Page 172 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
AB:Four. So somewhere along the line wedolose a body.
JS:This will sound crazy to you, Ms Bailey. I have lived heremanyyears and it sounds crazy to me. But for a while afterwards I would think of that man who was not declared dead. I’d think that perhaps he couldn’t pass through to the ancestors. And so he came back. [OMG. You’re both silent for a while. EC]
AB:It’s a yellow Mini Clubman.
JS:I’m sorry?
AB:Someone once told me about a yellow Mini Clubman. They said everyone should have one. A story that plays out in a way you can’t explain.
[You stop the recording here, Mand. OMG, I’m going to message you. EC]
WhatsApp messages between Ellie Cooper and me, 28 August 2021:
Ellie Cooper
The angels were assassinated. By whom? And why the discrepancy between body counts?
Ellie Cooper
Are firearms mentioned in relation to the angels at any time?
Amanda Bailey
Not by the bods I’ve spoken to, and not in the three works of fiction I’m reading. Not even in Mark Dunning’s spy novel.
Ellie Cooper
Are you keeping an eye on Oliver, Mand? I worry about him. When I messaged to ask how he was, he replied with a calendar marked with a date for ‘The End of Days’.
Amanda Bailey
He’ll be fine. I’ll snap him out of it. Soon. When I’m ready
Fourth attempt at a first chapter, written 28 August 2021:
Divine
by
Amanda Bailey
One
Oliver Menzies thought he wanted to be a journalist. He’d scraped his way through a history degree, had a passing interest in politics and always read the front of the newspaper before he turned to the back [is it obvious I mean the sports pages?]. But when his mother’s friend organised a place on a newspaper apprenticeship scheme, he didn’t count on his fellow trainees being better, brighter and hungrier than he could ever be.
Menzies dressed his feelings of inadequacy in practical jokes of the variety we would consider bullying and abusive today. On one occasion he deliberately told a young, female colleague the wrong venue for after-work drinks. It meant she was waiting, alone and vulnerable, at night, in a rough suburban pub.
What might have started as a harmless prank turned into anything but. When she finally realised what he’d done and left the venue, someone followed her. She was attacked and robbed, not just of her possessions, but of everything she’d been working towards. Her coursework gone, she was alone, injured and confused. She abandoned the apprenticeship rather than admit what had happened. Most distressing of all, she was robbed of the sight in her left eye. She was never the same again.
This young colleague wasn’t as fortunate or privileged as Menzies or the other trainees. She’d barely read a book in her life, never been to university or lived in anything like a functioning family. She didn’t realise then how vulnerable she was, but something in Oliver did. She was just learning what trust was – and with one thoughtless practical joke, he destroyed it in her. For ever.
He may have forgotten the incident, or chose not to remember it whenthe two met again years later. But she hadn’t, and she soon realised he’d learned nothing in the intervening years. He regarded others who fell for tricks, scams, lies and fraud as stupid, ‘pig-shit thick’ and unworthy of his regard. Well, when Oliver Menzies was commissioned to write a true crime page-turner on the Alperton Angels, he would discover just how easy it is to be influenced, deluded, controlled and ultimately betrayed by someone you trust.
You don’t need to be a charismatic individual to influence others. You just need to use the right words, at the right time, to show them certain things and hide others. They’ll do the rest all by themselves.
THIS IS IT! My new angle!
7
