Girl Zero

by A. A. Dhand

  He picked up the bag and opened it to find a thick red diary inside.

  Harry set off back to his car. Once inside, he turned on the interior light and started leafing through the diary, his progress getting slower and slower with each page he scanned.

  ‘Christ, Tara,’ he whispered, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’

  TWELVE

  HARRY GOT HOME at five a.m.

  His mind was burdened with images of Ronnie beating Nash and the troublesome notes in Tara’s diary.

  What the hell had she been caught up in?

  In the hallway, Harry touched his mother’s slippers before making his way to the kitchen. Saima was sitting on a stool holding a cup of steaming hot chocolate, a baby-monitor at her side.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘My husband comes home at five in the morning and asks if I’m OK?’

  Saima looked at him expectantly.

  ‘How’s Aaron?’ he asked, nodding at the monitor.

  ‘Dreaming.’

  ‘How come you’re up?’

  ‘Idiots setting off fireworks woke me. You weren’t here.’

  ‘Ronnie called.’

  Harry saw Saima open her mouth to say something, then close it. Her dislike of Ronnie was well established. While he was the only member of the family who’d accepted Harry’s decision to marry her, Saima despised the fact that he hadn’t fought for his brother. He’d opted instead for a peaceful existence, refusing to upset his parents or his wife.

  She saw him as gutless. But his daughter’s murder had muted Saima’s usual disdain.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘He needed me.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked Harry softly. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘The guy who did it.’

  Saima could see the tiredness in Harry’s bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You’ll get him. You always do.’

  ‘It’s different this time.’

  She nodded. ‘Can I say something?’

  ‘Shoot,’ said Harry, taking a defensive step away from her concerned gaze.

  ‘I don’t want to sound like a bitch—’

  ‘Hey, you’re never—’

  She raised her hands and continued: ‘I don’t want to sound spiteful. I never met Tara. I wasn’t … allowed, so this isn’t about that – what I’ve got to say.’

  Harry leaned against the kitchen worktop. ‘Sure.’ He put on his detective face – open and receptive.

  ‘I don’t want you tearing into this blindly, consumed by guilt.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  ‘Because you weren’t there. Because you feel somehow like you failed to protect her.’

  ‘No guilt here.’

  She smiled at him knowingly.

  ‘You need to be careful. You’re obsessive, Harry. You never give up. But the boss has told you: not this time, it’s too personal. I agree with her. I’m worried you won’t know when to leave it alone. That you’ll make things worse.’

  ‘Saima, this is my family.’

  ‘We are your family. We need you to look after yourself.’

  ‘Jesus, Saima, look at what—’

  She put her hand up to stop him. ‘I’m not finished.’

  Harry sighed, then waited for her to continue.

  ‘Your family has caused us unbearable pain.’

  ‘So did yours,’ he said, too quickly.

  She glared at him.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I saw it in your face last night. You think this might give you a way back. You think that if you catch this guy, give them some sort of closure, they might welcome you back with open arms.’ Saima paused. ‘Harry, I’m telling you that won’t ever happen.’ Her voice cracked, but she kept it together. ‘I’m not a bad person for saying that,’ she added, almost pleadingly.

  Harry shook his head. ‘That’s not why I’m doing it.’

  ‘But you are going to work this case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? Why can’t you leave it to your colleagues? You know they’ll do all they can for you.’

  Harry remained silent.

  Saima put her arms on the table and rested her chin on them. ‘Go on: say something.’

  ‘Make us a cup of Indian tea,’ he said finally. ‘Then I’ll tell you exactly why.’

  ‘I … I can’t not do this,’ said Harry, taking a seat opposite Saima in their living room. ‘It isn’t right that in my family’s critical hour, I’m not there.’ He lifted the tea she had made from the table and sipped it, pushing a stray cardamom seed from his lips with his tongue. ‘Might it open a door? It’s possible, and yes, that is part of what’s driving me. Awful as it sounds, Tara’s death might be the opportunity for us all to reconcile and for them to finally get to know you and see that you’re not the devil they think you are.’

  Saima’s eyes narrowed. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They know I’m not a threat. That’s the problem. If I was in a burka, praying five times a day and carrying around a ticking rucksack, their fears would be justified. It’s because I am not like that, because I’m just a normal girl who happens to be a Muslim, that they’re afraid.’

  Harry hung his head.

  ‘Even if you bring them justice, the door will remain closed. Your father has painted a picture of me, and people like me, as terrorists, religious fanatics, nutcases – all the usual nonsense. It doesn’t match the reality. I’m dead normal. So what happens if they get to know me, like me, maybe even love me? They can’t risk it, it goes against everything they’ve ever known.’

  Saima was right; she was always bloody right.

  ‘I know,’ he mumbled, staring past his wife at the picture of Aaron on their mantelpiece.

  He wanted his mother to meet her grandson. How could she keep this up if she held him in her arms?

  She’d never betray her husband. He knew that.

  ‘So you’ll stand down?’

  No lies, Harry. Not in this house.

  ‘No,’ he said flatly.

  ‘How am I supposed to watch you suffer that heartache again?’ Her face was drawn.

  Harry put his tea on the table and went to the window; dawn was yet to break.

  ‘When Mandy went into labour with Tara,’ he said, ‘I drove her and Ronnie to the hospital. Shit – we were so excited and scared; first baby in the house for decades. At the hospital, I was with them both for hours before everything kicked off, and I had to leave them to it – I’ll never forget how excited I was.’

  ‘You never told me this,’ Saima said, making her way towards him.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, arriving by his side, the streetlight outside throwing a golden ray across them, their shadows reaching towards the sofa.

  ‘I heard a baby crying. Tara’s loud, cranky entrance into the world. When Ronnie let me into the room, he went to call Mum and Dad. Mandy was ill from the gas and air and that just left me to hold Tara. For almost twenty minutes. I’ll never forget her eyes. Wide. Inquisitive. She was so calm in my arms.’

  Saima slipped her arms around Harry’s waist and rested her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Near enough the first twenty minutes of Tara’s life were spent in my arms. Ever since I found her body, I haven’t been able to shake those images from my mind.’ Harry’s voice started to waver. He turned and embraced Saima, kissing the top of her head.

  ‘I have to do this,’ he said. ‘If I don’t, the image of that baby girl will haunt me for ever.’

  THIRTEEN

  ALI KAMRAN HAD pulled up outside the Bradford Hotel.

  His phone vibrated in his hand, Billy Musa’s name flashing on his screen. It might have only been ten o’clock but it was Billy’s eighth call of the morning. Like the previous seven, Ali allowed it to ring out. It wasn’t a call he wanted to answer with guests in his taxi.

  The three young women sitting in the back of his cab were a traf
fic light of extravagant Asian suits: yellow, red and green, glittering with silver sequins. The fabric of their outfits rustled as they moved. They had asked Ali to wait at the hotel until the coach transporting the groom and his guests arrived. They were noisy, skittishly checking their jewellery and their make-up and giggling incessantly. One of them kept spraying perfume on her neck, the smell of citrus causing the throb in Ali’s head to worsen.

  Hood up as usual, Ali was safe from the gaze of his passengers. But the rear-view mirror gave him the opportunity to stare freely. The girl in the middle was fair for an Asian, her skin smooth and even like Tara’s.

  Tara.

  Tara had had fair skin too. Beautiful.

  The sight of rich, dark blood splattering Tara’s pale face had forced Ali to crouch close to her. For the briefest of moments he had been mesmerized, reaching out his gloved hand to touch her, even though he knew he shouldn’t stay.

  The girls broke into laughter, high-pitched and boisterous, interrupting Ali’s thoughts. If he turned around, reached back, would he catch them off guard? Just the thought of wrapping his hands around one of their long, bare necks was enough to start the familiar refrain screaming inside his head.

  ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses, Ali’s face exploded!’

  He shook his head slightly and closed his eyes.

  ‘Aisha looked amazing, didn’t she? Amazing!’

  ‘I’ve never seen a bride look so perfect! Imran’s a lucky man!’

  As they carried on their chatter the doors to the main entrance of the hotel suddenly opened and dozens of girls in outfits of every colour of the rainbow spilled out on to the street.

  ‘Shit, let’s go, the boys must be close!’

  There was a moment of turbulence from the back seat as the girls squealed and exited the cab. One of them threw a twenty-pound note on to the passenger seat.

  Ali didn’t pull away.

  He forced himself to watch as the girls joined an exuberant mob of women blocking the hotel entrance, all of them waving as a Bentley arrived and a coach pulled up just behind it.

  As the groom’s side of the family disembarked and approached the bride’s entourage on the pavement, there was a brief melee as everyone scrambled for the best vantage point, wanting to secure a view of the groom as he emerged from the Bentley.

  Look at you. No father will ever give his daughter into this house!

  Why did you curse my home?

  Ali’s mother’s voice was never silent for long.

  He tugged at his hood. Beneath the mess of his skin, was he really so different to the groom in that Bentley?

  Ali hated the delirium generated by ethnic weddings. He knew he’d never have one of his own.

  The bride’s guests started cheering as the door of the Bentley opened and the groom stepped out, dressed in a Mughal-style sherwani, a long silk jacket buttoned up the middle, with matching trousers and a red turban, a feather protruding from the centre. He raised his hands like a king greeting his subjects as several women from his side of the family surrounded him like guards. They moved towards the bride’s guests, who barred the way, demanding money before they’d let him see his bride.

  Ali sighed. These guys were honouring every tradition.

  The groom removed a bulging wallet from his pocket, carefully selected what appeared to be a five-pound note and offered it to one of the bride’s female guests. This was greeted by loud jeering from the crowd.

  It was like watching a pantomime. Ali leaned forward, captivated in spite of himself.

  Two women – the groom’s sisters, he assumed – stepped forward, meaty arms folded to take over the tough negotiations. The crowd jostled for a better view and, right on cue, the dohl players appeared, pounding the ends of their cylindrical drums, keeping up a frenetic beat.

  Ali had been unconsciously scratching at his hands. He felt the blood swell under his skin and a tackiness under his nails. He didn’t stop scratching.

  You will never get married, Ali.

  Mirrors will crack when you look at them.

  His mother had been so consumed with bitterness at her misfortune that instead of protecting Ali, she had mocked him at every opportunity. How was she to find him a bride when fair skin and good looks were priorities for any suitor in their community? It didn’t stop her trying. But even the girls she found from Pakistan, so desperate to come to England, rejected Ali. It was the worst of insults.

  As the groom made what looked like a final bid for his bride, Ali closed his window on the noise and pulled recklessly into the road. Another driver was forced to swerve and angrily blasted his horn. The wedding party were momentarily distracted, eyes darting his way.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ he hissed, thoughts turning to tomorrow night. After almost twelve months of careful planning, tomorrow was the big night. Riz and Billy wouldn’t know what’d hit them until it was all too late. Their reign over Bradford was nearing the end.

  Ali was going to take what he deserved.

  FOURTEEN

  AT NINE A.M. Harry was sitting at his desk in the spare bedroom with his laptop open and Tara’s diary in his hands. The photograph he had taken from her house was on the desk, Tara’s smiling face looking up at him.

  With Saima and Aaron at a mother–baby playgroup, Harry had the house to himself. He’d promised Saima that he would use the time to sleep, but there was no way he could.

  Tara’s diary was written almost entirely in Punjabi, so Harry’s progress was slow; he hadn’t used the language in years. Relief spread through him when he found the occasional word in English. There were dozens of references to ‘Olivia and Lexi Goodwin’, long passages of Punjabi broken up by English names that couldn’t be translated.

  There was also a table, written entirely in English, under the heading: ‘Why do girls go missing in Bradford?’ Harry decided to start there.

  The table was made up of four columns: mother’s name and date of birth; daughter’s name and date of birth; daughter’s age when she went missing; and the date she went missing. There was an entry in the final column every year from 2007 to 2010, then nothing until the entry for Olivia Goodwin, where there was a question mark in place of a date.

  Missing?

  At the back of Tara’s diary was a list of names: Billy, Riz, Omar, Ali and then a dash next to which she had written, ‘Boss?’

  An anxious feeling in the pit of Harry’s stomach caused it to spasm. He grabbed a handful of fennel seeds from a container he kept on the desk and shoved them into his mouth, an Indian herbal remedy his mother had given him as a child when exams had brought on a similar reaction.

  Harry slipped a pair of headphones on and pulled up a playlist of heavy rock music on his phone to drown out the noise of other thoughts. He’d start with the names of the mothers and daughters – any prior convictions might help point him in the right direction.

  It was the word ‘missing’ that had caught Harry’s attention. The woman on the phone had promised, Something terrible is going to happen in Bradford. Was this notebook going to lead him to that terrible something?

  While he waited for his searches on the police database to load, Harry removed his headphones and phoned one of his DCs for details of the coroner’s report on Tara. It had been prioritized and completed yesterday evening, giving a probable time of death as Saturday night. No signs of sexual assault.

  For that last piece of news, at least, he was grateful.

  Harry asked the DC to raise an urgent enquiry with the Department for Work and Pensions and Bradford City Council to find out about any benefits claimed or registered addresses for the mothers and daughters listed in Tara’s diary. He told the DC to stress it was of utmost importance; a potential danger to life. If Harry was lucky, the DWP would come through with the information before the end of the day.

  A couple of hours later, Harry was finished with the diary. He powered down the computer, his stomach cramping again.

  All the mothers on the list had l
ived in Bradford at some stage and all of them had misdemeanours for antisocial behaviour. Nothing new there.

  Two had turned up dead, several years after the date in the ‘daughter missing’ column, in the Greater London area; one was found near the River Thames, the other in a known drug slum in Croydon.

  No witnesses in either instance.

  As isolated cases, they were not remarkable. Heroin overdose was not an unusual cause of death for women like these.

  The files had been transferred down the line, eventually hitting Bradford CID – their last-known fixed abode.

  Details on their children did not feature in the files. At first Harry thought it a glaring anomaly, but then he realized that by the time the women’s bodies had been found, their children would have been over sixteen and legally adults, so they would not have been classified ‘at risk’.

  Harry turned off the lamp and closed his eyes. A picture was forming in his head, one he didn’t like.

  The fact that all the mothers on Tara’s list had minor convictions was not in itself remarkable. That two had died of a drug overdose was, again, not unusual. But as he verified the dates of birth Tara had recorded in her diary, Harry was struck by something else the women on that list had in common: the daughters were all eleven when they went missing, and the mothers were twenty-six or thereabouts, having given birth when they were still in their teens. A sinister pattern was beginning to emerge.

  Harry picked up the picture of Tara.

  What were you doing?

  For Tara to have stumbled on this, it had to have been connected to Ronnie’s underworld activities. Drugs were bad enough, but this felt like something even worse. Harry didn’t like it one bit.

  The phone rang.

  His DC had addresses for the women listed, going back ten years. Lexi Goodwin, the only mother with no missing date next to her daughter’s name, had told the DWP she was moving to London a week ago. She hadn’t supplied a forwarding address.

  Her previous address was on the Thorpe Edge estate, notoriously bleak even by Bradford’s standards.