Relief washes over me that he’s finally told me why he resigned from the force. This man saves people. Saves women. Saved me. I feel bitter shame that I ever entertained the idea he was a bent cop.
Pride lights up his features. ‘That’s why my uniform hangs in the room.’ Grit and steel-plated determination reverberate in his voice. ‘I might have left the force, but I made a vow all those years ago as an officer of the law and by hell I was going to see it through. I wasn’t going to stop looking until I found what had happened to these women.’
‘And me?’ I add swiftly. ‘Are we still going to pretend that “Was baby Eva meant to die?” wasn’t written on your whiteboard? I know you rubbed the question off.’
I could prove it to him by showing him the photo on my phone, but I need him to say it. His hand comes up to emphasise every word he’s about to say. ‘Can’t you see how dangerous this all is? I didn’t, still don’t, want you anywhere near it.’
‘One of the women is my mother, isn’t she?’ My request is so small even I barely hear it. I’m pleading, begging, there’s no way he can’t hear. ‘That’s why the Good Knight is also in the photo.’
Sugar rises to his feet. ‘Come to the house tomorrow and we’ll sit down and go through my investigation together.’ He takes a strong, deep breath. ‘We’ll do it in my room. No more secrets.’
CHAPTER 38
No Name
I catch the person talking again on the phone. I’m hiding near the office, in the dark, listening. My belly feels so sore tonight, my ankles painful and uncomfortable, I have no idea how I’m standing up. I listen to the person talk:
‘We’re agreed then. If the women are no longer of use it’s time to carry out Plan B.’
Plan B? What’s that? What are they planning to do to the missing women? The girl, Amina? It leaves me shivering in the dark in the corridor. There’s silence while the person listens to whoever’s speaking to them on the phone.
The person becomes angry. It sorta shakes me up because I’ve never heard them in anger before. ‘You’ve already let one slip through your fingers. Make sure the girl goes the same way as the other one . . .’ I hear their impatience as they bite out, ‘This is not the time for you to be squeamish. Dose her up with H until she ODs and then dump her on the street. Believe you me, the cops won’t be interested. When her body is found it will be treated like any other unnamed homeless junkie.’
I can barely breathe. What does this person mean?
Then my world crashes as they add, ‘No one is going to care that she was a kid. Plenty of them overdosing on London’s streets these days. Tomorrow night, I’m coming over personally to make sure it gets done.’
I recoil in horror. The person is talking about Amina. I’m gonna be sick. I’m gonna be sick. Acid bile, thick and disgusting, rises in my throat.
I understand what Plan B is. Plan B is murder. This person is going to have Amina killed tomorrow. Tomorrow. It gives me time. Time to save her.
CHAPTER 39
It’s after midnight or thereabouts when I find another Poppy Munro poster on the high street not far from where I live. This one is stuck on the brickwork between a bakery and phone shop. I take out my heavy black pen and scrawl the same words that I did on the poster outside John Dixon’s police HQ:
And Hope Scott, Amina Musa, Sheryl Wilson.
Any information about them too.
Over the ‘angelic’ Poppy photo I stick on another photo of Poppy I found online. Her hair is loose with a few strands hanging over her face. She’s wearing jeans, a close-fitting zip top over a white T-shirt. I printed it off, copied it and cut it down to size. That’s what the real Poppy looked like, not some ethereal creature from another world but a modern young woman.
This is what I’m doing in the dark early hours of the morning as I did yesterday morning and the morning before that. I wander the streets and suburbs of North London finding posters of Poppy Munro and try to right a wrong. Or is that write a wrong? Some might call me mad and they’d be spot on. I’m mad, raging with it. At the injustice of it all. But today was the worst with Sugar’s visit. Sugar telling me about the police doing nothing leaves me feeling like the thin thread of sanity I’ve been holding on to since Mummy Cherry died is cutting through my flesh as it slips through my fingers.
Since I took the DNA test there have been so many moments when I cried or sniffed back my tears. What I feel inside now is a fury for justice. I’m not someone who stands on a soapbox preaching, or who’s a political animal going on demos and supporting this cause and that, but now I want to take a megaphone out on the streets to blast to the world what the police have done. To do the same outside Commander Dixon’s offices.