Times of Trouble (40 page)

‘
Can someone make
that kid shut the fuck up!’ he snapped at Jared, as if it was him
that needed to shut up.

Jared ignored the
order, and said calmly to Liam: ‘So, you’ve done what we asked.
You’ve brought Molly, or Sophie, or whatever her name is to us.’
Liam nodded enthusiastically. Jared kept talking. ‘The only thing
is, you didn’t get to her before she went to the police. That
leaves us with a problem. We don’t know what she’s said to them. If
she’s said anything, we’re all in trouble. If she’s said nothing,
we’re ok. So the question is, what has she said?’

Vince nodded in
Jared's direction, corroborating his question, and they both sat
back, waiting for Liam to answer.

Liam laughed
nervously, and replied: ‘Oh, I haven’t told you yet, but Sophie
wasn’t the one the police spoke to. Your guys had her sister,
Ellen. Sophie wasn’t at the hotel today. It was a case of mistaken
identity.’ Liam spoke as if it was a funny coincidence, urging the
two men to share the joke with him. But neither of them was
amused.

Vince ignored Liam,
and looked at Jared accusingly. ‘Is this true?’

Jared thought for a
moment, and then shrugged, looking nervous himself. ‘Maybe. Jim
never said anything about Molly’s hair changing. If her sister
looked enough like her, maybe it was her.’

Liam jumped in,
feeling better that he had more good news to give. ‘Ellen looks
very much like Sophie, as Sophie used to look with dark hair. It
was definitely Ellen with the police. And she doesn’t know
anything. Whatever Sophie knows, Ellen has no idea about
it.’

Jared looked like he
thought this was good news, a smirk appearing on his face. But this
was no laughing matter. Jared was making too many mistakes, and it
was only by luck that this one had turned out to be in their
favour. Vince wasn’t ready to celebrate yet.

As Jared opened his
mouth to ask another question, they heard the sound of footsteps
crossing the deck at the front of the house. It made them both
jump. Visitors usually announced themselves by pulling their car up
the drive. But Liam’s car was parked at the end of the drive,
blocking it for other people. And they weren’t expecting any
visitors. But they had discussed a procedure for situations like
this, and they swiftly put it into action.

Jared took out his
gun, and pushed it into Liam’s shoulder, putting his finger to his
lips as a gesture to remain silent. Then he marched him up the
stairs, and shoved him into the room with Sophie, slipping in
behind him and locking the door from the inside. Vince silently
motioned to his girlfriend, Melissa, to answer the door. She had
put a silk robe on, and started down the stairs as soon as the
doorbell rang, appearing relaxed and natural, just as he had
coached her to look. She waited for him to duck out of sight before
opening the door. He couldn’t see who was there, but he could hear
everything they said.

‘
What can I do for
you, officers?’ Melissa asked, mixing just the right amount of
surprise with puzzlement at why they might be there.

Officers? Police?
Vince felt a wave of fury. What the fuck were they doing here? This
was his sanctuary.

‘
We had reports of a
disturbance at this address,’ he heard one say. Disturbance? From
the front door, they wouldn’t see anything but an empty living area
and kitchen.

‘
Disturbance?’ she
asked, sounding even more confused. ‘I don’t know what you are
talking about, I’m the only one here...’

As she spoke, the
child began wailing again upstairs. Melissa held her
nerve.

‘
Apart from my son,
who was asleep until you got here. You’ll have to excuse me. He
probably needs his nappy changed. Sorry I can’t be any help.’ She
started to close the door.

‘
Just a false alarm
then’, said one of policemen. ‘These houses are isolated. Best keep
your door locked if you are here by yourself.
Goodnight.’

Vince watched the
policemen walk down the drive from the window next to the front
door. He was angry. Perhaps angrier than he had ever been in his
life. But he needed to stay in control. He breathed deeply,
watching to be sure the police car was leaving the property before
he called for Jared back down. He watched their headlights reverse
from the entrance of the drive, and then speed off down the dirt
road, disappearing behind the sand dunes.

He knew it was his
attention to detail that made him so good at his profession. He
prided himself on checking and rechecking every possible risk that
could influence his business. So why were they up shit creek? Jared
had caused him embarrassment twice already today. First when his
men managed to let Molly escape from the hotel room. And a second
time when they found out it wasn’t even Molly. Kingsley might be
pleased to tell them that they had the real Sophie now, but what
had the sister been saying in the meantime? How come Jared hadn’t
known about the sister?

And now this. Was the
visit by the police really a coincidence? Could they know he lived
here? How on earth did they get this address? That little shit Liam
must have given it to them.

Vince felt uneasily
that things were getting out of hand. It was time to get rid of
this problem once and for all. He watched Melissa walking back
upstairs to her room; at least she was of use when needed. But just
as he had this satisfying thought, she glared down at him from the
landing, with a look of pure hatred. She had never looked at him
like that before. And there was no fucking way she was going to get
away with it.

Chapter 34

Sophie cowered in the
corner as if she wanted the wall to swallow her. Liam had taken
Charlie from her arms, holding him uncomfortably out in front of
him. Jared ignored her, and spoke directly to Liam. ‘Come with me.
Give the kid back.’ His gun lead the way, directing Liam back out
of the room. Liam handed Charlie to Sophie, who slowly stood up,
balancing on her thin legs so not to let Charlie fall from her
grip.

‘
He needs his nappy
changed,’ Liam said quietly to Sophie, who glared back at
him.

Jared pushed Liam out
onto the landing, locking the door behind them. Sophie could hear
the other man in another room nearby, shouting at
someone.

‘
Why the fuck do you
care what happens to the boy? It’s none of your
business!’

‘
But he’s just a
baby! You can’t hurt him! He hasn’t done anything to you!’ The
girl's voice was shrill and frightened.

‘
Just shut the fuck
up and do what you’re told! I never asked you what you
thought!’

Sophie winced as she
heard a door slam. The shouting continued.

‘
The cops coming here
has to have something to do with him. Get rid of him. Melissa’s
packing. We’re leaving now. We’ll take the boat.’

Sophie pressed her
ear to the door, eager for any hint of what might be happening. She
heard a yell, and then a frantic scuffle, followed by a sickening
crunch. At first it wasn't clear who had made the sound. But the
two men continued their hurried conversation, leaving as only the
possibility that it was Liam who had been silenced. The larger man
was barking orders to the other one, sounding more agitated every
second:

‘
Go get the car, I’ll
just finish packing, and then we’ll get going. This place is fucked
now. The police could be back any second’.

Sophie started crying
silently into Charlie’s soft chest; holding him close enough to her
face that he muffled her sobs. She couldn’t understand what Liam
was doing. He had said he was hired by her mum, and he definitely
knew Ellen, so why had he brought her to the very people she’d been
running from for months? Just when she had thought she was safe,
that she was about to see Ellen and her mum again, she was even
closer to disaster than she was before.

She heard the latch
on the door open, and she shut her eyes tight, expecting yelling or
violence to follow. But the door only opened enough for someone
small to slip quietly in. She could sense it wasn’t one of the men,
so she opened her eyes. There was a young woman standing in the
room, wearing only a bikini, her eyes red from crying. She
whispered something, but Sophie couldn’t immediately understand
what was going on. Then she made out what she was
saying.

‘
I’m not going to let
them...Bradley marina...they’ll drown you both... he’s too little
to understand...’

She was so upset that
she wasn’t making much sense, but Sophie could hear the fear in her
voice. Before Sophie could respond, the girl slipped silently out
of the room, and locked the door behind her. Was the girl trying to
help her? And what had happened outside her room? Had Liam been
badly hurt? Or killed?

Her question was
partly answered soon after. The door was flung open; this time the
person opening it was not trying to be discreet. The shorter man
with the gun shoved her and Charlie out onto the landing, pushing
them towards the top of the stairs. She could see Liam lying just
beyond the bottom step, blood on his face, and on the back of his
head. He body lay awkwardly, and he wasn’t moving. She willed
herself not to scream.

With one hand she
gripped the banister, and with the other she held Charlie as she
carefully walked down, trying not to look at the body. The man
walked behind her, a huge duffle bag over his shoulder, and his gun
at her back. He seemed impatient to get out of the house. She
slowed to manoeuvre herself around Liam’s body, which enraged the
man even more. He grabbed her by the arm, dragging her towards the
front door.

Liam’s car was no
longer in the drive. Instead, there was a four wheel drive parked
at the front of the house. The man shoved Sophie into the back,
pushing her across the seats, ignoring her pleas to watch out for
Charlie. Then he slammed the door. The girl who’d come into the
upstairs room was sitting in the front seat, her eyes forward,
still as a statue. The driver was the other man from the house; he
had a large gun in one hand, with what must have been a silencer
attached to the barrel. Charlie started crying again, and the man
in the front spat at Sophie: ‘Can you shut that fucking baby up!’
She tried to comfort him, but he was scared by the
shouting.

The smaller man
dumped the duffle bag in the boot, slamming it hard, and went back
into the house. After a few minutes, he ran out, and jumped into
the back seat, yelling ‘Drive’ to his boss in the front. Red and
orange flames, growing brighter by the second, were suddenly
visible through the tall glass windows, and smoke was starting to
billow up to the high raked ceiling. He had torched the place. He
looked exhilarated as his boss sped away.

Charlie kept fussing.
Sophie bounced him up and down on her lap, in an attempt to show
she was trying to stop him crying. As she bounced, she felt
something hard hitting her thigh. It felt like a lump of plastic in
Charlie’s pants. She slid her hand down his back, finding something
tucked in there, sitting on his soiled nappy. She suddenly realised
it was the familiar shape of a mobile phone. Liam must have put it
in Charlie’s pants in the brief moment he held him upstairs. She
felt an unexpected rush of relief. It was now her chance to be
brave.

Still careful to
bounce Charlie softly on her lap, she moved the phone sideways so
she could reach it with her right hand, concealed between Charlie
and the car door. She had used enough phones in her time to know
how to unlock the keypad without looking at it. She pressed the
star on the bottom left and the menu bar in the middle. She was
relieved to find the phone was on silent; the keys didn’t make a
sound. The screen lit up, but the light from it was barely
discernible, hidden by Charlie’s small frame. She knew if you
pressed left on the toggle button, a blank message appeared. She
had also sent enough text messages to be able to turn off the
predictive function, and find the right letters by feeling her way
across the key pad. She hardly moved her arm, but let her fingers
carefully crawl across the pad, typing ‘Bradley marina’. She
glanced at the man on the seat next to her, and could see he was
looking out his window, no doubt watching the glow from the burning
house disappear in the distance. His boss had his eyes on the road,
and the girl in the front seat hadn’t moved or said a word since
they left.

She hugged Charlie
close enough that she could pull open the side of his pants and
glance down at the screen. Then she pressed ‘send’ and scrolled
silently through the short list of A’s, pressing hard on ‘Andy’ so
that the text disappeared off the screen, replaced by a small
floating envelope. She said a silent prayer that Liam had saved her
uncle’s number in his phone, and it wasn’t some random Andy who
would have no idea what the message meant. When she had called
Ellen from Liam’s phone, he had explained that she would answer her
uncle’s phone. Was this still the case? She had to hope so. She
moved Charlie slowly one more time, pressing the phone back down
into his pants. Then she held him on her lap, and prayed that Ellen
would get the message.

Chapter 35

As Andy sped down the
highway, I glanced nervously between the road ahead, and the lit up
screen of the Sat Nav attached to his dashboard. We’d been driving
for about half an hour, but the time had ticked by so slowly, I
felt like we’d been driving for days. Every second that passed, my
mind tortured me with thoughts about what could be happening to
Sophie. And my rage at what Liam had done was making it difficult
for me to think clearly about anything.