Page 134 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
Divine
by
Amanda Bailey
One
David Harris Polneath had spent his life adding things up. As a corporate accountant for [find out where] he’d balanced ledgers, then spreadsheets, then accounting systems with equal attention to detail. He wasn’t about to stop in June 2019 when, at the age of sixty-five, he finally retired. Because David Polneath had a project. More than a hobby. An interest that saw him get up at six each day and go to bed by eleven. The Alperton Angels.
Sixteen years earlier David was glued to one particular news story with a fascination that transcended prurient interest. It started with four dead men, two traumatised teenagers and a baby in a derelict warehouse in north-west London – and ended with the chilling news that a small but intense death cult had been recruiting vulnerable children under the nose of social services.
While he was getting up and going to work day in, day out, David could keep his feelings under wraps. The work ordered his thoughts, the routine was comforting. He could ignore the angels and the memories they triggered. The darkness that threatened to well up and drown him in its wake. Now, he was ready to use his own trauma to help solve a case that ordinary, regular people simply did not compute. Because for David, to understand how the Alperton Angels did what they did, you had to have been a vulnerable teenager yourself. And he had.
I first met David when my own research into this mysterious case began. From the start I was baffled by personal accounts that were equally credible, yet completely at odds with each other. What’s more, these accounts often differed on the type of facts no one usually gets wrong, even forty years later, let alone eighteen. One professional remembers akey player pulling a knife and threatening to kill a child. Someone else who was there saw nothing of the sort.
I soon understood why David was fascinated by the Alperton Angels. What began as an exercise to banish his own demons gradually morphed into something quite unexpected. For the first time in his life, David found that things didn’t add up. Dates, names, places, times. Facts. His conclusion was as unnerving as it was short: there had been a cover-up, a smokescreen still in place today. And David vowed he’d get to the bottom of it, if it was the last thing he did.
***
The fire service was called to a blazing flat in the early hours of 28 July [find out exact timings]. It had started in the lounge and, thanks to a succession of flashovers and backdraughts, was pulled from front to back, incinerating everything in its path. Paperwork, records, computers, notes. Nothing was left of one man’s painstaking two-year investigation. What had he discovered that was now lost for ever? I cursed the fact I had put off meeting David until I had completed interviews with people directly involved in the case. I mourned the tragedy that had befallen him, but in the back of my mind was the suspicion this hadn’t been an accident.
An investigation into the fire found it had started at an overloaded electrical socket. No one was to blame, and relief was voiced that the fire had not spread to neighbouring flats. David’s body was identified by his dental records. One of the few things about his death that did add up.
5
The Closer I Get, the Further Away I Seem
WhatsApp messages between retired detective chief superintendent Don Makepeace and me, 30 July 2021:
Don Makepeace
I’m inviting you for lunch. Quaglino’s at one. Don.
Amanda Bailey
Today? To what do I owe this honour?
Don Makepeace
Yes?
Amanda Bailey
You bet!
WhatsApp messages between me and Ellie Cooper, 30 July 2021:
Amanda Bailey
Don Makepeace has invited me to Quaglino’s for lunch.
Ellie Cooper
Yum! Send the file through when you’re ready.
Amanda Bailey
Telling you just in case. So you know where I will be.
