I ask, ‘What did John Dixon tell you?’
He answers in a roundabout fashion. ‘We had a terrible nickname for him back then. Dicko.’ We laugh, the bleak atmosphere in the room recedes a little. ‘I worked the beat with him during our first year on the force. He’s a good man, decent. Justice is his number one priority. When I left we stayed in touch, got together for the occasional drink.’
Sugar stretches out his long legs. ‘So when the possibility of new evidence about the missing women reared its head he was the only one I trusted to help.’
‘What’s this evidence?’
The fire begins to smoulder in his eyes. ‘When the women vanished, there was no trace of them anywhere. Back then if there was no body there was no case.’ His voice catches. ‘For years I was looking in the wrong places.’
My nerve endings tingle with raw excitement. ‘You found their bodies?’
‘Every year there are unidentified bodies that litter every corner of this country. No one knows who they are. And, let’s put it this way, not many resources were allocated to finding the identity of the homeless community who drew their last breath on the street. The drunks, the junkies, the malnourished, people whose well-being society turned its back on long ago.’
The skin on his face sags with guilt. ‘Years back I glossed over the unknown bodies of three black women found just outside of London because they were identified as homeless drug addicts. None of the info I had about Hope, Sheryl and Amina said they took drugs. It wasn’t on the radar, so I turned my back on that information.’
‘That wasn’t your fault,’ I tell him fiercely.
He carries on, the fire to find the truth coming back to him. ‘Recently I decided to do a big trawl of every lick of information I had, and the bodies of the unidentified women came up again. I was lucky that they hadn’t been buried in a mass grave, which is the fate of so many unidentified dead people. I applied for a freedom of information request concerning evidence connected to the bodies.’
I’m hanging off his every word. ‘Was there any?’
Sugar nods. ‘The coroner’s autopsy reports on the bodies included toxicology tests. They were each the same. The deaths were recorded as a massive overdose of heroin. The bodies were all found in the same place, at different times, in a side street associated with junkies.’ He scoffs with open rage. ‘Three black females dead of drugs, now why would the cops investigate that? That’s why no one bothered to link them to Hope, Amina and Sheryl. Ronnie told me about the interviews but I couldn’t find the place she described. I looked for years.’
Of course Sugar wouldn’t think to look in a hospital complex.
I face my adoptive father square on. ‘I think I know who did this. What happened. Where it happened.’
Sugar looks astounded. ‘Who? How could you know who did this?’
I tell him. ‘My father. My birth father. His name’s Danny Greene.’
Sugar is slumped against the wall as I lay out before him Danny’s scheme of manipulation:
Using Joe to get me to do the DNA test.
He’s known about my existence from the beginning.
Ensuring I kept our contact secret from Sugar.
Trying to wrong-foot me about the Suzi Lake Centre and having opened the centre with Suzi Lake.
His being a trustee of Pretty Lanes.
Whispering in my ear about going inside Sugar’s room to find things.
Claiming Sugar and Dixon were bent cops. （Sugar bares his teeth at that.）
I finish by telling Sugar how what he has told me about the dumped ‘homeless’ women fits with what I know about Pretty Lanes. ‘When Danny and the people at Pretty Lanes were finished using the women and Amina to cover up their despicable deeds they killed them with a lethal injection of heroin. They dumped them knowing full well the police wouldn’t bother looking into the deaths of what looked like three homeless black junkies.’
Shame feels like it’s about to swallow me whole. ‘I’m sorry, Sugar. I should have told you about Danny sooner—’
He jumps in with a vigorous shake of his head. ‘The guy is a born manipulator. And . . .’
Drawing the word out, Sugar crawls to a stack of papers near his tipped-over desk. Sieves through them. ‘Here it is.’ Quickly he scans the contents of an article that’s yellowing with age.
‘Bastard.’ I’ve never heard Sugar swear before.
‘What is it?’
Sugar comes back to me and shows me what he’s holding. It’s a newspaper clipping. It’s a photo of Suzi Lake in an elegant red gown hosting a ball with her morose-looking son, Danny Greene. Stunned doesn’t even touch how I feel. Their different surnames made it hard for me to connect them.