Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  ‘To be honest with you, sir, I wouldn’t know what to say about it,’ said DS Patel. ‘If the killer left it behind, then we’re still looking for him. But if the coat did it? Then we already have it in custody.’

  DI Saunders didn’t answer that, but closed his office door like a man who needs to be left alone for a while.

  *

  Jerry had heard the news about Philip Wakefield’s murder on LBC News while he was eating a honey-and-oats breakfast bar in the bath. The only information that had been given out on the radio was that a man’s body had been found on Streatham Common and that his name would be released when his next-of-kin had been informed. Police were appealing for witnesses but although foul play was suspected, no suspects had yet been identified, and the motive for the man’s killing was unclear. It didn’t appear to be robbery, since his wallet and his iPhone and his thousand-pound Raymond Weil watch were found on his body, untouched.

  ‘They should have said around his body,’ said Jamila. ‘There were bits and pieces of him scattered over twenty square metres.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Do you want me to come in?’

  ‘Not just yet, Jerry. There’s nothing that you or I can do until DI French has completed his house-to-house and we’ve had Dr Fuller’s autopsy and a full forensic report on the coat from Lambeth Road.’

  ‘All right. But let me know if you need me. The only thing I really must do today is go to the launderette. Have you heard any more about Mindy?’

  ‘No, not yet. Personally I’d be surprised if she’s well enough to be questioned today.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, skip, this coat thing’s gone way beyond spooky now. I mean, it was weird enough them turning ordinary law-abiding people into homicidal maniacs, but now that they’ve started running around on their own—’

  ‘Jerry, we have no way of knowing if this duffle coat was running around on its own.’

  ‘But you said it had human tissue and blood clots inside its hood. I mean, think about it – inside its hood? How did those get there? If somebody was wearing it, all that gunk would have splashed onto their face, surely?’

  ‘It’s far too early to say, Jerry. We’ll just have to wait and see what Block B come up with. Listen, I’ll call you later if I need you. Don’t worry too much, I can handle things at this end. Enjoy yourself with Alice.’

  Jamila put down her phone. This investigation was all becoming so surreal. She was beginning to feel as if she had fallen asleep while her grandmother was telling her one of her stories about jinns and bhoot, the Pakistani house-ghosts, and had never woken up.

  She knew that very few people in Britain took the supernatural as seriously as they did in Pakistan, but she had been brought up to believe in the reality of evil spirits, and it was a belief that was hard to shake off. Even now, she still recited the Ayat-ul-Kursi from the Qur’an before she went to sleep and slept on her right side, specifically to ward off any demons that might come sniffing her out in the dark.

  Still – when she and Jerry had been eating together, she had noticed that if he spilled any salt on the table he would always flick two pinches of it over his left shoulder, so she supposed that everybody was prone to some degree of superstition. But what was happening with these clothes was so much more than superstition. Ever since she had seen David Nelson’s sweater crawling along the floor like a spider she had been completely convinced that they were possessed in some way, and that was why she hadn’t hesitated to run after the raincoat and beat it with the garden gate. And what about all the clothes that had come crawling out of Mindy’s parents’ wardrobe and down the stairs?

  She switched on her desktop computer and searched for any references to clothes coming to life. She found several examples of people being frightened to wear clothing that had belonged to the dead, especially in China and Indonesia. In contrast, she also found examples of cultural groups who were happy to wear inherited clothes. They believed that it kept them close to the relatives who had passed away.

  Jesus was said to have cursed any clothes that were laundered on Good Friday, because he had been slapped in the face with a wet smock as he carried the cross to Calvary. It was said that if you washed your clothes on that day, they would come to life and strangle a member of your family with their sleeves, or at the very least they would come out of the wash spotted with blood.

  Jamila spent over half an hour searching for more background information online. She came across dozens of fairy tales about dresses that danced when their ballerinas were asleep, and ghost stories about vengeful overcoats that roamed through the city streets at night. However she could find no credible accounts of clothes that had appeared to possess whoever was wearing them, or clothes that had appeared to move on their own. Not even in Pakistan.

  She was still scrolling through ‘Chinese funeral rites’ when her phone warbled. It was DI Saunders.

  ‘Jamila? DI French has just received a preliminary autopsy report from Dr Fuller. I’ll send you the PDF.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘He didn’t have to do his usual dissection, I think that’s why. The perpetrator had pretty much done it for him.’

  ‘Has he worked out how the victim’s arms and legs were taken off?’

  ‘Twisted off, he says – both clockwise and anti-clockwise.’

  ‘Twisted off? How much force would you need to do that?’

  ‘Well, let me read you what he’s written here. It would have taken between thirty and a hundred kilonewtons to twist off an arm, and possibly up to two hundred to twist off a leg. That’s between one to four megapascals if that means anything to you. In English, about fifteen horsepower.’

  ‘Fifteen horsepower? I’m not a physicist, sir, but surely that’s far more than most people are capable of.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said DI Saunders. ‘According to Dr Fuller, the average healthy human being can produce only one-point-five horsepower, and that’s a maximum, and not for any length of time, either.’

  ‘So – if his legs and arms weren’t twisted off manually, is there any indication as to how it was done?’

  ‘Dr Fuller says, the victim’s arms and legs all exhibit bruises which indicate that he was forcibly restrained with straps or belts about nineteen centimetres across. This would have kept him pinioned. However to generate sufficient torque to twist off his limbs the perpetrator would have required a mechanical device of some sort, such as a lathe. Or an elephant.’

  ‘A lathe?’ said Jamila. ‘But that would have been incredibly heavy, wouldn’t it, and I thought there were no impressions on the ground.’

  ‘There weren’t,’ said DI Saunders. ‘And no elephant footprints, either, although I’m not sure if Fuller was trying to be funny.’

  ‘Perhaps not entirely, sir. I’ve read about several recent cases in Pakistan of wild elephants killing people because we’re starting to encroach on their natural habitat. And right up until the end of the nineteenth century, it was quite common in many Asian countries for criminals to be executed by being cut apart by elephants with knives attached to their feet, and then having their heads stepped on.’

  ‘That’s very interesting, Jamila – but I’ll bet you a tenner that there were no bloody elephants on Streatham Common last night.’

  ‘No, sir. Probably not. But no lathes, either.’

  DI Saunders was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s remotely possible that the victim could have been dismembered with machinery at another location and his body parts simply dumped on the common. But the grass was soaked with blood, totally soaked, and the way his insides were all scattered about, that doesn’t seem likely, does it? I mean, how would they have carried him there? In a bathtub? It’s mad. It’s totally bloody bonkers. And then there’s the coat.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jamila. ‘Then there’s the coat.’

  37

  Alice was skinny and pretty and fair and looked just like her mother. Blue ey
es, upturned nose.

  Jerry drove his six-year-old Ford Focus to collect her from the small terraced house that used to be his, halfway down Lugard Road, in Peckham. Nancy stood in the doorway with her arms folded and her usual sour expression. Jerry always smiled and said, ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ but Nancy rarely spoke to him. If there were any special instructions for Alice – such as her needing to take any cough mixture, or to bring her back early to go to a friend’s birthday party – he would find usually them in a computer-printed note inside one of her Wellington boots.

  ‘How’s school?’ asked Jerry, as they drove back towards Tooting through Peckham Rye.

  ‘It’s really good. I got a gold star for my drawing.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. Well done. What did you do a drawing of?’

  ‘I drew a dressing-up doll. You know, with lots of different clothes that you could cut out and dress her up in.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘Well, I made up a different story for each of her dresses. I drew her a wedding dress for getting married and I drew her a ballgown for going dancing. That was when she was happy. Then I drew her a black dress because her husband had died in a car crash and a ragged dress because she went mad.’

  ‘She went mad? Poor woman. That’s not very nice.’

  ‘I know but I wanted to show that you can tell what somebody’s like by the clothes they’re wearing. I bet you can tell who’s a nasty person and who isn’t, just by their clothes.’

  Jerry didn’t answer that. He didn’t want to think about the connection between clothes and psychotic behaviour, not on his day off. He had been relieved to have received no more calls from Jamila, either about the man who had been dismembered on Streatham Common, or about Mindy. All he wanted to do was have a good time with Alice. She seemed to have grown another inch since he had last seen her, only two weeks before. Her Little Red Riding Hood coat looked too short for her now, and her sleeves no longer covered her skinny wrists and all her friendship bangles.

  It was 6:30 p.m. and dark by the time they reached Tooting. Jerry stopped at his flat to switch on the lights and draw the curtains and drop off Alice’s overnight bag, and then they got back in the car and headed to Nando’s for supper.

  ‘How hungry are you?’ asked Jerry.

  ‘Starving,’ said Alice. ‘I could eat a baby.’

  ‘Nando’s don’t serve babies,’ said Jerry. He realised that what she had said was only a coincidence, but she was beginning to give him a disturbing feeling that there was an imp inside her that knew what he was investigating, and was provoking him about it.

  What had Laura Miller said? I could eat an orphan. A stillborn baby. Anything.

  ‘Oh, they don’t serve babies?’ said Alice. ‘I’ll have the bean burger then.’

  They were driving past Tooting Bec Common when a group of four or five dark figures came running off the common about a hundred metres up ahead of them. Without stopping to see if any cars were coming, the figures ran right to left across the road, and turned down Franciscan Road opposite.

  ‘Did you see those twats?’ said Jerry, wishing immediately that he hadn’t used the word ‘twats’.

  ‘No,’ said Alice, without looking up. She was too involved with playing Star Stable on her iPhone. ‘What twats?’

  On impulse, Jerry turned down Franciscan Road after them, and saw them running close together along the pavement. What had caught his attention was that none of them was wearing running-gear, or a high-viz tabard. Although it was difficult for him to see them clearly because of all the parked cars lined along the road, they all looked as if they were wearing black duffle coats, with their hoods turned up.

  Jerry overtook them, and then slowed down and adjusted his rear-view mirror so that he could look back at them. Not only were they hooded, they all appeared to be black, or else they were wearing balaclavas, because their faces were so dark. Strangely, though, he couldn’t even see the whites of their eyes. Surely they couldn’t be running with their eyes closed.

  He continued to drive slowly so that they could catch up with him. Once they had, he crept along beside them for thirty or forty metres, but they didn’t appear to be aware that he was there and none of them turned to look at him.

  Alice looked up from her game and said, ‘Why are we going so slowly? We’re not there yet, are we?’

  ‘No, sweetheart. I’ve just noticed something peculiar and I want to take a butcher’s at it, that’s all.’

  Alice turned around in her seat. ‘What? Do you mean those men?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t look at them.’

  The figures had nearly reached the junction of Franciscan Road and Mantilla Road. They would have to cross over and so Jerry would be able to see them better. As they reached the corner, though, a car was coming up Franciscan Road in the opposite direction, and its driver was indicating that he intended to turn right into Mantilla Road.

  The figures didn’t hesitate. They ran across the road right in front of the turning car, so that its driver had to step on his brakes. He blew his horn and put down his window, obviously ready to shout something blasphemous at them, but by then they had carried on running and already they were halfway along the next block, a parade of local shops.

  Jerry had come to a sudden stop too, because he felt as if he had been hit in the pit of the stomach. When the figures had crossed the road in front of the car’s headlights, he had seen that they weren’t running at all. They had no legs. They looked as if they were nothing but coats, tumbling along the pavement together as if they were being blown by the wind.

  He pulled in by the side of the road and phoned Jamila.

  ‘Jerry? I’m just about to leave for the day. What’s up?’

  He climbed out of the car and closed the door so that Alice couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  ‘I’m halfway down Franciscan Road. I’ve just seen four, maybe five black duffle coats running on their own.’

  ‘You’ve seen what? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you very well.’

  ‘Five duffle coats, running on their own. Well, not running. They don’t have any legs. They look just like that bloody raincoat, skip, although they might have heads. I couldn’t be sure because they all have their hoods turned up.’

  ‘Can you keep track of them? I’ll ask Sergeant Bristow to send a couple of cars out.’

  ‘I’ve just lost sight of them, but they can’t have got far. I’ve got Alice with me, but I’ll keep in touch.’

  He climbed back behind the wheel, started the engine, and sped off down Franciscan Road. The figures had nearly reached the next corner, Brudenell Road. On the opposite side of the road stood a tall tawny-brick church, All Saints. Without any hesitation, the figures ran diagonally across the junction towards it – ran, or flew, or were blown by some capricious wind that Jerry couldn’t feel.

  Jerry swerved after them, but they didn’t continue to run straight down Brudenell Road. There was a low fence surrounding the lawn in front of the church, with a gate in it. They ran through the gate, crossed the lawn, and disappeared into the darkness around the side of the building. They looked like huge black bats flocking back to their cave.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Alice, impatiently. ‘What are you doing? I thought we were going to Nando’s.’

  ‘We are, sweetheart, but I’ve seen some suspicious-looking people and I don’t want them to get away. If you can wait here for just a moment, I’m going to lock the car doors so that nobody can get in.’

  ‘You mean those men?’

  ‘Alice, I promise you, there’s nothing to be frightened about. I’ve called the station for back-up and there’s more officers on the way.’

  Jerry took his flashlight out of the glovebox and then he climbed out of the car and walked up to the church. He turned around to Alice as she sat in the car, shining his flashlight up into his face and sticking out his tongue, but he could see that she wasn’t amused. He called Jamila again.
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br />   ‘Jamila? I’m at All Saints Church on the corner of Brudenell Road. The suspects went around the back of the church and I haven’t seen them come out yet, so I’m guessing that they might have sussed that I’m following them, and they’re hiding.’

  ‘There’s a car on its way to you now. It was already at Tooting Bec station so it should be with you in only a couple of minutes. But Jerry, be careful. If these coats are anything like the coat that was found on Streatham Common – who knows what they can do. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe they’re just ordinary coats. But then maybe they’re not.’

  ‘They were running along the road, skip. Ordinary coats don’t run along the road. We both know that. There’s at least five of them, but don’t worry, I’m not going to try to confront them. This time I haven’t got an onion with a wrought-iron gate to come to my rescue.’

  Almost as soon as he had said ‘onion’ he wished he hadn’t, especially to Jamila. ‘Onion’ was station slang for ‘sergeant’ – ‘onion bhaji’ rhymed with ‘sargie’. But she made no comment except, ‘Keep this line open, Jerry, and don’t try to do anything heroic. What about Alice?’

  ‘She’s locked in the car. She’ll be safe enough.’

  Jerry switched on his flashlight and walked up to the church’s main door. He rattled the handles but the doors were locked, so the coats couldn’t have gone inside. He made his way around the back of the building. The car park was deserted, so he had to assume that the coats were still hiding themselves somewhere in the shadows behind the buttresses. Very cautiously, shining his flashlight ahead of him, he made his way along the side of the building. His heart was beating so hard that he could hear it, and he was tensed up ready to run if any of the coats came leaping out at him.

  After his experience with the raincoat outside Mindy’s parents’ house, he was no longer sceptical about the possibility of these coats being alive – and not only alive, but highly dangerous. Whatever had possessed that raincoat, he had felt its strength as if a real man had been wearing it. If not a man, then some kind of powerful and aggressive spirit.