Ghost Virus

‘So what’s the plan with this what’s-his-name, this Lithuanian bloke?’ asked DI Saunders.

Jerry said, ‘It’s simple enough. We stake out his gaff early in the morning and when he sets off on his rounds picking up charity bags we nab him.’

DI Saunders came away from the window. It was dark outside now and he must have been admiring his own reflection.

‘I’m just wondering if it’s worth it,’ he said. ‘I know you said he makes a fair bit of money out of it, but if the clothes are being given away for free anyway, it’s not exactly the crime of the century, is it? It’s no worse than scavenging through a council rubbish tip and making off with a second-hand toilet.’

‘It’s depriving Cancer Research of valuable funds,’ said Jerry. ‘If your mum was diagnosed of cancer, how would you feel about some Eastern European tosser making off with the money that could have been used to save her?’

‘My mum was diagnosed with cancer,’ said DI Saunders. ‘She passed away last Christmas.’

‘Oh. Sorry. Wouldn’t have said that if I’d known. But you get what I’m getting at.’

‘Well, all right. But it seems like a slightly dubious use of our resources when we have more important cases to cope with. Like for instance Samira Wazir and Michael Brent and those two poor kids who got chucked out of their classroom window.’

‘We’re right on top of all of those investigations, sir,’ put in Jamila. ‘Samira Wazir’s father is back from Pakistan now and we’ve arranged to interview him at his house at six o’clock. We’ll be meeting Dr Fuller as soon as he’s completed his latest tests on the fibres from the coats and the skin samples from the victims.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘We don’t know for sure, sir. He’s waiting to get some more results from Lambeth Road, so it could be tomorrow or the day after. It depends. It could take weeks. But there’s not much more we can do until we understand how the clothing affected the suspects’ state of mind – if indeed that is what motivated them. Dr Fuller is also running new toxicology tests to see if there are traces of any mind-altering drug in the suspects’ bloodstreams.’

‘Well, keep on breathing down his neck, won’t you?’ said DI Saunders. ‘I’ve got the bloody media chasing me every five minutes and they’re getting on my nerves. We’re having to be so cagey about these cases they can smell that there’s something fishy about them.’

He stood looking at Jerry and Jamila with one hand lifted as if he were about to say something else. Eventually, though, he shrugged, and went back to his desk, and started prodding at his keyboard.

‘We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we have anything conclusive, sir,’ said Jamila.

‘Yes, OK,’ said DI Saunders. His tone of voice was such that it was difficult to tell if ‘yes, OK’ was simply an acknowledgement, or a statement of fact, or an order – as in, yes, OK, you will, because you’ll bloody well regret it if you don’t.

*

As soon as the lift doors opened on the ground floor, Jerry and Jamila heard a woman screaming. Two officers hurried past them in the direction of the cells, and almost immediately Sergeant Bristow appeared, bustling back towards his reception desk.

‘What’s up?’ asked Jerry. ‘It’s not that schoolmistress, is it? I thought she’d gone off to St George’s to have her coat cut off her.’

‘You’d think it was, wouldn’t you?’ said Sergeant Bristow. ‘But it’s a bloke.’

‘What? A bloke? He sounds just like my Auntie Doris!’

Sergeant Bristow stopped and came back. ‘You remember that call I was telling you about this morning?’

‘Of course, yes. The woman who rang in and said that her friend was missing?’

‘That’s the one. We got the go-ahead from Callow to force an entry, but as it turned out we didn’t have to, because her husband was at home. And – so was she, because her husband had stabbed her to death and hidden her body in the freezer.’

‘Jō ki hairāna hai!’ said Jamila, shaking her head. ‘That’s just incredible!’

‘Oh, it gets worse,’ Sergeant Bristow told them. ‘After he’d killed her he cut a lump off her thigh and cooked it and ate it, and when we got there, he’d cut her head off and was defrosting it in the microwave. He said he wanted to cook and eat her brain, and he got all narky when we wouldn’t let him.’

‘I feel sick,’ said Jamila.

‘And that’s him screaming?’ asked Jerry.

‘That’s him, believe it or not,’ said Sergeant Bristow. ‘DC Willis and DC Baker are with him now. They’ve been trying to get him to strip but he’s not having it – says he can’t take his sweater off because it hurts.’

‘It hurts?’ said Jamila. ‘Why?’

‘I haven’t a clue, but DC Baker’s asked me to call for a doctor. First of all we get that ice-cream stuck to his coat, and then that teacher, now we’ve got him, screaming about taking off his sweater.’

‘Let’s go and take a butcher’s,’ said Jerry.

While Sergeant Bristow went off to reception, Jerry and Jamila walked quickly along the corridor to the cells. David had stopped screaming now but he was sobbing bitterly and he still sounded like a woman.

The duty officer was standing outside the cell with his arms folded looking bored.

‘Come to see Madame Butterfly, have you?’ he asked.

‘If you’ve no objection,’ said Jamila, coldly, and the duty officer fumbled with his keys and opened the door for them.

David was sitting on his bed, his hands covering his face, his shoulders shaking. He was still wearing his black sweater and his grey boxer shorts and one bare foot was crossed over the other, more like a miserable woman than a man.

DC Willis was standing with his hands in his pockets and a look of total frustration on his face, like a parent whose three-year-old child is standing at the top of a playground slide, refusing either to slide down it or climb back down the steps.

DC Jean Baker was a young, chunky woman with short red hair, a face the colour of a pink party balloon and a tight bottle-green suit. Jerry always thought she could have been Ed Sheeran’s baby sister.

The two uniformed officers were there, too – PC Ted Jonas, in his shirt-sleeves, as broad-shouldered as a rugby full-back, and PC Wilkinson, older and greyer, with a paunch.

‘Ah, Jerry,’ DC Willis greeted him. ‘And DS Patel. I think we might have another case of Stuck Clothes Syndrome. He won’t take his sweater off himself and he screams like an effing soprano every time we try to do it for him.’

‘What’s his name again?’ asked Jerry.

‘David Nelson. He’s been formally charged with doing his wife in, and cautioned. He hasn’t asked for a brief, although I reckon he needs a nut doctor more than a lawyer. The trouble is, he keeps talking about himself in the third person.’

‘The third person?’ asked Jamila. ‘What do you mean by that exactly?’

‘He’s admitted that David Nelson killed his wife and ate part of her leg, and he’s admitted that he decapitated her with the intention of eating her brain. But he keeps insisting that he’s not David Nelson.’

Jamila turned to Jerry and said, ‘Just like Sophie Marshall. Just like Laura Miller, that teacher. Both of them quite freely confessed to the murders that they had committed, didn’t they, but both of them claimed that it wasn’t actually them. Oh, and that addict, too, the one who was brought in for importuning. It’s like they’re all suffering from schizophrenia.’

‘I think we need to leave this bloke alone until he’s been seen by a doctor and we’ve had a full report from forensics,’ said Jerry. ‘It’s obvious he’s in some kind of a freaky mental state, unless he’s putting it on, and somehow I don’t think he is.’

He sat down beside David and laid a hand on his quaking shoulder.

‘David? Can you hear me, David? Do you want to tell me how you’re feeling?’

David didn’t answer at first, but gradually his sobbing subsided and he gave a deep bubbling sniff. He lowered his hands and stared at Jerry with puffy, reddened eyes.

‘I can’t take it off,’ he whispered, as if he didn’t want anybody else to hear. ‘She won’t let me.’

‘Who won’t let you, David?’

‘My mother. She won’t let me.’

‘Your mother? Why won’t she let you? Where is she?’

David closed his eyes for a moment, and then shuddered. When he opened his eyes again, his expression had changed from miserable pathos to naked hostility.

‘What’s it to you?’ he demanded, and his voice was shrill again, almost a scream. ‘Why don’t you go away and mind your own business, whoever you are?’

‘Detective Constable Jerry Pardoe, if you must know, and you’re under arrest for murder. You’re not doing yourself any good by squawking at me.’

‘It wasn’t me. It was David. How many times do I have to tell you?’

‘You are David. You killed your wife and you started to eat her.’

‘There’s no law against eating human flesh.’

‘I know that. But there’s a law against killing people so that you can do it.’

‘But it wasn’t me, and you can’t prove that it was me.’

Jerry took his hand away from David’s shoulder and stood up.

‘There’s no point in carrying on with this,’ he said. ‘Let’s wait until a doctor’s seen him. If you ask me, he needs to go off to Springfield, too.’

‘Given up, have you?’ David challenged him.

‘For now,’ Jerry told him.

‘You need to feed me. I’m starving. If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to be very sick, and then you’ll regret it. You’re supposed to take care of people in custody.’

‘We can bring you some sarnies later, OK? I assume you don’t have any food allergies, do you? And you’re obviously not a vegetarian.’

‘Don’t you mock me, young man,’ said David. ‘I’ll dig your eyes out and fry them unless you’re careful.’

Jerry ushered Jamila out of the cell and the others followed them. DC Willis said, ‘I’ll keep you up to date, Jerry, once the doctor’s taken a shufti at him. I mean, don’t ask me what the bloody hell’s wrong with all of these nutters. I’ve never come across anything like it.’

They were all walking back to the reception area when they heard a hideous screech from David’s cell. It was more than a cry of protest – it sounded like somebody being tortured. They all looked at each other, wondering if they ought to go back and see what was wrong, but then David screeched again, and shouted out, ‘No! No! You can’t do that! You can’t do that! Stop! Stop, you can’t do that! No!’

They all hurried back to David’s cell. The duty officer had already lifted up his huge bunch of keys and was trying to unlock the door. Meanwhile David kept on shouting and whooping in agony. The last time Jerry had heard anything like it was when he had visited an abattoir in East London and heard pigs being killed.

‘What’s the hold-up?’ he snapped. ‘Just get the fucking door open!’

‘The key won’t turn!’ said the duty officer.

‘What do you mean, the key won’t turn? Here!’

Jerry pushed him aside and tried to turn the key himself, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘You’re sure this is the right key?’

‘Of course I’m sure. It’s just bloody jammed.’

Jerry lifted the viewing flap and inside the cell he saw that David was standing up with his back towards the door, and that he was trying to wrench his black sweater over his head. He had managed to lift it as far as his shoulders, and he was desperately trying to claw it up further, but in doing so he had ripped off all of his skin. His entire back was raw and glistening red, and he was throwing himself from side to side and twisting himself around in what must have been unbearable pain. Drops of blood were flying all around the cell like a swarm of scarlet flies.

‘Stop!’ he screamed. ‘You can’t do that! You know what will happen if you do that! You’ll kill me! I can’t die again! You’ll kill me!’

In spite of his obvious suffering, he gave the sweater one last heave. He managed to pull it right off, but at the same time he tore all the skin from his upper body and his arms, and it dangled from the inside of the sweater in long bloody shreds.

‘You bastard!’ he screamed. ‘You little bastard!’

With that, he pitched over sideways and disappeared from sight.

‘Call for a bus!’ said Jerry. ‘And go and fetch a bloody crowbar!’

He tried turning the key again. At first it remained stubbornly stuck, but when he jiggled it once more, the lock smoothly clicked and the door swung open, almost as if somebody invisible had pushed it.

Jerry stepped into the cell, followed closely by Jamila and DC Willis. David was twitching and shaking and mumbling. Jerry crouched down beside him, although he couldn’t touch him. He had ripped away more than just the top layer of skin. At least five or six out of the seven layers had been torn off, right down to the dermis and even the hypodermis in places, so that his body fat and muscles were exposed, and were glistening with interstitial fluid.

‘David,’ said Jerry. ‘David, there’s help on the way.’

David’s eyes opened, but then they rolled back into their sockets so that only the whites were showing. He was in deep shock, and Jerry knew that it would be more than a miracle if he survived until the paramedics arrived.

Jamila said, ‘Maybe his sweater did the same thing as those two coats. How else did he manage to pull off so much skin? Maybe its fibres had stuck themselves into his pores.’

‘Well, maybe,’ said Jerry. ‘Where is that bloody sweater, anyway? I thought he dropped it straight down on the floor.’

Jamila looked around. Then she said, ‘There – right under the bed.’

The black sweater was bunched up in the darkness underneath the bed, so close to the wall that they wouldn’t have seen it if they hadn’t been looking for it. Jamila bent down and reached out for it, but immediately she jumped back and yelped out, ‘Ō naraka! It moved!’

‘You’re kidding me,’ said Jerry.

‘I swear to you, it moved!’

Jerry leaned over and looked under the bed. At first the black sweater lay there perfectly still, but then after a few moments he thought that he saw its shoulders hump up, and one of the sleeves slide forward as if it still had an arm inside it.

‘It’s a rat,’ he said. ‘I’ll bet you anything that’s what it is. A rat’s got inside it.’ He stood up and called out to the duty officer, ‘Malcolm – had any rats in here lately?’

‘Rats?’ said the duty officer. ‘No, Jerry, never had no rats. Had some pigeons up in the roof-space last month, but that’s all.’

DC Willis was outside the door, talking to forensic services on his mobile. DC Baker had disappeared off to reception. She had said that she was going to meet the paramedics when they arrived, but Jerry guessed that she hadn’t wanted to stand around here looking at David’s grisly torso any longer. He had always prided himself on his cast-iron stomach, but the sight of a man whose entire upper body was nothing but scarlet muscle and exposed tendons and yellowish fat was beginning to make him feel queasy, too.

He bent down and looked under the bed again. The black sweater appeared to have crept forward a few inches. It was inside-out, glistening wet with blood and festooned with parchment-like ribbons of David’s skin. But it was only a sweater. It couldn’t be moving on its own.

He reached out for it, but as soon as he touched it, it recoiled, and then it came scuttling out from underneath the bed like a huge crippled spider.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jerry shouted. ‘Derek – watch out!’

DC Willis turned around and saw the black sweater running jerkily across the floor towards him, and he took two stumbling steps backwards in disbelief. The duty officer saw it, too, and stood with his mouth open as it carried on running jerkily up the corridor, leaving behind it a patchy trail of blood and fragments of David’s skin.

Jamila was almost screaming. ‘It’s alive, Jerry! Iha asabhava hai! How can it be alive?’

Jerry didn’t answer, but stepped over David and pushed his way past DC Willis. He caught up with the sweater before it could reach the reception area, and stamped on it. In immediate response, its sleeves flung themselves up and clutched at his ankle. They twisted themselves around his lower leg, around and around, and clung onto him tighter than a tourniquet. He kicked the sweater twice more, as hard as he could, and shook his leg again and again – so violently that he lost his balance and fell back against the wall, jarring his shoulder.

The duty officer came running up and stamped on the sweater, too. After he had trodden on it six or seven times, its sleeves went limp and unfurled themselves from Jerry’s shin. It lay flattened and sodden and totally still.

Jerry rubbed his shoulder and said, ‘Thanks, Malcolm. Jesus.’

They both looked down at the black sweater and then at each other. Neither of them could believe what had just happened. Jerry said nothing more – even swear words wouldn’t have expressed how he felt.

DC Willis came up to join them, although Jamila had stayed to watch over David. DC Willis crossed himself.

‘I didn’t know you were a left-footer, Derek,’ said Jerry.

‘I’m not,’ said DC Willis. ‘But if that wasn’t the bloody Devil at work, then I don’t know what the hell it was.’

The duty officer prodded the sweater with his foot. ‘I don’t get it. There’s fuck-all inside it. But it was beetling along, wasn’t it? Like – I don’t know – like a beetle.’

Jerry said, ‘Go and find somebody to keep an eye on it for us, will you, Malcolm? I don’t want it running off again before forensics have had a chance to take pictures.’

Just then, DC Baker came back, followed by two paramedics in bright yellow high-viz jackets.

‘Mind where you’re walking,’ Jerry cautioned them, and pointed to the sweater on the floor. The paramedics looked back at him blankly, but all the same they skirted around it.

Jerry and DC Willis waited by the sweater until the duty officer came back with another PC, a young officer with a fuzzy blond moustache and a protuberant Adam’s apple.

‘We’ve called forensics,’ said DC Willis. ‘But we just want you to watch this sweater until they get here.’

‘You want me to watch it?’ the young PC asked him. ‘In case what?’

‘In case it tries to run away,’ said Jerry. ‘If it does, step on it. Hard.’

The young PC started to laugh, but when he saw that Jerry was serious, he stopped abruptly, and said, ‘All right. Got you. If it tries to run away, step on it.’

‘Hard,’ said Jerry.

Jamila came out of David’s cell and walked up to him. Her expression was serious and she shook her head. ‘He’s gone, Jerry. There was nothing they could do for him.’

‘Oh, well. After what he did, he was probably going to be banged up for the next forty years, anyway.’

Jamila looked down at the sweater. ‘This is just like Sophie Marshall’s jacket. What did she say? It came crawling after her. And where did her jacket go, after we found it in the hallway?’

‘I know,’ said Jerry. ‘And it wasn’t Sophie who killed her boyfriend. The jacket did it. I can’t get my head round this.’

‘This is worse than my grandmother’s stories about the jinns,’ said Jamila. ‘Much worse, because this is real. This sweater – it ran away like a giant tarantula, yet it’s made of nothing but wool. How could that be?’

‘Don’t know, skip. I can’t imagine what Dr Fuller’s going to tell us, but personally I can’t think of any logical explanation for it at all. Well – except that it’s witchcraft.’