Heller’s Decision (37 page)

The
door handle rattled violently. “Matilda, let me
in.”

I slinked over to the door and switched
off the light, so my flat was in darkness. I leaned my back against
the wall
in total
silence, listening to the increasingly impatient rattling. I
couldn’t speak to him right now. I couldn’t even look at
him.

He grew angry at my unresponsiveness. He
kicked at the door. “Matilda! I know you’re in there. Let me in
now! I’ll break this door down if I have to.” That was a big call,
because he’d had it reinforced when it had to be replaced after the
whole Vanessa incident.

I flattened myself
up against the wall some more, tears
streaming down my cheeks. He kicked at the door, each time more
forcefully. I debated if I should go to the kitchen to arm myself
with a knife in case he managed to break the door down. But at that
moment I heard a soft voice and then a couple of soft
voices.

There was a
gentle knock on my door. “Tilly, it’s me,” Daniel
said. I jammed my eyes shut on my tears, but didn’t answer. “Tilly?
You’ve always been there for me when I’ve needed someone. Let me be
there for you tonight.”

He killed me with those
tender words, but I didn’t move or speak.
Sometimes a person just needed to retreat into themselves for a
while. Some hurts were too painful to share with another
person.

Another
soft conversation took place.

“
Let her be for the present,” I heard
Daniel say.

“No! I want to talk to her. Now.”

“
Heller!” And that was probably the first
time I had
ever heard
Daniel becoming sharp or angry with him. “Let her be. Whatever
you’ve done or said is enough for now. Go back to your place. Give
Tilly some space.”

When Heller spoke, he sounded a little
broken. “My
dearest boy.
It’s bad enough when Matilda shouts at me. But you now speak to me
like this too?”

Daniel sounded miserable
in response. “Yes, I do. Maybe
it’s the right time for me to put aside my problems and help
someone else with theirs. I don’t know what you did or said to her,
but you seem to have hurt her badly.”

“I had no intention . . .”

“
Maybe you should have thought about
whatever you said or did first.”

“I didn’t realise she would take it that
way.”

“
For a smart man, you don’t seem to realise
a lot of things, Heller. Just let her be by herself for now. I hope
you can talk about it and sort it all out tomorrow.”

Heller’s heavy, slow step sounded up the
stairs and the soft click of Daniel’s door let me know I was alone.
I didn’t sleep well for the rest of the night, staring at the
ceiling, thinking about Heller being with someone else tomorrow
night. This surely spelt the end of our relationship. Crushing
wretchedness washed over me. I’d known from the start that being
with him was always going to be a risky venture, with a high
probability I’d have my heart broken. But to not even be able to
hold his interest for a few months devastated me, cutting viciously
deep into my self-esteem.

The next morning I slipped down to my
car
without interacting
with anyone. I parked my car at the station carpark, not
remembering even one small part of the journey there. I plodded
blindly to my desk, so wrapped up in my own misery, I didn’t spare
my surroundings any attention at all. Trent had to repeat himself
each time he asked me a question, growing frustrated by my
inattentiveness.

A couple of hours later, we were out of
the office
on our way to
film the foot-in-the-door dodgy mechanic story
. Trent
brimmed with excitement as I drove there, a microphone in his hand
and his shoulder twitching to ram his way into any workshop with
inflated prices and shoddy service. He’d mentally donned his
favourite superhero persona, ‘the Battlers’ Avenger’, heroically
sticking up for ripped-off consumers across the nation. It was how
he’d built a name for himself, making his the most watched current
affairs show on television.

But the whole
excursion didn’t quite go to plan, which is how we
found ourselves in a tricky predicament.

“
Tilly!
”
Trent hissed at me in irritation. “I specifically asked you to make
sure that this guy would be a pushover. Does he look like a
pushover to you?”

We attempted to
keep a workbench between us and an extremely large, pissed off
tattooed bald man who brandished a king-sized wrench at us with
terrifying ferocity.

Embarrassed,
not to mention somewhat alarmed at that moment, I knew my
despairing inattention had caused the screw-up. I’d jotted down the
wrong address for the skinny-chested, asthmatic mechanic I’d
carefully chosen for Trent to intimidate with his renowned
aggressive interviewing style. Instead, we’d ended up with the
Incredible Bulk on the other side of the workbench trying to kill
us. He hadn’t appreciated his workshop being invaded and had been
less than thrilled with Trent’s hostile accusations that he’d been
swindling his customers. But mostly, he was enraged by the presence
of the camera, as you would be if you ran an illegal chop shop, as
he did.

The cameraman
cowered in the corner, possibly weeping, his camera smashed into
pieces and strewn across the workshop floor. The sound guy had done
a runner at the first sign of trouble, and Trent and I were trapped
on one side of a cluttered workbench, hoping like hell that the
Incredible Bulk (IB) had a bad aim as he readied himself to peg the
wrench at one of us.

Unfortunately
for him, considering the shitty day I was having, he chose me,
probably figuring me for the softer target. Even though I darted
sideways at the last second, the wrench clipped my shoulder,
nicking the skin, a thin trickle of blood oozing down my arm.
You shouldn’t have done that, arsehole
, I thought savagely.
At no time throughout history had it ever been a smart move for any
guy to annoy an already upset and scorned woman, and today was no
exception. I
needed
to take my anguish out on someone.

I pushed Trent
roughly to the ground for his own protection and stood glaring at
IB, hands on my hips with anger. He deliberately took his time
selecting another wrench. But if he was asking for a flinging bitch
fight, then I was the right woman for the job.

Without taking
my eyes off him, I felt around on the workbench, picking up the
first thing my hand closed over. I glimpsed down in disgusted
disbelief. It was a paintbrush.
Shit!
Maybe if I had three
hours, I could clog his pores with low-sheen acrylic and slowly
suffocate him, but that wasn’t going to help me much right now.

IB flung the
second wrench at me but I ducked, in the process getting a good
whiff of the paintbrush, which I still clutched.
Turps!
I
searched in desperation for the source and saw a lidless jam jar of
cloudy liquid perched precariously on a teetering pile of sandpaper
sheets. I tutted to myself at the shocking workplace health and
safety practices on display. Knowing it was cruel, I still dunked
the paintbrush into the turps and flicked the brush without mercy
into his eyes. He would either kill us or we would escape, and
unsurprisingly, I felt a strong preference for the latter option,
leaving no place for misguided compassion.

IB dropped his
next wrench, howling in pain. He stupidly rubbed his eyes, only
increasing his suffering. While he was distracted, I raced to the
other side of the workbench and jammed his hand into a vice,
frantically turning it until he stopped shrieking about his eyes
and started noticing the pain in his hand. A sickening, crunching
noise matched the agonised expression on his face as I twisted the
vice as hard as it would go. I didn’t want him to inconveniently
free himself as we hauled arse out of there.

He bayed like a
wounded rhinoceros. I yanked Trent to his feet and clasped his hand
with one of mine, the distraught cameraman’s with the other. We
scrammed the hell out of there, almost stumbling over ourselves as
we ran.

Our station
wagon, the network’s logo conspicuously plastered over the sides
and roof, thankfully still waited at the curb for us – something
not guaranteed in this neighbourhood. Safely locked inside, I
called Brian. Although he worked homicide, I thought one of his
colleagues might be interested in a tip-off about a chop shop. He
impatiently promised to pass the information onto the auto theft
team and hung up without another word. I hoped he’d do it quickly,
if they wanted to nab IB. It wouldn’t take him too long to get out
of the vice.

I’d just hung
up when the back window of the car smashed in, scaring the crap out
of us. Trent screamed. A wrench flew through the interior, narrowly
missing the cameraman’s head, landing with a clatter on the
dashboard. I looked into the rear view mirror and saw IB, a tyre
lever raised to his shoulder, javelin-style, ready for launching.
He must have exhausted his wrench supply.

“
Shit!
”
I squealed in unison with the car tyres, as I planted my foot and
recklessly steered us away from him. He chased us at an astonishing
speed for such a large man, and I had visions of him morphing into
a Terminator-1000, pursuing us relentlessly all the way back to the
station. He released his tyre lever javelin with the timing and
skill of an Olympic athlete. It sailed gracefully through the air,
but was just a tad too high, scraping along the roof of our vehicle
with a spine-tingling screech, dropping down on to the bonnet,
scoring deeply into the metal as it travelled along before falling
off the front of the car with a loud clang. I accelerated harder
and we sped off, IB soon a tiny figure in the distance, shaking his
miniature fists.

“Oh dear,” I
said sheepishly, biting my bottom lip and throwing Trent an
uncomfortable glance. He sat staring ahead, his features stony and
irate. He didn’t say a word until we arrived back at the office,
where he stood in the carpark, viewing the car with a grim face. It
was the second network car that I’d damaged. The first time
involved an incident with a chauvinistic, fat-bellied taxi driver
who implied that I was too oestrogen-laden to understand the road
rules relating to roundabouts. I admit that I’d become a little
tetchy over that comment, resulting in a minor physical altercation
that I’d won. But the taxi driver had showed his displeasure in
being bested by a woman by breaking every window of our vehicle,
ironically enough, with his tyre lever.

I made a
gallant effort to laugh off my little wrong address error, though
in reality, I never felt like laughing again. Trent stalked into
the station without a word, and in his office afterwards, dragged
my arse over the coals, pointing out all my faults in great and
furious detail. Everyone else in the section pretended to work, but
listened avidly to each scathing word he uttered.

“You are
irresponsible and a complete trouble magnet. Everything you touch
turns into a disaster. I should have been suspicious right from the
beginning when Heller let you come to work for me. He probably
couldn’t wait to get rid of you.” Trent didn’t realise how much
that comment cut me to the bone today. I blinked rapidly, forcing
back tears while he continued to rant. I’d be damned if I was going
to cry in front of him. “I will be reamed to the end of the world
and back by management over the car damage. It’s the second car
you’ve ruined in two months!”

I jumped in to
defend myself. “Neither was
ruined
. That’s an exaggeration.
And you know the first time wasn’t my fault. That taxi driver was a
jerk and I was
right
about those roundabout rules. He didn’t
give way to me properly.”

“Do you think
management give a shit about whose fault it is? All they know is
that two network cars I’ve been in have been damaged. Not to
mention that camera today. Do you know how much they cost? Do you
know what those bastards upstairs are going to say to me? They’re
going to say . . .”

For my own
sanity, I disengaged from his lecture. I stared out of the window
instead, wondering if I’d ever felt more miserable and watching the
two meatheads swagger around as though they shared more than one
ball between the both of them.

“Well? What do
you have to say for yourself about that?” he demanded, hands on
hips. I quickly turned my attention to him again, wracking my
brain, having no idea what he was talking about. I made an intrepid
attempt to answer.

“I guess it
depends on which position you’re looking at it from, Trent,” I said
in a small voice, but not unpleased with that response. It was a
good generic answer that would cover a lot of topics, hopefully
even the one he’d been talking about.

But he wasn’t
fooled for a second. “You weren’t even listening then, were you?”
he shouted in frustration. I shrugged at him with mild guilt. He
ran his fingers through his hair. “You know what? I keep trying to
defend you in this place, but you’re driving me insane.”

Brady stepped
into the office.

“Do you mind?
We’re having a private discussion,” Trent snapped at him.

“Not anymore
you’re not. Seems like
someone
. . .” And he tried out an
‘innocent’ face that somehow managed to look like a maniacal
psycho-killer had joined us for a cup of tea and a spot of
slaughter, “told the bosses about yet another mishap to a company
car involving Trent Dawson’s inept researcher.”