Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  Gemma Watts was standing in front of the children when Laura came in, singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round’. Most of the children were joining in, although two or three of them were staring blankly at nothing at all and picking their noses, and a ginger-haired boy was standing on his chair and waving his arms from side to side as if he were conducting the singing.

  ‘Thank you, Gemma,’ said Laura. ‘I think we’ve had enough of this cats’ chorus. You can go back to the Sevens now.’

  Gemma’s cheeks flushed. She was a big young woman, wearing a long dark brown cardigan and an oatmeal tartan skirt. Usually, she was very outspoken, and had her own strong ideas about educating small children, and she was never afraid to tell Laura what they were. Now, though, she didn’t answer back. She was still unsettled by the way that Laura had spoken to the school at prayers this morning, and there was something else that she found even more disturbing. Laura seemed to have grown until she was nearly as tall as she was, even though she wasn’t wearing high heels, and her face was oddly mask-like and expressionless. Laura actually frightened her.

  She left the classroom and Laura closed the door behind her. It was obvious that she had made an impression on the children this morning, too, because they were fidgeting and whispering and staring at her apprehensively, when normally they would have been laughing and larking about. The ginger-haired boy, though, was still standing on his chair waving his arms and singing.

  ‘Luke,’ said Laura, quite quietly. ‘Get your feet off your chair and sit down properly.’

  Luke took no notice and started to sing ‘Old King Cole’, clapping his hands.

  ‘Luke!’ snapped Laura. ‘I won’t tell you again! Stop that horrible howling and get your feet off your chair and sit down properly!’

  Luke continued to ignore her, so she marched up to him, picked him up and carried him over her shoulder to the front of the classroom. He screamed and kicked in anger and embarrassment, but she was far too strong for him. Some of the children laughed but others were clearly terrified, especially the very little ones, and they sat round-eyed and silent.

  Luke carried on struggling and screaming ‘No! No! No! Let me go! Let me go! You’re horrible! Let me go!’

  Laura said, ‘Shut up, you little runt! You asked for this!’

  She let him down onto his feet, but she kept a tight hold on his collar while she unlocked one of the windows. Once she had swung it wide open, she lifted Luke up again and forced him over the windowsill. Then, without any hesitation, she pushed him out. He let out an extraordinary noise that sounded more like a gargle than a scream and then he was gone.

  It was over twenty-five feet down to the narrow concrete pathway at the side of the school, and it was fenced off from Hillbury Road with spiked iron railings. Luke dropped onto the railings with a thud and a crunch, because the spikes penetrated his ribcage. After that he hung there, with his arms and his legs outstretched, looking more like a ginger-haired doll than a real boy.

  Six or seven of the children got up from their tables and rushed to the window. The windowsill was too high for them to see out, but a little Somalian girl with her hair tied up in four bouncy plaits dragged a chair over and climbed up onto it. The rest of the children stayed where they were, too shocked to understand that Laura had actually thrown Luke out. One of them started to cry, and then another, and another, until almost all of them were wailing.

  ‘Luke must be hurt, miss!’ said the little Somalian girl. ‘He’s stuck on the fence! We have to go down and save him!’

  ‘Luke got what he deserved for being disobedient!’ Laura retorted. ‘Now get down from that chair and go and sit down, Bishaaro, and the rest of you – the rest of you – stop that crying! I said, stop it at once!’

  ‘But Luke is stuck!’ Bishaaro protested. ‘We have to save him!’

  ‘You want to go down and save him?’ said Laura. ‘All right – you go down and save him!’

  With that, she picked up Bishaaro and even though she struggled and kicked, she pushed her out of the window, too. Bishaaro let out a shrill scream and tried to snatch the handle to save herself, but then she dropped straight down, bouncing off Luke’s body and rolling to one side, so that the railing spikes pierced the back of her neck and she hung there, still alive, unable to utter a sound, but thrashing her arms and her legs as if she were swimming the backstroke.

  Now the whole class was moaning and crying. Laura stood in front of them and shouted, ‘Shut up! Do you hear me? Stop that appalling racket! If you don’t stop bleating, you’ll all go out of the window!’

  The classroom door was thrown open and Gemma Watts came bursting in.

  ‘What on earth is going on, Miss Miller? Why are all the kids crying?’

  ‘Mind your own business and get back to your class!’ Laura told her.

  But one of the little girls pointed to the open window. ‘Luke and Bishaaro!’ she sobbed. ‘Miss Miller threw them out!’

  ‘Gemma – I told you to go back to your class!’ Laura repeated, but Gemma went over to the window and looked out.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, Miss Miller, what have you done?’

  ‘They were misbehaving! They got what they deserved!’

  ‘Henry!’ said Gemma, turning to the children. ‘You’re the class monitor! I want you to take everybody downstairs to the dining hall and I want you to tell Miss Lawrence and Miss Clover what’s happened! Go on, everybody, off you go, quick as you can!’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Laura. ‘This is my school and my children. Everybody stay where you are!’

  But the children were already hurrying out of the classroom, whimpering in panic, almost tripping over each other to get away. When Laura tried to go towards the door to stop them, Gemma stood in her way. She took her mobile phone out of her cardigan pocket and prodded out 999.

  Laura tried to get past her, but Gemma sidestepped and blocked her again.

  ‘Ambulance,’ she said, into her phone. ‘Ambulance and very quickly, please. St Blandina’s School next to Tooting Bec Common. And police, too, please. Two children have been thrown out of a window and impaled on railings. Yes. I’m going to look at them now but I think they both may be dead. Yes, I’ll stay on the phone.’

  Laura stood and watched her without saying a word.

  They have no idea, do they, that children need discipline? No wonder the world is in such a mess, with so much violence and so much civil disobedience. People need to be taught right from the beginning to do what they’re told, or suffer the consequences.

  Laura sat down at her desk. Behind her on the chalkboard there were pictures that the children had drawn of the animals going two by two into Noah’s ark.

  Gemma went to the window. She could see that Susan Lawrence was already outside, along with two passers-by, trying to lift Luke and Bishaaro off the railings. She closed the window and locked it and dropped the key in her pocket.

  ‘I want you to stay here until the police arrive,’ she told Laura.

  Laura smiled and shrugged and said, ‘The police won’t blame her. The police will understand. Children can’t be allowed to run riot. You know that as well as she does.’

  20

  Jerry was eating sausages and baked beans in the station canteen and reading the sports pages of The Sun when Jamila came in. Her right hand was bound up in a thick white bandage, like an enormous mitten.

  ‘How’s the mauler?’ he asked her, as she sat down beside him.

  ‘Oh, fine. No serious damage, but they’ve given me a tetanus shot and they gave Sophie a point-of-care test to make sure that she didn’t have HIV. We’ll be sending her to Springfield later today.’

  Jerry said, ‘I’ll tell you, sarge, these cases are making me feel like admitting myself to Springfield.’ Springfield University Hospital was the main psychiatric centre in Wandsworth, and a maximum security facility for dangerous mental patients. When it was first opened in 1840, it had been called the S
urrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  ‘Well, perhaps we’ll get some sense out of our druggie,’ said Jamila. ‘I’ve just had a call from St George’s and they’ve managed to separate him from his coat. He’s still anaesthetised but they reckon he should be compos mentis in two or three hours.’

  ‘What about the coat? I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s more like it’s alive, isn’t it, rather than infested? And the same with Sophie’s jacket.’

  ‘The coat’s gone off to forensics. We should know within a day or two how it managed to stick itself to his skin.’

  ‘Do we know who he is yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but we’ve circulated his picture around all of the local homeless shelters and charity soup kitchens and drug dependency clinics. The Evening Standard, too.’

  ‘This is all going way beyond your specialised field, isn’t it?’ said Jerry. ‘I mean, it’s looking less and less likely that Samira was the victim of an honour killing, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you suggesting? That I should quit? I think I’m already too deeply involved. Besides, even though I don’t personally believe that it was an honour killing, there is still a remote possibility that Samira was murdered by a member of her family. Until we understand what effect her coat might have had on her, I think it would be premature for me to consider withdrawing from this investigation – or from the Sophie Marshall case for that matter. Supposing the coat somehow changed her feelings about marrying the man that her parents had chosen for her, and they resented it?’

  Jerry prodded his last remaining sausage. ‘I think Smiley’s right about this. It’s one hundred per cent bonkers.’

  They were still talking when Sergeant Bristow came into the canteen. ‘Ah, Jerry! I don’t mean to interrupt your lunch, but DS Morgan thought you ought to know about this female suspect we’ve just brought in. He said something about her case having similarities to the cases that you’ve been working on.’

  ‘“Similarities”?’ asked Jamila. ‘What kind of “similarities”?’

  Sergeant Bristow checked the note he had scribbled down. ‘She’s the head teacher at St Blandina’s private primary school – Laura Jean Miller, aged forty-five. About an hour ago she threw two children out of the window of an upstairs classroom, a boy of four years old and a girl of just five. Both of them were impaled on railings outside the school and were fatally injured.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Jerry, and put down his fork. ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘They were misbehaving and they had to be punished, that was what she said. But she also said that it wasn’t her who did it – even though there were no other adults in the classroom at the time. And that’s one of your similarities. She said it was her coat that threw them out of the window, not her.’

  Jerry looked at Jamila. Jamila said, ‘Her coat? What kind of a coat is it?’

  ‘Fairly ordinary brown woman’s overcoat, that’s all. About knee length. She’s still wearing it.’

  ‘Can’t we take it off her?’

  ‘She refuses, absolutely refuses, and when a WPC tried to remove it, she found that she couldn’t. It’s like it’s stuck to her. Same as that homeless bloke who was brought in this morning.’

  ‘We need to have a word with this woman,’ said Jamila. ‘Has she been cautioned?’

  Sergeant Bristow nodded. ‘We’ve taken down all of her personal details but DS Morgan isn’t going to proceed with a formal interview until she’s been assessed by a doctor.’

  Jamila stood up. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But I would like to see her at least. Are you coming, Jerry?’

  Jerry put his knife and fork together and folded his newspaper. ‘Lost my appetite, anyway.’

  *

  Laura was lying on her side in her cell when Jerry and Jamila came in. Her eyes were open but she showed no sign that she had seen them.

  ‘Laura Miller?’ said Jamila.

  Laura still didn’t respond, so Jamila sat down on the blue vinyl mattress next to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Laura Miller?’ she repeated, very gently.

  Laura looked at her for a few seconds, and then said, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Jamila Patel. Is it all right if I have a word with you?’

  ‘If it’s about those children I have nothing to say.’

  ‘No, Laura. It’s not about the children. It’s about you.’

  ‘What about me?’

  Laura lifted up her head and Jamila stood up, so that Laura could swing her legs around and sit up straight. She squeezed her eyes shut a few times, as if she were in pain, and then opened them again, although she kept them fixed on the cell door opposite, hardly blinking at all, and didn’t look either at Jerry or Jamila.

  ‘We haven’t been able to take off your coat,’ said Jamila.

  ‘It’s her, that’s why.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? Who’s “her”?’

  ‘Me, of course,’ said Laura, as if Jamila were unbelievably stupid. ‘She’s me and I’m her and the coat is both of us. That’s why you can’t take it off.’

  ‘The officer who arrested you... you told her that the children were misbehaving and that they needed to be punished.’

  ‘I told you. I’m not going to talk about the children.’

  ‘I understand that, Laura, but I just need to know who punished them – you or her?’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘So she punished them, not you? Even though she’s you and you’re her?’

  ‘It was the coat.’

  ‘All right, it was the coat. We won’t trouble you any more, Laura. Get some rest. The doctor’s coming in a while to see if we can get it off you.’

  ‘You can’t get it off me. It’s me.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to see. I’ll come back and talk to you later.’

  ‘Listen! They think they can do and say whatever they like, those children. It’s the parents. I blame the parents. But you can’t let them get away with it. Otherwise they’ll grow up to be hooligans.’

  ‘But those two little children are dead now, Laura. They’re not going to be able to grow up at all.’

  ‘It’s no good blaming me. At least I didn’t try to eat them. She would have eaten them, given the chance.’

  ‘She would have eaten them? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not answering any more questions. My head’s too noisy.’

  ‘Laura—’

  ‘No. I’m not saying any more. And neither is she.’

  Jerry and Jamila left the cell and the duty officer locked the door. Jerry turned to Jamila, spinning his index finger around his head and letting out a whistle.

  ‘Nutty as a fruitcake, just like the others. But that’s three of them now, all blaming their coats for what they’ve done, and all of them with fibres from their coats stuck into their skin. Four, if you count Samira Wazir. There’s no way that’s a coincidence.’

  ‘Once we manage to take off Laura Miller’s coat and send it to forensics, I think we need to have a meeting with Dr Fuller,’ said Jamila. ‘Like DI Saunders said, there has to be some logical explanation for this. My grandmother in Peshawar used to warn me about jinns, and she terrified me. She said that if I wore perfume at night, a jinn would be lured by the smell into my bedroom and stick to me while I was asleep, and I would never be able to get free of him. But that was only a story. This is something quite different – if only we could understand what.’

  ‘Some granny you had, scaring the crap out of you like that,’ said Jerry. ‘My granny used to tell me the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and that was frightening enough. Whenever she tried to say “who’sh been shleeping in my bed?” her false teeth fell out.’

  As they were walking along the corridor, DC Willis came plodding towards them.

  ‘Jerry... just the man! Young Billy Jenkins says he’s got something you might like to hear. I get the impressio
n he wants to do a deal.’

  ‘Couldn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No... he reckons he can only trust you. He reckons if he told me, I’d only use it as evidence against him – and yes, well, he’s probably right. I would, the little sniveller.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jerry, and then he turned to Jamila and said, ‘I won’t be long, sarge. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.’

  He found the duty officer, who was just about to sneak out of the back door of the station for a quick cigarette in the car park, and asked him to open up Billy’s cell for him. Billy was sitting hunched on his bunk, shivering and twitching and looking even more like the last days of Sid Vicious than he had before. His cell smelled as if he had been sweating and breaking wind all night.

  ‘Wotcher, Billy!’ said Jerry, trying to sound cheerful. ‘How’s it going? Are we treating you all right? Had your lunch, have you?’

  ‘I need to get out of here, Mr Pardoe. I really do. I’m going barmy.’

  ‘DC Willis said that you had something you wanted to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, but only if you promise to let me out.’

  ‘I can’t promise until I’ve heard what it is, Billy. It could be something I already know, like the price of Marmite after Brexit.’

  ‘It’s about Liepa. But you must never let him know that I told you. I mean like, not ever.’

  Jerry sat down on the bunk next to him. ‘OK, I’m listening. But don’t take too long, it smells of farts in here. What have we been feeding you on? Cauliflower curry?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Thursday, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, because today’s Wednesday. Bloody hell – and to think I called you thick!’

  ‘Yes, but this Thursday is collection day for Cancer Research. You know, for people to put out bags of old clothes and shoes and stuff and the Cancer Research van goes around in the morning and picks them up.’

  ‘I know. Go on. What about it?’

  ‘The thing is, Cancer Research always get the best-quality stuff, and much more of it than anybody else, even the NSPCC, I suppose because everybody knows somebody who’s had cancer. But Liepa’s been missing their collection days for a while, on purpose, because he knows you’ve been watching him.’