The Girl in the Hard Hat (17 page)

‘You wish.’ Gavin hastily left his side to catch his site supervisor before he exited the room. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’

‘Sure.’ Marvin turned around. He was a slight man, thin of stature, with messy blond hair and bony fingers. His hard hat always seemed a little too big for his head – a circumstance that was definitely not in his favour.

‘I just wanted to ask you how things have been going,’ Gavin began cautiously.

‘Oh fine, fine.’ Marvin nodded, though his expression told a completely different story.

Gavin decided to cut to the chase because he knew he didn’t have time to coax a confidence out of Marvin. ‘Look, I know there have been some settling-in problems and I wanted to assure you that I’m aware of them.’

Marvin’s eyes widened slightly but he said nothing.

‘I just want you to trust me a little more, okay, and have a little more faith in yourself. We’ll work this out. I think the guys just need time. But you can rest assured I’m not going to let the status quo continue unchecked.’

Marvin flushed. ‘Er, thanks, Gav.’

Gavin slapped him on the back. ‘No problem. I’ll see you this arvo.’

Having said what he thought needed to be said to get his man through the morning, he went outside, which was the best place to receive private phone calls. It was seven-twenty-five and it was at times like this that he wished smoking didn’t kill you. At least if he had a cigarette he wouldn’t look so stupid standing out there, seemingly waiting for nothing. Plus, it might even calm his nerves. His fingers clenched and unclenched. He needed something to occupy his hands.

Like a cruel joke, Wendy stepped out of her office donga at that precise moment, looking as fresh as a flower that had just bloomed.

She didn’t have her hard hat on, so he could see that those long, flowing blonde tresses of hers were confined loosely at the nape of her neck. And what a neck it was – as elegant as a swan’s, with peach-perfect skin you just wanted to rest your face against. The outfit she was wearing left everything to the imagination – the loose-fitting shirt and long fluoro-coloured safety vest hid all her curves – but he’d had her in his arms once, not to mention the sight of her in her bathers the day before. He knew what his eyes were missing and it scalded him every time he caught a glimpse of her. Across the jetty, across the room, across the camp and now here . . . right in front of him.

His guilty conscience reared up and slapped him in the face, making him suddenly feel like a little boy who’d dared perve at the hottest girl in school.

Just at that moment Wendy looked up and saw him watching her. Her skin took on a delicious rosy hue as her step faltered. A hand went to the collar of her shirt, lightly brushing the merest fraction of exposed skin there. Turning his heat up like the dial on a gas heater.
Man! You are gone!

‘Hey, Sarge.’ His mouth twisted in mockery of himself.

‘I . . . er . . . didn’t see you there.’ She stopped. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

There was a vulnerability in her eyes that touched him. She was lost too. Except, unlike him, maybe if someone helped her . . .

He shook off the thought. ‘No,’ he murmured in answer to her question and then, unable to stop himself, grinned invitingly at her. ‘Just enjoying the view.’

‘Okay.’ She held both hands palm up. ‘Clearly, you’re in one of those moods, so I think I’m going to go now.’

She made as if to walk off but her words startled him and involuntarily he grabbed her arm. ‘What do you mean? Those moods?’

She looked down at the hand that had halted her and he hastily disengaged it. The faint smell of either her deodorant or her shampoo wafted headily under his nostrils as she turned back around.

A frown marred her perfect features. ‘You blow hot, you blow cold. You make fun of me, you flirt with me. But mostly you lecture me as though I’m a little girl. I don’t need your assessment of how much fun I’m supposed to be having in my life, whether or not I’m a workaholic or if I’m too much on edge for your liking. As shocking as this might be, I wasn’t put on this earth just to please you.’

Her eyes flared as she came to the end of this impassioned speech. With hands on hips, her body language was nothing but challenging.

‘
Really?
’ the devil in him drawled. ‘Damn shame, that.’

But she wasn’t fooled by his attempt at distraction. She’d adopted that fearless look that he loved more than anything else. She’d take him on if she could and then some. Her lips thinned. ‘I mean, what’s it to you what I do in my free time? Why do you even care?’

Good question.

A muscle in his jaw twitched and the words were out before he could stop them. ‘Because I’ve limited my choices because I had to. You, you beautiful girl, don’t need to bury yourself.’

His phone rang. It was seven-thirty.

The insistent bell was a stark reminder of his real obligations. Obligations so far from where he was standing right now it wasn’t even funny.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said with difficulty. ‘I must take this.’

It seemed mean to leave her standing there gaping at him. But he had to. Taking his phone out of his pocket he walked off, heading for the yard as he put it to his ear. It was safest to talk there in the wide open space where he could see anyone coming a mile off. Doing his best to put Wendy out of his head he spoke into his receiver. ‘Janet?’

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ came the courteous female voice that always seemed at odds with his raging emotions. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine, fine.’

‘The job still okay?’

He thought about his run-in with Fish at the bar. But then banished it. That incident was sorted. ‘Yeah it’s all good. How’s my family?’

‘They are absolutely fine. Doing well, actually. Your sister wanted me to tell you that she got into medical school.’

The first genuine smile in weeks spread across his face. ‘Really, that’s great. Please tell her I’m really proud of her.’

‘I will.’

‘You, er, said you had news.’

‘Not good, I’m afraid. A gang war has broken out in Sydney. It hasn’t been released to the press yet but Eddie Marshall was murdered yesterday in his cell.’

Gavin closed his eyes and breathed deep. He could almost hear the sound of his own heartbeat.

‘Are you okay?’

‘His brother will blame me, won’t he?’

‘That’s the other thing. Unfortunately, at the moment Eddie’s brother is off our radar. I’m sure we’ll relocate him soon. But since the incident, he’s kind of disappeared. For this reason, I might be getting in touch with you more often, if you don’t mind. Just to make sure you’re okay.’

Gavin opened his eyes, rubbing his temple with tired, weary hands. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.’

‘Look,’ Janet said sympathetically, ‘I know I’ve mentioned this since the beginning and you keep on turning me down, but we can provide you with therapy if you need to speak to someone.’

‘No.’ Gavin’s tone was adamant. ‘I can assure you that won’t be necessary. I’m trying to keep my life as normal as possible.’

‘And so you should.’ The voice of his case officer was both soothing and unhelpful. ‘It’s the first aim for any participant in the Witness Protection Program.’

Her clash with Gavin that morning pretty much fit with the rest of her day. It was definitely shaping up to be a bad one.

First up was a phone call from Dan’s safety manager, Frank, to set a date for the audit. Having met the guy once before, she knew he was painful. She hadn’t expected him to be quite so rude and short with her, though. He was all too happy to reveal his intentions, however, as their conversation came to a close.

‘Just thought you should know that Neil was a good friend of mine. We went to uni together. I hope you can live up to his standards.’

She had a feeling the standards he was going to set had nothing to do with Neil’s ability. Frank blamed her for his buddy’s sacking and he was going to let her know about it during the audit.

Fantastic.

Her records couldn’t just be clean. They had to be perfect.

She slowly replaced the receiver, chewing on her lower lip like it was a strip of dried jerky. Good thing she had a meeting with Carl that morning. In fact, she’d been on her way to this meeting when Gavin had done his usual ‘suck the wind out of her sails’ routine.

This time, more than usual. He’d seemed to be trying to tell her something but couldn’t bring himself to. Frankly, she was over it and had tried to tell him so, but if anything it seemed to have made things worse. Gavin wasn’t at all inclined to stop commenting on her personal business, give up Yabber’s address without dinner or quit flirting with her.

She didn’t like the way she always seemed to be in his crosshairs, like he was keeping an eye on her or something. He wasn’t like the other guys on site who heckled her. At times, there seemed to be more behind his words than just games but she could never be absolutely sure.

If only the man were a little uglier. It would just make him so much easier to deal with.

On this thought, she went to Carl with a stack of questions under her arm. They spoke for a good couple of hours. As it turned out, between ‘fuck this and fuck that’, Carl was very helpful. Even pointing her in a few directions she hadn’t thought to look.

‘He’ll be checking everything, including individual people. Make sure everyone’s licences and verification of competency tests are up to scratch. I don’t want no fuckin’ crane drivers being pulled off the job because they haven’t been tested.’

‘I’m on it, Carl.’

‘And another thing, check we’ve got resumes for all the engineers.’

‘Done that already.’ She paused. ‘The only person we haven’t got a resume for is you.’

‘Fuck! All right, I’ll put my credentials together.’

They cut the meeting short so that he could go off and do this and she could finish off her changes to the engineering method statements. Unfortunately, she got stuck and needed to talk to Fish. Perhaps it was fate that intervened, or some other divine mystical power, otherwise she never would have gone out to the wharf that morning.

Sharon seemed reluctant to take her too. ‘Don’t you have a meeting with Carl or something?’ she asked.

Wendy shrugged. ‘It got cut short.’

‘But surely you’ve got a heap of stuff you need to get on with in the office with the audit coming up.’

Wendy eyed her cautiously. ‘I do but I need to see Fish.’

Like someone had just rung the death knell over her head, Sharon grimly slipped the bus into gear and faced forwards. ‘All right. Hop on.’

Wendy boarded the bus, clutching her notes to her chest, wondering what on earth was going on at the end of the wharf that nobody wanted her to see. She couldn’t help feeling just a little hurt too. Sharon was supposed to be her friend. She didn’t think she’d be fighting this safety war with her as well.

Was no one on her side?

At first glance, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary when the bus pulled into its usual bay beside a small donga office. The pile hammer was going, so she put two foam ear plugs into her ears before alighting from the bus.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The sound of metal crashing on metal pounded her ear drums. She stepped out of the vehicle onto the trembling deck and several guys turned around and looked at her in horror before scurrying off like rats in a fire.

Something was definitely up.

She saw Gavin standing off to one side, talking sternly to one of his men. She vaguely knew his name . . . Marvin, was it? They appeared to be arguing about something but that wasn’t her priority right then. She walked towards the railing to examine Gavin’s piling barge. As she drew nearer, she could see the weight inside the hammer sleeve moving up and down as it powered the pile it was holding into the sea bed.

What was wrong with this picture?

‘Wendy!’ She felt a hand on her arm. But it was too late. She’d already looked down and seen what they’d been trying to hide from her. The blood went straight to her head as she yanked her arm out of Gavin’s hold and spun around to face him. ‘Stop that pile hammer
now
!’

To give him some credit, Gavin acted quickly and without protest. He grabbed the two-way radio receiver that hung over his shoulder and spoke.

‘Stop the hammer. Over.’

‘Okay, boss. Over.’

The hammer ceased.

Wendy took deep calming breaths as she watched the fishing boat she had only just managed to avoid boarding the day before bobbing on the waves a few metres from the pile they were driving. Fish, with all the gall of a man still in the thrall of his own genius, was busy scooping up stunned fish from the surface of the waves with a long armed net.

‘How could you be so stupid?’ Wendy whispered, not even daring to look up, the disappointment she felt was so deep.

‘Wendy, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t give me that!’ She turned on Gavin like a hungry banshee. ‘This is just the kind of schoolboy mentality I expected from you.’

Suddenly his mobile buzzed and he reached into his pocket and put it to his ear. ‘No, Fish,’ he responded tightly, ‘the hammer has stopped because you’ve been made. No, I’m not kidding.’