Corrupt Bodies by Peter Everett

Author:Peter Everett [Peter Everett and Kris Hollington]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785785535
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2019-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, with still no sign of Barry Lewis or Tina Beechook, Wendy and I were spending the morning shopping. We’d just settled down for lunch when my pager went off. A squad car arrived minutes later, and I was whisked back to the mortuary, which was besieged by press and public alike, with more people arriving by the second. A couple of constables, on the verge of being overwhelmed, were trying to hold the growing mob back. Inside, on the mortuary table, was a large suitcase. One didn’t need to be a detective to guess what was inside.

Cliff was already there, looking troubled. I asked him what was wrong. ‘We tried to keep it secret, so we put the suitcase in a box and I walked with it to the van on my own. No one saw but by the time I got here, the press had somehow found out and I was snapped walking in with it. I think I’m going to be on the front pages tomorrow.’ He was quite correct, as it turned out.

Dougie’s team had found out from a neighbour that Tina’s mother was holding another neighbour’s keys while she was away on holiday. Mirella’s flat had already been searched and nothing suspicious had been found, but when police searched the neighbour’s flat, they found a suitcase under the bed. Tina’s body was hidden inside, along with a length of electrical cord, taken from Mirella’s vacuum cleaner. Mirella and her husband, Ravi, 30, were taken into custody. As they were led away from their flat, neighbours crowded their windows and balconies, jeering racist abuse.

To Scotland Yard’s great embarrassment, they belatedly discovered that six years earlier Mirella had spent time in Broadmoor, after attempting to poison her first baby. This child, Sabrina, had been taken into care.

Gradually, with the help of a Harley Street psychiatrist, Dr Raghunandan Gaind, Dougie pieced the story together. Dr Gaind’s questions to Mirella revealed her to be ‘vulnerable, obsessional, rigid and stubborn’. She talked about black magic and voodoo, claiming that scratches on her body had been caused by ‘the evil eye’ and that Ravi’s ex-girlfriend had put a spell on her. Haunted by voices telling her to sacrifice the children, Mirella had taken both Tina and Stacey to Southwark Park. After sending Tina away to play, she strangled Stacey and hid her body under some leaves. She then took Tina home, stopping off on the way to buy some sweets. Tina kept asking where Stacey was, and when they arrived back at their flat Mirella Beechook strangled Tina with the electrical flex.

Mirella was charged with two counts of murder and remanded to stand trial. A devastated Ravi, who didn’t know about his wife’s past, and who seemed to be in genuine shock, was released, albeit under police protection, and had to move to another part of the UK for his own safety.

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