Heller's Punishment (40 page)

With every step
that he took approaching me, I took a cautious matching step
backwards. After five or six steps, with Beyrer closing in on me,
my feet touched something hard and thin. I ran my toe up its length
trying to identify if it could be useful to me or not. It felt like
a metal pole and I remembered with carefully suppressed excitement
the steel rod Beyrer had used to smash the car windows.

I pretended to
stumble, quickly reaching to the ground, seizing the rod and
swinging it up with both arms, smashing him across the side of the
head. It impacted with a nauseating crunching sound, jarring my arm
right down to the shoulder, but not knocking him out. Dazed fury
raged across his face and he rushed towards me, causing me stumble
backwards for real. We tussled frantically over the rod for a
moment, but it was an uneven battle. His superior strength soon
triumphed and he wrenched the rod from my hands, raising it and
bringing it down hard towards my head. I raised my arms in
protective terror and the bar smashed across my forearms. Pain shot
up to my shoulders. Too afraid to turn and run in case he whacked
me on my skull with the bar, I backed up as fast as possible. I
kept my injured limbs up in the air to take another strike if
necessary.

Light flooded
the laneway and a vehicle pulled up at the entrance. While Beyrer
stood stunned by the sudden brightness, I took the opportunity to
flee towards the new arrivals. I didn’t care if it was Heller, his
men, the cops, the garbage men or an ice-cream van, it might be
someone willing to help me. Beyrer charged after me brandishing the
rod, bringing it down hard. He just missed my skull, but hit me on
the side of the neck.
Oh God, that hurt!
I was lucky that he
didn’t break my collarbone.

A warning shot
rang in the night air. I recognised the much-loved silhouette of
Heller striding our way, the gun in his hands pointed at Beyrer’s
head. Clive stepped out of the passenger seat, gun also out.

Beyrer stopped
in his tracks at the sound. As he did, Farrell jumped from the back
seat, rushed over to me and ushered me to the safety of the
Mercedes. I huddled against him in shock, cradling my sore
arms.

“Next one won’t
be a warning,” Heller said to Beyrer, and I’d never heard his voice
so detached and cold before. “Face down, hands behind your back.”
Beyrer was slow to obey, so Heller shot him in the shoulder without
a hint of hesitation. I flinched in the back seat, almost too
scared to breathe. Farrell tightened his hold around me. “Next
one’s in your head.”

Beyrer obeyed
quickly then, animal whimpers of pain escaping him. Clive trussed
him tightly, while Heller covered him with his gun. The two men
worked efficiently and silently together, which only made me wonder
if they’d ‘taken care of’ these sorts of problems so many times
before that it rendered communication between them unnecessary.

“You’re a
stupid man, Beyrer,” Heller spoke with contempt, kicking him
violently in the ribs a couple of times. “I warned you what would
happen if you came near Matilda. All you had to do was walk away. I
gave you that chance. I treated you with respect because of your
service to me, but now you’ve chosen to disrespect me.”

“Please Heller,
no! There’s no disrespect to you. I wanted to teach her how to
behave. I did it for you!” Beyrer begged, his voice muffled in the
ground. “I wanted to help you. She’s a slut. She needs to learn
respect.”

“Put him in the
back,” Heller ordered. With no expression at all, Clive hauled
Beyrer roughly to his feet and frogmarched him to the back of the
Mercedes. Beyrer pleaded for mercy, tears and snot running down his
face, blood soaking his shirt. Clive threw him in the back and
slammed the door. He hammered on the glass between the back and the
rear seat with his head, crying out for Heller to listen to him. I
felt ill, shaking in fear myself. I didn’t know what was going to
happen to Beyrer but I knew it wasn’t going to be friendly.

Heller came
over to me and gently took my arms, examining them. Then he checked
on the ugly, rapidly bruising welt across my neck.

“Nothing’s
broken. It hurts though, doesn’t it?” he said with such tenderness
that my mind couldn’t process how he’d switched so quickly from
wintry rage to warm caring.

I shrank away
from him, nodding, not able to stop myself shaking. I was aware of
nothing except Heller leaning over me and Beyrer banging and
screaming in the back. My breaths came in gasping shallow gulps.
Bitter bile rose in my throat and for a terrible moment I thought
I’d throw up on myself. I didn’t want to be in this 4WD. I didn’t
want to be in this situation. I didn’t want to know what was going
to happen to the man in the back. I wanted to be at home again with
Mum and Dad, tucked up safely in my bed, a loved and carefree
little girl happily dreaming of fairies and beautiful unicorns.

Heller took in
all of these reactions with thoughtful silence, gently cupped the
back of my neck with his hand and kissed me on the forehead. “It
will be all right, my sweet. Nothing for you to worry about.”

I managed to
speak, even though every muscle in my body felt too tight to move.
“Trent. He’s badly injured. He’s lying on the ground near the car.
We need an ambulance.”

“Farrell, you
stay here with Matilda and escort the two of them to hospital.
Clive and I have some business to attend to.” And with that, he
kicked us out of the 4WD and they sped off into the night, his
prisoner trapped in the back.

Poor Trent had
come around, and lay still, blinking groggily, the blood on his
face and clothes a congealing mess. I sat on the road next to him
holding his hand, waiting for the ambulance that Farrell had called
to arrive.

“Hugh, what
will Heller and Clive do to him?” I asked in a low, flat voice, not
really wanting to hear the answer.

Farrell
shrugged. “Depends what Heller threatened to do to him if he came
near you. You don’t want to know, Chalmers. Put it out of your
mind. It’s Heller’s business now, not yours.”

I tried to
concentrate on comforting Trent, but couldn’t banish the image of
Beyrer’s face pressed up against the back window of the Mercedes as
it screeched away, silently screaming for help, banging with utter
futility. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him. He was a dangerously
violent man, but he was also a human being. I wouldn’t wish what he
was about to suffer on anyone. The bile rose in my throat again and
I fought to keep it down.

The ambulance
arrived and it was the same paramedics yet again.

“Are you two
the only paramedics in the whole city?” I asked when they
approached us.

“Feels like it
sometimes. God, what a night. Must be a full moon or something.
What have we got here?
Shit!
Trent Dawson! That’ll be all
over the news in five minutes.”

They gave him
some first aid, lifted him into the ambulance on a gurney, and
threw me an icepack for my neck and arms. As Farrell and I had no
transport, he called a taxi for us and we sat on the road, waiting
quietly for it to arrive. I had nothing to say about what had just
happened and he never spoke much on a good day. But he took the
opportunity of being alone with me to hold me close and kiss my
forehead. I let him because it was exactly what I needed right then
– comfort and safety from someone I admired and trusted. In fact, I
leaned against him.

He spoke and I
felt the rumble of his voice through his chest. “This is the best
moment I’ve had since –”

“Shh. Don’t
even say it,” I warned.

He stroked my
hair and I relaxed even further against him. “You and him?”

I sighed.
“Yeah, I guess. Me and him.”

“It doesn’t
have to be like that.” I thought about his words for a moment but
was saved from answering by the arrival of the taxi.

Before we
climbed in to go to the hospital, Farrell locked Trent’s little
car, but it was pointless. The broken windows gave easy access to
any enterprising car booster and it would probably be stolen in
less than an hour.

Hours later, I
sat beside Trent’s bed in his private room at the hospital, my sore
arms and neck tutted over, painkillers swallowed to help me reach
that nirvana of being free of pain for a while. Trent looked
terrible, one eye completely closed with swelling and heavily
bruised, nose twice its size, his lips badly split and stitches in
his eyebrow. Although bruised and battered, he’d been lucky not to
fare worse after his vicious bashing. But emotionally, he was badly
shaken and subdued. His phone didn’t stop ringing after reports of
his assault hit the news. His network boss rang anxiously, checking
that his star performer was still alive and able to continue
working. Trent advised him through hurting lips, and with an
understandable touch of acerbity, that he wouldn’t be on air for a
while and that it might be a good time for him to take some
extended leave.

Eventually
though I was chased out of his room by a nurse who insisted that he
had to sleep. I returned to the waiting room where I’d left Farrell
an hour ago, to find Heller and Clive also there. They both wore
neutral expressions, neither appearing upset nor distressed. Could
they really be that cold-blooded?

“Ready to go
home, Matilda?” Heller enquired and I nodded. It was a long silent
trip home and I leaned against Farrell’s shoulder in the back seat,
not caring about Heller’s watchful scrutiny in the rear view
mirror. Farrell slid his arm around my shoulders, to make it more
comfortable for me, and I fell asleep in that safe embrace, only
waking when Heller stopped outside Farrell’s apartment block to
drop him home.

Chapter
27

Back home
ourselves, Heller led me to my flat where I insisted on having a
shower although I was nearly asleep on my feet. I felt unclean and
scrubbed myself down aggressively, thinking that a psychologist
would probably make a big deal about that. Heller took a shower
after me. I wasn’t sure what he felt the need to wash away. If
anything.

“What did you
do to him?” I murmured in the dark when we lay together in bed,
glad I couldn’t see his glacial eyes.

“What I
promised I’d do to him if he ever came near you again. He was given
fair warning.”

“Did you kill
him?”

“Do you really
want to know?”

I gave it some
consideration. “No.”

“He won’t
bother you again.”

“Did you remove
his tattoo when you fired him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Painfully.”

“That’s not
what I meant.”

“I know.”

“You can’t do
these things, Heller. It’s so wrong.”

“Some people
don’t deserve to live.”

“It’s not up to
you to decide something like that. Do you think that you deserve to
live?”

A long stretch
of silence. “No.”

That upset me.
“How can you say that?”

“One day I’ll
take on the wrong person. He’ll be stronger, younger, sharper than
me and I’ll get what I deserve. It’s as simple as that, Matilda.
It’s only a matter of time. It will be him or me. I’m just lucky
that so far it’s been me.”

How could he
talk like that?

“Do you think
that I deserve to live?” I asked in a small voice, afraid of what
he would say.

His answer
startled me with its fierceness. “
Yes!
”

“Why me, but
not you?”

“Because you’re
sweet and beautiful. You bring happiness and light to people.
You’re special.”

“I’m
not
special.”

“You’re
important.”

I became
agitated. “I’m not
important
! I’m just
me
! No better
and no worse than any other human.”

He drew me to
him roughly and held me close, so close I couldn’t move. His voice
tickled my ear. “You are important. You’re the most important
person in my life. I would do anything to keep you safe.” He
brushed his lips against mine. “Anything.”

I thought of
Felicia and Paulie, and now Beyrer. I asked the question I dreaded,
“Have you killed for me?”

His response
was anti-climactic. “Go to sleep, Matilda.” And I knew a brush-off
when I heard one.

He fell asleep
immediately, no guilty conscience or ethical dilemmas keeping him
awake. I wished I could be so detached about the value of human
life. I lay awake for ages, my mind churning with the terrible
events of the evening, thinking about Will, Trent, Heller, Farrell,
Clive and Beyrer.

My life was
full of men, but I didn’t have anybody to call my own. I thought
about Will’s wedding and wondered if I’d ever get married,
remembering how I’d turned him down all that time ago. If I’d said
yes, it would have been me in the wedding dress walking down the
aisle to a new life with him, not Penny. Why couldn’t I have loved
him more? I could have had a Happy Ever After, with mortgages and
family gatherings, growing old together. Instead, my heart yearned
for this beautiful, cold, dangerous, enigmatic man lying in bed
next to me.

Why didn’t I
fall for an accountant? An engineer? A carpenter? Someone ordinary?
Someone normal?

Why
this
man? Was it something about him that was to blame?

Or was it
something about me? Something I wasn’t ready to face about
myself?

The tears I’d
stifled all day suddenly flooded my eyes, rolling down my cheeks,
dampening my pillow. I cried silently, not wanting to wake up
Heller. I didn’t want to talk about the huge conflict in my heart I
felt over loving him, but not knowing him or understanding him at
all.

Heller stirred,
his fingers gently touching the tears on my cheeks. “Tough
day?”

“It was . . .
rather stressful,” I snuffled.