Times of Trouble (13 page)

‘
This city makes me
feel claustrophobic.’

I wanted to ease the
tension in the car, to get Liam to relax a little, and have a
normal conversation. But his still sullen face peered over the
steering wheel, hardly acknowledging I had spoken. His friendliness
and charm of yesterday had completely disappeared today.

‘
Liam, are you ok?
You seem quite stressed out. I know you’re worried about Sophie,
but is there something else as well?’

He grunted. ‘As
you’ve just said, the traffic is stressful. I’m finding Sydney
stressful.’

I had to take his
word for it, but his snappy response didn’t satisfy me. Was he
trying to make me feel unwelcome with his surliness? Maybe more
talk about our plans would help.

‘
So, I’ve been
thinking. I know you’ve been concentrating your search on Sophie.
But I don’t think that’s our only problem. These people, these
psychos, whoever they are, aren’t just going to give up and let her
go. Whatever has been done to them, they apparently want revenge,
and aren’t going to settle for less.’

We were waiting at
traffic lights, and obviously weren’t going to make it through this
set before they changed again. Liam hit the steering wheel with the
base of his hand.

‘
What were you
thinking of doing once we find Sophie?’ I asked, trying to sound as
non-confrontational as possible.

‘
I’ve already thought
all of this through.’

Now he wasn’t letting
his anger simmer. He was throwing it straight at me.

‘
When we find Sophie,
she should have some idea of who these people are, and we can go to
the police, and they can sort it out.’

‘
But what if she has
no idea? Isn’t that possible?’

‘
I wouldn’t have
thought so! If someone wanted to kill you, don’t you think you’d
know why?’

‘
I wouldn’t
know.’

From the way Liam was
looking at me, this conversation was over.

‘
Where are we going?’
I asked.

‘
My mate’s house,
like I said. It’s in Newtown.’

‘
I know where that
is. It can’t be far from here, can it?’

‘
No, we’re almost
there.’

I had forgotten how
big Sydney was. And now it was clear Liam didn’t have any leads as
to Sophie’s whereabouts, I was starting to picture a needle in a
haystack.

Chapter 13

When we finally got
into Liam’s borrowed accommodation, after circling the block
numerous times for a car park, I started to feel slightly more at
ease. The house was an old, thin terrace, adjoined on both sides,
and half covered with ivy. It was the only one in a row of houses
that looked untouched since it was built, and, though it was a bit
run down, I thought it had charm. Liam explained that his friend
rented it. There were two bedrooms, but only one of them had a bed.
I said I would sleep on the sofa, and then wished I hadn’t when the
living room, and the sofa, came into view.

‘
Only a male would
keep a sofa that far past it’s used by date!’ I commented, as Liam
slumped down onto the oldest, grubbiest piece of furniture I ever
saw. I couldn’t even tell what colour it would have been
originally; now it was a light greyish brownish shade. The house
was in a mess. I assumed this was partly Liam’s doing, and partly
left this way by his holidaying friend.

‘
Look, sorry about
before,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you feel like you’re
getting in the way.’

‘
Well you did, but I
accept your apology.’ This was a welcome truce.

‘
Finding out about
Katie, well, it’s really knocked me for six. I had no idea these
guys were in Sydney. I thought we had plenty of time to find
Sophie. But it’s suddenly really urgent, and I guess I could use
all the help I can get.’

‘
The whole thing is
still really new to me too, Liam. It wasn’t until today that I
found out how serious it is.’

Liam had turned the
living room into his search headquarters. He had a pin board at one
end of the room, with a photo of Sophie on it: the same one mum
sent him. He had also stuck up a more recent one, which must have
been the publicity shot from the agent. She looked exactly as I had
imagined she might. Beautiful and confident, she was pouting at the
camera, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders and onto her
back like a model in a hair conditioner advertisement. How could
this woman be all the things Liam had told me...a failed actress, a
prostitute living with her pimp boyfriend?

There was also a
photo of Sophie with a girl I guessed was Katie. She had short dark
curly hair and dark skin. And though she wasn’t as beautiful as
Sophie, she obviously would be very attractive to men. The way she
had her arm around Sophie, and her head against her, made me
realise they were as close as friends got, almost like sisters. Her
death suddenly felt real as I looked at the image of her with
Sophie. What had happened in these girls’ lives to make someone
want to kill them? This photo made them look so...normal. I don’t
know how I expected prostitutes to look, but not like this. They
looked like those girls you'd see out, having so much fun in bars
they don’t notice all the men staring at them. The very few times I
ventured out into nightclubs with friends from university, I hated
seeing girls like that. Men never offered to buy me a drink. They
never even glanced in my direction. They were too busy competing
for the attention of the Sophies and the Katies. I bet Liam would
be the sort of man to not only approach the Sophies and Katies, but
to succeed in buying them a drink, dancing with them, taking them
home...

‘
Have you got a photo
of Danny?’ I asked, hoping to complete the picture of the three
friends.

‘
No, there wasn’t
one.’

‘
You never told me
what happened to Katie. Did they shoot her?’

Liam shook his head.
‘She fell in front of a train.’

‘
Fell? So it might
have been an accident?’

‘
I doubt it. I’d say
she was pushed. There was an article in the newspaper saying the
police are treating it as murder.’

‘
That’s a relief. If
the police are looking for these people, there might be less chance
they’ll find Sophie.’

Liam didn’t comment
on the police search.

‘
There’s something
else about Katie I haven’t told you,’ he said. ’Sporalli mentioned
it when I gave him the money. She had a baby... a boy. He’d be
about 10 months old.’

‘
And she brought him
to Sydney with her?’

‘
Yes. His name is
Charlie.’

‘
So what happened to
Charlie... when she.... she was hit by the train? Please don’t tell
me he was killed too...’

‘
No, he wasn’t there.
I don’t know what happened to him.’

‘
What do you think
she was doing at the train station?’

‘
I think she was
trying to run. And these people caught up with her, and made sure
she couldn’t get far.’

‘
But why would she
run without Charlie? That doesn’t follow at all...’

‘
I’m not sure. I
can’t explain it.’

Liam seemed
exhausted. My guess was these questions were just reminding him how
much further we had to go. He got off the couch, and was standing
behind me for a while, staring at the photo of Sophie, a strange
look of sadness on his face. I had to remind myself he had never
met her, but he seemed genuinely concerned, even upset.

‘
You’d look a lot
like your sister, you know. If you...’

‘
What? Lost some
weight?’

‘
That’s not what I
was going to say... straightened your hair.’

I self-consciously
ran my hand through my wavy mess of hair. Maybe I did look a bit
like her, but I wasn’t like her, in too many ways to
count.

There were photos of
Sophie and me when we were young scattered throughout our house,
some in frames on the walls, others sitting on mantel pieces or any
other surface mum could find. I used to look at the photos of
Sophie when she was my age, and marvel at how much I looked like
her. But then as we got older, Sophie seemed to grow from a pretty
child into a beautiful woman. Almost overnight, she was confidently
styling her hair, wearing makeup and looking immaculate whenever
she left her bedroom. But I went from a pretty child to a frumpy
teenager, never able to put myself together like Sophie did with
such apparent ease.

The few times I tried
to wear makeup, I couldn’t work out how to make the eyeliner look
like anything other than a thick intrusion on my eyelid. And the
mascara would just clump my eyelashes together and smudge. When I
was 15, my eye sight deteriorated, and I got glasses. I never
bothered to put makeup on underneath them. By the time I got
contact lenses, I felt too old to ask anyone how to put make up on.
So I never wore it at all, even for performances. I also never did
anything with my hair, because unlike Sophie, who had gorgeous
straight dark hair, my hair was wavy, thick and disobedient. For
years, I just rolled it into a bun wet and let it dry like that.
Then I cut it really short, but it just got even thicker and more
unmanageable. So I let it grow out a bit, leaving it at an
in-between length that gathered on my shoulders in a tangled mess.
When my hair was long, Sophie used to offer to plait it for me, and
later tried to get me to blow-dry it. But I always took her offers
as put-downs; I thought she was criticising how I looked. Since she
left, and I grew into my body, I’d slimmed down a lot. But I’d
never been comfortable dressing in anything that showed off my
figure. I was always more at home in baggy shirts and track pants.
My only dressy clothes were the ones worn at piano competitions and
concerts: formal black skirts and white shirts. I didn’t have any
need for proper ‘going out’ clothes, nor the money to buy them if I
did. How was it that Sophie and I turned out so
different?

I remembered that no
matter how much we clashed, she always defended me in front of
other people. There was a bully in my class, who’d yell ‘nerd’ when
I walked down the corridor, and stand in front of my locker to stop
me opening it. He always sneered at me for wearing the pants and
shirt school uniform, rather than the summer dress. He called me
‘butch nerd’ once, and Sophie and her cool high school friends
heard him. She went right up to him and said ‘do you have a
problem?’ He was terrified, and he stammered that he was just
having a laugh. She said he wasn’t funny, and it was obvious he had
a crush on me. Why else was he following me round? He went bright
red and ran off. Sophie and her friends nearly died laughing.
Sophie yelled after him that he would be lucky if I even noticed
him, and he never teased me after that.

‘
I’d like to get to
know her again...you know...if we find her. I miss having a
sister.’

The quietness of the
room made my confession seem even more poignant. It probably wasn’t
what Liam needed to hear right now, since he was so worried about
the search. But I wasn’t expecting him to blush quite as quickly
and darkly as he did.

‘
I’d like to meet her
too. I’d like to see you guys back together.’

He seemed too
embarrassed at his own emotion to show his face, and quickly
disappeared upstairs.

The pin-up board had
some other bits and pieces that I was eager to look at. Right in
the middle was an article cut from a newspaper, with yesterday's
date, about Katie’s death. I quickly read it. The police didn’t
have any suspects, and there was no mention of her baby. Maybe we
should tell the police about Charlie? Pinned at the top of the
board was a photocopy of the newspaper article about Danny’s
parents’ car accident. There was also a clipping about Danny’s
murder, though this hardly contained any information at all, as the
police knew even less than we did about the circumstances. The
article stated that a man had been found shot in his apartment. His
identity had not yet been revealed, and there was no known motive
for the killing, which appeared to be ‘execution style’. There were
also no witnesses. One line of the article leapt out at me,
reigniting my anger at Sophie again. It said
'a small amount of cocaine was found in the
apartment. Police do not believe there was a saleable street
quantity. It appears more likely it was for recreational
use'
. I couldn't bear to
imagine Sophie as a drug addicted prostitute! I decided to ignore
this problem, and concentrated on the rest of the article.
Strangely, the call to the ambulance had come from a telephone box
a quarter of a mile from the apartment. Did this mean someone heard
gunshots, and called from the nearest phone box? Or did they see
something, but not report it to the police? The last line of the
article was also less than helpful:
‘Police have no leads as to the identity of the
gunman’.

As I read through the
article, I suddenly remembered my Facebook investigation. Liam’s
laptop was sitting open in the middle of his mini command centre. I
was sure he wouldn’t mind me using it. My email welcome page
advised that I had one un-read email. The internet connection took
a painfully long time to show me the message. Please let it be from
Tina, I willed the universe. When it appeared the subject was:
‘
Tina Gianopoulos sent you a
message on Facebook...’ Yippee!