Ghost Virus

On their way back to the station, Jamila received a text from Dr Fuller telling her that he had successfully removed Mindy’s jacket with far less skin abrasion than he had feared. She would be spending the night in intensive care at St George’s and sent over to Springfield in the morning for psychological assessment and further recovery.

‘It’s my day off tomorrow,’ said Jerry. ‘If you want me to, though, I’ll come over to Springfield when you go to see her. I don’t have to pick Alice up until six.’

‘Let’s see if she’s fit to be questioned,’ said Jamila. ‘Is your Alice staying overnight?’

‘Yes, she usually does. We won’t be doing anything very exciting – just go to Nando’s for a bean burger and then come back to my place and watch Frozen for the eleven-thousandth time.’

‘How old is she? It must be very hard for you, only seeing her now and again.’

‘She was seven in June. And you’re right, yes, I’ve missed out on a lot. She seems to have grown taller every time I see her. But there was no way that her mum and me could have stayed together. Too much alike, that was our trouble. You know what they say about magnets.’

They turned into the police station car park. They didn’t get out immediately, but sat together in the car for a while, as if they needed some quiet time to think – not only about their investigation, but about themselves.

‘I’d better go and write this up,’ said Jamila, at last. ‘I don’t know how Saunders is going to react, but he needs to know what a confused state our suspects are in. There won’t be any future in taking any of them to court, not the way they are now. We’ll have to apply to have them sectioned.’

‘That’s if they live long enough.’

‘You don’t think they’re really going to die, do you? I’m sure that must be a delusion.’

‘I don’t honestly know any more. The way this case is going, I’m beginning to think that I need to be sectioned myself.’

‘I’m going to do some Googling,’ said Jamila. ‘There could have been similar outbreaks in the past, maybe in other countries.’

‘I suppose it’s possible, but you’d think we would have heard about them, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps they were so unbelievable that nobody ever took them seriously.’

‘So what are you going to Google? “Coats that make you think you’re somebody else”? “Jackets that make you want to eat people”? How about “Sweaters that crawl around the house and make a grab for your ankle”?’

‘Jerry, we’re not going to solve this by making fun of it.’

‘Do I look as if I’m laughing? I’ve never had a case that’s given me the willies so much as this one. And the worst part about it is, there’s so much evidence, and all our suspects have freely confessed to what they’ve done, but none of it makes any sense whatsoever.’

Jamila laid her hand on top of his. ‘Don’t allow yourself to get frustrated. Everything in the world makes sense. It’s just that sometimes we can’t understand why.’

Jerry looked at her. There was something in her eyes that made him feel both reassured but lonely, as if she had acknowledged that they could never have anything more than a professional relationship. It wasn’t only their different ethnicity and their different religions. She would always be DS Patel and he would always be DC Pardoe.

‘Come on,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Let’s go and make Smiley as baffled as we are.’