Unseen Evil

by Liz Mistry

  ‘That’s true, but let’s try to focus. This investigation is a minefield. We have hearsay, we have contradictory eyewitness statements and we have no proof of Mehmoona’s guilt. She could get off with little more than a warning, unless we step up to the mark. So, Professor, what do you suggest?’

  Blinking myopically at Gus, Carlton shrugged. ‘For now, the same approach you’d use for any other investigation. You need to target the weakest link, exploit it, get all the information you can and then regroup to come up with a strategy to coax Mehmoona to confess.’

  ‘Yeah, like that’ll be easy.’ Taffy’s tone was despondent and Alice, who was sitting next to him, punched him on the arm. ‘Don’t be a wuss, Taff. We’ll start with Claire. The doctors at the BRI say she’s up to being interviewed. Then, if Mita hasn’t lost all grasp on reality, we’ll progress to her. We’ll do this.’

  Gus smiled. Alice’s optimism was just what they needed right now. ‘Okay, Taffy, you’re with me at the hospital. Let’s see what Claire Stevens has to say.’

  CHAPTER 89

  C laire Stevens’ mum looked as pitiful as her daughter. Her acne-scarred face told Gus that Claire’s complexion was an inherited condition. She was emaciated and seemed to not quite have grasped the seriousness of the accusations against her daughter. Gus sent the duty officer off for a break and chatted idly to the mother while they waited for the duty solicitor to appear. Moments later a young, fresh-faced woman with a wide smile and optimism oozing from every pore, breezed in, introducing herself as Claire’s representative and saying her client was happy to cooperate.

  Gus turned his attention to the young woman who was nearly as pale as the sheets on which she lay. Her wound had missed all major organs and she had said it was an accident. Zarqa, on the other hand, had claimed self-defence. Claire’s lips quivered, and tears seeped from her eyes and ran down her face. Her mother periodically mopped them up. Gus suspected Claire was barely aware of them.

  Despite the fact that he’d seen her holding the knife to Mehmoona’s neck, Gus pitied the girl and had a hard job believing that she could have planned any of this. He gestured to Taffy to pull up a chair and set up the recording equipment. Introducing those present, Gus hoped he’d judged the weakest link correctly. ‘Claire, can you tell me what happened last night?’

  Claire glanced as if for reassurance, not to her mum, but to the solicitor who nodded. ‘I didn’t try to kill Mehmoona. She was the one holding my hand to her neck. She gave me the knife. She wanted me to kill Zarqa like I killed Betsy. I told her and Mita I wanted to stop. It were bad enough before when we weren’t killing anyone, but then Billy sodding Clark-Tosser killed hisself. I wanted to stop, but they said no. Said they’d hurt me… hurt me mam.’

  ‘Who killed Pratab, Claire?’

  ‘That were Leo. I mean Mita. We all have code names. Mehmoona is Zodiac, Mita is Leo, and I’m Pisces. Mehmoona found a place we could have a headquarters. It was all a game… that’s all it was supposed to be… a game.’

  ‘Who was the leader?’

  ‘Zodiac… Mehmoona. She made us do everything, though I think Mita liked it. She was happy to see Pratab dead.’

  ‘How did you communicate? We have no evidence of the three of you being in contact.’

  ‘Mehmoona gave us burner phones. We only used them to text or phone each other.’

  That was more like it. Something concrete they could use. ‘Where is your phone now?’

  ‘Mehmoona made us chuck them all in the lake last night. Said she was destroying evidence.’

  Shit! Wonder what the chances of retrieving info from waterlogged phones is? He turned to Taffy. ‘Get the divers on it. We need those phones.’

  Then Gus turned back to Claire. ‘What sort of evidence was on the phones, Claire?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Dunno, texts and stuff. Mehmoona recorded what we did to Pratab and Betsy. She recorded stuff in the headquarters too. She were always filming.’

  ‘Why did you kill Betsy, Claire? You must have known that was wrong.’

  Claire sniffed, her bottom lip quivering. ‘I hated her. Betsy made everyone hate me because of my spots, because my mam’s a druggie, because I smell… not my fault the house stinks. Didn’t want to kill her though. Thought we’d just frighten her.’

  Gus had his doubts about that. Mita had already killed Pratab, so no jury would believe Claire’s claim that she didn’t think she’d be expected to kill Betsy. He had no doubt she’d been bullied. No doubt she was heavily influenced by the other two, but at the end of the day, she had taken a life.

  The doctor came in, frowned at Gus, and said, ‘You need to wind this up. She needs to rest.’

  ‘Just one more question then. Where is this headquarters of yours?’

  The address she gave wasn’t far from Lister Park. A series of small shops fallen into disrepair. No different form the sort of places he, Mo, and Greg had used as dens when they were young. Only difference was they weren’t planning murders.

  CHAPTER 90

  S ipping a coffee in the observation suite, Gus reflected that that had been the easy bit. Straightening out the stories from the three girls would take a lot more work.

  Sebastian Carlton walked in and pulled up a seat next to Gus. ‘Ready?’

  Gus was far from ready. He’d spent the last ten minutes wondering if this would work. Mehmoona was in the interview room with her solicitor and this was her second interview, the first had been led by Alice, and if they didn’t break her soon, she could get away with everything. ‘Just waiting for the others.’

  And as if on cue, the door opened and in trooped the rest of the team and Nancy. Gus waited until they’d settled in front of the one-way mirror before nodding to Alice and Nancy. They’d agreed that, bearing in mind they had evidence linking Mehmoona to Gus’ stalking, he should not be on the interview team and Carlton had suggested that two female officers might provoke her more as she seemed to enjoy the male attention.

  When Alice and Nancy entered the interview room, Gus studied Mehmoona. Why had she focussed her attention so firmly on him? He barely remembered the few conversations he’d had with her. Yet, if Carlton was right, the girl sitting opposite Nancy and Alice, with her dip-dyed hair and insolent expression, was the ringleader. How could someone so young be capable of manipulating her friends into killing? As Alice completed the formalities and switched on audio and video recording, Gus could see that Carlton was equally focussed on Mehmoona. When the door opened, her head jerked up, immediately a smile on her face, eagerness written all over it. However, that faded when she saw Nancy and Alice and she slumped in her chair.

  Carlton gripped Gus’ arm. ‘You see that? She’s pissed off. Let’s keep her that way, eh?’

  Nancy, looking as different from Mehmoona’s mother as it was possible to be, made a big show of smoothing down her floral dress and patting her hair. Her bracelets jangled as she rested her hands, loosely clasped, on the table. She looked like anyone’s grandmother and that was exactly what Carlton had suggested, in order to subvert the girl’s expectations at every turn.

  Nancy sighed. ‘Well, my dear. What sort of bother have you been getting yourself into?’

  Beside her, Alice glowered and Mehmoona cast a quick glance between the two of them and a sly smile flitted across her lips. Gus relaxed a little. So far so good. She was falling for their trick.

  Lip trembling a little, Mehmoona, looked down. ‘This is all a huge mistake. I’ve not done anything wrong. Zarqa saw Claire attacking me. I don’t understand why I’m still here.’

  Alice snorted and rolled her eyes, but Nancy angled herself away from Alice and reached across the table, resting her hand on the girl’s arm. ‘We’ve had Zarqa’s statement and we know you’re an innocent party in all of this. Gosh, even Gus saw the girl attack you.’

  Alice shuffled a bit in her chair and cleared her throat. ‘With respect, DCI Chalmers, there is evidence that…’

  Nancy turned towards
Alice, straightened her shoulders, and stuck her chest out. ‘Excuse me, DS Cooper. When I want your input on this, then I’ll ask for it. Please don’t interrupt again or I’ll ask you to leave.’

  Mehmoona’s solicitor glanced between the two officers. ‘I’d like a word with my client please, in private.’

  Gus held his breath. This was the point when everything could go wrong. They relied on Mehmoona’s narcissism to continue. The solicitor suspected what they were doing, but if his client refused to accept his advice there was nothing he could do.

  Nancy rolled her eyes and shared a smile with the girl. ‘Really?’

  She made to stand up, but Mehmoona jumped in. ‘We’re fine here. I don’t need you telling me what to do.’

  ‘But…’ The solicitor didn’t get his sentence out before she cut him dead.

  ‘Enough. You’re being paid to do what I want, and I want you to shut up.’

  Under his breath Carlton muttered, ‘Classic narcissist.’

  Blinking rapidly, the solicitor glanced from Nancy back to his client and then shrugged.

  Nancy pulled her chair closer and, elbows on the table, chin resting on her steepled hands she nodded her approval. ‘So, all this stuff with Gus… I get it. He’s hot, isn’t he? And it all got a bit out of hand. We might be able to make that go away. You just need to tell us all about the other stuff, you know, with Mita and Claire?’

  Again, with the trembling lip. Nancy kept her smile in place and passed a tissue across the table.

  ‘I was lonely. No friends.’ She paused and blew her nose. ‘Mum dragged me here, didn’t let me see my dad. It was all too much. I thought it was all a game and then Mita started saying we should do stuff for real. I refused.’ She looked right at Nancy, ‘I should’ve told someone, but I was scared they’d kill me. That’s what they said… that they’d kill me.’

  Nancy smiled. ‘Don’t you worry yourself, dear. We already know that Mita and Claire are the ringleaders. You just got caught up in all.’ She gave a little giggle that made Gus’s estimation of her as an actress increase. ‘There’s no way a simple girl like you could’ve masterminded all this. No. It’s quite clear to us… and she’s confirmed it, Claire was the mastermind. All of it, Pratab Patel’s death, Betsy Reavley’s death, it was all her idea.’

  Gus was on the edge of his chair. Mehmoona had gone completely still, a frown fluttered across her forehead, then her lips pursed. She glanced at her solicitor, drummed her fingers on the table. The atmosphere in the observation room was stagnant, waiting for the knife to fall whichever way it would. Carlton’s leg was bouncing up and down, Gus’ heart was hammering. Bring it home, Nance, Bring it home!

  ‘A nice normal girl like you could never in a million years dream up such a plan…’ Nancy patted Mehmoona’s arm again. ‘No, dear. This took brains and deviousness and daring to execute.’

  Gus held his breath. Come on, come on, go for it!

  The silence in the interview room went on for too long. Carlton’s leg stopped thrumming, Gus’ chest tightened, then… Mehmoona laughed a shrill high-pitched laugh not dissimilar to the one Mita had produced the previous night.

  ‘Idiots. All of you, idiots. That fucking Claire couldn’t plan a shag in a brothel. Course it wasn’t her. It was me. I planned it all… I set them up…’

  She jumped to her feet, her eyes wide, fists clenched and, as Alice and Nancy smiled at each other, she roared, ‘Bitches!’

  Gus collapsed onto his chair, exhaustion overtaking him while Carlton, Taffy, and Compo did a dance which involved a lot of high fives and whoops.

  They’d rattled her… and the rest was easy as the whole story spewed out in all its sordid glory.

  CHAPTER 91

  H issing Sid motioned Gus and Alice into the gang’s headquarters. Both suited up, Gus stood by the entrance as Alice moved into the small room and turned in a complete circle. He wanted to absorb the entirety of this room where so much planning had been done. Once Mehmoona started to talk, she wouldn’t shut up and by now Gus had a good sense of the three girls escaping here, getting drunk, smoking weed, and Mehmoona ultimately leading the other two on a destructive journey, culminating in the deaths of two teenagers and the destruction of their families.

  Mildew hung in the air, heavy and oppressive, making the atmosphere even more cloying. Was it the stench of evil? It was the sort of smell he’d easily dismissed in the dens of his childhood with his friends. Now though, it clogged up his throat and made his eyes itch.

  The space was full of contrasts. Brightly coloured cushions scattered on the floor. Small makeshift tables fashioned from old boxes with tealights on top, stood beside each cushion. A larger one in the centre was covered with a sheet of stained plywood and an empty bottle lay on its side in the middle, its neck pointing accusingly at Gus, making Gus remember the girls’ description of the game they chose to select their victims. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs and spent spliffs, sweet wrappers, empty cans, bottles, and dirt. However, what was most interesting, were the walls.

  Here Gus could track the girls’ progress from malicious bullying, to the more sinister acts of character assassination. The list of names, the newspaper articles… all of it spoke of organisation and planning. What had these girls been thinking? Carlton, after intense scrutiny and analysis of their interviews, suggested they each had their own distinct triggers and Mehmoona had developed the knack, even before her arrival in Bradford, of preying on her contemporaries’ vulnerabilities. At great length she’d described how she saw each of the two girls, talking of them in disparaging ways. Gus of course had used this to drive a wedge between the girls to get to the truth.

  They were all scheduled for in-depth psychiatric assessments and, with the amount of evidence, plus each girl’s confession, Carlton had told him they would serve time in a juvenile detention centre, followed by psychiatric rehabilitation and, depending how they responded, they may be released with new identities in the future.

  Gus took a last look round the room and had a desperate urge to escape the malevolence that seemed to seep from the walls. He was being fanciful, he knew, yet his skin prickled. His head buzzed and the laughter of three young girls plotting and planning various revenges against people who had slighted them, seemed to echo back at him. At what point had they decided to take the step to commit murder? To take the lives of those they sought revenge against? Had it all been, as Mehmoona insisted, a game led by her to prove that she was superior to the other girls? And if so, what had flipped in Mita’s and Claire’s brains to make them susceptible to this degree of violence?

  Images retrieved from their dumped burner phones by Compo were damning. Three girls, drunk and egging each other on to commit murder and laughing and joking and taking selfies as they did so, was sickening. Gus pitied any jury that had to see that. He tried to balance the outpourings of support for Betsy and Pratab’s families online, with the images of the murdered bodies that had gone viral and the filth that lay just under the surface of the Internet. They kept popping up, despite Compo and the IT specialists’ attempts to block them and what was more disheartening, were the sheer number of views and shares they gained. Were there really so many sick, heartless people out there who took gratification from the snuffing out of a human life? What sort of society was this if dead kids were amusement fodder?

  Pratab’s mum, in particular, had taken great comfort from the online support. Yet, Pratab himself hadn’t been completely innocent. Comps had found an image that Pratab had posted outing Jo Jo and there were others; bullying texts, malicious Facebook posts, cruel Instagrams, all among normal, jolly everyday posts. Mr Patel had been admitted to Lynfield Mount hospital when the enormity of nearly losing one son, losing the other, and then discovering that his daughter had been the one to kill him, prompted him to attempt suicide. Betsy Reavley’s mum was a wreck and was drowning her grief in alcohol combined with pills. Gus suspected it wouldn’t be too long before she would join her daugh
ter.

  Then there was Jo Jo’s abuse. Poor kid! Not only were there images of him all over the Dark Web, but he’d lost his entire family, his home… his innocence. They’d found a hidden camera in Jo Jo’s room and initially, Jo Jo blamed Razor McCarthy for that, saying he’d had access to his room. In interview though, Mehmoona had admitted to planting it, after finding out Jo Jo was a drone expert through some of his Facebook posts. The delight on her face when she’d described breaking into Jo Jo’s home, looking down at his mother as she slept, stealing one of Jessie’s beloved stuffed animals, before finally finding the key and breaking into his room was creepy. It was as if she expected to be congratulated on her ingenuity. Her plan had been to steal a drone, but when she’d seen Jo Jo’s equipment, she formulated another plan.

  Her glee, when she described the things she saw Jo Jo doing, had made Gus want to vomit. He still didn’t know how Nancy and Alice had sat through those interviews so calmly. But when they came out, they seemed to shrink, their control during questioning stripped right back the moment they left the room. Gus had applied for mental health support for both of them. No way was he allowing either of them to internalise any of this. Mehmoona Bashir’s warped mind was baggage they didn’t need to carry. Later, he, Carlton, Alice, and Nancy had got very drunk and although it didn’t make them forget, it at least gave them a temporary reprieve from exposure to the malevolence of Mehmoona’s twisted mind. Unfortunately, catching evil didn’t make it go away.

  Gus and Compo had taken to talking about the unseen evil of social media… the persuasive and abusive stuff that was unmonitorable and the sick minds that exploited that weakness. Compo admitted he had an online friendship group which kept him sane when he was investigating this sort of shit and Gus was glad the lad had that support system. The more he found out, the more Gus wanted to punch walls. If he could crawl into the Dark Web and physically catch these child abusers, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back. Gus’ anger was ever present; roiling and snarling inside him, making him jumpy and snappy at everyone. He jogged every spare moment he had now, trying to banish the tension, trying to evict the tightness in his chest that had taken up permanent residence. Nothing worked. He was a stick of dynamite just waiting to explode.