Times of Trouble

by Victoria Rollison

  I felt my cheeks blush, and I kept my head down. Again, he could read my expression without me having to say a thing. His tone changed to something resembling compassion when he saw how ashamed I was of where the conversation was heading.

  ‘Please don’t worry too much about that. It’s not that she was a prostitute that has brought her to our attention,’ he offered, almost sounding flustered at having to comfort me.

  What then? How on earth had he heard of Molly Lane?

  ‘I think your sister may have been doing more than just soliciting men. There has been a complaint made against her and her associate Danny Wright, who we know to be deceased.’ Complaint? Was it possible Sophie wasn’t quite the innocent victim in what was going on?

  ‘What do you mean, complaint?’ I asked.

  ‘We had a fax from London Metropolitan Police. They are also looking for your sister. She has been implicated in a fraud charge. One of her clients was blackmailed by Wright, and then by another man, Frank Sporalli. Wright got 20,000 pounds out of him and Sporalli was trying to get another 10,000.’

  Frank. The accountant who took $30,000 of my mum’s money for information about where Sophie was? Why was I not surprised that he was a dodgy shit? As I took this in, the detective kept talking.

  ‘Mr Sporalli has been arrested. He was apparently relieved to be somewhere where no one could get to him, and didn’t apply for bail. It seems there are some people looking for revenge.’

  So it would seem. But what was this blackmail about? Just as I was about to ask, my mind came to the obvious conclusion I must have missed, not wanting to believe it was true.

  ‘So Sophie, Danny and Frank were blackmailing a client, threatening to publicise that they were a client?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  I felt humiliated on Sophie’s behalf. How could she get involved in something like that? Wasn’t it bad enough that her profession was dodgy, without having to do something completely criminal as well? I felt sick again, just as I had when Liam told me about Sophie’s job. This was a Sophie I just didn’t know. I had been so devastated to find dope in her pocket, but compared to prostitution and blackmail that was nothing!

  ‘So how much trouble is Sophie in?’ I asked.

  ‘It sounds like a police cell might be the safest place for her.’

  ‘Who was she blackmailing? Wouldn’t it follow that this is the person who has killed Danny and Katie? Isn’t murder a bit more serious than blackmail?’

  ‘Of course. The detective working the case in London has thought about that possibility. But the person who brought about the complaint is a member of parliament. If he was hell bent on revenge, and was taking these people out one by one, he wouldn’t go to the police.’

  He had a point, but I wasn’t so sure. Maybe this was the best cover he could get; turn himself into the victim, and bring in the police to make it look like he could have nothing to do with the killings. That wasn’t so farfetched, was it?

  ‘What is his name?’ I asked.

  The detective looked thoughtful, wondering if it was ok to tell me. With a small shrug, he decided it was.

  ‘Matthew Harrison-Brown.’

  I let the name settle into my memory, and then had another thought.

  ‘Is he the only one they blackmailed?’

  ‘The detectives in London assume not. If they got away with conning one client, there’s likely to be others. They will be working on that at their end. Doesn’t sound like Sporalli is much use, though.’

  ‘And how did the detectives know Sophie was in Sydney?’

  Again he paused, not overjoyed at giving too much information to me.

  ‘I presume this Sporalli fella told them.’

  Of course, it suddenly made sense. Just as Frank had given the information to Liam (at a huge price) he would have easily folded, and given it to the police. But who else had he given it to? If these people were after him as well, it was possible he had given them Sophie and Katie to save his own skin.

  The detective was looking at me as if to work out how I could be of use to him. I wondered how seriously he and his colleagues were taking the search for Sophie, and whether they cared that she was in danger. He hadn’t mentioned Katie: did they know more about the events at the train station than they let on? Or was this the first time a connection had been made between the woman who died at Central Station and the fax they received from London? I suddenly felt uncomfortable at the way he was staring at me. The detective shifted in his seat and looked ready to stand.

  ‘I’d like you to give a statement about the men who followed you, and what you know about your sister’s case.’

  I didn’t hesitate to reject this idea. Liam had warned me about putting any information on the official record. The fewer people who know I’m involved in this situation the better.

  ‘No, look, Liam and I might have been imagining it. We are pretty stressed; it’s possible the men weren't actually following us. It’s more likely that these people have no idea we exist. I won’t make a statement today. I can come back another time...’

  The detective looked cynical about people who don’t want to make statements.

  ‘The sooner you make the statement the better. And in the meantime, why don’t you leave the detective work to us. Make the statement and then go back to Adelaide. We will be on the lookout for your sister.’

  I heard a patronising tone, and I felt his main aim was to help the London police to arrest Sophie. I hadn’t come all this way to help the police lock her up. Imagine what she would think of me then!

  ‘Take my card. If you think of anything else helpful, and of course if you find your sister, give me a call on this number.’

  His large finger obscured almost everything on the card, but I could see a mobile phone number under some other numbers. I shoved the card in my pocket and thanked him for his time, almost running down the corridor before he could ask any more questions. He called after me.

  ‘Can you leave your number with me, in case I need to contact you?’

  I turned back, wishing I had the guts to ignore his request, and run. But I was always too polite for my own good. He took a notebook out of his pocket, and eyed me suspiciously, sensing my nervousness.

  ‘0425325323,’ I obediently recited, changing the last digit from a four to a three in my head so not to give him a real number. I wasn’t going to have him calling me if he wanted to arrest Sophie. Again I turned to leave, confident it was the last time I would see Detective Williamson. But before I could get out of the door, he called me back.

  ‘Is this the right number? It says it’s disconnected.’

  I can’t believe he called it to check! He must be used to finding himself with a fake number. I fumbled for my phone and showed him the screen. Detective Williamson wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Oh, it’s off, sorry. I was about to turn it back on. I’ll just do that now.’

  This time I turned and ran, not looking back to see if he followed me. I went straight down the escalator to the train, still reeling from what I had heard. This had to be the break I needed to find out who was after Sophie. It had to be something to do with Matthew Harrison-Brown. He had to be stalking Sophie, and maybe me as well.

  Chapter 21

  Liam had left four angry messages on my voicemail while my phone was off. He was still seething by the time I called him back.

  ‘I told you not to go to the police,’ he almost screamed into the phone.

  ‘I don’t care what you told me not to do. You don’t own me.’

  ‘And thanks a million for the help with the car. I had to get a train back there, and when I found the car it had about ten parking tickets on it …’

  I wanted to tell him what I had found out, but it was impossible to get a word in edgeways around his fury. At least he had retrieved the car. Apparently someone had moved it off King St and left it in a side street. They'd even locked it, and left the key on the wheel. This was a huge piece of
luck, it could just have easily been stolen or towed away. But Liam was not in the mood to acknowledge this. I hung up on him, and then texted him to call me back when he had calmed down, as I had things to discuss with him. He hadn’t phoned by the time I got back to Parramatta on the train.

  The journey gave me time to think. And in due course, it occurred to me that the member of parliament, Harrison-Brown, might not be the only one with a motive to harm Sophie and her friends. Was there someone else they were blackmailing who didn’t pay up, but decided to get rid of the problem another way?

  Sophie sure wasn’t making any of this easy for me. Not only did she have someone looking to kill her, but I had to assume they also wanted to find anyone else she was involved with. Obviously they were worried she would tell other people about their working relationship. But who would care so much about people finding out they visited a prostitute, to the point of killing to keep the secret safe? It would have to be someone who stood to lose a lot. The member of parliament fitted this profile. But then why would he also go to the police as well? Assuming Sophie, and possibly Frank Sporalli, were the last ones he needed to get rid of, he had almost reached that goal. But his complaint to the police had got Frank arrested and now the police were after Sophie too. If she was arrested, all her secrets would eventually come out, and the world would know who her clients were. The more I thought about it, the more likely it wasn’t Harrison-Brown. His reputation couldn't have been worth killing over. If he was convicted of murder, he wouldn’t just lose his career, he’d be in prison for the rest of his life!

  I walked quickly back to Andy’s from the train station. Liam wasn’t there when I got into the apartment. I guessed once he got the car, he had gone back to Dee Why, to our last sighting of Sophie. I felt nervous about being outside for too long, potentially visible to blue Magnas, and searching for Sophie meant being outside. If Liam was happy to do that on his own, I was happy to stay in the apartment, doing my best to investigate the people who were behind the murders. I locked the door, and shut all the curtains. Even though Andy's apartment wasn't on the ground floor, and no one could possibly see through the windows, I somehow felt safer with everything closed tight, cocooning me in the dark flat.

  Liam had left his laptop, so I opened it up and typed ‘Matthew Harrison-Brown’ into a Google search. The first result was a website with the address ‘matthewharrisonbrown.co.uk’. It was his official website, with the banner at the top announcing he was the member for Bethnal Green and Bow. There was a photo of him; he looked like a pompous snob. He had a little moustache, and his face had a greasy sheen to it. He was overweight, and really unattractive, but his expression in the photo gave the impression he thought he was a smug little man. As much as I tried to avoid the thought of what he would look like having sex, my mind couldn’t help jumping straight to that image. Gross!

  I tried to rub out the thought by focusing on what was on the website, but it was so dull, it didn’t do a good job of distracting me. There was a lot of information about his constituency, and from the information on his policies, and the style of the website, it was obvious he was a Conservative MP. He had a section on his latest reports to the parliament, which showed he was ‘anti-crime’, ‘pro tax cuts’ and ‘fighting for the rights of businesses affected by new EU environmental regulations’. Boring! He also had a ‘contact me’ page which invited people to book appointments with him.

  I stared at the ‘contact me’ page, my mouse hovering over the ‘email me’ button. I clicked onto it, and a form came up asking for my contact details, so Matthew could make a time to meet with me. Before I could decide it was a bad idea, I quickly typed ‘concerned friend’ in the name field, and in the contact field I wrote Liam’s address: liam.kingsley@gmail.com. It was Liam’s computer; the message could be traced back to him either way, so I may as well use his real email address. Then in the ‘details’ field, where people would usually write ‘there are gangs hanging around my street’ or ‘I don’t want a phone tower built in this suburb’, I typed ‘leave Molly alone’. Short and sweet. I pressed send, and watched as the page loaded to a ‘thank you for your email. Matthew will be in contact with you shortly’ message.

  Even though I was almost sure that this person couldn’t be the one threatening Sophie’s life, it didn’t hurt to let him know someone knew what he was doing, if he was in fact a murderous psycho. I wondered if anyone would be able to work out the exact location the message was sent from, as Liam’s friend had with the internet café. But since it was a laptop, there was no way of knowing exactly where the computer was when it sent the message? I hoped so. The last thing I wanted was to pinpoint us in this exact apartment. A lump formed in my throat as I thought about the implications of the message I had sent so impulsively. Had I just fucked things up? Liam was going to spew. But my mind cleared as I thought about the slight chance there was of anyone actually reading the email, let alone caring who it was from.

  As I thought back to what the detective had told me this morning, something suddenly struck me as important. 20,000 pounds. Danny had blackmailed this guy for £20,000. Sophie’s notebook! I grabbed it from my handbag, and opened to the first page to check if my mind was playing tricks on me. But it wasn’t. I was right. The first garbled phrase was followed by the number 20,000. This had to be a clue; there was no way it was just a coincidence. I looked at the words again: ‘Busby George Old Shoe’. Was it possible this really was a code, as I had guessed? I thought back to the cryptic message Sophie had sent to mum. She had used a code that would be familiar to anyone who knew her well. Lyrics to The Beatles. As if this was the last piece of the puzzle my mind needed to get the code sorted, the link fell into place. Matthew Harrison-Brown. George Harrison, one of The Beatles’ names. That had to be it!

  But what about Matthew and Brown? I had heard Beatles songs so many times that they ran through my mind in a list. Busby…busby…busby. It still wasn’t making sense. I got back onto the laptop, and searched for Matthew Busby. Some results came up for Facebook profiles of people with the name Matthew Busby. That didn’t help me. So I tried ‘Beatles Lyrics’. The first search result brought up a list of every lyric of every Beatles song. Thank god for the internet!

  I did a ‘find’ search for ‘Busby’, and the curser leaped to the one place in the lyrics that showed this word. I exhaled, as the proof I was right hit me in the face. ‘Matt Busby’ was a tiny part of a tiny song that I couldn’t remember ever hearing. It only had one verse: ‘Like a rolling stone, like a rolling stone, Like the FBI and the CIA, And the BBC, BB king, And Doris Day, Matt Busby. Dig it, dig it, dig it, Dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it’. Just to prove a point, I also searched for ‘old’ and ‘shoe’, and was unsurprised to see this also now made sense. Harrison-Brown. ‘Old Brown Shoe’. This was another Beatles’ song; this time one I remembered hearing. So Sophie had coded Matthew Harrison-Brown as ‘Busby George Old Shoe’, and recorded the amount they got from him as 20,000 pounds.

  I felt pleased to have figured this out. But at the same time, proof of blackmail was devastating. I wondered how long it took Sophie and Danny to spend all that money. And whose idea was it to start blackmailing people? I preferred not to believe it was Sophie who came up with the scheme. We had a bit of a disrupted childhood, and Sophie was a bit out of control at times, but mum did her best. I hated to think how upset she would be to find her daughter was involved in serious crime. We weren’t brought up to feel like money was really important to happiness. Well I wasn’t, anyway. As long as you had enough money to live, and were doing something with your life, it didn’t matter if you weren’t rich. But Sophie must have viewed things differently. Having sex for a living couldn’t have been an enjoyable job. I just couldn’t believe she wanted to do it. But she did it for money, so money must have become important to her. And maybe she needed more and more of it to make herself happy. Even if it meant moving from escorting to blackmail. When she talked about
becoming a famous actress, I thought she was imagining her adoring fans, and her name in lights. But maybe what she had was visions of hundreds of thousands of dollars. How did this happen, Sophie?

  With a sigh, I returned to the problem. There could only be one conclusion. The other two pieces of code were the names of other people they had blackmailed. And they had to be the other people with a motive to kill Sophie. If I could decode them, I had two more suspects.

  ‘Perkins’s Drums, 35,000’. This was shorter, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me how it related to The Beatles. I did a search for ‘Perkins’s drums’, wondering if it was an obscure Beatles song that only die-hard fans like Sophie would know about. But the search only found useless references to drum shops, and people called ‘Perkins’ who were advertising their drum lessons.

  Adding another key word, ‘Beatles’, I found, half way down a long list, an instantly exciting possibility. A website called ‘songlist.com’ had a sentence that said ‘The Beatles covered Perkins's ‘Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby’ and ‘Honey Don't’. Pete Best, The Beatles’ original drummer, sang lead on this until he ...’ I never knew The Beatles did covers. I thought all their songs were written by the band. But I bet Sophie knew about the cover song. I clicked through to the site. There was a small sentence at the end of a list of lyrics that said ‘This song was originally recorded by Carl Perkins’. So if there was someone called Carl Perkins, what did this have to do with drums? Was it possible Carl Perkins had a band, and that band had a drummer? Or was the code just something to do with the name ‘Carl’ and then ‘drums?’ Who had Sophie written this code for? She knew who her clients were. She was the one who slept with them, and then decided to fleece them for money. The codes in her notebook must be some sort of security record, safe from prying eyes. But would anyone else be able to understand them? She couldn’t have known I was coming.