Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  He paused, and shrugged, and then he said, ‘There’s endless possible motives for an honour killing, DS Patel. Maybe she had a boyfriend here in Tooting who was jealous about her getting hitched to some fellow in Pakistan and decided to mess up her looks. Maybe that was all he intended to do, but it all went too far, and she died.’

  ‘You have a very vivid imagination, sir,’ said Jamila.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t. The things that people do to each other, DS Patel, and the reasons why they do them, they’re beyond anybody’s imagination, mine included. Why do you think I have a reputation for being such a miserable git?’

  Jerry thought, Blimey, he actually knows that he’s a miserable git, and accepts it. There’s no answer to that.

  *

  As DI Saunders had demanded, the media briefing was very brief indeed. Only five journalists had turned up: a middle-aged reporter from the Wandsworth Guardian with a blocked-up nose and a hacking cough and two stringers from the Daily Mail and the Sun, as well as a young woman from Nawa i Jang, the Pakistani weekly, and a bored-looking man in an anorak from BBC-TV London News.

  ‘Are you looking for anybody in connection with Samira Wazir’s death?’ asked the stringer from the Mail. ‘Like, was it an honour killing?’

  ‘We’re exploring every avenue,’ said DI Saunders. ‘That includes the possibility that it was an honour killing, or a deliberate assault that may have had more serious consequences than the perpetrator intended.’

  ‘Is it conceivable that it was suicide?’ asked the young woman from Nawa i Jang.

  ‘As I say, we’re keeping an open mind,’ DI Saunders told her. ‘We’re still waiting for the results of some further forensic tests, and these may take several weeks.’

  ‘Were there any signs of a sexual assault?’ asked the stringer from the Sun.

  ‘Not so far,’ said DI Saunders. ‘Her mother claimed that she was a virgin, but then it’s highly unlikely that she would have confided in her mother about losing her virginity, isn’t it?’

  The young woman from Nawa i Jang put up her hand. ‘Is it possible that it was a racially motivated attack? There has been some tension in Tooting lately between different ethnic groups. That black boy who was stabbed last week at Tooting Broadway station, and that fire at the Svaadisht Khaana restaurant?’

  ‘I really can’t say,’ said DI Saunders. ‘All I know is that the Wazir family seem to be well integrated into the local community and they’ve received no threats that I’m aware of.’

  He paused and looked around. ‘Is that all? This is an ongoing investigation and we’re appealing for anybody who has any information to get in touch with us, no matter how inconsequential that information might seem to be. Thank you, and good afternoon.’

  ‘Did Ms Wazir have any history of mental illness?’ asked the reporter from the Wandsworth Guardian.

  ‘Mental illness? Not that we’re aware of.’

  ‘It’s just that I found details on Google about a similar case in 2010. A nineteen-year-old Pakistani girl in Balham poured petrol over her head and set fire to herself. She survived, even though she was severely disfigured, but she told her doctors that she had wanted to destroy her face. She said that she had been possessed by an evil female spirit called Pichal Peri, and that her face was changing so that she was beginning to look like this Pichal Peri, with staring eyes and sharp teeth. Apparently this belief in possession is quite common in Pakistan. Even quite educated people in the cities will blame mental instability on demonic possession.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that,’ said DI Saunders, without making any attempt to mask his impatience. ‘That gives us one more avenue to explore. Demonic possession. Terrific. I’ll see if I can get in touch with Father Karras.’

  11

  Jerry bought himself a cup of black coffee from the coffee machine before he went down to the interview room. The young man who had been trapped in the charity box was bent over the table with his forehead resting on his hands. DC Derek Willis was sitting opposite him, reading through the incident report, and moving his lips while he did so. A uniformed constable sat in the far corner with his arms folded, yawning from time to time.

  Derek Willis was a large overweight man in his early forties, with a short grey buzzcut and a roughly hewn head that resembled a half-finished granite sculpture. He was wearing a grey suit as tight as a sausage-skin and his neck bulged over his shirt collar. Jerry had worked with Derek on three or four cases, and while he wasn’t at all imaginative, he was thorough to the point of being obsessive. In fact his fellow officers called him ‘OCD Willis’.

  When Jerry drew out a chair, Derek dropped the incident report onto the table and said, ‘Ah, Pardoe. You know this young chap already, I gather.’

  ‘We’ve talked,’ said Jerry. ‘This is the first time I’ve met him face-to-face.’

  The young man looked up, too. His face was dead white and foxy-looking, and his hair stuck up. He wore a silver stud earring and he was covered in tattoos, all the way up to his neck. In appearance, he reminded Jerry of Sid Vicious, and he gave off the same air of rebellious vulnerability.

  ‘They got you out of there, then?’ said Jerry. ‘I would have let you stay there for a week or two, and just fed you on salt-and-vinegar crisps and corned-beef sandwiches.’

  ‘That ain’t funny,’ the young man retorted.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be. The only funny thing about it was you getting yourself stuck. I mean, that was hilarious.’

  ‘For the record, son, can you confirm your name?’ said Derek, although he had all of the young man’s personal details on the incident report right in front of him.

  ‘Billy. Billy Jenkins.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Number eight, Dewar House, Tooting Grove.’

  ‘How old are you, Billy?’

  ‘I was seventeen in June.’

  Jerry sipped his coffee, staring intently at Billy all the time. Then he said, ‘Didn’t you realise you were going to get stuck in that charity box? There’s even a warning notice on the outside, saying don’t attempt to climb inside.’

  Billy shrugged. He started scratching the back of his left hand, and then his skinny bare arm.

  ‘What’s the matter, Billy?’ asked Derek. ‘Got the itch, have you?’

  ‘I could do with some stuff, man. I’m feeling really pukish.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘What are you on? Crystal meth? Coke? Or just good old common-or-garden smack?’

  Billy looked at Jerry appealingly, and said, ‘Cheese, mostly. But anything. Otherwise I’m going to throw up, man, honest.’

  Cheese was a mixture of heroin and Benylin cough mixture. Jerry had seen a lot of it around lately, especially in schools. It was highly addictive, but it did tend to make its users vomit.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Derek. ‘I can call for a bucket if you really need it.’

  ‘Please,’ said Billy. ‘Just one hit to stop me from itching.’

  ‘Well, answer me some questions first, and then we’ll see what we can do. To begin with, were you trying to rob that charity box off your own bat, or did somebody tell you to do it?’

  Billy shook his head. His nose was running and some clear snot was flung across his cheek. Derek reached across for the box of tissues which they always kept in the interview room.

  ‘Here, blow your nose. And answer my question. Somebody told you to do it, didn’t they?’

  ‘No, but I needed the money.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To pay off my debt, man. I’m so deep in the shit it’s untrue.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three hundred quid.’

  ‘For cheese? Is that it?’

  ‘Most of it, yeah. Some of it just for food and bus fare and stuff.’

  ‘Who do you owe it to? All the same person or more than one?’

  ‘About fifty quid to my girlfriend. The rest to somebody else.�
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  ‘Somebody else?’ asked Jerry. ‘Somebody else like who?’

  Again, Billy shook his head, and kept on shaking it. ‘I can’t tell you, man – I can’t! If I tell you, he’ll fucking kill me for being a snitch. Either that or cut my fucking tongue out. He’s done it before, I know he has.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Jerry. ‘I believe I know who you’re talking about. It’s Jokubas Liepa, isn’t it? Liepa the Weeper, they call him, don’t they, because he always pretends to cry when he’s doing something really nasty to someone, like nailing their balls to the kitchen chair they’re sitting in.’

  ‘I’m not saying nothing.’

  ‘It was him, though, wasn’t it? Who else would accept second-hand clothes in payment for a drug debt? The Weeper’s the only man who’s got the organisation to turn second-hand clothes into cash.’

  ‘I need some stuff, man. I mean it. I’m dying here.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. But it was Liepa, wasn’t it, who sent you after those clothes?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me to do it. I was just walking past and I saw this woman shoving shoes and sweaters and all kinds of good stuff into that box, and I decided to give it a go. I’ve done it loads of times before and I’ve never had no trouble – never.’

  ‘You must be aware, though, that they’ve adapted almost all of the charity boxes lately,’ said Derek. ‘Once you’re inside, son, there’s no way that you can get yourself out. Not without a key, anyway.’

  ‘Didn’t you read the warning notice on the side?’ put in Jerry. ‘You can read, can’t you?’

  ‘Course I can fucking read. I come second in English, at school. Mind you, the rest of the class was all Pakis.’

  ‘Let’s try to be ethnically inclusive, shall we?’ said Derek.

  Billy hesitated for a moment, biting at his thumbnail. Jerry had the feeling that he was going to come out with more, so he said nothing and waited.

  Eventually, Billy said, ‘This is going to sound like I’m off my nut or something.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Derek. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  ‘It sounds cracked but I swear it’s true, and it weren’t the cheese or nothing.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The reason I thought it was going to be OK to climb in there, right – the reason was, I heard somebody else inside it.’

  ‘You heard somebody else inside it?’

  Billy nodded. ‘I don’t know what they was saying. It was more like singing than talking. Like a woman singing.’

  ‘So you thought – if there’s somebody else in there, it’s got to be OK to get out?’

  Billy nodded again.

  ‘And you don’t think it was the cheese singing to you, or whatever other shit you’d been taking?’

  ‘I heard them, honest. I heard them as clear as I can hear you now. But it wasn’t even like proper singing. It was just “ooh-wooh-ooh”.’

  ‘But once you’d managed to climb inside, there was nobody there?’

  ‘No. I was the only one in there.’

  ‘So how do you account for hearing that voice?’ asked Jerry.

  ‘I can’t. But I swear on the Bible I heard it, and it wasn’t inside my head or nothing. It was inside the box.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jerry. ‘You thought you heard a voice singing or “ooh-wooh-oohing” or whatever inside the charity box. But even before you heard it, it was your specific intention to steal clothing and shoes so that you could take them to Jokubas Liepa as part-payment for the money you owed him for drugs?’

  ‘You won’t say nothing to Jokubas, will you? He’ll fucking kill me. Even if I’m in prison he’ll pay somebody to kill me.’

  ‘I’ll have to have a word with Inspector Callow,’ said Derek. ‘He may decide to let you off with a caution.’

  ‘If we do that, though, we might have to make some conditions,’ added Jerry. ‘We could well expect you to give us more information on the Weeper and how he’s running his business these days.’

  ‘I seriously need some stuff, man,’ said Billy. His white face was glossy with sweat now, as shiny as if it had been coated in clear varnish, and he was trembling and scratching and shuffling his feet and his nose was running again.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to talk to Inspector Callow about that, too,’ Derek told him. Then he turned to the uniformed constable and said, ‘That’s it for now, thanks. Can you take him back to his cell? And give him a blanket. I think he could do with a little security, right now.’

  12

  Jerry was buttoning up his coat when Jamila came into the CID room.

  ‘Going out?’ she asked him.

  Jerry was about to say, You’d make a good detective, you would, but then he remembered that Jamila outranked him and he didn’t know if she could handle sarcasm.

  ‘I’m going to have a word with the bloke who donated Samira’s coat to the charity shop. I just want to know if his late wife noticed anything funny about it.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. I’ve got nothing better to do.’

  ‘OK. You haven’t heard anything from Lambeth Road yet?’

  Jamila shook her head. ‘You know how long they usually take. I doubt if we’ll get any results from them for weeks.’

  They drove up to Furzehill Drive. Number fifteen was a corner house, overlooking Furzedown Recreation Ground, a rhomboid of wet green grass with swings and a roundabout. The sky was overcast and it was still drizzling, and so the only person on the recreation ground was an elderly man in an anorak, walking his Labrador.

  Jerry rang the doorbell. They waited almost half a minute but nobody answered, so he rang it again. This time the front-room curtain was drawn aside, and a grey-haired man in a mustard-coloured cardigan appeared, frowning at them. Jerry took out his ID and held it up, and mouthed the word ‘Police’.

  The man opened the door. He was sixtyish, with brambly grey eyebrows and a downturned mouth. He was wearing baggy grey trousers, and Jerry noticed that his slippers didn’t match. One was brown corduroy and the other was black leather.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, holding onto the edge of the door as if he didn’t want to open it any wider and let them in.

  ‘Mr Stebbings? I’m Detective Jerry Pardoe and this is Detective Sergeant Jamila Patel. Can you spare a few minutes?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘It’s about your wife, Mr Stebbings.’

  ‘What about my wife? She’s gone now. You’re not accusing her of anything, are you? She was always breaking plates but I don’t think she ever broke the law.’

  Jerry couldn’t work out if this was meant as a joke, but Mr Stebbings didn’t appear to be smiling so he ignored it.

  ‘Actually it’s about her coat. That short grey coat you donated to Little Helpers.’

  ‘What about it?’

  Jerry looked up at the sky and held out his hand. ‘Do you mind if we come inside and talk about it? We’re getting a bit wet standing here.’

  Mr Stebbings opened the door and stepped back to let them in. Inside, the house was chilly and dark and smelled of cigarette smoke and stale cat food. There was a framed engraving hanging in the hallway of the death of Nelson.

  ‘Come through,’ said Mr Stebbings, and led them into the living-room. An obese brindled cat was sleeping on one of the armchairs so he pushed it off, and it sulked away under the glass-topped coffee-table. On top of the table there was a plate with the remains of Mr Stebbings’ lunch on it, which looked as if it had been sausages and baked beans, judging by the orange sauce and the lump of spat-out gristle on the side of it.

  Jerry reluctantly sat on the armchair where the cat had been sleeping, while Jamila sat on the end of the sofa. Mr Stebbings sat on the opposite end, with his knees so close to Jerry’s that they were almost touching.

  ‘So what about her coat?’ asked Mr Stebbings. Jerry could see that his fingers were stained amber with nicotine.

  ‘Do you know where she bought it?’ />
  ‘No idea. It wasn’t new, though. She liked to scour the charity shops. You know, Oxfam and Cancer Research, shops like that. She never liked spending money, that was her problem. Well, one of her problems.’

  ‘What were her other problems?’ asked Jamila.

  ‘Oh, you know, women’s problems. One minute she’d be sobbing her heart out and the next she wouldn’t even talk to me.’

  ‘After she bought the coat, did you notice any change in her behaviour?’

  Mr Stebbings stared at Jerry as if he had insulted him. ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m interested to know if the coat appeared to have any effect on her, that’s all.’

  ‘It was a bloody coat. Apart from the fact that she hardly ever took the bloody thing off, no, it didn’t have any effect on her. Why would it?’

  ‘When you say she hardly ever took it off, did she wear it in the house?’

  ‘Yes – well, the cost of heating these days. Our last gas bill was more than four hundred quid.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bring this up, Mr Stebbings,’ said Jerry. ‘But can you tell us the cause of your late wife’s death?’

  ‘She drowned. Drowned in the bath. I was out that evening, playing darts. I always told her not to have a bath on her own, when I wasn’t there, because she was prone to fainting fits. I came home about half past ten, and there she was, lying under the water. I fished her out, and tried to give her the kiss of life, but the bathwater was freezing cold so she must have been there for hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jerry told him. ‘That must have been a terrible shock for you.’

  ‘Well, thirty-four years we’d been married. The last couple of years were a little difficult. I won’t pretend that they weren’t. But – yes, it was a shock.’

  ‘When you found her, did you notice anything unusual about her skin?’

  Mr Stebbings gave Jerry another hostile stare.