Times of Trouble (10 page)

‘
So you gave her
£5,000 even though she wasn’t in contact with Sophie at that time?
How did you know she wasn't conning you?’

‘
You’re right, she
hadn’t seen Sophie in a while. But she knew where she was
living.’

‘
Is that where she
sent you?’ I had started to interrupt now, the keenness to hear the
rest of the story overtaking my reluctance to speak.

‘
Yes, but Sophie
wasn’t living there anymore.’

‘
So she gave you an
old address, and got the money for nothing?’

Liam wasn’t taking my
bait. He was too focused on thinking about his story. I noticed he
hadn’t touched his wine, whereas my glass was empty. I felt
confused and even angrier.

‘
You are very blasé
about the money. It might not be a lot for you, but it is for my
mum. You have no idea about the money problems this has all
caused.’

I expected Liam to at
least look at bit guilty when I said this. But his face revealed no
shame.

‘
Your mum wants me to
find Sophie. I am doing whatever it takes to do that. I’m sure you
would do the same if you had a daughter who was in
trouble.’

That was a low blow.
Now he was trying to make me feel bad for implying Sophie’s safety
had a price, and it had been exceeded.

‘
I don’t want to
appear heartless. I want Sophie found as much as anybody, including
my mum. But how would you feel about losing your home?’

Still no guilt on
Liam’s face, but maybe a hint of surprise.

‘
Are you behind on
your payments? Is that why you sold your piano?’ he asked
matter-of-factly, far underestimating the pain this situation had
caused me.

‘
Yes, I sold it so we
could pay the mortgage. And keep up with your fees.’

He didn’t look
perturbed by this. ‘I’m relieved you’re not going to lose the house
then. That’s the last thing Sandra needs. So as I was
saying...’

He paused. I noticed
his concern was purposely directed only at mum. I also noticed he
was getting annoyed by my efforts to divert the conversation to
money. The cost was quite obviously a long way down his list of
priorities. He sounded satisfied he had justified the expense, and
kept on with his story in an enthusiastic boast. I realised how
proud of his investigating skills he was.

‘
The information
Carla gave me... she gave me the name of Sophie’s new employer, who
was also her boyfriend, and the address where they
lived.’

‘
She had a boyfriend
even though she was a prostitute? Charming.’ This was a world I
just couldn’t begin to imagine.

‘
Can you let me keep
going? Yes, she had a boyfriend. She stopped working for Carla, and
was working for him. His name was Danny.’

‘
So her boyfriend was
her pimp. Makes sense.’

As hard as I tried
not to let all this information affect my feelings about Sophie, I
couldn’t help but lose respect for her. I just always thought she
would amount to more than someone who got paid for sex.

‘
Don’t forget she was
high class, not just a girl who works the streets. Once Danny took
her on, her clients became absolutely top notch. She started to
earn upwards of £1,000 a night.’

Liam looked impressed
by this, but I wasn’t moved. So, she was an expensive prostitute.
She was still a prostitute.

‘
How did you find
this bit out?’

‘
Well, first I went
to the address Carla gave me. It was a penthouse in Chelsea, but
there was no one there. I could see from the outside it was pretty
swish, must have cost a fortune to rent.’

‘
Ok, so my prostitute
sister and her pimp boyfriend were rich! So what?’ Even I hadn’t
expected my outburst.

Liam looked
unsympathetic, and finally took a sip of his wine, which must have
got warm in the heat. He screwed up his nose and put it down again.
What a waste!

‘
I can see you’re
quite… alarmed… at your sister’s career choice, but honestly, it
really isn’t that big a deal. Lots of people work as escorts. It’s
the world’s oldest profession.’ Now Liam was acting
smug.

‘
How would you like
it if your sister was a prostitute?’ I snapped.

‘
I don’t have a
sister. But why do you think I kept it from your mum? Do you want
me to keep going with the story?’

I folded my arms
across my chest, and nodded.

‘
Right, so no one was
at home. I hung around for a while. Actually it ended up being
three hours. This investigating game can get quite
boring.’

‘
You were getting
paid weren’t you? $300 a day doesn’t sound boring to
me.’

He said nothing. The
confrontational comments were flying out of my mouth now. I felt
like I’d been possessed by an angry person.

‘
Eventually there was
a man going into the apartment building, and I asked him if he knew
Danny and Molly. I assumed she used Molly instead of Sophie
permanently, which she did by the way. He had never heard of them.
I asked him which apartment he lived in and he said he had the
penthouse. That left me flummoxed, because I really thought Carla
was genuine. I did worry for a moment she had given me a bum steer,
and taken money for bad information. But rather than be totally put
off, just before the lift arrived I asked the man how long he had
lived there and he said he’d been there only a couple of weeks. So
I gave Carla the benefit of the doubt, and assumed Sophie and Danny
had lived there, but moved on without telling Carla.’

The detailed story
telling was starting to get on my nerves. Had he just used the word
flummoxed?

‘
So, back to the
story. I had to find out Carla wasn’t a… what did you call it…a
con...’ Now he was teasing me. ‘So I asked which property
management firm looked after the building, as I wanted to look into
leasing a flat. He gave me a name just before the lift
disappeared.’

‘
Liam, I’m beginning
to be convinced you have, in fact, been trying to find my
sister…’

‘
Were you not
convinced before?’ he asked, without even a hint of concern. If
anything, he was amused.

‘
If you must know,
from your emails, I thought you were a complete fraud. I was
worried about the lack of detail about what you had actually
found.’

‘
And what do you
think now?’

It was a fair
question. I paused for a while to consider it.

‘
To be honest, as
much as I hate admitting I might be wrong, it does sound like there
may have been reasons why you decided to keep some of the
investigation to yourself. You obviously decided early on that mum
couldn’t handle too much seediness. Now you are sitting in front of
me, telling the story, I can see you must have done some work to
get where you are. But I still have some issues with what you have
done and said…’

‘
Like what?’ he asked
casually, doing his best to sound uninterested in what I
thought.

‘
I’ll get to those as
you go on with your story. I might be judgemental, but I’m not
stubborn.’

This made him laugh,
and I almost laughed too, realising how ridiculous my last
statement sounded.

‘
I was under the
impression you wanted more information about the case. I didn’t
realise you asked to speak to me to ascertain whether I was genuine
or not,’ he said with a sarcastic sparkle in his eyes.

At that moment mum
slammed the back door loudly, warning us to stop speaking as she
walked over to the table with a plate of food. It was no longer
just sandwiches and salad; there was also gourmet dips, cheese,
biscuits, ham and olives. Trust mum to try to help a situation with
food. Liam didn’t seem in the mood for chit chat any more. Was it
possible I had offended him slightly? Or was he still trying to
protect mum from the truth? We ate in forced civility. Mum chatted
to Liam about everything except looking for Sophie, and I sulked in
silence. Just as we were finishing the last few sandwiches, his
mobile phone rang, and he stood up to answer it. He excused
himself, ducking around the side of the house where we couldn’t
hear him. When he appeared again after a couple of minutes, his
face looked pale and his confident smirk was gone.

‘
That was my parents.
They were wondering when I would be arriving. I better get going,
they're waiting for me.’

‘
Can’t you tell us
the rest of what you found out?’

Or did he need more
time to make things up? My suspicions, which moments earlier had
cooled, flared up again.

‘
I really have to go,
they aren’t happy I didn’t come straight home from the
airport.’

As much as I couldn’t
fluster this man, his parents had the completely opposite effect.
He said a quick goodbye to mum, turning down her offer of a
lift.

‘
I’ll get a taxi,
thanks anyway Sandra. I’ll call later, and we can make another time
to talk.’

As we watched him
hurry out the front gate, mum looked worried.

‘
What did you say to
him before lunch to make him rush off like that? He hardly spoke to
me at all.’

‘
Nothing mum,
seriously. Like he said, he had to go see his parents. They must
have been cross, or something.’

I felt like I had
just got to the end of a book, and found the last chapter torn out.
He had given me some information, but nowhere near enough to
understand how he tracked Sophie to Sydney.

.

Chapter 10

It wasn’t often he
made this sort of phone call himself. But the security risk had
been going on too frigging long. Vince was impatient to sort it
out, before it wasted any more of his time. He wanted to get this
conversation exactly right. And the only way to do that, he had
learnt, was to do it himself.

‘
Hello?’ the man
answered gruffly, making it obvious he wasn’t in the mood to
chat.

‘
Hello. You don’t
know me, but I know you.’

Vince's tone was
menacing enough to make the man's voice jump with alarm.

‘
Who is
this?’

‘
I just told you. You
don’t know me. So there’s no point me telling you who I am. It
wouldn’t mean anything to you.’

‘
What do you
want?’

‘
I want to tell you
something important. I want you to confirm you’ve understood. Then
I want you to agree to do exactly what you’ve been
told.’

‘
I can’t agree to
anything unless…’

‘
Be quiet, friend.
Just you listen.’

Vince was not good at
keeping his temper, but he had trained himself to breath slowly in
this situation, no matter how much the conversation irritated him.
There was a welcome silence at the other end of the line, so he
continued.

‘
The first thing is
that I know you’re connected to a woman whose boyfriend has
recently become… deceased.’

‘
Is this the police?’
The man's voice was shaky now. Just how Vince liked it.

‘
Ha! You wish! The
police are the least of your worries.’ His laughter was genuine.
‘No. The reason I know this gent is dead is because I organised for
him to be rubbed out. I didn’t get my own hands dirty, of
course.’

‘
Who are you?’ the
man asked again, hopefully knowing by now it was futile even to
speak.

Vince could tell his
quarry knew who the dead man was.

‘
No more questions,
lad, remember? I’m doing you a favour. I’m saving your life. And
I‘m potentially going to make you a rich man. If you do what I say,
of course. You see, I had planned to kill you. Tie up lose ends and
all that. In fact I had a man organised to be at your front door
first thing tomorrow morning, and he would have put a bullet in
your head. But then I thought you might have some information that
would be useful to me. And I’m willing to pay handsomely for any
help you can give.’

‘
What is it you want
to know?’

Another ridiculous
question. ‘I need your help to find someone’.

‘
Who are you looking
for?’

He must have known
the answer. ‘Molly Lane of course.’

‘
I…I...don’t
know…’

‘
Don’t lie to me! Do
you think this is a game? Did Danny think it was a game? It’s his
fault you’re involved in this. Now you’ve got this one frigging
chance to stay alive!’

Vince was losing his
battle with his temper. God how he hated wimps. This whining was
really pissing him off. Maybe he should have just got rid of him
after all.

‘
I...I....don’t know
where she is…. please... I can’t help you.’

The squeaky voice
gave away everything it was trying not to. This man definitely had
the information he needed.

‘
I hope you’re not
lying to us, lad. I’m sure you realise what we’ll do if you
are.’

‘
No… no... I have no
idea... Please, just leave me alone, I don’t want to be involved in
this.’