Times of Trouble (25 page)

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.

I took a deep breath.
This couldn’t be impossible. I just had to be smart about it. My
next search was ‘Carl Perkins drums’. It revealed a biography of
Carl Perkins on the Rolling Stone website. His photo made him look
more like a nerdy geek than a rock star, but back in the 50’s his
huge glasses might have been fashionable for about five minutes.
Scanning the biography, he was described as one of the ‘architects
of rock and roll’. I kept reading, and found he had written ‘Blue
Suede Shoes’, made famous by Elvis. The biography stated that his
first band was with his brothers, and in 1953, a drummer called W.S
‘fluke’ Holland had joined it. So, Carl Perkins’s drummer was W.S
Holland. Perkins later became friends with The Beatles. They worked
on albums with him, and did some covers of his songs. This had to
be the right Perkins. And since the only drummer mentioned in his
biography was W.S Holland, this must be something resembling the
name of the second person Sophie was blackmailing. But who the hell
was W.S Holland?

Continuing the
search, I typed in ‘what is W.S Holland’s first name?’, and
connected with a page all about W.S Holland. It was an obscure rock
fan’s website, where an entry explained that W.S was his first
name. Apparently it was common at the time in West Tennessee for
people to give children initials instead of names. No wonder he had
a nickname. Fluke. So I was looking for someone called W.S Holland?
But I assume this person has a first name and a middle name too.
Holland was quite a common last name, but how common were the
initials W.S? When I searched W.S Holland, a few more references to
Carl Perkins’s band appeared, and some other random entries.
Nothing seemed relevant, so I jotted down W.S Holland in Sophie’s
notebook, and turned to the next page to see if a third name could
be dragged out of her code.

‘
Toothy seal E.P star
I will be golden, 20,000’. There were more words in this code,
which made me feel slightly relieved, as it should mean it would
lead me to a more specific name. I didn’t even need the computer to
work out the first word must have something to do with ‘Walrus’. I
remembered a time when we were really young, and mum and dad had
taken us to a Chinese Restaurant. I think it was dad’s birthday.
Sophie and I were really excited. We hardly ever went out for
dinner. Our meals arrived with chopsticks, not forks. We had no
idea how to use them, so mum patiently tried to show us. Dad called
the waiter back over to see about forks. And in the meantime,
Sophie lodged her chopsticks in her top lip, so they hung
vertically, wobbling with her laughing mouth. I thought it was
hilarious, and called her a toothy seal. She slapped the backs of
her hands together, and made whooping noises. Mum was not
impressed, and wrenched the chopsticks out of her mouth. Dad tried
to suppress a laugh, and explained that she wasn’t a toothy seal,
she was a walrus.

So ‘Toothy seal’ had
to mean ‘walrus’. And The Beatles’ song ‘I am the Walrus’ had to
have something to do with this code. So again I pulled up the
website with The Beatles lyrics, and read through the words. If
Walrus was a clue, something else in the code should relate to
these lyrics. But there was so much nonsense I started to feel lost
again. The code could have too many meanings. ‘I am the eggman…’
Did this have something to do with a real person? ‘See how they run
like pigs from a gun’…. ‘Tuesday man you been a naughty boy’. The
Beatles had to be on drugs when they wrote this one. ‘Mr. City
policeman sitting pretty little policeman in a row’. Could the
person be a cop? I looked at the next part of the clue. ‘E.P star I
will be golden’. Could the initials E.P be a separate clue on their
own? I read through the lyrics again ‘Elementary penguin singing
Hare Krishna, Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen
Poe’. There was something. Edgar Allen Poe. Initial EAP. Or EP if
you took out his middle name. Could Allen be the missing word? In
terms of a name, it was the only thing that vaguely made sense from
the muddle of lyrics in the song.

That only left ‘star
I will be golden’ to work out. Could this be another lyric from a
Beatles song? It didn’t sound familiar. Back to the keyboard. The
computer plucked the answer out of the air more quickly than my
mind could read the resulting search. Google had found almost an
exact match to the phrase, and completed the sentence for me,
revealing what had to be the answer to the riddle. A website called
‘hollywoodgoss.com’ had a sentence that began ‘Allen Berkley, young
star of ‘I Will Be Golden…’ Allen Berkley, that had to be
right.

I had never heard of
the movie, but this wasn’t surprising as the website was an
American one, announcing the movie was just released in the States.
And I had never heard of Allen Berkley either. But it all made
sense. The more I read, the more I was sure this was the third
person Sophie blackmailed. The article explained that Allen was a’
fresh young talent’, having earned his acting stripes in several
successful West End productions. He came from London, and had
recently moved to LA after scoring the lead role in a new film
about a gay dancer who ‘overcomes poverty and personal tragedy to
become a Broadway star’. It was only too likely that Sophie had
preyed on this person as a victim of her scam. I thought of Hugh
Grant, and the headlines after he was caught with a prostitute in a
car. Would he have paid £20,000 to make that situation go away?
Maybe, if his first major film role was in jeopardy.

The article about
Allen Berkley had a promotional photo, and unsurprisingly, he was
extremely good looking. It must have been a relief to Sophie when
some of her clients weren’t revolting to look at. As much as I
tried not to think about it, images of Sophie’s job kept flicking
through my mind. I tried to focus on Allen Berkley as a potential
murder suspect, rather than a hot movie star. It made sense that
Sophie would blackmail him. Maybe she didn’t realise he was a star
until later. And then worked out he would be rich, and potentially
easy to embarrass. But would he be so angry that he‘d start a
campaign of revenge, ordering people be killed to protect his
secrets? It didn’t seem likely. But then this was a world I was
completely unfamiliar with. Maybe as well as being a gorgeous,
talented, hooker-visiting actor, he was also a crazy psycho who
hated the idea of people holding something over him.

But if he started
killing people to keep the secret hidden, how could he be sure they
hadn’t told someone about what he did before they were killed?
Maybe Sophie had made a will with a letter included to be read
after her death, revealing her secrets to the world? It was the
first time I realised how risky the situation was for the person,
maybe Allen, who was trying to cover up what they had done. To kill
Danny, then Katie, still left plenty of chance for Sophie to tell
anyone and everyone what she knew. Secrets could so easily be
passed from one person to another, and once they were out, there
was no way to contain them. So what was stopping Sophie using this
against Allen now? She feared for her life. Why not leave the
information for someone else if she was killed by these people?
Maybe she feared for other people’s lives? I suddenly thought of
Danny and his family. His parents had been in a suspicious car
accident, only a day after he was killed. Was this enough of a
warning for Katie and Sophie not to tell anyone else what they
knew? Had the killer warned them that other lives were at risk too?
Katie had Charlie to worry about, and then after she was killed,
Sophie had him to worry about. And maybe she had me too? Maybe
these people were after me on the off-chance Sophie had told me
what she knew.

After worrying so
much about the killers’ motives, it seemed almost pathetic that it
could just be about reducing humiliation for a Hollywood actor.
Would someone really kill to stop people finding out they visited a
prostitute? Could the risk of a murder charge be worth all the
trouble? I had to find out more about Allen Berkley. He’d been a
star in the West End. Could Sophie have known him personally, not
just professionally? She had auditioned for plays in the West End
when she first moved to London. Did she meet Allen doing this? Was
he one of the ‘actor crowd’ who hung out at the café she worked at?
Did jealousy of his success help her decision to target him with
blackmail?

Chapter 22

No matter how hard he
focused, working on details of suppliers, transport, distribution
routes and profit per unit, Vince couldn’t distract himself from
the lose ends he still hadn’t managed to tie up. He needed to
maintain his cash flow, but if this problem wasn’t fixed, there
would be more than profits to worry about. He had been waiting all
day for an update from Jared, and the longer his phone didn’t ring,
the more impatient he got to hear what was going on. It would be a
weight off his mind to know Molly was off the streets, and ready
for her final performance.

The busy working day
had given him some comfort, though. He had been reassured that his
narcotics business was booming. And despite all the distractions,
and the stuff up by his nephew, other divisions of the business
were still turning over a healthy profit. He had been warned many
times not to mix family with business, but he had needed someone by
his side he could trust to keep things going when he had a break.
The boy had started off well, opening up profitable new
opportunities. But his mistake couldn’t be ignored, and thankfully
he had gone to ground as ordered. He had almost compromised
everything with his lack of judgement. So good at living the fancy
lifestyle and accepting the bundles and bundles of cash, but not so
smart in choosing who he associated with. The boy obviously never
fully understood how this empire had grown from nothing, and how
many intelligent, well-planned decisions had been made along the
way to get it to the point it was at now. He would decide what to
do about his nephew when the damage he caused was fixed.

Thankfully, the huge
profit bought him all sorts of security. Everyone who worked for
him was their own unit, taking responsibility for such a small part
of the business that none of them knew how the whole operation ran.
So if the police ever did catch any of them, no matter how much
they tried to pry information from them, there would be nothing
they could tell that would lead back to him. The few who were in
his inner sanctum, and allowed to meet him face to face, didn’t
know his real name. The only ones who did were his nephew, who was
too far away now to matter, and Jared, who was in too deep to give
anything away. Jared’s idea to use recognisable landmarks in the
films was genius; there was now a huge premium on the product that
made profits soar even higher. And with business booming in London
and Sydney, Vince would make more this year than all the previous
years. His thoughts were diverted by the sudden ring of his mobile
phone.

‘
Jared, what’s
happening,’ he asked, failing to keep the concern from his
voice.

Jared also failed to
hide his disappointment. ‘They got away. My men were watching the
house but she never went back inside. The man she was with grabbed
some things and left. They followed, but lost them in the
traffic.’

‘
I assume they are
not your men anymore.’

Vince couldn’t
believe that people hired to watch a house could let someone go
inside, pack up their things and leave without managing to follow.
What sort of imbeciles was Jared dealing with?

‘
I can’t afford to
lose them yet. I still need them to work on this one. I don’t have
that many contacts in Sydney. If I lose these without a result I’ll
be stuffed. I don’t have enough man power to mount a search of the
entire city.’