Page 173 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
The End of Days?
My third meeting with the Mystery Woman from 2 August (and that first meeting on 13 July). I now know her to be ‘Marie-Claire’. Transcribed by me this time. I don’t want Ellie tangled up in anything that might backfire. Backfire. Lol. 30 August 2021:
AB:Thanks for meeting me again. What should I call you?
MC:Marie-Claire. If you like.
AB:Your operational name? [she doesn’t answer] Mark Dunning immortalised you inWhite Wings. Celine is an angel with powers of invisibility who does the bureau’s dirty work.
MC:I don’t read fiction.
AB:Don Makepeace tells a story about a yellow Mini Clubman that skids off the motorway. A couple stop to try to rescue the driver. But it’s disappeared. Days later, Don searches a wider area and discovers it, tangled in undergrowth, the driver dead. Only, it didn’t crash days ago, it’s been hidden from view for six months, its driver a missing person.
MC:Every police officer in the Met has heard that story. Most of them tell it too, and claimtheyfound the crashed car.
AB:Don explains it as a vision from the other side. The driver wanted his body found.
MC:Bizarrely, that’s considered a happy ending.
AB:I have an alternative ending. A small car skids off the road, hurtles down the bank, comes to a halt on a dirt track beside a field. The unharmed driver simply changes gear and drives away, rejoins the road further along. That’s why the couple fail to find the vehicle. When Don returns to the scene he searches a completely different area and finds the remains of a yellow Mini Clubman. The coincidence is enough that he tells the story. Over time, both cars become the same make and colour with the same stickers and the same sun visor. Eventually: the same car. The story becomes a popular myth.
MC:No one wants the alternative ending.
AB:Christopher Shenk wasn’t an Alperton Angel. He was a small-time drug dealer who discovered Harpinder Singh wasn’t a shy Indian waiter, but a police detective, undercover and about toblow open an OCG. Did Shenky intend to kill Singh, or just warn him? It didn’t matter to the police officers who kicked Shenky to death. His body was dumped at the scene of the Alperton Angels massacre and his story lost in theirs. Passing him off as Raphael, a secret cult member, avoids questions about how he came to die.
MC:You don’t know everything—
AB:I know the angels were fatally shot in that basement. You’re right, I don’t know why. Not just to hide a body. I get the feeling it was all very convenient for someone, until Gabriel got up and walked away. How did he do it? He’s framed for Singh’s murder to put him inside. Someone somewhere is determined he’ll never get out. [She’s silent for a long while.]
MC:Give me your phone.
[She takes it and turns it off before she speaks again. I can’t prove anything of her subsequent conversation, but she told me what happened to Gabriel and it explains a lot.]
WhatsApp messages between my agent Nita Cawley and me, 30 August 2021:
Nita Cawley
Have you heard about Minnie Davis? She copied a student’s entire thesis and was only found out when a proof-reader did some basic fact-checking. It was all an arty hoax. Pippa is livid.
Amanda Bailey
It could only happen to Minnie.
Nita Cawley
It’s not so much the yawning errors and jokes – anyone can fall for that. It’s the fact she copied someone else’s work. That’s what Pippa can’t forgive. The book’s cancelled and she is too, so heads up, Mandy: distance yourself from her. No bargepole would be too long, if you know what I mean.
WhatsApp messages between true crime author Craig Turner and me, 30 August 2021:
Craig Turner
Have you heard?
Amanda Bailey
Yep.
Craig Turner
