He doesn’t need to say more. I know how expert Sugar’s tongue is at extracting the truth.
‘Is it true?’ I ask softly.
Sugar’s face falls, his response almost a broken whisper. ‘If you have to ask me rubbish like that you don’t know me at all.’
Sugar places a purple corded bracelet on the table. It’s simply made but there’s something so perfect about it. The formation of the circle, the two pieces of thread that hang free with knots at the end, the wrist I imagine wearing it. It’s the colour that makes me nervous. Purple. The colour of sorrow and shadows.
‘This is the only thing I have left of my mother,’ he says. I sit next to him. ‘I have no photos, no clothing, no documents of hers. Not even a stick of the pale red lipstick she wore.’
There’s something so awful, so dreadful about that last statement.
‘She came to Britain from the island of Grenada in 1959. She married my father a year later. My mother was a simple woman. She used to say to me, “Carlton, just because a body hasn’t gone to university doesn’t mean it has no education. Having sense doesn’t come from no certificate. It comes through the life you live and how you make nice with people.”’ He lifts his eyes to me. ‘Most people think I got the nickname Sugar because I used to box when I was young. My mother called me Sugar. I was her Sugar, the sweetest boy in the universe.’
I feel a dread brewing. ‘What happened to her?’
The polish of his skin seems to dim. ‘My parents had a troubled marriage. Daddy could charm the pennies out of your purse. I was eight years old when I came home from school to find Mummy gone. Daddy said she’d left and wasn’t coming back.’ Sugar turns the bereaved eyes of a child to me. ‘She wouldn’t leave without me. But back then children didn’t challenge or cheek their parents.’ He lifts his head. ‘Now, my aunts were different. They were convinced he’d murdered her.’
My hand slams in horror across my chest. I’m suddenly reeling. How has he kept this from me?
‘They went to the police,’ Sugar carries on. ‘My father had a story already: Mummy had gone back to Grenada because apparently she didn’t like the weather here.’
I can’t help it; I have to say something. ‘What a wicked thing to say. What did the police do? Did they check to see if she was in Grenada?’
Sugar lets out a laugh I pray never to have to hear from him again. ‘They just believed him. They never checked out anything. Never did any searches. In fact, never carried out any type of investigation. Why would they believe two grieving black women? Mummy was just another brown migrant to them: here today, gone tomorrow. And good riddance.’
How Sugar is telling this without tearing up I don’t know; my own eyes are blurry. ‘Did you ever find her?’ I know the answer already but am compelled to ask.
‘That’s why I became a policeman. To make sure truth comes to light and justice is served. And when the young black women went missing it was like Mummy all over again.’ He looks me dead in the eye and won’t let go. ‘I was too young to look for my mother, but those women, I’ve never stopped looking for them. I admit to taking the police reports concerning the cases when I left the police. I know what I did was breaking the law. But I’d do it all over again in the fight for justice.’
He picks up his bag and places a faded green document wallet on the breakfast bar.
I cast a dubious eye over it because I’m disappointed. There can’t be much information in the file because it’s so flat. I was expecting something more substantial. ‘I thought there’d be more.’
Sugar shakes his head, pushing the file my way. I stare at him quizzically.
In a voice as cold as I’m starting to feel, Sugar tells me, ‘Inside are the police investigative reports. For all of the women.’
No way can that flat file contain all the evidence the police gathered. I open the file and read. The first is a missing person’s report, essentially two sheets of A4 paper stapled together.
Sheryl.
I soak up her personal details: age, twenty-three, address in north London, special features, a mole above her wrist. The member of her family who reported her missing was her older brother. Finally, I find some information on the police investigation:
Brother told to come back in twenty-four hours.
Heart sinking, I turn and read page after meagre page.
My eyes meet Sugar’s. ‘Is that it? They told Sheryl’s brother to come back the next day?’