Ghost Virus

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.

‘What do you mean, “unusual”?’

‘Did you notice any fibres, for example?’

‘Fibres? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Fibres – you know, like fine hairs growing on her skin.’

Mr Stebbings shook his head. ‘Still don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘All right, then. That’s all we wanted to ask you. We’ll leave you in peace.’

Jerry and Jamila stood up. Mr Stebbings looked up at Jerry and said, ‘I don’t understand what you come here for, to be honest with you.’

‘We needed to check out one particular line of inquiry, that’s all.’

‘Inquiry into what? I mean, what does my late wife’s coat have to do with anything? It was a bloody coat. She wore it so often I was sick of the sight of the bloody thing, but that’s all.’

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you why we’re interested in your late wife’s coat, Mr Stebbings,’ Jerry told him. ‘But thank you anyway for your time, and for being so cooperative.’

Mr Stebbings stood up, too. Close up, his breath smelled strongly of tobacco. ‘Well, if you won’t tell me, you won’t. But I won’t pretend I’m not bloody baffled, because I am.’

When they left Mr Stebbings’ house, it was raining much harder, and they ran to get into their car. After they had climbed in, and Jerry had started the engine, Jamila said, quietly but firmly, ‘He was lying.’

‘What?’

Jamila turned to him. Jerry surprised himself by thinking how pretty she was, with those large brown eyes and those full, pouting lips.

‘He was lying about finding her in the bath like that. He was telling the truth about going out to play darts, but that was only to give himself an alibi. It wouldn’t surprise me if he drowned her himself – either before he went out, or after he came back. Before, most likely.’

‘So how do you know that?’

‘Let’s just say I have a talent.’

‘I’m sorry? A talent?’

‘It’s one of the reasons I decided to become a police officer. I can always tell when somebody isn’t telling the truth.’

‘How? Do you see their nose growing longer?’

‘It’s not a joke, Jerry. I shouldn’t really have told you, but if you’re right to have suspicions about this coat, then you need to know that our Mr Stebbings is a liar. The coat made him very angry for some reason, and he knew exactly what you meant when you asked him about the fibres.’

‘So how can you be so sure?’

‘If I tell you, you won’t believe me. I know that Mr Stebbings lied to us, but let’s just leave it at that. I agree with you now that we need to find out what happened to that coat, and if possible find the coat itself so that we can examine it.’

‘Why don’t you try me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why don’t you try telling me how you know that he was lying. Maybe I will believe you.’

‘You won’t.’

‘How do you know? I’m extremely gullible. I believe they’ve found a statue of Elvis on the Moon.’

‘You won’t believe me because you’re not superstitious like we are. In Pakistan we believe in supernatural causality. Many of us believe in witches and jinns and evil spirits called bhoot. Even our former president Zardari used to have a black goat sacrificed every single day to protect him from demons.’

Jamila pulled down the neck of her light grey sweater and lifted out a small black pouch on a string. ‘I have worn this all my life. It’s called a ta’wiz and it contains words from the Qur’an. It keeps me safe from evil.’

‘That still doesn’t tell me how you’re so sure that Mr Stebbings was coming out with a load of porkies.’

‘Before I was born, my father helped to save the life of a woman who was accused of being a witch. Some local men believed that she had caused a fire which had destroyed several of their houses, and so they were going to cut off her fingers and put out her eyes with a pointed stick and then pour petrol all over her and set her alight. But my father who was the district policeman got to hear of this, and he rescued her before the men could hurt her.

‘She came to visit us soon after I was born, so my father told me, and she admitted that she really was a churail, or a witch, but that she cast only good spells. She cast a spell over me, when I was in my crib. She said that it would give me the power of knowing when people were trying to deceive me, and that would help to keep me safe. It was her way of thanking my father for saving her life.’

‘Well, it’s a good story,’ said Jerry. ‘But you still haven’t told me how you know they’re trying to deceive you.’

‘For as long as they’re lying, their eyes go totally black. Black and shiny, like black onyx. I suppose it means that their words are empty. Sometimes their lips turn black, too, and when I see that I know that what they’re telling me is not only meaningless, but poisonous.’

‘And did Mr Stebbings’ eyes go black?’

Jamila said, ‘Yes. As soon as he said that his wife had drowned in the bath, they went totally black, shiny black, and they stayed black until he had finished answering your questions about the fibres.’

‘How about his lips? Did they go black?’

‘No. I think that he was only trying to deceive us, not to harm us.’

Jerry sat and watched the rain dribbling down the windscreen. ‘I don’t know what to say, DS Patel. I believe you, but then again how can I believe you? His eyes turned black? I mean, really?’

‘It was the power that the churail gave me. A sixth sense, just like seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling and touch.’

‘So you’re telling me that he was lying when he was talking about the fibres, too?’

‘Definitely. And that’s what makes me feel that we have to locate that coat, if only to rule out the possibility that it had anything to do with Samira Wazir or Mrs Stebbings both being murdered – that’s if they were murdered.’

Jerry sat and thought for a moment longer. Then he said, ‘Do you know something? I need a drink.’