Page 135 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
Ellie Cooper
OK.
Meeting with retired detective chief superintendent Don Makepeace in Quaglino’s, 30 July 2021. Transcribed by Ellie Cooper.
[Unusually for a meeting between you and Don, there’s no chitchat or gossip before you get down to business. EC]
AB:Don, when we met back in June, did you know I had no hope of finding the baby?
DM:I suspected.
AB:Why didn’t you say?
DM:I warned you to be careful. I don’t know the ins and outs of this case, but I know thereareins and outs.
AB:Five people connected to this case died prematurely. [A long pause. EC]
DM:Most of us have a story.Thatstory. The one that doesn’t quite add up. I want to tell you mine.
AB:Go on.
DM:Many moons ago I was a young traffic officer working out of Hillingdon. One night shift my colleague and I were called to an accident on the M40. We arrived to find a distraught couple, their car stopped on the hard shoulder. They were searching for something. We soon discovered they weren’t the accident, but rather the witnesses to it. Now, this was a time before there were barriers in the central reservation. The couple had been driving along, when a car from the opposite carriageway veered, out of control, across their path, causing them to brake suddenly. The rogue car flew off the road, down an embankment and plunged into dense undergrowth. You couldn’t see into that thicket, even with a police torch. The couple were beside themselves, imagining the occupants trapped in the car, possibly injured, so I called for back-up. We had six patrol cars, an ambulance, twelve coppers and eventually the police helicopter with its floodlight. We turned that stretch of embankment over more than once. No car. The couple insisted on staying to help with the search, and that’s what I couldn’t forget. Their distress, the detail in their account. The car was a mustard-yellow Mini Clubman with a green strip across the top of the windscreen, a common sun visor at the time. The face of a young man, petrified, behind the wheel. A sticker on the passenger window for Windsor Safari Park. Were there children in the car? But the search was fruitless. At daybreak we had to call it off, tell the couple they’d been mistaken. They were probably tired and full-beam headlights on the opposite carriageway had momentarily blinded them. It appeared a car was crossing their path but it was just an optical illusion. Reluctantly they left the scene. But I couldn’t forget them. I was on day shift, a week or so later. Itwas a quiet day, so I decided to drive past the spot, give it one final check. I trawled the place we had searched and found nothing. But I continued under the bridge and along the road some way ahead of where the couple had said they saw the car. I hadn’t gone far when I glimpsed a chrome bumper buried in the undergrowth. To cut a long story short, a mustard-yellow Mini Clubman with a green sun visor and Windsor Safari Park stickerhadskidded off the road. Its driver was declared deceased at the scene. A young man of twenty-one in his first car. Died on impact with a tree. [Shit, what a story. No wonder you both take deep breaths after that one. EC]
AB:Wow. If you hadn’t had a hunch and returned to the scene, he would never have been found. That’s a moving story, Don.
DM:That’s not the story, Amanda. Remember I’d moved a good quarter of a mileaheadof where the couple saw a car go off the road. The car I found had been hidden in the undergrowth for six months. The remains inside were skeletal. [This is creeping me out. EC] When the accident happened, no one saw it. The young man was driving back from a friend’s house, alone, and was reported missing when he didn’t arrive home. His parents were distraught. Had he been murdered, taken his own life or simply walked out on them? It wasn’t a happy ending. But at least it gave them closure.
AB:What was the explanation for that discrepancy in time?
DM:Certain colleagues joked the young man’s ghost re-staged the accident so his remains would be found. But I put it down to mere coincidence. Witnesses are mistaken about what they see and it just happened to be near the site of a previous, similar accident, involving a popular car, in a popular colour, with stickers common at the time. But I never forgot that case and shortly before I left the force, I looked it up again and read through the documents. With the benefit of an entire career’s experience, I hoped to see in those few pages an explanation for the time lag. Evidence I was right and that it wasn’t supernatural at all. And I did. I found something I missed at the time.
AB:What was it?
DM:It was a transcript of the 999 call that had summoned my colleague and me to the scene. It wasn’t made by the couple who witnessed the accident. It came from a phone box just off the next motorway exit. This was long before mobile phones. The caller had seen a yellow Mini Clubman skid across the carriageway and into the bushes. He told us another car had been obliged to brake sharply and stopped on the hard shoulder. Two people in that car had got out to help. This driver did the right thing, pulled off at the next exit, found a phone box, reported the accident, then drove on his way. That call meant the coupleweren’t mistaken, Amanda. Someone else had seen the same accident they witnessed,six months afterit happened.
AB:Wow. That’s …
DM:It’s evidence … that some things simply havenological explanation. Perhaps everyone should come across such an experience once in their lives. And when you do, the best course of action is to stay the fuckawayfrom it. [There’s something about his tone, Mand. Anyway, I cut out a stilted discussion about the starters. You both have scallops and heritage tomatoes. Here’s where it gets interesting again. EC]
AB:I’m worried a colleague of mine is falling under the spell of Gabriel Angelis.
DM:Oliver Menzies? [He laughs at the idea. EC] Well, if he sprouts wings and starts calling himself an archangel, you’ll know why.
AB:Have you met withhimlately? Have you toldhimabout the yellow Mini Clubman?
DM:No. No need, Amanda.
AB:Why not?
DM:Because he’s not like you [he lowers his voice. EC] he’s not likely to get anywhere near the people who want this all kept quiet. Sohe’snot in any danger. Please take note.
[I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here, Mand. But do you think you could listen to what he says? I cut out everything else because it didn’t seem as important as the above. EC]
WhatsApp messages between me and true crime author Minnie Davis, 30 July 2021:
Amanda Bailey
Hey, Mins! How goes it?
