Times of Trouble (22 page)

'Grab your bag out of
the back. Get mine too' Liam barked.

I did as I was told,
awkwardly hauling the bags through the gap in the seats. I stuffed
them both at my feet, and stared at Liam, waiting for another
instruction. Liam said nothing, but he quickly undid his seatbelt,
and then undid mine in one rapid flick. Had he changed his mind
about getting out? I didn't have time to ask.

The light turned to
green in front of us, and Liam had only a moment to act. The first
car at the traffic lights on the opposite side of the road was slow
to take off. As the car in front of us moved forward, Liam yanked
down hard on the steering wheel, slewing our car across the
pedestrian crossing, effectively blocking the traffic in both
directions. The car stalled as Liam took his foot off the clutch.
It was a miracle no one hit us. They made up for it by hitting
their horns instead.

‘
Get out,’ Liam
bellowed. ‘Quick! Taxi!’

I pushed my door
open, and almost tripped trying to drag the bags with me. Liam was
much quicker, slipping around the front of the car, and grabbing
his bag as he sprinted past me. He was pointing and yelling as he
ran down the middle of the road, and I suddenly realised what he
meant. The car in front was a taxi. It was moving away from us, but
only at walking pace. Liam managed to hurl himself in, leaving the
door open for me to throw myself, and my bag, across the back seat.
I slammed the door shut, and Liam screamed at the bemused taxi
driver to keep going.

Liam’s car sat
jamming both lanes of traffic on King St, with the Magna stuck
behind it. Traffic was starting to bank up on the other side of the
road as well. But our lane was now moving faster, free of the
bottle neck. The beeping and yelling quickly faded as Liam directed
the tax driver down the first side street we came to. We were free
of the jam. And the Magna was no where to be seen. All I could do
for a few moments was stare at Liam, dumbstruck at what he had
done.

‘
That was brilliant,’
I said eventually. ‘What will happen to the car?”

‘
I guess someone will
move it out of the way.’ He seemed overwhelmed.

The taxi driver was
peering at us curiously in the rear-view mirror. It must have
looked like we robbed a bank.

We didn’t seem to be
going in any particular direction, other than away from King St. It
was clear Liam was too flustered to give directions, so I tried to
think where we could go. We needed somewhere to stay, but I
couldn’t produce any coherent ideas. My mind was too clouded by a
terror I had never felt before. What were those men going to do to
us? And how did they find us?

‘
We have to go to the
police…’ I began, realising too late Liam was on the edge of losing
it altogether.

‘
I already told you!
There’s no way they will help us! We have nothing useful to tell
them… and…’

Before he could
continue his rant, my mobile started ringing. We both looked at the
phone like it was a bomb, ready to explode. The name flashed up on
the screen. I had never been so relieved to see the word ‘mum’ in
my life.

‘
Mum,’ I answered,
not trying to hide the panic in my voice.

‘
What’s the matter
Ellen? Did you find Sophie?’

Her panic easily
matched mine. I had forgotten to keep her updated on what had
happened.

‘
No… she… she wasn’t
where we thought she might be. But Liam and I can’t go home. There
were men there, and Liam thinks they might be… the same men as are
after Sophie. Mum, I’m really scared.’

‘
Oh my god, I told
you not to go to Sydney! I knew it was a bad idea! Where are
you?’

Liam could hear mum’s
frantic tone vibrating out of the phone. He looked even more
worried, hearing the reaction from someone else.

‘
We’re in a taxi. We
don’t know where to go. I guess we’ll have to find a
hotel.’

I expected mum to
complain, to say it wasn’t safe. But she was silent. I could almost
hear her mind ticking over, trying desperately to come up with a
way to keep me out of harms way.

‘
Just keep driving
Ellen. I’ll call you back in a second. I have to make a phone
call.’

She hung up before I
could ask any questions, leaving me staring at the phone like it
was a foreign object.

‘
What did she say?’
Liam asked, desperate for some good news.

‘
Nothing. She’s
calling me back.’

The taxi driver
seemed too timid to ask where to go. So he just kept driving.
Judging from the change in the landscape, I could tell we were
already a long way from Newtown. I guessed we were heading west.
Within a couple of minutes, my phone rang again.

‘
Mum.’ I
answered.

‘
I know somewhere you
can go. I just called your uncle, your father’s brother Andy. I
didn’t really explain what was happening. I just told him you
urgently needed somewhere to stay.’

I was too surprised
to speak. I had only met Andy once, when he visited us for
Christmas in Adelaide when I was little. I had no idea mum still
had a phone number for him. She can’t have spoken to him since
before dad left.

They weren’t
following us were they? Surely they couldn’t find us somewhere
else…

‘
Where does he live?
’

‘
In Parramatta. Unit
14, 46 Robertson St.’

‘
Thanks so much mum,
we’ll be safe there. I’ve got to go, so I can find his house. I
promise I’ll call you in the morning.’

‘
Please Ellen, come
home. It’s the only way you’re going to be safe! If they know you
are there, they might find you again!’

I felt bad to hear
mum begging me to come home. Tonight’s phone call would just make
her even more worried than she was before. But there was no way I
was coming home now, and leading these people to mum.

‘
I’ll be ok now mum.
There’s no way they can know about Andy’s house.’

I hung up, worrying
about what I had just said. If they could find me at Liam’s
friend’s house, maybe they could find me at my uncle’s? But I was
too tired to come up with any other ideas, and I directed the taxi
driver to head for Parramatta. We wouldn’t stay with Andy for long;
just until we found somewhere safer. Liam didn’t object. He
obviously didn’t have any better ideas.

When we got there, I
paid the taxi driver at the end of Andy’s street. There was no
point in making it really easy for them to find us, and no telling
whether or not they could find our taxi driver. He’d certainly
remember us.

Andy was waiting in
the foyer. He awkwardly introduced himself to Liam; I felt like I
needed to be introduced too. It had been so long since I had seen
him, I barely remembered what he looked like. He was tall and solid
like dad, but unlike dad, his dark brown hair was balding. Though
dad could be balding now too. He was dressed in jeans that looked
more like a teenager would wear than a ... what would he be... a 50
year old? And his casual T-shirt reminded me of clothes people wore
in the ‘80s, far too bright, with writing that didn’t seem to say
anything, and too many mismatched colours. Definitely no dress
sense. He seemed shy, but also quite happy to see us. I was glad we
didn’t seem to be putting him out, but I almost wished we were at a
hotel, so I wouldn’t have to be sociable. It felt rude to walk in
unannounced, and not catch up on old times. But what better excuse
did I have than the nightmare I had just been through? And anyway,
what old times did we have to catch up on? His brother leaving us,
and never even calling to say hi? But to my relief, Andy sensed I
wasn’t in the mood for a chat. He can’t have got much information
from mum; I wondered whether she had told him about Sophie. He
didn’t ask about her.

He took us up in the
lift to his apartment. Liam seemed a bit too shaken to be polite,
which was out of character for him. Andy offered us the spare room,
but before I had a chance to explain we weren’t a couple, Liam
offered to sleep on the sofa. I was absolutely exhausted, so with a
fairly lame attempt at an excuse, I left Liam and Andy talking in
the living room. I heard Liam ask him about security: whether he
had a dead lock, and if the windows were secure at night. Andy
sounded worried as he explained the whole apartment building had a
security system and he’d never had any robberies. He can’t have
realised that thieves were the least of our problems.

I slipped into bed
after texting mum to tell her I was safe, and pulled out the
notebook I found at Sophie’s. After the events of the evening, I
was even more desperate to find any clues that might lead us to the
people who were after her – and apparently us as well.

The notebook didn’t
have much writing in it. But the writing it did have was in
Sophie’s familiar style that I had seen on the medical centre
admission form. The pages still looked quite straight and new, but
I could tell the notebook had been bought in London, as the price
tag on the back was in pounds. It wasn’t a diary, and she hadn’t
torn any pages out. The first page had a list of dates back in
September, and initials next to them. How were these going to help
me? Maybe they were clients and appointments. The next page had
some sums on it, adding and subtracting. It looked like a budget of
some kind. This went on for a few more pages, numbers scrawled all
over each sheet.

The next page had
only a few words: ‘Busby George Old Shoe’. This meant absolutely
nothing to me. And to add to the strangeness of the words, there
was a number written underneath: ’20,000’. I stared at the words,
trying to make sense of them, but my eyelids felt heavy, and my
eyes couldn’t focus. The next page had two more strange words, and
another number: ‘Perkins’s Drums, 35,000’. And the page after had
an even more muddled sentence: ‘Toothy seal E.P star I will be
golden, 20,000’. The notebook was blank after that, apart from one
page that had something that looked like a flight number on it. I
would have to remember to ask Liam if this was the flight Sophie
came out on.

I flipped back and
forth between the three pages a few times, but there was still
nothing that gave me any idea what Sophie was recording. I had a
sudden fear that she was on drugs or something, and was writing
random, hallucinating sentences. But the writing was so clear and
precise that she had to have been in total control when she wrote
it. And the numbers had to mean something. Maybe it was a code.
Maybe it wasn’t, and I just hoped it was. Either way, my mind
didn’t have the energy to think about it then.

I heard Andy closing
his bedroom door, leaving Liam to the sofa in the dark living room.
I wondered whether he was still feeling as scared as I was. He had
been brave to go and get our things. And his get away strategy was
incredibly smart. I hoped he didn’t mind too much about the
car.

There was no way of
knowing whether the men were watching for him or me. It made more
sense that they were watching for him. He had been searching for
Sophie for much longer than I had, so it was far more likely that
they had somehow tracked him down. But knowing that didn’t make me
feel any better. I didn’t want anything to happen to Liam, for how
would mum and I ever forgive ourselves if he got caught up in
Sophie’s drama, and was hurt or even killed for trying to help? My
fear for us all gave me a new drive. I wanted to find these people
to keep them away from Sophie. And I wanted them gone, so we could
all get our lives back, and maybe get each other back
too.

Chapter 20

I woke up early with
a stone of dread in my stomach. I wanted to get out of the unit
quickly, before getting trapped talking to Andy, or agreeing to do
something with Liam. But to my surprise, Andy had already left for
the day. A note on the table said he would see us tonight when he
got home from work, and gave his phone number in case we needed
him. He also left a spare key on the table so we could come and go.
I tried to think what Andy did for a living, but it was so long
since I saw him, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever known.

His apartment
appeared almost brand new, and if it wasn’t for all his mess, would
probably be very nice to live in. To be fair, he wasn’t expecting
visitors, and people who lived alone probably spread themselves
out. But it looked like Andy hadn’t put anything away, let alone
cleaned the place, for weeks. At his age, with no wife and
children, he must have had quite a bit of money. He had enough to
buy a really nice apartment. Couldn’t he fork out for a cleaning
service too?

I didn’t feel right
about staying in his apartment much longer. Apart from feeling
uncomfortable about his obvious absence from my life, and the
reason for it, I’d rather not be anywhere longer than a night in
case they tracked us down again. Now the danger felt so close, I
hated the thought of spreading the problem to Andy, like a
contagious disease.

I quickly showered
and dressed, and careful to not wake Liam, slipped out of the
apartment. Liam would probably be worried when he woke up to find
the place empty, but he'd call my mobile before he did anything
else, and I could explain then that I had gone out.

Where I was going I
wasn’t quite sure. The nearest police station would be easy to find
if I had thought of checking on Liam’s laptop before I left the
apartment, but having not done this, I had to use old fashioned
nous. The first thing I did was ask a pedestrian for directions to
the nearest train station. I felt scared to be out in the open, on
main roads and busy streets, in case a blue Magna suddenly
appeared. But the back streets were even scarier, making me feel
cornered and alone.