by JD Nixon
“Select Security.”
Will glared at me in disbelief. “Tilly, are you shitting me? After what they did to you?”
Bick glanced at me. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Will, Bick had nothing to do with that,” I hissed to him fiercely. “Just drop it, okay?”
Will shot me an angry look and turned on his heel, stalking back to his teacher friends. I realised with a sinking heart that I didn’t even know any of them, had never met them, had never done normal social things with him like a real girlfriend. I didn’t even know if he called me his girlfriend. Maybe I was just his occasional fuck. Maybe that’s how he explained me. I stood up.
“Sorry, Bick. Back in a moment. Or maybe not,” I said ruefully, and raced after Will, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him over to a vacant table.
“Talk to me, Will,” I demanded.
“Tilly,” he started in exasperation. “I never get to see you and when I do you are always with some gigantic good-looking man who has his hands all over you. What the fuck am I supposed to think? Are we together or not? Because I don’t really know any more.”
I leaned against him and kissed him lovingly. I looked into his eyes. “Let’s go to your place now.”
“I thought Heller said –”
“I don’t care what Heller said! My assignment finished suddenly today. I was just having a drink with Bick because it didn’t end well and we’re all concerned, but I can ditch him. Let’s spend some time together.” I paused and gave him the full force of my big eyes. “Unless you’d rather party with your teacher friends?” And I kissed him again for good measure.
He groaned softly and kissed me back. “God, Tilly. Let’s go to my place. Now.”
I smiled at him. “I gotta ditch Bick first, okay? Meet you outside in five minutes.”
I went back to Bick. I was just about to explain to him that I had to leave when my phone rang. I answered, collapsing on my chair in shock. Later, Bick told me that my face went so pale that he was sure I was going to faint. It was Patricia’s lawyer on the phone. As soon as I heard her voice, I braced myself for bad news about Patricia. Corella was hysterical. I don’t know how she found my mobile number. I must have given it to her at some point. I couldn’t remember.
“She’s killed him. She stabbed him fourteen times. Right through the heart. The police are here. There’s blood everywhere. He’s dead. You have to come over right now. His hotel.” And she started sobbing in earnest. I couldn’t get another sensible word out of her and then the phone disconnected. I looked over at Bick in shock. It hadn’t been the news I’d expected.
“She said Patricia’s killed Warburton. Let’s go.”
I admit that I didn’t even think of Will or what I’d just promised him a minute ago. My whole thoughts were on that poor woman and whatever insane form of justice had permeated her brain. As we walked out the front door of the pub, I spied Will waiting to one side. He came over straight away when he saw how distressed I was.
“Tilly, what’s the matter?” he asked anxiously.
“It’s my client. We think she’s killed her husband. I have to see her.” Then I focussed on him. “I’m sorry, Will. I have to go.”
I gave him a peck on his cheek and walked off with Bick, not looking back. Neither of us had a work car, so we legged it the few blocks to Warburton’s hotel, which was virtually next to the mediation centre. We turned the corner to the last block and I was on the verge of tears again thinking about the whole situation, when Bick put his arm comfortingly around my shoulders.
Suddenly a black 4WD travelling in the opposite direction to us screeched in an illegal u-turn and pulled up at a strange angle at the curb near us. Two men jumped out of the front seats, walking threateningly towards us. They were Heller’s men and they weren’t happy. They stood in front of us, arms folded aggressively, causing us to stop in our tracks. I looked up at them, eyes wide with distress.
“Get away from her now, scumbag!” ordered one, pushing Bick in the chest with force.
The other man grabbed me by the waist and pulled me to one side, away from Bick, sheltering me with his huge body. “Are you okay, Miss? Did he hurt you? Did anything happen?”
“What were you planning on doing to her this time? As if she hasn’t suffered enough from you fuckers. Thank God we were driving past and saw you taking her away. You won’t get away with it this time!” the first man shouted in Bick’s face.
To his credit, Bick didn’t flare up, but held his hands up peacefully first and tried to reason with them.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding here, gentlemen. I’m not trying to hurt Tilly. I’m just escorting her to her client.”
Fortunately, I found my voice soon after. “Guys, settle down. He’s right. He’s not harming me. He’s looking after me. We’re working on the same job. We’ve just heard that my client has killed his client and we’re going to check it out.”
The Heller’s men continued to look at Bick suspiciously, but backed away.
“Does the Boss know?” asked one gruffly, and I finished his sentence mentally, that you’re associating with the enemy?
“He knows about Bick, but he doesn’t know about what’s just happened. I don’t know much myself. I’ll ring him as soon as I find out more details.”
The men pulled me to one side. “Sorry, Miss. It looked as though he was forcing you to walk with him, and you seemed pretty upset.”
“I am upset. My client’s just killed her husband. We only saw them this morning. It was an ugly divorce case. Bick was on the other side.” They looked over at him with distrust. “I really appreciate you keeping an eye out for me, guys. Thanks heaps. I’ll make sure that Heller knows what you did for me.”
They nodded in appreciation. Everyone wanted to be noticed by their boss for the right reasons.
“Do you need a lift?”
“Thanks anyway, but the hotel’s just around the corner.”
“I guess that would explain the cop cars everywhere.”
“God, it must be true then. We gotta go. See you guys later and thanks again.”
I slapped their palms in the traditional Heller’s way and took off in a hurry. Bick scrambled after me, watched guardedly by the two men until we were out of sight.
“That could have become ugly for me. Everyone is very protective of you, aren’t they?”
“With good reason,” I replied grimly.
“I hope you’ll tell me what happened one day. I’ve heard some rumours at work, but I didn’t know it involved you. But I can see that anyone connected with you despises Select staff.”
“They sure do.” I didn’t want to discuss it any further as we arrived at the hotel.
There were a couple of cop cars and an ambulance in the hotel’s drop-off zone. We asked the uniformed cop left at the door on crowd control to contact the lead detective to speak to us. While we were waiting, I went to the ladies and scrubbed off the concealer I’d applied to my bruising. I wanted the cops to see the violence that Warburton had been capable of inflicting on a woman.
We sat in the foyer for quite a while waiting for someone to come and see us. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when it was my brother Brian, a homicide detective, who came down to interview us.
“Tilly? How the fuck are you involved in this?” he asked with impatient gruffness. Our relationship had been somewhat strained for a few months because of Heller.
I introduced Bick to Brian and explained our assignment. He was immediately interested in interviewing us and took us upstairs to an empty suite that the cops were using as a temporary interview room.
“Can I see Patricia first, please? I want to make sure she’s okay,” I asked him nicely.
“For a few minutes. She’s in that bedroom, waiting for her lawyer to arrive.”
I left Bick behind with Brian and cautiously opened the door. Patricia was sitting on a chair, dressed in a bathrobe, looking unruffled and sere
ne. She had scratches on her face, the start of a black eye and incipient bruising around her neck. I nodded to the policewoman who was watching over her and entered the room, moving over to Patricia.
Corella was nearby, in a state of shock, talking in a very subdued voice into her mobile. Patricia turned to me and smiled.
“He won’t hurt anyone again now, Tilly.”
I sat down heavily on the bed. “Oh God, Patricia. I’ve let you down so badly.”
“Don’t be silly. It was meant to be. He rang me last night and proposed a reunion. Then it just hit me that I’d never escape from him; that he was going to kill me one day. So I agreed to reunite. Then as soon as we were alone here in the room, he attacked me and raped me again. He was so angry with me for initiating the divorce, yelling at me that I’d humiliated him and that this time I was really going to pay. He had both hands around my neck, choking me while he raped me. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t go through it all again with him. It’s better this way.”
“Don’t say any more Patricia, please. Are you waiting for a criminal lawyer?” She nodded. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything? Do you want me to fetch some of your clothes so you can get dressed?”
“I’m fine, thanks. The police are collecting my things from my hotel room.”
“I’m going to make sure they know about what he did to me and what kind of animal he really was. We’ll all be giving statements about what happened over the last few days.”
“Thanks, Tilly. I appreciate that.” She smiled her creepy, otherworldly smile. Perhaps she needed to disconnect for the moment to cope with what had happened to her and what she’d done. I took her hand and squeezed it, then went back to the living area where Brian took a brief initial statement from Bick and me. I showed him the bruising on my jaw and the faint finger marks on my neck.
“Jesus, Tilly! Does Mum know what you get up to in your job?”
“No! And I’d appreciate it if she never found out. She would freak. And anyway, I had it all under control. Mostly.”
Brian nodded his head in Bick’s direction. “And what was Mr Muscles here doing while you were going two rounds with the victim?”
Bick flashed that gorgeous sunny smile. “I was placing my bets on Tilly, of course.”
Brian smiled grudgingly. “She’s tougher than she looks.” That pleased me, not receiving praise from my oldest brother very often.
He advised us that we would have to go to the station to make a proper statement and warned us that we would probably be called to court eventually when Patricia’s trial took place. We left the suite and I was surprised to see when we stepped out of the hotel that it was dark.
“What a day. I really need to get totally smashed tonight,” I commented matter-of-factly.
“Me too. Let’s find a pub.”
There was one on the corner of the block and we parked ourselves in a corner booth and stayed there for the next few hours, drinking steadily, talking about what we should have done to stop Patricia leaving with her husband. I was extremely pissed by then and knew it was time to head home when I stood up to go to the bathroom and stumbled over my own feet, landing in Bick’s lap.
“Well, hello gorgeous,” he slurred, and put his arms around me.
“Hello, gorgeous yourself,” I slurred back and leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. His eyes widened in surprise, but he took advantage of the situation and kissed me back. I pulled away and tried to focus on him.
“You’re cute. You have beautiful eyes,” I observed, though I could have sworn at that moment that he had four of them.
I looked around guiltily, almost expecting to see Will materialise at the table. It would be hard to explain this away to him, so I gave Bick another drunken kiss before staggering off to the bathroom. When I returned he was resting with his head back on the booth chair, eyes shut.
I swayed in front of him. “I gotta go home, Bickley Barnes. I’m a little bit drunk.”
“Me too, Matilda Chalmers. I’m well and truly pissed.”
I took out my mobile and it took me a few minutes to find Heller’s number, as my eyes refused to focus properly for some reason. His phone rang and rang and then I heard the diverting call noise. The call was picked up and I heard Daniel’s sleepy voice on the end.
“Tilly?”
“Daniel? Where’s Heller? I want him to come and pick me up now.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“I might have had one or two. I had a horrible day.”
“Heller’s not here. He’s out for the evening.”
“Damn!”
“I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Can you give my friend a lift home too?”
He sighed patiently. “Sure, why not? I was only sleeping anyway.”
“Thanks, darling boy.”
I told him our location, and we went outside to sit on the low brick fence surrounding the front of the pub to wait in the cool night air for his arrival. I had almost fallen asleep leaning on Bick’s shoulder when Daniel pulled up in one of Heller’s personal 4WDs. Bick shook me awake. I couldn’t think where I was for a second, until Daniel stepped out of the vehicle and came over to help me into the front seat.
“Danny darling! I love you!” I exclaimed happily and threw my arms around him, giving him a huge inebriated and affectionate hug.
“Tilly,” he tutted in mild irritation, disentangling himself and trying to guide me to the front seat.
“Bick, this is my best friend in the whole world, Daniel. And Daniel, this is one of my new best friends, Bick,” I slurred drowsily.
“Hi Bick. Are you as drunk as her, because I’m not sure I can carry you into your house?”
“Pretty bad, Daniel, but not as bad as her. She was matching me drink for drink.”
“She’s a shocker, isn’t she?”
“I can hear you, you know,” I complained crossly, but sat patiently while Daniel fastened my seatbelt for me. Bick managed to fasten his own.
Daniel drove off and I tried to tell him about what had happened during the day, with much backtracking to fill in important details I’d left out, repeating myself frequently, Bick interrupting every few seconds. Daniel patiently sat through all those incoherent ramblings and deposited Bick at the modern apartment block where he was paying off an exorbitant mortgage on a small flat. I waved to him as we drove away, then closed my eyes and slept (or snored as Daniel rudely insisted afterwards), all the way home.
Chapter 10
Poor Daniel had a terrible time trying to rouse me and help me up the stairs to my flat. Halfway there, I insisted on us both sitting on the stairs so that I could drape myself all over him and tell him, a little tearfully, how much I loved him and what a great person he was. For five minutes he good-heartedly endured my drunken endearments, before encouraging me to stand up again and resume the trek upstairs.
When we finally made it to my flat, I slumped on my bed fully clothed, still wearing my boots. I was ready to fall asleep immediately, but Daniel managed to make me swallow some paracetamol and drink some water, leaving a bottle of it on my bedside table. He moved me into the recovery position, pulled off my boots, kissed me goodnight, and left me to sleep it off. I woke once during the night and barely made it to the bathroom in time to vomit profusely, most of which even made it into the bowl. I splashed cold water on my face, drank some more water, fighting to keep it down, and flopped back into bed, groaning in misery.
The next time I woke up I didn’t feel any better, especially when I unglued my eyelids to find Heller standing by my bed looking down at me, reproach stamped all over his face.
“Go away,” I moaned and rolled over, pulling a pillow over my head so I didn’t have to look at him.
“You’ve been exceedingly foolish, Matilda.”
“Just let me die in peace without any lectures. That’s all I ask. My last wish,” I mumbled, my voice smothered by the pillow. He pulled it off my face.
“Why woul
d you try to match drinks with a man?”
“It seemed like a really good idea last night. I wanted to forget my terrible day and I wanted to show Bick how tough I am.”
“He wouldn’t think you were so tough if he could see you now, would he?”
I tried to shake my head in agreement, but it was pounding too much to move. Heller sat on the bed and stroked my hair gently. It was very soothing.
“I can’t help feeling that this is a call for attention. You don’t like me seeing Vanessa and you’re behaving badly to get my attention. You don’t have to do that,” he said kindly.
I sat up abruptly, ignoring my throbbing brain and churning stomach. I pointed to the door. “Get out now! And take your crappy – and for your information extremely inaccurate – cheap psychology with you. I couldn’t give a shit who you’re screwing and if you think this is about you, then you are even more of an arrogant jerk than I originally thought!”
He shook his head sadly. “You’re so angry all the time lately, Matilda. I’ll go, but just think about what I’ve said. It might help you deal with your strong emotions next time.”
“Get out!” I screamed and he left.
I fell back onto the bed and for no reason at all started crying. I didn’t bother trying to stop and let the tears flow until I was exhausted and dehydrated. I greedily gulped a whole three glasses of water, took some more paracetamol and went back to sleep for a few more hours. I didn’t start feeling even remotely human until the early evening when I sprawled on my lounge watching some brainless TV quiz show that pitted adults against young children. It was all my few surviving brain cells could cope with at the moment. Even then, the kids were whooping my sorry butt in answering the questions correctly.
I’d ignored all the knocks on my door during the day, but now there was a loud, angry knock that demanded a response. I opened the door cautiously and groaned out loud when I saw Farrell standing there, looking mighty pissed off.
“You’re five minutes late, Chalmers,” he barked angrily.
“I don’t feel like it tonight,” I grumped and tried to shut the door on him. He stuck his foot in the way and grabbed me around the wrist.
