When details of the torture were leaked, the murder took on a greater sense of urgency. Various theories emerged, including foreign crime syndicates, or money-laundering, or a drug deal gone wrong.
Without any new leads to feed the story, the media became more interested in the fate of the dogs, which were given names, William and Harry. The Sun and Daily Mirror ran competing campaigns to find them new homes. Hundreds of readers offered to adopt the animals, while others donated money, until the Alsatians risked becoming the richest dogs in England before the deputy mayor of Barnet Council stepped forward and adopted them, promising to use the donated funds to build an animal shelter.
In the weeks that followed, the story slipped from the headlines until Angel Face was discovered and it became an international news event. A mysterious child in a secret room – it sounded more like a Grimm’s fairy tale than reality.
Among the files that Guthrie has sent to me is the original admission form from Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.
Gender: Female
Name: Unknown
DOB: Unknown
Height: 50 inches
Weight: 57lbs
Condition: Underweight. Filthy. Evidence of scabies, headlice and rickets. Physical signs of long-term sexual abuse, including deep perineal and vaginal lacerations and scar tissue.
Markings: Birthmark on her left inner forearm the size of a penny. Scar on her right thigh, four inches above the knee. Multiple lesions on her back and chest most likely caused by cigarette burns.
Property: Eight pieces of coloured glass. A large tortoiseshell button.
Clothing: Soiled jeans. A woollen jumper with a polar bear on the chest. Cotton knickers.
The admitting officer is listed as Special Constable Sacha Hopewell. She was photographed carrying Angel Face into the hospital – an image that flashed around the world and became synonymous with the case. I call it up on my computer. Constable Hopewell is dressed in dark gym gear – leggings and a jacket and trainers. Her knees and elbows are smudged with some sort of white powder. The girl in her arms looks filthy and emaciated, her hair a tangle of snakes, her face gaunt. She’s dressed in the clothes described in the hospital admission form.
Sacha Hopewell was twenty-two when she found Evie. She’d be twenty-eight now. A lot of people become special constables as a stepping stone towards a full-time career in policing. Sacha could still work for the Met. I want to ask her how she found Evie. What made her go back to the house so long after the murder?
I call Barnet Police Station in north London and negotiate a maze of automated choices before reaching a desk sergeant.
‘Never heard of her,’ he says, wanting to get rid of me.
‘She was the officer who found Angel Face.’
‘Oh, her! She doesn’t work here any more.’
‘Where can I find her?’
‘No idea. She was only a volunteer.’
‘She was a special constable.’
‘Yeah, same thing.’
I hang up and type Sacha’s name into Google, hoping she might have a Facebook page or Twitter account, but come up with nothing. Instead I stumble across several newspaper photographs of her leaving a house identified as being in Wembley Park – possibly her parents’ place. She is surrounded by photographers and reporters, forcing her way grimly through the pack.
Further down the screen, I find a story from the Harrow Times. Sacha’s father, Rodney, is quoted, asking the media to leave his daughter alone. ‘She’s not allowed to speak to you. She doesn’t have anything to say. Please, let Sacha have her life back.’
A street name is mentioned. I try the reverse phone directories, but the family’s number is unlisted. Eventually, I call an old friend who works for the DVLA. Donna Forbes was a year ahead of me at school and is one of the good ones.
‘How do I know you’re not trying to trace an old girlfriend?’ she asks.
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes, but I how do I know?’
‘I’m trying to find the special constable who found Angel Face. Do you remember the case?’
‘Of course. Why her? I’m going to assume it’s police business,’ says Donna, sucking air through her teeth. ‘But if I get caught, I could lose my job.’ I can hear her typing in the background. ‘Every search creates a data trail.’ More typing. ‘There’s a Rodney Hopewell in Wembley Park.’ She gives me an address and phone number.
‘I owe you a drink,’ I say.
‘I expect dinner.’
‘You’re married.’
‘A girl still has to eat.’
Rodney Hopewell answers on the fourth ring. A gruff-sounding man, he recites the phone number before saying, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is Sacha there?’
There is a pause.
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend.’
The phone goes dead. I don’t know if he hung up, or the line dropped out. I call again. The number rings off. I try one more time. Someone picks up the receiver and drops it into the cradle.
I’m listening to dead air.
8
The major incident room at West Bridgford Police Station has a makeshift feel, as if put together in a hurry. Computer cables snake haphazardly across the floor and desks are pulled into clusters. A series of whiteboards dominate the space, covered with data collected over the past twenty-four hours – crime scene photographs, timelines and phone wheels. Some of the information is highlighted or circled with fluorescent markers or linked by hand-drawn lines, creating a storyboard of Jodie Sheehan’s final hours.
Forty detectives are working on the case, collecting CCTV footage, knocking on doors and taking statements. Many of them have been up all night and their eyes sting with tiredness and too much caffeine. Most are men. Lenny has done her best to get more women into the CID, but politics and sexism trickle down from the top. Regardless of the difficulties, she rarely complains, although she has become more outspoken with age. Professionally and publicly, she enforces laws that she sometimes regards as being antiquated and unfair – protecting property rather than people – while privately she rails against the real causes of crime: poverty, boredom, stupidity and greed. None of these are excuses. In Lenny’s view, deprivation doesn’t force someone to put a needle into his or her vein, or gamble away a welfare cheque, or put a rubbish bin through a shop window, or set fire to a homeless man.
‘Every society gets the criminals it deserves,’ is her philosophy. ‘And the police force it’s willing to pay for, rather than the one it insists upon.’
The ten o’clock briefing is under way. Lenny is perched on a desk with her feet on a chair, listening as various detectives bring her up to speed. Some I’ve met before. Many have nicknames. Monroe gets called ‘Marilyn’ for obvious reasons, although she does have blonde hair. Her partner is known as ‘Prime Time’ because he manages to get himself on camera so often. My personal favourite is David Curran, a sharply dressed younger detective they call ‘Nobody’ because ‘nobody’s perfect’.
An estimated two thousand people were at the fireworks display on Monday, with as many as three hundred vehicles. Parking was ticketed, but anyone could walk from the surrounding streets and set up a picnic blanket for the show. There were no CCTV cameras focused on the crowd, but the rugby club had one in the parking area and another covered the traffic lights on Clifton Lane.