Page 100 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
That’s deep. I thought your brief was to rehash the case for a beach read?
Amanda Bailey
You’re right.
Ellie Cooper
Heard from my friend with the recording studio. He’s got round to Oliver’s interview with Gabriel. Said it’s a thing called ‘bleed’. He can treat it, and it might bring out more words, but says he’ll have to stay after hours, use his work’s equipment and risk his job. He’s angling for money basically.
Amanda Bailey
OK. Let me think. Thanks, Ellie, you’re a star.
Text messages between Dave ‘Itchy’ Kilmore and me, 20 July 2021:
Dave Kilmore
Hey Amanda, have you heard the podcast? Dropped last night. We’re already getting responses to your call-out for info. You can see them on the forum yourself. I’ll get contact details by DM. OK to forward them? I’ll filter out the energy vampires, violent shitheads and downright perverts. After that, believe it or not, there are a few left
Amanda Bailey
Cheers, Dave. Haven’t listened yet, sorry. Will tune in when I get a moment. Yep, might as well send them as they’ve bothered to reply.
Anonymous email sent to theFresh Ghostinfo@ address, 20 July 2021:
For the lady who appeared on the show. I’ve got a weird story about the Alperton Angels. I don’t tell people often because I feel stupid saying it. But I’m sure I wasn’t mistaken. I was in a police station in Wembley the night the bodies were found. At least ten thirty or eleven at night. My wallet was stolen in the pub and I was at the desk reporting it. The station was arranged with a space in the middle where the desk sergeants worked and there were separate areas either side: one for the public and one for police bringing arrested people in from the car park. I could see across the desk to that side. While the sergeant was taking my details, I glanced across the counter and there’s Christopher Shenk being brought in. Now, I’d known Chris, or Shenky, at school, but hadn’t seen him for years. I’d heard he was dealing drugs, running round the area pretending to be a gangster. He didn’t look at me. No one logged him in at the desk, he was led straight through and out the back, I assume to the cells. Thought nothing of it at the time. Days later I caught his name in the paper. He’d died the night of the Alperton massacre. It said he’d joined a cult and believed he was an angel called Raphael, like the Ninja Turtle. Made my blood run cold. Always a shock when you hear someone you’ve known has died, but this chilled me for another reason. I even dug out the police report about my stolen wallet to check, and I had. I’d seen Shenky that same night, at around the time the angels must’ve killed themselves. He wasn’t being released when I saw him, he was going into the copshop. How could he have been in two places at once? I’ve thought back to that glimpse I had of him. Was he really being escorted by coppers, or was he walking through alone and I was the only one who saw it? Did I witness his doppelganger at the moment he died? I’ve never been able to explain it. Never got my wallet back either.
Printed out from theFresh Ghostforum, 20 July 2021:
One of our counsellors tells a story about the Alperton Angels. He says his brother was at school with the Asian man who was killed. He said the newspaper reports about his life up to then weren’t true.
Interview with Galen Fletcher, in The Doll’s House Café, Harrow on the Hill, 21 July 2021. Transcribed by Ellie Cooper.
[I cut out the bit about him explaining his counselling work in a boys’ school. EC]
AB:Thank you for responding to the podcast—
GF:I didn’t hear it, one of my students did. He remembered me talking about my brother and the angels, so …
AB:Sure. What is that connection? If you could explain for the record.
GF:My brother was in the same year as Harpinder Singh at school. They were friends.
AB:So your brother went to school in India?
GF:No, this is the strange thing. Harpinder was, I believe,bornin Delhi, but his family moved to London when he was a baby. He was schooled here.
AB:Which school?
GF:Here. This one. [You pause in disbelief, as did I. EC]
AB:Harrowschool?
GF:Yes. [Harpinder Singh went to one of the most prestigious boys’ public schools in the world? EC] The reports after his body was found said he’d recently arrived from Delhi. Well, if he had, then he was there on holiday. They spoke as if he was scratching a living in a restaurant, that he’d been burned out of a rented room and was housed in emergency accommodation. It’s not impossible – anyone can fall on hard times – but that doesn’t sound like the guy I remember. Very sad if he’d ended up insuch circumstances. Oh, and they got his age wrong. He wasn’t twenty-two. He was twenty-nine.
AB:What do you remember about Harpinder?
GF:I should say he was always Harry Singh to us. He and Clem knew each other at prep school in Ealing. Then they both came here. Harry was outgoing, energetic. Bright, but not as focused as Clem. I remember him in all the school plays. Excellent at chess.
