04 Heller's Punishment - Heller Page 5

  He drew me to him and flung his leg over me, kissing me gently. “I’ll miss you being away for a week, Matilda,” he said softly.

  “I’ll miss you too, but I hope it will go quickly. Thank you for staying tonight. I probably would have had a nightmare otherwise. I can’t get that scene with the severed legs out of my head.”

  He didn’t answer, but stroked my back and pulled me even closer, kissing me again harder. His hand crept under my singlet top to cup my breast, his tongue moving exploringly into my mouth as his fingers teased my nipple. He moved his other leg under me and trapped me in a scissor-hold, crossing his legs together behind my back. I was crushed against him.

  “So, Matilda. You and Elton?” His breath tickled my face.

  I burst into laughter. “Oh Heller, please. If you’re going to accuse me of sleeping with one of the men, at least make it someone credible.”

  “He’s a tall, good-looking man.”

  “So are you and do you see me sleeping with you?”

  He laughed, so I knew he wasn’t totally serious. I think. It was hard to tell, but my muscles relaxed from a tension I hadn’t even realised they’d been carrying. My sleeping with the men was such a touchy topic between us that I couldn’t even joke about it. He kissed me again. “I wish you would sleep with me.”

  “One day.” Maybe.

  “You’ll enjoy it.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

  “So, why don’t we? Right now.”

  I tried to wriggle away, but I was captured by his legs. “What would happen if we did?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you still sleep with other women?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. Now and then. If it was beneficial to me or my business.”

  “And I would still sleep with other men, now and then?”

  “No.”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to share you.”

  “I don’t want to share you.”

  “It’s different for me. Sex with other women doesn’t mean anything to me. Sex with other men means everything to you.”

  That angered me. “It’s not different for you. That’s just an excuse you use.” I tried to free myself again, suddenly upset, but he clamped his legs together more tightly. It was starting to hurt.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He sighed. “Matilda. My sweet. What did I say now?”

  Eventually, I forced myself to speak. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Let me go. I’m tired.”

  “Matilda, please. I know I’m not skilled at . . . ‘relationships’, but even I know that when a woman insists that nothing is wrong, it’s not true.”

  “You having sex with other women might mean nothing to you, but it means everything to me. You look at it the wrong way around. Don’t you understand?”

  He unclamped his legs and rolled onto his back. “No, I don’t understand. Why should it matter what I do with other women when it’s you that I care about? Isn’t the emotional more important than the physical to you? It doesn’t matter what I do with them. I don’t care about any of them. It’s just sex. I don’t even remember them afterwards.”

  “Well, using your logic, I guess that I can ‘care’ about you and still keep sleeping with as many other men as I want because it’s just sex.”

  Quick as the wind, he’d pinned me to the bed. “No. It’s not the same between us. There’s always emotion involved in sex for you. You’re an emotional person. You can’t separate the emotional from the physical. And it’s not okay with me for you to share any of that with another man. I hate it when you do.”

  I struggled against him. “You’re such a hypocrite. Let me go.”

  “Matilda, one day you’ll understand me.”

  “I’ll never understand you.”

  He was silent for so long I didn’t think he would respond. When he did speak, his voice was quiet. “You’ll understand me one day, my sweet. I need you to. I need you.” And he gathered me in his arms and crushed me up against him, holding me tightly.

  I didn’t know what had just happened. It was out of my realm of experience. It seemed significant, but I didn’t know why and that only made me feel naive. And for the first time since I’d met him, the nine-year gap in our ages mattered. He needed . . . I didn’t know. I wanted . . . I didn’t know. I realised sadly that I didn’t know much at all about either Heller or myself. That was no way to have a relationship.

  Why did it all have to be so complicated?

  Trapped in his arms all night, listening to his steady heartbeat and breathing, for once I didn’t sleep well.

  As usual, he was gone when my alarm woke me. He seemed to exist on less sleep than normal people and I knew that he liked to do an early morning workout each day. I had a big day ahead and decided I’d better get a good workout in while I could as well. Who knew what facilities would be available in a rehab clinic.

  I went down to the house gym on the floor below. Also on that level was Sid and Clive’s flat. The good insulation of the old brick building meant that the twins were never disturbed by any noise coming from the gym.

  Heller was just finishing up his own routine and I stopped to watch him for a short while, admiring his strength and muscularity. He met my eyes in the mirror, but otherwise ignored me. Nothing distracted him from keeping his body beautiful. Compared to most of the men I knew in my personal life – my father, brothers, cousins and ex-boyfriends – he was vain, caring greatly for his appearance, but he wasn’t flashy about it. He was well-groomed and extremely well-dressed, but he paid absolutely no attention to other people’s reactions to his incredible good looks. At that moment, he was only wearing tiny skin-tight black gym shorts, no shirt. And despite my emotional turmoil last night, I’ll admit that I found it hard to tear my eyes away from his glistening muscles as they tensed and relaxed. Hmm, it had been a while since I’d had any sex. And who’d have imagined that a sweaty, smelly man could be so alluring?

  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 an
d 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.