Heller's Punishment (7 page)

I forced myself
to the treadmill, pushed my headphones into my ears, turned on some
of my favourite music and prepared to zone out. I punished myself
for the next forty minutes, reaching a tough speed and gradient.
Heller watched me for a while once he’d finished his workout, but I
guess it became boring looking at my butt and he soon left me alone
in the gym. I moved over to the weights area and did my own
routine. I wasn’t interested in building gigantic muscles – I was
no female bodybuilder – but I wanted fitness and strength so that I
could kick butts and wrestle with maniacs when necessary.

Unattractively
red-faced and dripping with sweat, I headed back to my place to
jump in the shower and have a decent breakfast. I spent some time
packing for the week, after ringing Heller to check whether or not
I’d be in uniform. I wouldn’t, so I packed a week’s worth of jeans,
shorts and t-shirts, a couple of skirts, shoes, socks and undies,
some exercise gear and my pyjamas. At the last minute I threw in a
little black dress and a pair of glamour sandals, just in case. I
didn’t pack much makeup or jewellery, but made sure I took my
expensive toiletries and hair products with me (for which Heller
paid). A woman doesn’t have to rough it just because she’s not at
home.

Finally it was
time to go. I popped into the office to give Daniel and Niq a hug
and kiss goodbye, then followed Heller down to the first basement,
where he kept his personal fleet of vehicles and his armoury. He
didn’t use guns very often at work, but they were there when
needed. I was never trusted with a weapon because I hadn’t had any
training, but I didn’t mind about that. I wasn’t a big fan of
guns.

I climbed into
Heller’s Mercedes and he drove me to the airport. Parking was
always an expensive nightmare there, so he let me out at the
two-minute passenger drop-off zone. I gave him a quick kiss goodbye
and waved as he drove away, promising to keep in touch with
him.

Chapter 5

I hoisted my
bag on my shoulder and set off to the lockers to stow it so I could
go through security to be at the arrival gate when Felicia Heyne
stepped off the plane.

While I waited,
I had another look at her photo, memorising her features so I’d
recognise her straight away. I didn’t want her slipping away
because I hadn’t been paying attention. Heller had warned me again
on the drive over how devious heroin addicts could sometimes be.
And her own father had reinforced this point with me repeatedly.
She was not to be trusted for a minute.

Her plane
taxied in slowly from the runway and it was another ten minutes
before the first passengers started trickling through the doors
into the terminal. But even though I was paying very close
attention to each passenger, I almost didn’t recognise the woman
who stepped through the doors, looking around uneasily, as the girl
in my photo.

She wasn’t a
sweet-faced teenager any more, and although I knew she was only
eighteen or nineteen, she easily looked twenty years older than
that. She was skeletally thin, her face gaunt and angular. There
was no more baby fat on her body, not even a gram. Her face was
like a skull with the skin stretched tightly over it. Her eyes were
sunken, bloodshot and puffy, big bags underneath each one. Her skin
was dull, and she had premature wrinkling on her forehead, between
her eyes and around her mouth. Her lovely blonde hair was now dry
and over-bleached, swept up untidily, frizzy straw-like strands
escaping in a messy halo.

Unsurprisingly,
life as a junkie hooker had not treated her kindly.

She was still
dressed for the street in inappropriately skimpy clothes – a tiny
fluorescent orange miniskirt that showed off her stick-insect legs,
a tight red tank top displaying her scrawny boobs and a dirty,
scruffy, deep red thigh-length jacket that I suspected was made
from a couple of skinned Elmos.
Someone had tickled Elmo a
little bit too much
, I thought looking at it.
Right out of
his skin
. A pair of mile-high, lime-green wedge shoes completed
her less-than-elegant ensemble. She’d be hard to miss on the street
in those bright colours – she looked like a walking traffic
light.

I made my way
over to her, pushing through the crowds of normal families greeting
each other with loving welcomes. She stared at me with cold, dead
eyes that chilled me to the spine.

“Felicia
Heyne?” I asked.

She nodded
lethargically, flicking me only a small, uninterested glance. Her
face was flushed and she looked drowsy as if she’d flown in from
halfway around the world, instead of an inter-city flight that took
less than two hours.

“I’m Tilly
Chalmers,” I persisted, holding out my hand. She looked at it as if
she’d forgotten even the most basic of human interactions, before
taking it in hers. Her hand was dry, her shake weak and limp.

“I’m thirsty.
Can you get me some water?” she asked, not bothering with any
pleasantries.

“Sure,” I said,
and led her away to a newsagency booth that stocked a whole
double-door fridge full of bottled water. I bought one for her and
she gulped it down in a couple of swallows, handing me the empty.
So I placed the empty in a recycling bin, buying her another. She
drank half of that, burped loudly, and stowed the rest of the
bottle in one of the two huge pockets on the front of her ugly
jacket. She stood in the arrivals hall when she was finished,
waiting for further instruction. I gave a mental shrug –at least
she was docile.

“Let’s get your
luggage,” I said and she nodded slowly, obediently following me
down the escalator, through the security barrier to the baggage
retrieval area. I turned to her. “What does your suitcase look
like?”

She scrunched
her forehead in immense thought, looking up at the ceiling. “Um . .
. um . . . fuck . . . oh yeah, it’s black with pink trims. It’s
pretty.” She stood next to me silent and disinterested, hugging
herself and yawning hugely as I kept my eyes peeled for her
luggage. Finally I saw a small scruffy black bag with barely
distinguishable dirty pink trimming coming out of the luggage
carousel. It couldn’t be described as pretty by even the most
charitable person in the world.

“Is that it?” I
asked, pointing. She took a couple of moments to focus her
attention before nodding, forcing me to dart forward quickly before
it moved out of reach, keeping an eye on her the whole time,
grabbing the bag and hauling it off the carousel. It was fairly
light; she obviously was a believer in travelling lightly.

“Not much in
here,” I commented casually as I slung it over my shoulder.

She didn’t
answer for a while, before admitting, “I haven’t got much.”

I immediately
cursed myself for my stupid comment. She was an addict, for God’s
sake, and had probably sold everything of value she owned for
another hit. I gave her a grim smile and led her to the lockers
where I’d stowed my bag, which was considerably heavier than
hers.

She stood
waiting patiently as I fumbled with the lock, her eyes half-closing
with sleepiness.

“Are you all
right?” I asked her, concerned as I finally freed my bag from the
locker. She didn’t answer, but swayed slightly on her feet.

“Yeah,” she
drawled eventually. “I had a last hit before I got onboard. In my
boyfriend’s flat before that man picked me up to take me to the
airport. One for the road, you might say.” Her giggle was
sluggish.

Oh crap
,
I thought wearily.

“So you’re
tired and thirsty. Anything else I need to know?” I asked, barely
reigning in my temper. She didn’t answer, but dragged the water
bottle from her dirty pocket and finished off the rest, handing me
the empty bottle. I pegged it into an adjacent recycling bin.

“I felt great
on the plane. Really alive. Felt like I could fly myself,” she said
abstractedly, following with another pearl of wisdom. “Need to
pee.” I suppressed a sigh and took her arm gently, taking her to
the nearest bathroom.

“Do you have
any more drugs on you? I am
not
letting you be caught with
drugs. Not now,” I snapped at her in a fierce whisper. I would
flush them down the toilet if I had to. That made her look at me
properly for the first time.

“No,” she said,
staring me straight in the eye. “No. No more. I’m quitting.” But
then she spoiled it by adding, “My bastard of a boyfriend wouldn’t
give me any. He only gives it to me when I pull.”

I looked at
her, not comprehending.

She sighed.
“God, are you a fucking virgin or something? You know,
pull?
Pulling in customers?” She sounded like a world-weary, thirty-year
veteran of the streets.

“Your
boyfriend’s your pimp?” I asked.

She shrugged,
but didn’t answer. We had to wait in line in the ladies until a
cubicle became free. I knew our ride to the mountains would take at
least a couple of hours, so took the opportunity to use the
facilities as well. She snatched her bag from me as I saw her into
a cubicle and I snared the next available one for myself. I rushed
through what I needed to do, afraid I’d come out to find her gone
AWOL on me. I shouldn’t have worried though, because her actions
were so slow that it took her ages to complete her business, before
she emerged and lurched to the entry.

I grabbed her
arm, ignoring the curious glances of the other women in the queue
and guided her to the basin to wash her hands.

“Hygiene’s
important,” I whispered to her.

She ignored me
and gazed at herself in the mirror. She reached into one of her
pockets to pull out a garish lipstick that she re-applied
liberally, if not quite accurately. She then pulled out a compact
and dusted her face with a powder that was far too pale even for
her pasty complexion. She fluffed her dry hair some more, moving
her hairdo up in the scale from wild to feral. After she’d
finished, she smiled at herself in the mirror, wiped some lippie
off her teeth, obviously pleased with the result. Personally, I
thought she looked like a tired vampire having a bad hair day.

We left the
ladies and I went to the nearest vending machine and bought two
more bottles of water. She immediately snatched one off me and
drank half of it, putting it in the pocket of her Elmo-skin jacket.
I looked around for our ride, finally spotting a bored tall, thin
man with a greying moustache and goatee, dressed in a half-arsed
chauffeur’s uniform. He held up a sign proclaiming in bold, if not
well-spelt, lettering: CHARMERS/HAIN.

That’s us, I
guess
, I thought and herded Felicia in his direction.

“We’re Chalmers
and Heyne,” I said, business-like. He looked me over
appreciatively, letting his eyes rest on my boobs, before glancing
at Felicia with disgust.

“Is she all
right? I don’t want her hurling in my limo,” he complained.

“Felicia, are
you going to hurl in his limo?”

“I don’t think
so,” she said, her eyes drooping, leaning against me.

“Do you have a
sick bag, just in case?” I asked him. He reluctantly admitted that
he had. “Problem solved then. Give the sick bag to me and I’ll sit
in the back with her, watching her carefully. Just don’t drive as
if you’re in a rally race, okay?”

“What’s the
matter with her anyway?”

“Tummy bug,” I
lied.

He shot me a
scornful, disbelieving look. “Yeah, right. So that’s why I’m
driving her to a rehab clinic.”

“Well, why ask
if you already know?” I snapped. “Take this.”

And I handed
him Felicia’s bag, not trusting him with my own undies. Let him
rifle Felicia’s to his heart’s content. She probably didn’t even
own any. He grabbed the bag off me with attitude, then turned and
stalked off, not bothering to see if we were following. I hoped his
driving was better than his social skills.

“Come on,
girlfriend,” I said to Felicia, almost asleep on her feet, tucking
my arm into hers and forcefully leading her after the
chauffeur.

We pursued him
for a while, out of the terminal, past the taxis and buses,
zigzagging through the carpark, out past the shuttle buses and into
the recesses of the airport, to where a shining limo was parked,
quite isolated from anybody or anything. I felt uncomfortable with
its location, thinking about the canister of capsicum spray I had
in my handbag.

“Why is it all
the way out here?” I asked aggressively, letting him know that I
was no pushover.

“I didn’t want
no pricks dinging it, did I?” was his truculent answer. “My boss
takes it out on my arse, otherwise.” He gave me the evil eye. “Same
with any spew on the inside. You better get to her quick with that
sick bag if she even looks like she’s gonna hurl,” and he went to
the glove box and shoved a paper bag into my hand.

“Yeah, yeah,” I
said, taking the paper bag and throwing my bag into the boot when
he opened it. He tossed Felicia’s bag in carelessly after. I
settled Felicia into the back seat and I climbed in the other
side.

“How long’s the
journey going to take?” I asked him.

“Two, three
hours, depending on the traffic.”

We should
arrive by late afternoon, I calculated, giving us time to settle in
and be ready for dinner. I wondered if they had nice food at a
rehab clinic.

He slipped into
the front seat, pulled on his seatbelt and cranked up the stereo
before easing the limo away from the airport. The driver was a big
fan of grunge music, my least favourite genre. Fortunately for her,
Felicia fell asleep immediately, her head leaning against the side
of the limo, only her seatbelt restraining her from sliding to the
floor. I really hoped she didn’t hurl.

I put up with
the racket from the speakers for about thirty minutes before I was
forced to open the glass barrier between the front and back seats
and ask the driver politely, but firmly, to turn the music down or
off. He did it unwillingly and with a lot of muttering under his
breath, dropping the f-bomb frequently.