Unseen Evil

by Liz Mistry

  First Published in 2019

  By MB Publications

  Copyright © Liz Mistry

  Liz Mistry Has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual person living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

  A CIP Catalogue Record for this book is available from the British Library

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency

  ISBN

  Print 978- 1- 9161835-1-3

  Also Available in her DI Gus McGuire series are:

  Unquiet Souls

  Uncoiled Lies

  Untainted Blood

  Uncommon Cruelty

  Unspoken Truths

  Also coming soon is the first in a new series featuring DS Nikki Parekh Last Request

  Praise for Liz Mistry

  ‘I have great admiration for Mistry’s skill, this is one of the best crime thrillers I’ve read in ages.’

  ‘Absolutely fantastic read.’

  ‘Simply unputdownable.’

  ‘Devoured in two days.’

  Unseen Evil

  By

  Liz Mistry

  Nilesh, Ravi, Kasi, and Jimi,

  as always you have my back and I love you!

  PROLOGUE

  SUMMER 2018

  SUNDAY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  THURSDAY

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  FRIDAY

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  SATURDAY

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  March 2018

  The Zodiac Club

  W e had to have a headquarters. Somewhere we could meet. Somewhere we wouldn’t be seen and just by luck, while I was exploring, I found it. An old grocer’s store on a side road. No For Sale sign, no indication anyone was interested in it… Nothing. It was easy to get in.

  The front of the property faced a busy side street, but the windows were covered by a metal shutter with Bradford City spray painted on in black. Some smart-ass had crossed out the ‘C’ of City with a black marker and replaced it with a ‘T’. How droll. I knew there was no way in from the front, so I wandered around the back. It looked promising, so I waited until dark and came back. Sure enough, the back of the shop had an enclosed yard with a sturdy door which was hanging off its hinges. But, more importantly, the properties behind it were also lying empty… apart from the druggies and tramps that occupied them by night. It was easy to get the gate fixed and I knew just the person to help me. A sturdy lock and we were sorted. Our own private space.

  I love it. It’s well enough out of the way as to be discreet, but not too far out of the way as to be difficult to get to. The headquarters we call it… HQ. Nobody sees us coming and going because we’re invisible. Today’s important. Today is the day we extend our manifesto… make more plans… finalise things.

  ‘Neck it! Neck it! Neck it!’

  Their chants are like hooligans at a football match as they loll about on the carpet, sprawled over the cushions, intent on getting pissed. Leo, dark eyes all sparkly, cheeks flushed, hands clapping in time with the chants, is the most drunk. Pisces is a little less so… nervous, maybe? Picking those oozing pussy spots and licking cracked lips – yuk, enough to make me want to barf, but I cover it up… for now. Instead, I move my phone, taking in our handiwork… all this will go down in history… saved for posterity. I smile a little. I remember when I used to muddle that word with posterior… but that was a long time ago.

  The items pinned to the wall document the progress we’ve made. A timeline of charts, newspaper clippings, photos… Each one evidence. Each one a piece of the plan. Ambling round the room I zoom in on my favourites.

  First there’s the list:

  Sumaira Begum

  Shannon Oyando

  Billy Clark-Thompson

  Becky Easton

  Imran Sajid

  Suki Singh

  It’s so satisfying to see them all crossed out. Next there’s the first lot of evidence… the photos. Sumaira Begum, when she found the bacon in her locker… that was brilliant. She was hysterical… crying and yelling as if someone was stuffing the rasher down her throat. It served her right telling Ms Copley about me smoking in the girls’ toilets. The one of Shannon Oyando with her tits out – ’cept they weren’t really hers – we’d photoshopped over hers, printed them out, and stuck them up in the lads’ toilets.

  The other two are still necking the voddie… Leo’s really flushed now and Pisces, all bleeding pox and nervous eyes, is getting there too. I’ll call the meeting to order in a bit, but for now, I record the last few items… the newspaper clippings… Fame! I love the way we’ve moved on… the way we’ve developed. Progress… you can’t whack it.

  November 2017

  Local Teacher Convicted of Grooming Students

  Craig Borthwick, a teacher at a local secondary school, pictured here entering court, today received a ten-year sentence after images showing him booking into a low budget hotel with a fourteen-year-old stude
nt were anonymously uploaded to the Internet.

  We did that! We made that happen. That snooty little bitch got what she deserved when that picture of her snogging Mr Borthwick went viral. That taught her. The way she dumped Leo, like a sack of hot potatoes, all the time on her phone sexting that dirty old perv. Served her right… served him right too.

  January 2018

  An unnamed Bradford teenager has been found dead in his bedroom in a suspected suicide. The fifteen-year-old’s parents claim their son was being bullied on social media… a police investigation is ongoing.

  Stupid bloody Billy Clark-Tosser. Couldn’t take it. Facebook shut his page down… it was so funny. We all got the dick pics I sent from his Facebook page. That taught him to make sure he’d logged out… couldn’t believe that he did that though… topped himself… what sort of sick shit is that?

  I end the recording and flop down on the cushions between the other two and grab the bottle. No point in letting them get too rat arsed. This is our tenth meeting and today’s the day we’ll up the stakes. Right at the start, I gave us all code names. I’m Zodiac, of course. The Zodiac Killer, one of the world’s most famous killers, but, more importantly, one of the few who has never been identified. I chose well.

  Then there’s Leo after Nathan Leopold Jr. Poor little rich kid, working as a team with his mate and thinking he could escape justice… how did that work out, Leo? My Leo doesn’t have the same mental capacity but, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I admit I had to push it a bit with Pisces, but I got there in the end. Pisces equals fish; Albert Fish, a cannibal and grotesque serial killer. My Pisces doesn’t carry the same panache, but again, it’s only a name. It makes me laugh that they don’t get it, though, the joke’s on them… just like I planned. The joke will always be on them.

  I look at them and wait. That’s my strategy… let one of them take the lead for now. If either opens up the subject, it’ll be easier. They don’t get it… neither of them. That’s why I chose these two… gormless… impressionable… the exact opposite from me because I do want to make an impression.

  Pisces keeps looking at the floor, head bowed, leg jittering. I wish the idea of a shower was higher on Pisces’ list of priorities… that’s why the other kids are always teasing and taunting the dirty git. No one likes smelly kids with crappy clothes. I sidle a little further away, don’t want to catch anything, do I?

  The game was the easiest sell I had to make. Who doesn’t love a game, after all? The beauty of it is… it wasn’t my idea… or was it? Who knows? Will we ever know?

  All I’m saying, is that planting seeds is the easiest part, nurturing them? Now that’s hard. I want to press my fingernails into Pisces’ knee. Make the jittering stop. It’s getting on my nerves big time. I want to yell, ‘I’ve arranged everything, brought all the equipment, taken all the risks. What more do you want?’

  But, I don’t. I need to make this work. I need to play one of my blinders… one of my aces. Gotta keep the minions on-board… keep them in line. An image of that stupid game my mum used to watch springs to mind… The Weakest Link. No points for guessing who’s the weakest link here. Not rocket science, is it?

  I remember how it was when we upped the stakes last time and I take a sip of the vodka. Not enough to get me pissed, just enough to smooth my edges… and I remember.

  We sat down, the three of us. We were all excited, but I kept my excitement hidden as I handed the envelopes to Leo. We’d played the game before, but this time it was going to be different. This time we were moving up a level… Only they didn’t know it yet. ‘Lay them out.’

  Leo took a last swig of the fizzy plonk and handed the dregs to me. I passed it to Pisces. They’d already downed one bottle and were at that giddy phase where they’d do anything. I just needed to sow the seeds and let them take it from there. ‘You finish it. I’ve had loads already.’

  As Pisces downed the last mouthful, Leo made a big show of shuffling the envelopes before laying them in a circle with just a little space between each one.

  Arms spread, Leo grinned, all lopsided and stupid. ‘Ta dah’… and promptly burped, which of course set the two of them off giggling again. Give me strength!

  There were five tonight. Five names… They’d chosen them, not me, but they didn’t get that. They were so willing to let things blur.

  ‘Leeeeet’s get this party started.’ Pisces sang out of tune and out of rhythm… Story of their lives really… and placed the empty bottle in the middle of the circle.

  ‘Go on then, Leo. Your turn to spin.’ Pisces leant forward, legs crossed, keen to discover who it would be.

  Leo looked to me as if asking permission and I nodded. ‘Go on, your turn. Make it a good one.’

  Pisces, clearly three too many, started to chant, ‘Spin it! Spin it! Spin it!’

  The bottle spun and ended up dead between two envelopes. ‘Oh, let me do it again. I didn’t spin it hard enough.’

  Again, with the, ‘Spin it! Spin it! Spin it!’

  Didn’t matter to me how many times they spun it as long as, by the end of it, we had a name… and we did.

  Still grinning, I look at them. Leo’s buzzing, but Pisces looks all pukey and scared.

  ‘Don’t think we should do this anymore.’ Pisces picks at the craters again, leg going nineteen to the dozen.

  For fuck’s sake! Time for a little brain mess!

  ‘You came up with this idea. You told us how much you needed to do this. It was your idea… surely you don’t regret it, do you? I mean you got what you wanted. Remember you wrote it down. You spun the bottle and it landed right there… you chose it. You made all the arrangements; all we did was be your friends…’ I don’t look at either of them. Keep my head angled down at the floor, don’t want them to see the rage. I need to play this tight.

  ‘Wasn’t my idea… it wasn’t!’

  I look up, straight at Pisces. ‘Well it sure as hell wasn’t mine or Leo’s. You wanted to punish them. You said so. That right, Leo?’

  Always up for a bit of bullying, Leo grins. ‘Yip. You can’t wiggle out of it now.’

  I love the way Pisces’ head jerks back, like Leo’s landed a punch or something. ‘Didn’t want him to die though.’

  I snort. ‘Yeah right, after all he did to you? Billy was a knob. And he was always picking on you.’

  Leo chips in, ‘Yeah, Pisces, he was. Billy was a dick to you… and to everyone else too.’

  Still with the picking, slender fingers, scraping over little smears of blood, linking up the spots like a kid’s dot to dot.

  ‘What if someone else dies? What if it happens again?’

  Leo glances at me, wanting to curry favour, be my bestie and in a gruff, I’m the big I am voice says, ‘Well, maybe that’s what will happen. They deserve it. Look at the names. Think what they’ve done to us.’

  And simple as that, we’re sorted… the stakes are raised… Game on!

  SUMMER 2018

  SUNDAY

  CHAPTER 1

  G us rolled onto his back and stretched, enjoying the release of tension throughout his body. One of the many bonuses of being in a steady relationship was making love to the accompaniment of tweeting birds as the sun rose, followed by the prospect of a mug of fresh coffee… and time with Patti. Despite the early hour, the oppressive heat of the last few weeks was almost overwhelming. Even with the windows open, not a single breath of air wafted the curtains. The fan, whirring at the bottom of the bed, was the only reprieve from the blanket of heat that pressed down on him. Sprawled in bed, a thin cotton sheet pulled up to his waist and with the smell of their lovemaking still in the air, Gus’ body tingled with a soft post-coital glow.

  Through the open bedroom door, the sounds of her pottering about downstairs, talking to Bingo, and singing along to the radio made him smile. Patti was the worst singer imaginable – completely tone deaf, yet she was addicted to Karaoke. Gus loved watching her as she belted out classics like, ‘I Will Survive’,
with more enthusiasm than skill. The contrast with her normal reserved, dependable, head teacher image was only one of the many things he was growing to love about her. Hell, there it was; the ‘L’ word. He expelled a long low breath. Why would someone like her want to be with someone like me? Gus did what he always did and shoved it away, ignoring the persistent thought that if Alice were around, she’d tell him to grow a pair and tell Patti how he felt, but he wasn’t ready for that… not yet.

  Positioning a pillow more comfortably behind his back, he sighed. He missed his detective sergeant’s sass, her irreverent, bouncy, say-it-as-it-is attitude and, deep down, he acknowledged that the Alice he once knew, may be gone forever. Last time he’d seen her she’d looked…decimated… yep, that was the best way to describe her… decimated and damaged, but what had been worse was the emptiness in her eyes – as if all her vitality had been stripped from her soul, leaving a black hole in its place. With an effort he pushed the maudlin thoughts from his mind; those were best explored from the safety of his psychiatrist’s couch.

  The smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted upstairs accompanied by another aroma – croissants? Freshly warmed-up croissants? Oh my God! How much more indulgence could one man take on his day off? A whirlwind of white fur tornadoed through the door and dived onto the bed, all wagging tail and excited yelps, landing just south of Gus’ groin. As he moved Bingo to a less dangerous position, Patti, wearing one of his old T-shirts, walked in, carrying a tray. Heading straight for Gus, she held it under his nose, just long enough for him to snatch a croissant and with a mischievous grin on her face she said, ‘Miss me?’

  Gus snorted through a mouthful of croissant. ‘Didn’t miss your singing. Could hear it all the way up the damn stairs. Surprised the windows are still intact. Justin Bieber would kill you if he heard the way you murdered that.’

  Patti laughed. ‘You’re just jealous… and it wasn’t bloody Bieber anyway, it was Paloma Faith’s ‘Make Your Own Kind of Music’.’