Times of Trouble (37 page)

‘
I just found it. I
think he was one of Sophie’s clients, she was working...’ I avoided
the word prostitute, still feeling a pang of embarrassment at the
thought of Sophie’s work. ‘When she was working for him, I think he
must have told her about the movies, or she found out about them
somehow.’

‘
And you think she
blackmailed him, threatening to tell the police if he didn’t give
her money?’

‘
Yes. It was probably
her boyfriend’s idea. They can’t have known how Holland would
react. I think he was behind the murders. The thought of people
knowing about the movies was too big a risk. I don’t know how these
people managed to mix me up with Sophie. When they were waiting for
me at the house in Newtown, they might have already mixed me up by
then. And when I turned up at the hotel, they thought they had
Sophie. They wanted to put her in a movie. When they tied me up,
they spoke to someone on the phone, and were given directions about
what to do to me.’ It was hard to keep my voice steady so I took a
deep breath.

‘
Do you think they
were talking to Bill Holland?’ Williamson was now looking more
interested in what I had to say.

‘
I’m not sure. The
thing is, I also happen to know Bill Holland is sort of missing. He
hasn’t been seen in London, where he lives, for a couple of months.
He might be here in Sydney. I’m not sure. But one of his associates
is definitely here. Somewhere on the South Coast.’

Now Williamson’s
expression changed again, and he looked incredulous. ‘How on earth
could you know that?’

How many times did I
have to tell him I wasn’t going to explain that? I put my face in
my hands, and let out a long drawn out sigh.

‘
I really don’t have
time to explain now. You just have to believe me, because while we
talk the men who attacked me are still out there. And, since they
still think I am Sophie, they are probably aware that ‘Sophie’ has
gone to the police. I’m not sure whether they will come here
looking for me, but I won’t feel safe until you find them. And even
more critically now, until I find Sophie.’

‘
About that, you know
we still need to speak to her about the blackmailing she was
doing.’

‘
Of course, but
what’s more important? Finding someone who tried to make money off
someone else’s crimes? Or finding the people who are actually doing
the crimes? They tried to murder me today! And I wasn’t their first
victim! Not to mention murdering two other people that we know
of!’

I was starting to get
hysterical again, because the detective wasn’t acting with any
sense of urgency. He obviously wanted to know more before he acted.
He seemed to be speaking as slowly as possible, in an attempt to
calm me.

‘
We need to find
these people who attacked you today. If they are involved in
murdering women on film, we should be able to find evidence of that
fairly quickly. Right now, I think it would be best if you give us
a description of the other man, and we hear in greater detail what
happened to you this afternoon.’

Was he serious? I had
told him everything he needed to know! How did it help him for me
to re-live the last couple of hours? I was attacked and I got away!
I was almost killed as the star of a snuff movie! End of
story!

‘
Can I make a phone
call before I give the sketch artist the description?’

‘
Who are you going to
call?’

‘
Does it matter?’ A
week ago I would never have said that to a detective. This
experience had changed me, whether it was for the better was hard
to say.

The detective got up
from his chair, looking at me like I was a misbehaving teenager who
he didn’t feel like dealing with. I followed him back into the
foyer and he motioned to the policewoman at the desk to come and
stand with me as I picked up the phone. Liam answered straight
away. He sounded tired.

‘
Liam, it’s me Ellen.
I’m at the police station...’

‘
Not again! What the
hell are you doing there this time?’ he interrupted.

‘
I was attacked
Liam!’ I hissed into the phone, trying to keep my voice down, as
the policewoman was listening.

‘
Attacked? Who?
Where? When?’

‘
Some people who
thought I was Sophie. I found them, the people who killed Danny and
Katie. I’m sure it’s them. They were about to use me in a snuff
movie.’ I already hated the word ‘snuff’, having only found out
what it referred to minutes before. Liam didn’t need to be told
what it meant.

‘
They were going to
kill you on camera? Is that what they were going to do to Sophie?’
His voice petered out into a frightened whimper as he said
‘Sophie’.

‘
They thought I was
her! They were calling me Molly. We have to find her, Liam. The
police are looking for the men now, but who knows when they’ll find
them. I just don’t want Sophie found by the people they work for in
the meantime. There are definitely more of them. One of them was
talking on the phone to someone else.’

‘
I’ve been trying to
call you all afternoon. Your phone has been off,’ Liam
complained.

‘
The man who attacked
me has it! Or it's still in the apartment. For fuck’s sake, didn’t
you just hear what I told you! They almost killed me! I had to
strangle one of them, and stab the other to get away!’

‘
Shit Ellen! Are you
ok?’ Finally a bit of sympathy.

‘
Yes, I’m fine. Where
are you? Mum has asked Andy to come and pick me up.’

‘
That’s why I’ve been
calling you, I think I’ve worked out where Sophie might be and I’m
just on my way there now!’

‘
Where?’

‘
This morning I went
back to the hospital, to see if I could find out who Sophie saw. I
finally found a nurse who had checked up on Charlie, and she told
me he was fine. But she had asked Sophie why he had a dirty nappy,
and was wearing dirty clothes. Sophie admitted she had nowhere to
stay that night, and she had been sleeping in her car. She must
have slept in her car after she left the apartment at Dee Why. And
she didn’t have any clothes or anything.’ I felt terrible. ‘The
nurse asked her if she wanted the address for some women’s shelter,
but she said she didn’t. She wasn’t going to stay in Sydney
long.’

‘
So where would she
go?’ I couldn’t bear the thought of Sophie leaving Sydney. How
would we ever work out where she had gone? Liam didn’t seem to
share this anxiety.

‘
I think I know where
she might be going. It’s just a hunch, but it’s worth checking.
When we went through Sophie's things in her apartment, she had the
City Rail train timetable. We both thought it was Katie's. But why
would Sophie keep it?'

'You think Sophie
might be catching a train too?'

'It's just an idea.
The thing is, her car was still in the car park at the hospital.
She must have left it there. So I was thinking, if Katie was trying
to leave Sydney by train, maybe the plan was that Sophie would take
the same train later, and meet up with her. It was safer to travel
separately. So if Sophie said she was leaving, and she’s not using
the car anymore, and she was holding onto the train timetable, the
chances are that she will be taking a train too. I looked into the
reports on Katie’s case and found out what platform she was on, it
was obvious from the timetable that she was either on her way to
Brisbane or Lismore, depending whether she planned to catch the
train that was stopped at the station, or the one that hit her.
Soph has to be headed to one of these places, I’m sure of
it.’

Liam’s enthusiasm was
not infectious. I had to admit that his investigations had been
quite clever, but there wasn’t any certainty that Sophie was going
to Brisbane or Lismore. Even if she was catching a train, she could
be going absolutely anywhere! She might have already left! And then
where would we start looking?

‘
I’m on my way to
Central Station now,’ Liam went on. ‘Both the trains Katie might
have been catching leave twice a day. They’re both due out in about
an hour. But I may as well hang around the station, just in case
she’s catching a train somewhere else.’

I had to hand it to
Liam. He sure was persistent in his search for Sophie. The
excitement in his voice was palpable. I had to keep reminding
myself he had never met Sophie. What would he say when he found
her? ‘Hi Sophie, you don’t know me, but I’ve been searching for
you, and by the way, I’m in love with you’?

‘
Ok, I guess it’s
worth a try. Do you want me to meet you there? Andy should be here
soon, I could get him to drive me over to wait with
you?’

‘
After what you’ve
been through, you probably should just rest. If I find her, I’ll
let you know and I’ll bring her straight to Parramatta.’

I did want to go wait
with Liam, but I was also aware of how painfully exhausted I was. I
had to try to stay positive, no matter how long a shot I thought
Liam was chasing. Could it possibly be that by the time Andy got
here, Liam would already have found Sophie and we could all meet
back at Andy’s flat? The thought of being able to call mum and tell
her that Sophie was with me lifted my spirits.

‘
You’re right, I am
pretty whacked. When Andy gets here, I’ll call you back on his
mobile so you will have a number to call us on when you find
Sophie...’

‘
If I find Sophie,’
Liam corrected me.

'Yeah, if. Also,
there's something else I thought of. Sophie has run both times we
found her. If you find her again, you need some way to make her
understand you have been sent by mum and me, so she'll know she is
safe.'

'Good idea. Like
what?'

'I was thinking you
could yell 'Soapie', instead of Sophie. I used to call her that
when I was little. I couldn't say Sophie'.

'Do you think that
will work?' Liam sounded dubious.

'Trust me, she'll get
it.'

'Ok, thanks for that,
it will be useful.'

The excitement in his
voice gave away his hopefulness. He thought he was onto something.
I just prayed he was right. I hung up the phone, now more eager
than ever to get the rest of my police interview over and done
with. I realised that in all the excitement, I had forgotten to
tell Liam about the email from Sophie. But that wasn’t important
now, especially if he managed to find her in the
meantime.

The policewoman led
me into another interview room, where a surprisingly young, scrawny
little man was sitting behind a computer screen. He introduced
himself as the sketch artist, and we got to work. I had such a
clear image of the man who chased me that I expected the artist to
be able to put together a near perfect likeness. But when he turned
the screen towards me, I was shocked at how imperfectly the image
resembled what I was picturing. I tried to change a few things -
the size of the nose, the length of the ears - but I just couldn’t
get the drawing to look like the image I could see in my head. The
artist sensed my frustration, and calmly explained it was near
impossible to make the sketch look identical to the man I had seen.
This didn’t make me feel any better. I felt like I was wasting
time.

When there was
nothing more I could add to make the picture more lifelike, I asked
if we could move onto my statement. Detective Inspector Williamson
came in with another policewoman, who had a tape recorder. They
asked me to explain the events of the attack in perfect order, from
the first moment I saw the man in the hall, to when the policemen
arrived in the lobby. I started out reciting what happened almost
robotically...

‘
He yelled to the
other man for help.’

‘
He tied a plastic
tie around my ankles.’

‘
He left me on the
bed and made a phone call.’

But when I got to the
part in the bathroom where I had to put on makeup and take my
clothes off, my shoulders started to shake and tears flowed down my
face. I was humiliated explaining how vulnerable I felt. And when I
went through the part about the piano wire, and what I did with it,
Detective Williamson asked me questions that made me feel like I
was in trouble.

‘
Where did you get
the piano wire?’

‘
Was the man
breathing when you smashed his head?’

‘
Were you trying to
kill him or just get away?’

By the time I
explained about stabbing the other man, and sprinting down the
stairs, I just wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep.
Finally, the tape was turned off and the policewoman left me and
the detective alone. I avoided eye contact with him, hoping he
didn’t have any other questions for me, off the record. But he
surprised me by saying: ‘You were very brave Ellen. You’ve been
very lucky to get away from these people. They were almost
certainly planning to kill you. We’ve seen the tapes they had in
the apartment, and there is plenty of evidence to back up what you
have told us. We have lots of people looking for them. Your uncle
is waiting for you in the foyer. Do you feel ok to go with him? Or
would you prefer one of our officers accompanied you to his
house?’