Page 143 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
AB:Call it intuition. One of those things you can’t quite explain. Like why Harpinder Singh was depicted as a penniless migrant when he was a former public schoolboy from a wealthy family.
MW:Like I said, I can’t be specific.
AB:He was undercover, living in a flat near the angels. Why? I wondered if he was watching them, but they moved around every few days, while Singh was at Middlesex House for weeks. I know he was connected to Chris Shenk via the restaurant. Singh worked there and Shenky sold drugs out the back.
MW:[She’s obviously walking away here. EC] I’m sorry …
AB:Marie-Claire! [Quite a pause here. I think you shocked her. EC] Why was the baby spirited away? It was taken from Holly before social services could get there.
MW:So people like you never find it. [So quiet I could barely hear this. EC]
AB:What’s so special about that child?
MW:There won’t be any more warnings, Amanda.
[OMG, Mand, stick to your new angle. The popular culture thing. It’ll be great. This book’s only a holiday page-turner. It’s not worth it. EC]
A slip of paper, torn from the margins of a Bible. On it, in hurried handwriting, is the name ‘Marie-Claire’ and a scribbled telephone number.
WhatsApp messages between Ellie Cooper and me, 2 August 2021:
Ellie Cooper
Is the Mystery Woman the police officer Marie-Claire, who was at the scene of The Assembly?
Amanda Bailey
Possibly. She’s a woman of colour in her forties. She’d have been in her late twenties at the time.
Ellie Cooper
Did she also collect the baby from Holly, immediately after Aileen left? The duty manager of the children’s centre, Maggie Keenan, says it was collected by a black woman and a white man. It surprised the social workers who expected to collect it the next day.
Amanda Bailey
Again, possibly. Only Maggie Keenan remembers Marie-Claire as Caucasian. ‘Marie-Claire’ could be an operational name used by several undercover officers
Ellie Cooper
The baby wasn’t missing so whoever collected it must’ve been legitimate. Social services might have accidentally sent two teams of social workers
Amanda Bailey
Ellie, in 2004 a respected filmmaker, Suzi Korman, tried to make a documentary. She was warned off, and when that didn’t stop her, she died in a house fire. But two TV drama series aired a couple of years later. One exposed failures of the care system. The other created a fantasy with demons and hellfire. No one warned THOSE filmmakers.
Ellie Cooper
What can it be that they’re STILL trying to keep quiet?
Amanda Bailey
The woman I met in the park just now was the one who gained access to my flat, without any sign of entry, while I was waitingbehind the Ballot Box pub on 13 July. She told me to stop looking for the baby. What is it about me – and Suzi Korman – that they’re afraid of?
Ellie Cooper
A respected documentarian. An experienced journalist with a background in true crime. Either of you might just get to the bottom of it. Shame you had to abandon your search for the baby.
Amanda Bailey
