I answer, trying to keep my emotions under wraps. ‘She was loved by so many people.’ Will I ever get over losing the only mother I’ve ever known?
Coffee arrives and we sit at Dixon’s desk. I tell him about Miriam. ‘A close friend of mine has gone missing. I’m really worried about her.’
He doesn’t need to know she’s my sister. And I can’t take the chance that he might innocently mention it to Sugar if he does.
‘I know there’s probably nothing you can do,’ I stumble along, ‘but maybe you could ring one or two of your colleagues to help find her?’ I quickly add, ‘I should say that I did call the local police but, let’s just say, their response wasn’t quite what I was after.’
Displeasure sharpens the angles of his face. ‘You didn’t receive the help you needed? What are the names of the officers who attended the scene?’
His response is a reminder that Dixon is a top-level cop who has spent his career repairing the relationship between the police and the public. If he comes across questionable conduct he does not hesitate to stamp it out.
But I haven’t come here for that. ‘Do you think you can help me?’
He nods with understanding, the long groove in his cheek deepening. ‘Have you any reason to think your friend has been the victim of a crime or been abducted?’
A shiver zings through me, a reminder of what I saw. ‘Her living room was a total mess like someone had turned it over. There was blood on the floor.’
Heavy concern draws out the other lines on his face. ‘How much blood?’
‘It was just a little, not pooling or anything.’ My panicked eyes catch his. ‘There shouldn’t be any blood on her floor at all.’
Dixon picks up a pen and notebook. ‘As you’re Sugar’s daughter, I’ll make a phone call. What’s her full name and date of birth?’
‘Miriam Greene.’ I lean into the table as if that will make him write faster. ‘I don’t know when she was born. She’s nearing forty . . . I think.’
Dixon stops writing, mid-sentence. His grip on the pen tightens. He peers at me from beneath hooded eyes. ‘Tall, tends to wear black with blue in her hair?’
My heart accelerates and sinks in one fluid motion. Oh heck! This isn’t looking good. It’s probably going to go south like the two uniforms who attended the scene at Miriam’s home. ‘That’s a pretty accurate description of her,’ I slowly respond.
Dixon sits ramrod straight, every bit the commander. Against the backdrop of the London skyline, he transforms into one of those portraits of military men from centuries past. Aloof, dead-calm, ruthless when the job calls on him to be.
‘Miriam Greene? The daughter of Danny Greene?’
My very bad feeling deepens. ‘Do you know her?’
Dixon carefully closes his notebook. Large fingers slide it to the side. He wears the solemn expression of an undertaker giving a person advice about the best way to display their deceased loved one in a coffin.
‘If it’s legal trouble, Danny Greene certainly has his contacts in the police force to help him out. I am not one of them.’
I replay the incident with Danny and Miriam on the street. Stop the action at the point where Danny told me: ‘I called in one or two favours and managed to secure her release.’ Danny did hint at having contacts in the police.
‘How do you know Danny?’
Sourness curdles his expression. ‘In the past, Danny Greene has had one too many dealings with us. It’s all a game to him, trying to outwit the police. Nothing has been able to stick. We’d have called him the Teflon Don if the nickname hadn’t already been taken.’
I tighten the muscles of my jaw to stop it falling open as John Dixon proceeds with his character assassination of my birth father. ‘He’s only a friend to someone the way a hound is a friend to a fox. He’s trouble.’
‘Trouble? What sort of trouble?’
Dixon shakes his head, becoming vague. ‘The ins and outs of troubles that only businessmen know how to perfect.’
Even I know that businesspeople can have a very elastic relationship with the legal rules when it comes to making money.
But what I don’t get is this: ‘If Danny’s the bad egg you paint him to be how is it he has friends in the police force? He can’t be all that bad.’
He holds my gaze. ‘Are you a student of history, Eva? If you are then you’ll know that even in the most brutal and bloody of wars, leaders of both sides will sometimes use the back door to meet to unpick matters of common interest. That’s while their soldiers are still busy killing each other.’