‘Thank you so much for contacting me,’ he tells the police with his most charming and gracious smile. ‘Her family are going out of their minds—’
‘He’s lying,’ I scream. ‘Ahhh!’ I moan in pain as his fingers dig into my tummy, and double over.
My baby! My baby!
I’m stunned by what’s going on. The coppers were meant to be helping me. That’s what the police are supposed to do, help people. Why have they brought me back?
The older cop seems to be the one doing all the talking. The younger one stands near the car staring at the ground.
The cop says to Danny, ‘Mr Greene, it’s always a pleasure.’
They know him. I should have guessed; Danny knows so many people.
The cop says, ‘This lot can be a right handful.’
This lot meaning black women. If I didn’t have the baby to think of I’d have shown him what a handful I could be with my fist down his throat. I’d have smashed every one of the lying teeth in his mouth.
Danny smartly tells the cops, ‘Don’t go yet. Please wait for me here. I must thank you properly.’
Before I can do anything else Danny yanks me to the side door.
‘You bitch,’ he spits once we’re inside.
He digs his fingers into my hair and drags me howling in pain up the stairs. I fall on my knees halfway to the first floor. Cruel pain shockwaves up my spine. Danny keeps on dragging me up the stairs. Inside the room he throws me to the floor. Landing on my belly I cry out in pain. My mouth gasping for air, I roll on to my back, rubbing my palm over and over my belly. I need my baby to know they will be OK.
Danny looms over me, shaking with anger.
‘I really thought you had more sense. You should have known that the police would have contacted me to verify your story. Why would they believe someone like you when they already trust an upstanding man like me?’
He’s so right it almost makes me want to die. The cops would never believe a black woman over a white man with his type of reputation. God! I have been so naive.
Danny bends down over me, his face so close to mine his spit hits my cheeks. ‘If you scream, yell, shout, or even talk above a whisper, I will do this over and over again.’ He punches me so hard in my belly black dots swim before my eyes.
‘How did I ever think I loved you?’ I spit back in anguish.
When I think of the man who found me crying at my desk when I was working on reception in the centre, offering me comfort and kindness when I told him all about my friend disappearing. He made love to me with such tenderness. And all this time it was him and those faceless murderers at Pretty Lanes who were behind my friend’s disappearance and the women and Amina. God above, Amina was a child. A child. All this time he was a monster. A murdering monster.
‘You preyed on Amina,’ I spit at this human piece of offal, ‘because you knew she probably couldn’t shout for help like others. And Veronica because you knew her father is abusing her and the authorities have long since washed their hands of it. And Sheryl likes her guys so people are probably going to think she got what was coming to her.’
‘And you, my sweet?’ Danny taunts me.
‘I was vulnerable because my friend was missing. That’s what you do, Danny, hunt for the vulnerable, those who are at a weak moment in their lives.’
‘You got that right. Those that no one gives a crap about,’ he tells me, relishing every awful word. ‘And, let’s be frank, the cops don’t give two pennies about black girls. So, remember if you leave and go to the police they will just bring you back again. If the police won’t believe you, no one else will.’
That’s what kills me knowing that he’s right. If the cops won’t believe me no one else will. In that moment I feel my loud ’n’ proud spirit start dying inside me.
Then I see the chain on the wall. What’s the point of resisting if no one will believe me? He clicks it around my ankle. Then he does the most disgusting thing ever – he kisses me hard on my mouth. That charming smile of his smothered all over his face, he double-locks the door when he leaves.
And I sob because I wasn’t able to save Amina.
And my baby? Will I be able to save her too?
That bastard’s voice praising the policemen outside carries up to my window.
‘Thank you so much, Constable Evans and . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know you.’
‘It’s PC Dixon. John Dixon.’
CHAPTER 48
‘You. Murdered. My. Mother.’ My throat burns with the accusation. My heart. God help me, I don’t think I’ve got one left. ‘Not by your hand but you are as implicated in her killing as Danny Greene is.’ My voice rises. ‘Don’t you understand what you did?’