in the morning yesterday. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” And I
made my statement, watching carefully as he laboriously typed it
into the official format, correcting him on multiple occasions.
When I was satisfied, he printed it off and I signed it with a
flourish.

“Are you
sleeping with him?” Brian asked me bluntly when I handed the form
back to him after signing it.

I shook my
head in disgusted disbelief. “Why is everyone so interested in my
sex life? No, I am not sleeping with Heller. He’s my boss! How many
times do I have to tell everyone?”

“You stay away
from him, you hear? Do not get involved with him.” His eyes were
burning with intent. “Do you know what he did to that woman? He’s
no better than an animal.”

I locked eyes
with him, but didn’t say a word.

“We found his
body fluids – his semen – in every single one of her orifices. Do
you understand what I’m saying, Tilly? Every single one. Would you
want him to do
that
to you? The woman also had bite marks on
her buttocks, breasts and thighs. It’s no wonder her husband went
ballistic when he saw them.”

“So you’re
blaming the victim now? You’re saying she deserved to die? Because
she had a night of rough sex with someone who wasn’t her husband?”
I stared at him, enraged. “They were
separated
, Brian. She
was free to do whatever and whoever she wanted.”

“It would
drive any man to the point of madness to find out that his wife was
up to that kind of thing with someone like Heller.”

“It’s none of
my business what Heller does in his own time. All I know is what he
told me and it sounded as though whatever he did to her, it was
what she wanted him to do. She did a few things back to him too,
you know.”

“You have very
frank discussions with him, don’t you? I wouldn’t talk to my boss
about stuff like that.”

“We’re fairly
close, yes.”

“But not
sleeping together?”

“No!”

“You’ve
changed since you started working for him. You’re getting hard,
just like him.”

I was furious
at that unwanted observation. “I’d rather be hard like Heller than
be as big an arsehole as you.”

“Tut, tut,” he
sneered. “Such bad language from such a nice girl. What would Mum
and Dad say?”

“Why don’t you
go and tell them?” I scorned. “You always did like getting me in
trouble.”

“Always Mum
and Dad’s little angel. They don’t know what a devil you really
are.”

I smiled
sweetly at him. “Heller has a message for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. He
wasn’t happy about how you messed him around this morning. Keeping
him here for hours when you knew he couldn’t possibly have done
it.” Brian had the good grace to squirm a little. “His lawyer
wanted him to lodge an official complaint against you and your
mate.”

Brian laughed
contemptuously. “Am I supposed to be scared?”

I grew serious
and leaned forward, moving my hands out towards him. “Yeah Brian,
you probably should be. Heller’s not going to do that. He told me
you’ve made an enemy of him now. And he will get some revenge on
you one day.”

He leaned back
in his chair, away from me, and folded his arms. “So what? How
melodramatic. He’s all piss and air. He’s nothing but a nancy
boy.”

I entreated
him with my eyes. “Brian, please. He means it. I’d be worried if I
was you. You didn’t see his face when he said it. Maybe you should
apologise?”

“Fuck off! I’m
not apologising to
him
! He should be sucking my dick with
gratitude for not chucking his pretty arse in jail.”

I eyed him in
disgust. “God, listen to yourself, Brian. You sound like you’ve got
a hard-on for him.”

He stood up
quickly, forcing his chair to teeter on the verge of falling,
before righting itself. “Fuck off! We’re done.”

“Lovely to see
you again too, dearest brother. Take care now. Kisses for Cara and
Libby.” And I ambled out of the station, collected Tysen and
returned home.

Our weekly
staff meeting was scheduled for that afternoon. I went into
Heller’s office earlier than the others and told him about my
meeting with Brian, recounting all the details. “You were right. He
wouldn’t listen to me. He doesn’t believe you’re any threat.”

“His mistake.”
His face was cold, hard and evil. There was no other word for it,
except evil. I believed everything he had said. And threatened.

As the others
trooped in and sat down, he rearranged his features back into a
neutral position and we progressed through our normal business
items. Daniel noted that revenue was up again for the previous
month and I felt proud about that, knowing that some of that was
due to the business I had brought in.

Heller didn’t
react to that news, but merely regarded me quietly for a moment
while everyone waited for him to speak. “Matilda, I have an
assignment coming up in the next few days that I want you to do.
I’ll talk to you about it later, but I don’t think you’re going to
be very happy about it.”

Daniel and I
exchanged surreptitious glances and he gave the slightest shake of
his head as if to deny any knowledge of the assignment. My
curiosity was piqued, but infuriatingly Heller didn’t expand any
further.

That night, I
lay in bed worrying about everything. It was only as I was finally
drifting off that I remembered that I still hadn’t called Will.

A couple of
days later, I checked my bank account. There was more money in it
than I’d ever had in my life. I couldn’t spend my salary fast
enough. Heller was a very generous boss, paying for all of my
day-to-day needs as well as paying me to work for him. But he did
expect a lot, as I was about to be reminded when the devil himself
walked into the office. He crooked his finger at me as he walked
past and I followed him into his office, sitting down without being
invited.

“Time to talk
about that new job for you. It’s your first sleepover job.”

“Okay,” I said
docilely, half-excited and half-nervous. I was also proud that
Heller felt confident enough of my ability to give me the
responsibility of safeguarding a client overnight. It was
unexpected.

“We have a
pastor coming to the city for a few nights. He’s giving two
lectures while he’s here and wants someone to look after his wives
during the visit.”

“That sounds
all right. Why did you say I wouldn’t be happy? I’ve done that kind
of work . . .” I broke off as his words sunk in. “What do you mean
wives
? You meant to say wife, didn’t you?”

He ran his
hand through his spiky hair in procrastination and avoided eye
contact with me, his gaze fixed on his fingers that were playing
with his expensive gold pen.

“Heller? What
did you mean by wives?” I repeated myself impatiently.

He shrugged
and blasted me with that lovely blueness. “Matilda, it’s
self-evident, isn’t it? It’s a plural word. The man has more than
one wife.”

My blood
pressure rose a few points, but I kept my voice deliberately calm.
“How could he? That’s not legal.”

“It is
tolerated in some states in the United States. He’s one of the
world’s leading proponents of polygamy. He runs his own religion,
the Church of the Manifold Flowers of God.” I rolled my eyes in
disbelief. “He’s here in the city from the US for the next few days
to give some lectures to like-minded people.”

“Heller, I am
not
the right person for this job. It’s like a red rag to a
bull,” I warned him, arms crossed with attitude.

“Don’t you
think I know that, Matilda? But he wants a woman. He doesn’t trust
his wives with a male security officer apparently. There are a lot
of people opposed to his ideas, so he employs security whenever he
leaves his own compound.”

“For God’s
sake! I can’t believe what you make me do sometimes.” I was struck
by a sudden thought and smiled at him, pleased with myself for
finding a loophole. “But I can’t do this job. I’m not licensed to
perform security work.”