The Girl in the Hard Hat (26 page)

Bring it on.

Janet misinterpreted his tone.

‘Don’t panic,’ she said. ‘Like I said, we can’t know for sure. I just wanted to make sure you were on alert. Just keep doing what you normally do, but be extra cautious with who you talk to and who you involve in your life.’

Like Wendy.

Stay the hell away from Wendy.

‘No problem,’ Gavin agreed.

‘Okay.’ Janet seemed ready to go. ‘I’ll call you again if there’re any more developments. And if you need to reach me, don’t hesitate to make contact.’

‘Sure.’ Though when she rang off Gavin felt strangely bereft.

He cursed that day he’d witnessed Brayden’s murder, as he cursed it every time he was reminded of how trapped he was.

Back then, he’d been as carefree as a teenager with a licence and probably not much more mature, despite being in his late twenties. He hadn’t needed to be. He was a well-paid young man with no dependants. He had worked a couple of engineering jobs overseas, made a stack of money and decided to return home to Sydney to enjoy an easier life. A Friday night after work had meant three things for him. Mates. Girls. And a couple of drinks . . . maybe more.

That critical night, it had been a friend’s birthday. His usual crew were out on a pub crawl celebrating. They’d just finished a drinking session at a flashy joint called Pulse. Everyone was waiting on the bus. Brayden said he was out of cash and needed to go to an ATM. When he didn’t come back soon enough, the others started to get annoyed. Gavin volunteered to go find him and jumped out of the bus. He’d taken those back streets off the main road to get to the 7-Eleven faster. The ATM was supposed to be located on the corner next to it.

But he found Brayden before reaching the ATM. His friend was having what appeared to be a disagreement with another man Gavin didn’t recognise – swarthy, scarred and dark-haired with tattoos on the backs of both hands. Gavin naively approached the scene, still intending to speak to Brayden, when unexpectedly a gun went off.

‘Hey!’ he yelled, increasing his pace to the scene. But as Brayden crumpled to the pavement and the shooter spun around, brandishing the weapon like someone who had used it many times before, Gavin knew he was done for.

‘What the hell?’ the tattooed man said. ‘What are you looking at?’

As Gavin took a step back, the murderer lifted the weapon to take aim. Gavin spun around just as the gun exploded again. Pain erupted in his shoulder, making his vision blur, but he had enough momentum to stumble on. He heard footsteps behind him and knew the gunman intended to finish him off.

Gasping with pain but high on the need to survive, he clutched his shoulder and ran as fast as he could, which was more of a swaying stagger, towards the lights of the busy main road. He could see the bus and fell into the arms of a bouncer standing out the front of the club he’d been drinking in not half an hour ago.

‘What the fuck?’ the stocky man cried as his hand came away from Gavin’s shoulder wet with blood.

‘Behind me,’ said Gavin before passing out.

He didn’t know what transpired next because he was unconscious and didn’t come to until he was sitting in a hospital bed, the bullet having already been removed. His mother, father and sister were sitting by his side and a police officer was standing at the foot of the bed.

He’d given a statement and for a while that had all been enough. But then using his description and their knowledge of the area’s drug gang, they went and caught the bastard.

His name was Eddie Marshall.

Brother of Peter Marshall, reigning drug dealer in Sydney’s most powerful organised crime ring and owner of Pulse.

Basically, he was a prince as far as criminals went.

That notoriety alone should have set off alarm bells in Gavin’s head. But he’d just had a bullet removed from his shoulder and one of his best friends was dead. When the police came knocking for his testimony at trial, he didn’t say no. Like a cocky young hound, he’d been hungry for justice and sure that he could get it for both Brayden and himself. If the thought that the Marshalls would not play fair had occurred to him, he probably would have dismissed it. Perhaps he still would even now. Somebody needed to bring Eddie to justice. If only there wasn’t such a steep price.

But for his testimony, Eddie Marshall would never have been jailed for life.

And but for his testimony, Peter Marshall never would have come after him.

For the next few days, Gavin’s mood remained foul. Not because he knew a psychotic druglord was after him but because one of his men was holding up his end of the project. The job was the only thing keeping him sane – between avoiding Wendy and staying off Peter Marshall’s radar. It was something else to focus on and he needed that distraction.

However, he couldn’t get on with the job unless he had a faulty pile repaired. Bloody Spoon was demanding confined-space training before he would do the repair welding.

Working in a small or confined space was often considered more dangerous than working in the open. There were many hazards associated with working inside tanks, or down mines or in any space that was restricted, mostly to do with not being able to get out quickly if there was an accident, or having to work alone without supervision. Sometimes, if the space was very small, it might also be poorly ventilated, thus increasing other risks.

Gavin was fully on board with all the issues. But the so-called ‘confined space’ that Spoon was talking about was inside the end of a pile. Piles were one and a half metres in diameter – so definitely wide enough for a man to stand inside comfortably. The repair work Gavin wanted him to do was only forty centimetres from one end. If Spoon just stuck his hand out straight, he’d be waving it outside.

It was ludicrous to suggest that he needed confined-space training for this, especially as it would take him off the job for at least a day.

And that wasn’t the worst thing about it. The worst thing was he knew he’d have to get Wendy involved. He’d been so successful in avoiding her all of Monday and Tuesday. But today he was just going to have to go and see her because she was the only person who could sort this issue out once and for all.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, he left to the sound of guffaws and teasing remarks. His men had all noticed his bad mood and one of them shouted at his retreating back, ‘I think Gav needs another visit from his Norwegian boys!’

Ever since he’d been overheard saying to his supplier, ‘I need those Norwegian buoys and I want them today,’ he’d been the butt of a number of gay innuendoes. Normally he’d be the first to see the funny side.

But not today.

Every time he saw Wendy, it was like ripping off a Band-Aid. He knew this afternoon would be no different.

He knocked on the door of her office donga and then wished he hadn’t. Nobody did that! They just walked straight in.

While he was still cursing himself, the door flung open and Chub filled the threshold. ‘Damn it, Gavin, you made me get up. Do you know what an effort that is?’

Despite himself, he couldn’t help but grin. ‘Got your exercise for the day, mate. You should thank me. Is the Sergeant in?’

Chub eyed him a little too shrewdly for his taste. ‘Come a-calling, have you?’

Gavin shuffled from his front foot to his back. ‘Something like that.’

‘Well, you’re welcome to try.’ Chub stepped aside. ‘She’s been on the phone all day.’

Gavin removed his hat and entered the donga, immediately seeing Wendy seated at her desk. She gave him a tentative smile of acknowledgement. ‘I’ll just be five minutes,’ she mouthed and then continued to talk on the receiver cradled between her ear and her shoulder. He stood there awkwardly, hat in hand, watching her, soaking up the view like a desert mirage. She was leaning all the way back in her chair, boots up on the desk, crossed at the ankles, like she’d been at this conversation a long time.

His eyes couldn’t help but wander up those long legs, so prominently and beautifully displayed. His attention flicked to the elegant fingers impatiently twirling a hair lackey band. She must have taken it out of her hair at some point because those long blonde tresses were caressing her cheeks and shoulders in that mussed ‘just-got-out-of-bed’ look he’d never get to see for real.

A low chuckle sounded just above his ear. ‘Do you need a cigarette with that, mate?’

‘Er . . .’ He turned around to find Chub watching him with interest.

He cleared his throat. ‘Could you tell her, I’ll wait in the smoko donga till she gets off the phone?’ He ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed. ‘She looks like she’s going to be a while and I could do with a coffee.’
Or something stronger.

‘No problem.’ Chub grinned. ‘I’ll let her know to come and get you.’

Grateful for the reprieve, Gavin got out of there, hoping that he’d sufficiently disguised the fact that he was fleeing the scene.

He was so hell-bent on his escape, he didn’t realise that the smoko donga wasn’t empty until he was halfway through making himself a cup of tea. It was a rather pathetic sounding sniffle that had him looking up as he was about to add milk. Standing at the far end of the long donga, with a box of tissues, was Lena Todd. She had her back to him but he could hear her pulling tissue after tissue from the box, clearly as unaware of him as he had previously been of her.

Is she crying?

He couldn’t leave because he’d asked Chub to tell Wendy to come here. And there was no way he was going back to Wendy’s hot legs and her smug donga mate.

Haven’t you got enough damsels in distress in your life?

With a sigh, he withdrew a second mug from under the counter and added a tea bag to it.
What’s another one over a cup of tea?

Lena jumped as the hot beverage was placed in front of her. ‘Gavin. I thought nobody else was in here.’

‘Me too. So what’s the problem, Madame E?’

‘What makes you think there’s a problem?’

He indicated her face with a casual wave of his pointer finger as he sunk his nose into his mug for a sip. ‘You’ve definitely looked better.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No charge.’

She sighed. ‘You’re a real arse sometimes, you know that?’

‘Somebody’s got to be.’ He shrugged. ‘Craig’s the nice one, Dimitri’s the foreign one, Anton’s young, Carl’s wise, Tony’s efficient and so on. So I’m the arse. It’s what I do best.’

Despite herself, she cracked a smile. ‘So what am I?’

He paused. ‘You’re tough. You’ve put up with a lot these past few months but you managed to get through it all with your enthusiasm intact.’

His words seemed to have the opposite effect to what he was aiming for as her face immediately crumpled. ‘Really? If I’m so bloody tough, why am I letting this psycho rattle me so much?’

‘Psycho?’

‘Annabel George,’ she sniffed, drawing the mug he had put on the table towards her. ‘Dan and I went out to dinner last night and right in the middle of it she calls him on his mobile for advice.’

Gavin raised his eyebrows. ‘Advice about what?’

‘Apparently she has a leaky tap in her bathroom and she was wondering if he could recommend someone who could fix it for her.’

‘Sounds harmless enough.’

‘Maybe.’ Lena sipped her tea. ‘Until I found out she makes calls like this to him all the time. She’s acting like he’s her husband or something.’

‘What does he think about it?’

‘He says he’s just being a good friend and thinks I’m being ungenerous. He said she’s not confident with things like that the way I am and sometimes just needs a little help. That’s when we had our first fight.’

‘Oh.’ Gavin nodded, understanding dawning on him. ‘Let me guess, Bulldog doesn’t understand why you can’t trust him. Particularly when he has told you that he’s not interested in her.’

‘Yes.’ Lena glared at him. ‘But it’s not about trust. It’s about respect. Annabel doesn’t respect our relationship. She doesn’t respect me. She’s just taking advantage of Dan’s good nature and his inability to turn his back on a helpless woman . . . urgh!’ Lena groaned. ‘I don’t know how else to explain it.’

‘No, no,’ Gavin agreed thoughtfully, ‘I get it.’

‘Oh good.’ Lena looked at him eagerly. ‘Can you explain it to Dan?’

Gavin gave a bark of laughter. ‘Are you kidding me? You want me to go to talk to Bulldog about his relationship with you? That’s one way to get my balls cut off, I suppose.’

Lena sunk her chin into her hands. ‘Then what on earth am I supposed to do?’

‘Well,’ he began slowly, ‘if you want this woman to stop going after Dan then maybe you need to find her a replacement.’

‘A what?’ Lena dropped her hands.

‘You’ve told her to back off and she hasn’t done it.’ Gavin tried not to sound patronising but it seemed to come out that way. ‘I know her type. She’s the kind of woman who needs someone to take care of her. Dan’s done it before and she obviously wants him for the job again. Believe me, I can smell clingy a mile away. How do you think I know when to run?’

‘Did I say you were an arse before?’

He grinned. ‘You certainly did.’

‘Well, I rest my case.’ She sniffed but it was obvious his idea had given her pause because she added, ‘But who would want to go out with
Annabel George
?’

‘Well, she’s not bad looking and very eager to please. For some guys that’s enough.’

‘Okay.’ Lena nodded decisively. ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

‘You do that.’ He polished off his tea and stood up to take his mug back to the kitchen.

Lena stood up too. ‘Gavin.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks. I mean for the tea and the advice and everything. Maybe you’re not such an arse after all.’ To his surprise, she threw her arms around his neck, delivering him in one impulsive movement a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

‘Er . . . no problem.’

And then a new voice broke through. ‘Am I interrupting something here?’

Lena dropped her hands and they both spun guiltily towards the door, just like there was something to hide.

Damn!

‘No,’ he said.

‘
Wendy?
’ said Lena.