Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Why? Has something happened to her?’

  ‘I’m just making some general inquiries, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, if it’s who I think you’re talking about, then yes. I don’t know what her name is but she comes in here quite often. She’s not missing, is she?’

  ‘She’s deceased, as a matter of fact.’

  The young woman nodded, almost as if that was what she had been expecting to hear. Jerry was surprised that she didn’t ask when Samira had died, or how.

  ‘It’s her coat I’m interested in,’ he told her.

  ‘Her coat?’

  ‘Do you have any record of where it came from? Who brought it in?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would help us with our inquiries, Miss, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t usually ask for names and addresses when people bring in donations. I happen to know who brought that particular coat in, though, because he makes cash donations, too, and I have to keep a record of those for tax. It was Mr Stebbings. His wife died about two months ago and he donated a whole heap of her clothes.’

  ‘Do you have his address?’

  The young woman put down the banknotes that she was holding and took out a black accounts ledger from a shelf underneath the counter, every page stuffed with receipts. Her tightly pursed lips gave Jerry the impression that she felt she was doing him an enormous favour.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘He last made a cash donation on August the twenty-fifth. He makes regular donations because his son had cerebral palsy. That’s why this shop’s called Little Helpers.’

  ‘Because it helps kids, you mean?’

  ‘No. It’s because cerebral palsy used to be called “Little’s Disease” after the man who first studied it, William Little.’

  ‘Well, well. You learn something every day. Are you going to give me Mr Stebbings’ address?’

  ‘Here. Number fifteen, Furzehill Drive.’

  ‘Thanks. And can I have your name, please?’

  ‘Why do you need my name?’

  ‘In case I have to explain to Mr Stebbings who gave me his address, and for my report.’

  ‘Sophie – Sophie Marshall. Is that your car outside? You’ve just got a ticket.’

  9

  Evie was in the kitchen chopping up onions when David came home.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said.

  David came into the kitchen and stared at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What does it look like?’

  Evie put down her knife. ‘David, what’s wrong? You sounded so strange on the phone. Has something upset you? Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing is wrong, Evie. Nothing at all, except you.’

  Without saying anything else, David walked out of the kitchen and into the living-room. He picked up the remote control and switched on the television, but almost immediately he switched it off again and threw the remote control across the room, so that it clattered into the beige tiled fireplace.

  Evie came into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘David, what on earth’s the matter with you?’

  ‘You’re always bloody nagging, that’s what’s the matter with him. You think you’ve got him under your thumb, but that’s where you’re mistaken, my girl. That’s where you’re very much mistaken.’

  ‘“Him”?’ said Evie. ‘Who’s “him”? I’m talking about you.’

  ‘There you are!’ David retorted. ‘That’s how much you don’t care about him! Pretending you don’t even know who he is! Well, I think it’s time to put an end to your little game, don’t you? You should never have married him in the first place! I told him! Didn’t I tell him? But oh no, you played your tricks and he believed you! But now we can put an end to all that!’

  David stalked across to Evie and loomed over her. At first she stood her ground, but his eyes were so glassy and his grin was so deranged that she took a step back, and then another.

  ‘David, have you been smoking something? I don’t know what’s wrong with you but I’m calling the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him, Evie. Not now, anyway. All that was ever wrong with him was you. But now that’s all going to change! Oh, yes!’

  David seized both of her arms and shoved her back against the door-frame, so that she banged her head hard.

  ‘David!’ she screamed at him, but he shoved her again, and then again, until she managed to twist herself around and wrench her arms free. ‘What are you doing? Have you gone mad?’

  David didn’t answer but tried to grab her again, ripping the sleeve of her blouse. She smacked his face, hard, and then turned around and tried to escape into the kitchen. Before she could slam the kitchen door shut, though, David collided with it and flung it wide open.

  ‘You trapped him, didn’t you?’ he screeched at her, as she dodged around the kitchen table. His voice was unnervingly high, like a furious woman. ‘You trapped him and then you kept him under your thumb, you selfish little bitch!’

  Evie feinted to her right, but when David came around the table towards her, she ducked to her left. She had almost made it to the door when she caught her foot against the leg of one of the kitchen chairs, and stumbled. David caught up with her and gripped both of her shoulders before wrapping his left arm around her neck, almost choking her.

  ‘David!’ she gasped, trying to pull his arm away. ‘David, for God’s sake!’

  But David pulled her even closer, until she was squeaking for breath. Then he reached across to the wooden board where she had been chopping onions and picked up the five-inch knife that she had been using. He twisted her around and then he stabbed her in the lower back, as hard as he could. The point of the knife crunched into the disc between two of her lumbar vertebrae and severed her spinal cord. She let out a muffled whinny and her knees gave way, although David kept his arm around her neck so tightly that she didn’t collapse.

  ‘You thought he was spineless, did you?’ David hissed in her ear, and he sounded even more like a woman than he had before. ‘You thought you were the only one with a backbone, did you? We can see about that, can’t we? We can certainly see about that!’

  With that, he started to tug out the knife, although it was lodged so tightly in her spine that he had to wrestle it from side to side before it came free. Evie said nothing. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t feel her legs at all. She could only think that she was dreaming this, and it wasn’t happening. Any second now she would be back chopping onions for the beef casserole that she had been making for their supper. Any second now she would hear David’s key in the door and it would be David as he always was, cheerful and resilient, in spite of their money worries.

  But David kept his choke-hold on her, and now she could feel him breathing harshly into her hair. He tensed, and then he stabbed her again, just as hard as he had the first time, but in the middle of her back this time. She flinched, and murmured, but she was in shock now, and close to blacking out.

  ‘Girls like you, they think they can get away with anything,’ said David. ‘They think that they can treat their husbands any way they like – as if they’re something unpleasant that they’ve trodden in. It’s time girls like you were taught a lesson, that’s all I can say.’

  He pulled out the knife and then he stabbed her yet again, between the shoulder-blades. By now the back of her pale pink gingham dress was soaked in blood, and she was sagging so much that David was finding it hard to keep her upright. He stabbed her one last time in the back of the neck, and then he lowered her lifeless body onto the kitchen floor. Their tortoiseshell cat Maggie approached her and stared at her in bewilderment, and then looked up at David as if she were saying, What have you done?

  David laid the bloody knife back on the chopping-board. His heart was beating hard but he felt truly vindicated now, as if a long-standing score had been settled. He left Evie lying where she was and went to the sink to wash his hands. Then, shaking the drops off them, he went through to the bedroom and sat down on the end of
the bed, staring at himself in the wardrobe mirror.

  You’ve wanted to punish Evie for so long, and now you’ve managed it. Justice has been done! She took him away from you even though you had nobody else to take care of you. When did she ever once think about you, and how your heart would be broken?

  He stood up and went so close to the mirror that the tip of his nose was almost touching it. He couldn’t believe how much he looked like his mother. Even his mouth was turned down, in the way that her mouth always was, as if she disapproved of everything. And he had that impenetrable look in her eyes, just like the look she had, as if she were hiding how much she hated the world and everybody in it.

  He would have to work out how he was going to get rid of Evie’s body, but he didn’t want to think about it now. After that surge of triumph, he was beginning to feel deeply tired, both physically and emotionally. It had been a long and difficult day, and Evie had struggled hard. Stabbing her in the spine hadn’t been easy, either: he had sprained his wrist.

  He shrugged off his corduroy jacket. There was blood on the sleeves, which he would have to wash off himself, because he couldn’t take it to a dry-cleaners. How could he possibly explain it? Oh, I was butchering a pig, as you do when you’re wearing your best corduroy jacket.

  Next, he reached behind him to pull the black sweater over his head, but as soon as he had grasped the back of the collar, he stopped, and let it go again. I don’t want to take this off yet. This makes me feel more secure. It reminds me so much of my mother. She used to wear it, and it helps me to understand her. It’s almost as if she’s here, with me, still alive, and with Evie gone, who else have I got?

  David sat down on the bed again and took off his shoes and socks, followed by his trousers and his boxer shorts. Then he carefully lay down on the white candlewick bedspread, his knees drawn up in a foetal position, and closed his eyes.

  He didn’t fall asleep, but he continued to lie there, for hour after hour, with his eyes still closed. He was pretending to be dead. Being dead meant that he was no longer responsible for anything.

  Maggie came to the bedroom door and mewed because she was hungry, but all he could think was: Go away. I can’t hear you. I’m deaf to the world. I’m dead.

  10

  Before the media conference at noon, Jerry and Jamila briefed DI Saunders on what little progress they had made so far.

  DI Saunders stood staring out of the window at the station car park two floors below and Jerry wasn’t even sure that he was listening to them.

  After a while, though, he turned around and said, ‘It could have been some kind of an allergy.’

  ‘You mean the fibres in her skin?’ Jerry asked him.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I? But I can’t see what those fibres have got to do with her having concentrated sulphuric acid poured over her face.’

  ‘The only prints on the acid bottle were hers, guv,’ said Jerry. ‘It could have been that the fibres were hurting her more than she could bear, and she wanted to end it all.’

  ‘Jerry – just because the only prints on the acid bottle were hers, that doesn’t mean that nobody else handled it. And if she couldn’t stand pain, why would she choose the most painful possible way of killing herself? She’d take an overdose, wouldn’t she, or jump in front of a train? It’s only a five-minute walk to Streatham Common station.’

  ‘I seriously don’t think it was an honour killing, sir,’ said Jamila.

  ‘You don’t? Why?’

  ‘Because it seems that she was happy to be marrying the man that her parents had chosen for her, and because her mother is so deeply distressed about her dying. The father, of course, is still in Peshawar, but apparently he will be back before the weekend, and we can interview him then.’

  ‘I’ve found out where her coat came from,’ said Jerry. ‘It was donated to a charity shop opposite the Granada and Samira bought it from there. I’ll be going round this afternoon to talk to the fellow who donated it.’

  ‘Quite honestly, I don’t know what the point of that is,’ said DI Saunders.

  ‘The fibres embedded in her skin were grey, and her coat was grey. I’m just checking to see if there’s any connection.’

  ‘Jerry – she died because acid was poured over her face. Perhaps it was self-inflicted but as I say, there doesn’t seem to be any logical motive for her killing herself. There was no suicide note, and no indication that she was depressed. Everything points to an honour killing.’

  ‘We know that less than sixty per cent of suicides leave any kind of note, guv,’ said Jerry. ‘And her uncle said that the last time he saw her, after she had finished at the restaurant, she was very tired and seemed to be distant. That was the word he used – “distant”.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d knocked back a few sneaky drinks while she was working,’ said DI Saunders.

  ‘She was a Muslim, sir,’ put in Jamila. ‘Muslims don’t drink alcohol.’

  ‘Oh, they say they don’t,’ said DI Saunders. ‘I went to a police conference in Dubai last year and if some of those Arab officers weren’t drinking whisky then there must be some special soft drink there with the same label as Johnnie Walker.’

  ‘Well, whatever; Dr Fuller has sent a skin sample to Lambeth Road for forensic tests,’ Jerry told him.

  ‘All right,’ said DI Saunders. ‘But don’t spend too long chasing this coat. I never heard of anybody being driven to kill themselves by a coat before. And where is it, anyway, this coat? Didn’t you say it went missing?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. At the moment I’m working on the possibility that one of Samira’s friends or relatives came around while we were there and took it.’

  DI Saunders raised one sceptical black eyebrow and it looked like a crow suddenly taking off from a telegraph wire.

  ‘Well, I don’t know why they took it, do I?’ said Jerry. ‘Maybe they wanted it for sentimental reasons, like a souvenir. Or maybe Samira had promised to give it to them.’

  ‘I think you’re wasting your time, Jerry,’ said DI Saunders. ‘You’d be far better employed trying to find out which of the victim’s relatives did it, or who they paid to do it.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to suggest at this media conference?’ asked Jamila. ‘If so, I think that you’ll be treading on very thin ice, racially speaking.’

  ‘I’m simply going to say that one of our lines of inquiry is the possibility that it was an honour killing. There’s no point in pretending that it couldn’t have been, and if there’s any witnesses out there who can tip us off about who might have done it, they need to know what we’re looking for. We’ll be offering the usual reward for any information leading to a conviction.’

  ‘The Pakistani community here in Tooting is very proud and very tight-knit,’ said Jamila. ‘At the moment we have excellent relations with them. I don’t want us to put their backs up, that’s all. There’s a word in Punjabi which roughly translates as omertà, or keeping schtum. We don’t want that.’

  At that moment there was a knock at the office door. It was Sergeant Bristow from the desk downstairs, a thin, morose man with large ears and a comb-over. He was always helpful but he had no sense of humour at all. Jerry always thought he looked as if he ought to be the manager of a shoe-shop.

  ‘DC Pardoe? Ah – there you are. You asked me to tell you when that lad who got himself stuck in that charity clothes box was going to be questioned. It’ll be about one-thirty, in interview room two. DC Willis will be doing the honours.’

  ‘Great, sarge, thanks,’ said Jerry.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ asked DI Saunders. ‘It sounds like you’ve got some bee in your bonnet about second-hand clothes.’

  ‘No, sir – it’s not connected with the coat. It’s a long-running case I’ve been working on with DI French, on and off. This Lithuanian geezer, Jokubas Liepa, he’s been operating a racket in stolen charity donations for over a year now, but he’s a bugger to nail down. People leave bags of clothes and sh
oes and toys and stuff outside their front doors for the charities to come around and collect, but Liepa sends a couple of vans round at the crack of dawn and picks them all up before the charities can get there.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it was worth the effort, would you?’ said DI Saunders.

  ‘What? No, you’ve got to be joking! It’s more than worth the effort. It’s worth thousands – tens of thousands! Liepa sends most of the clothes off to Lithuania, where they either get cleaned and restructured and modernised, or else they get ripped apart and re-spun into new fabric. Shoddy, they call that.’

  ‘Oh well, good luck with that,’ said DI Saunders. He checked his Rolex and then said, ‘Time for our media briefing. Let’s make it a brief briefing, shall we? And I don’t think we’ll mention the fibres in the victim’s skin, not until we get a full report from forensics. And I don’t think we’ll mention the coat, either.’

  ‘If it appears on the media that we’re looking for it, guv, there’s every chance that someone might come forward and let us know what’s happened to it.’

  ‘Yes, and there’s every chance that some reporter will ask us why we’re looking for it, and we won’t be able to give them a coherent answer. Jerry – I want focus on this case, and the focus as far as I see it is on an honour killing. Why do you think we sent DS Patel down here? I know we have to be thorough, but everything else is just a diversion.’

  ‘Sir – I wasn’t necessarily sent down here to prove that this was an honour killing,’ said Jamila. ‘I was sent down here because I have the experience and the ethnic background to recognise if it really was an honour killing or not. At this stage of our investigation, like I said, I have considerable doubts that it was. If she was happy about her arranged marriage, what was the motive?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ said DI Saunders. ‘Maybe it wasn’t her own family that killed her – maybe it was somebody acting on behalf of her intended husband’s family. Maybe they weren’t happy about him marrying her. Or maybe it was somebody acting on behalf of another family who wanted their daughter to marry him. His family are pretty wealthy, aren’t they? That would have made him quite a catch for a girl who lives in a terraced house in Tooting.’