On soft feet, back upstairs I go. The baby fusses and turns while I wait for the person downstairs to leave. For the place to be silent again.
When it is, I whisper to my moving belly, ‘We’re going to find out what’s going on.’
Downstairs we go again. The person I heard has forgotten that I’ve got a key to the office. Of course, I would have one. Inside I look through the dark and notice the filing cabinet that’s slightly open. It’s filled with files and papers. Through the thick dark I peer over my shoulder just to check no one’s there. The shadows in this office are large, crawling from the wall to the ceiling. My heart’s beating so bad. Before I lose my nerve I check through the filing cabinet.
There! I find the name on a piece of paper. Pretty Lanes, I read. It doesn’t make any sense. I make a copy on the photocopier. I must hide it.
I know it’s not proof of anything on its own, I need more evidence to prove the evil that’s going on.
The person on the phone thinks they’ve got me eating outta the palm of their hand, that I’m a right proper idiot, a total rollover. This person is forgetting I’m a London girl and us London girls don’t take jack-crap from no one.
This person will trip up again soon. And when they do I’ll find all the evidence I need to get help to find the missing women and girl.
And then I can somehow find a way to speak to that black cop I’ve seen downstairs a few times while I watched from the window. He used to come into the reception office sometimes as well. How can I have forgotten his name; it’s not like I know any other black five-O.
Oh yeah! Detective Carlton McNeil.
CHAPTER 35
‘Was Sugar a dirty cop?’
I lob the question with maximum force at Sugar’s knife-wielding housekeeper across the table inside the diner near Victoria Station. It’s the same place where I first met Miriam. In fact, we’re sitting at the same table under the large black-and-white photo of icon Dame Cleo Laine.
Ronnie has been touching base with me about her search for Miriam, but my continual probing about Sugar and their relationship and how that connects to the past is a no-go area. Except now. Not even she can stop the shock that widens her eyes.
‘Sugar? Dirty?’ She’s so fierce in her defence of him she looks about ready to take me by the scruff of my neck and shake me. ‘Are you one of those doctors secretly snorting up her own drugs?’
I stay calm. Her total defence of him is what I expected. ‘Then why did he quit the police force all those years ago? Did he ever tell what happened?’
‘Do you have any idea how hard it was to be a black cop back then? The shit that was shovelled in their faces each day. Opening their lockers to find all manner of filth in there. Working with fools who had less sense that this spoon’ – she bangs her teaspoon on the table – ‘and them all getting promoted while you’re held back.’
‘I know all of that,’ I snap, scraping my chair closer to the table. She does the same. ‘Is that what he told you? Do you know for sure that’s what happened?’
Ronnie stares boldly at me. ‘Who’s whispering all this badness about Mister Sugar being a crooked copper in your ear?’
‘I hear things.’ I won’t tell her about Danny.
She kisses her teeth derisorily and tells me with maximum sarcasm, ‘Where? At the bus stop? Haven’t you considered whoever is mouthing this bollocks is trying to set you against him?’
Is that what Danny is trying to do? But why? He doesn’t know Sugar, so what would be his motivation?
I counter with, ‘How can you be so sure that Sugar wasn’t involved in what happened to you and the others in 1994?’ I hear my voice shaking as I accuse my beloved father.
Ronnie’s head springs back, her face a picture of stupefied surprise. Then her hands clench into fists. ‘Let me tell you something about Mister Sugar. He’s the only person, man or woman, who has ever given me pride in my life. Made me feel that the reflection I stare at every day in the mirror is worthy.’ Her chest puffs out.
She carries on, putting me in my place. ‘How can you ask this about Sugar after he took you in as a young girl. I bet that care home you lived in had already rubber-stamped you as a failure.’ Her mouth twists. ‘Mister Sugar never saw me as a failure, he never saw you as a failure. He made you and he made me see ourselves as people for the very first time.’
My head bows with the weight of what she confronts me with, the shame it leaves behind. But the reality is I don’t know who to believe. Sugar, who is the person who stands above all others, or the father whose blood runs in my veins? What does occur to me is that both are connected to the Suzi Lake Centre. That has to be my starting point with Ronnie today.