‘Easy, easy,’ Sugar soothes me from behind. ‘Take a breath, girl.’
The incident report my mother gave Miriam clutched in his hand, John Dixon looks pale, the only colour left in his face indicating his guilt. He looks about ready to fall down. Good! I want to stand here and watch it happen. Watch him end up as crushed and as battered as I feel.
‘You took her back!’ I cry. ‘She went to the police for help to stop a killer and what did you do? You dragged her back straight into his killer arms.’
The change in Dixon’s breathing is wild and loud, an alarming mottled redness crawling up his neck to his face. I hope he has a damn heart attack.
I realise that he’s Danny’s contact in the police force, the guy who got Miriam off the hook after being arrested. He lied to me when I went to see him. All that talk of his painting Danny as one of his arch enemies was a smokescreen. Well, I’m seeing clearly now.
‘Do you know how much courage it must have taken her to do that?’ I slap my mother’s bravery in his face. ‘She was heavily pregnant, and escaping the Suzi Lake Centre, where she was psychologically imprisoned by Danny. And she wasn’t even doing it for herself, but for a fifteen-year-old girl. She told you about Pretty Lanes. What was probably going on. You were meant to protect her,’ I spit. ‘But she was just another black woman. Why the hell would you believe one of them?’
He still won’t speak. ‘You and the police chose a side. The side of the criminal over the victim. The black woman over the highly regarded white professional man. Danny was only able to operate his evil because he knew that the police would never look for missing black women or take her word over his.’
A low growl leaves me. I’ve never made that sound before. It’s one of pure outrage. ‘He kept Hope chained to the wall after you took her back.’ Dixon flinches. ‘I know what a master manipulator Danny is and he will have convinced Hope that because the police not only wouldn’t listen to her but took her back there was no point in her trying to get away again. Imagine what she must have been going through? Her spirit broken because those that should have helped her never did.’
I feel Sugar move before I see him. He comes level with me, his gaze on his former colleague and the man he has called friend. ‘It was you who made the blood sample disappear,’ he says. It’s not a question but a firm accusation. ‘You’ve been trying to make a fool out of me. Making me think how you’re helping me re-open the investigation and all the time working with Danny Greene, biding your time until the blood sample turns up so you can make it disappear. All to save your own skin.’
Dixon steps back. There’s a coating of sweat on his face that looks as icy as the touch of death. Finally, he speaks. ‘You know what it was like back then. I had only been in the job a couple of years, still proving myself. Newbies on the block didn’t go against the big boys back then.’ He wipes his forehead. ‘A call came through that there was a distressed young woman in the reception making all types of serious accusations. I’d never heard of Danny Greene, but the older and more senior officer I was with knew him well.’ He scoffs. ‘That’s Danny’s speciality, you see, making friends in low and high places.’
‘So you went along with it,’ Sugar punches in.
Dixon’s shoulder’s slump. ‘I tried to tell him that maybe—’
‘Maybe?’ Sugar growls. ‘Maybes don’t cut it when a young woman in distress and trouble comes to the police for help. You’re either on the right side of justice or you’re not. And if you’re not you had no business wearing that uniform that upholds the law of this country.’
Dixon explodes back, ‘It was my suggestion the sergeant at the desk make an incident report and get both me and Evans to sign it. That she got a copy.’
Sugar bristles with disgust. ‘You think that turns you into some type of hero—’
‘Hell no! Danny Greene knew of its existence which meant that there was a piece of evidence he could hold over my head. He said if I didn’t help him turn off the life support of your investigation I was going down as well.’ He pulls in a sharp breath. ‘We agreed that I would get rid of the evidence. But I refused to tell him what the new evidence, the blood sample, was.’ Dixon’s gaze flicks to me. ‘So he also needed someone else to get into Sugar’s room to find out what that evidence might be.’
Dixon looks at Sugar. ‘I know what I did back then was wrong. But since that youthful mistake I have made it my life’s work to strengthen the relationship between the police and the black community.’ His voice is more confident now. ‘If any of my officers under my command step out of line they are out the door.’