Ghost Virus

Jerry didn’t get back to Tooting until a quarter to nine, by which time he was feeling bruised and exhausted.

He felt more bruised by Nancy than the knock that he had received on the back of his head, even though Nancy had cleaned it for him. He had sat at what had once been his own kitchen table, and while she had applied Savlon antiseptic cream with her fingertip, he could have believed that the past two years had never happened, and that they had never had to face up to the fact that they were never going to like each other, or even understand each other.

Their attraction had been physical, and that was all. She had always read The Guardian while he read The Sun. She adored her pet Staffie while he thought it was an ugly, slobbery, expensive waste of space. She was a churchgoing Christian and wanted Alice to be confirmed. He had seen enough killing and villainy and paedophilia to know for an absolute fact that there wasn’t a God.

‘Alice said you were attacked by coats,’ Nancy had said, almost off-handedly, when she had finished dabbing his wound. ‘Why would she say a thing like that?’

‘The assailants were all wearing duffle coats, that’s correct.’

‘Jerry – you’re not reporting to your DI now. She said that they were coats – just coats – with nobody in them. I’m asking you why she should say that.’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it, Nancy. That’s all I can say.’

Nancy had dragged out a kitchen chair and sat down next to him. Her expression had been ferocious and he had thought what a great interrogator she would make. Not even the hardest criminal would dare to lie to her.

‘Your own daughter has been so traumatised by what happened to her this evening that I doubt if she’ll be able to sleep for a month, and I’ll probably have to take her for counselling. I’m asking you one more time, Jerry. Why would she say that you were attacked by coats?’

‘It was dark and she was very frightened. She could have imagined it, or it could have been an optical illusion.’

‘Was it an optical illusion?’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it. That’s all I can say. And I’ve asked Alice not to discuss it with anyone – except for you, of course. But please don’t you mention it to anyone, either. It’s a question of security.’

‘What’s going on, Jerry? Are you trying to suggest that Alice is lying, or that she’s gone mad?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then are you going to tell me who really attacked you this evening?’

‘No.’

Nancy stood up. ‘In that case, Jerry, get out. I mean, get out now. And I’ll be making an application to stop you from seeing Alice ever again. Whatever happened, you had no business dragging her into your police investigation. It was reckless and stupid beyond words and she could have been seriously hurt or even lost her life. As it is she may never get over it.’

Jerry said, ‘It’s her birthday next week.’

‘Don’t even think about seeing her. Don’t even think about buying her a present or sending her a card. This evening you forgot what it is to look after a daughter. From now on, you can forget what it is to be a father.’

*

Jamila was still at the station when he got back. She was sitting at her desk with a cup of latte and a half-finished plate of samosas. Jerry plonked himself down opposite her and they looked at each other for a long time before either of them said anything.

‘We’ve been sent a preliminary report from Lambeth Road about the duffle coat that was found on Streatham Common,’ said Jamila at last, wiping her mouth with a tissue.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Jerry. ‘It sat up and gave a Nazi salute.’

Jamila shook her head. ‘No… it’s more disturbing than that. It’s new.’

‘How did they work that out?’

‘The only traces of DNA they found on it belonged to the victim, Philip Wakefield. Apart from that, it still has the original maker’s label on it. It’s a Navy Commander, tall men’s size. They cost nearly four hundred pounds new.’

‘Is there any clue where it came from?’

‘Not so far. But if it originally belonged to that same gang of coats that attacked you and Alice, that means that some shop or warehouse is missing nearly two-and-a-half thousand pounds’ worth of merchandise. Don’t tell me they’re not going to report them stolen.’

‘Stolen, or walked out on their own,’ Jerry added.

‘Whatever. But it was the same type of coat, same colour, same size, and Tooting Bec Common is only just over a mile away from Streatham Common.’

‘It’s interesting that it got itself all caught up in the bushes, though,’ said Jerry.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, when I was trying to pull one of those coats away from my car, you’ve no idea how bloody strong it was. Like, eat your heart out, Hulk Hogan. If the coat that was caught in the bushes was one of them, it should have been able to tear itself free. And if the other coats were there, too, why didn’t they help it to get itself free? Between them, I reckon they could have uprooted the whole bloody bush.’

Jamila sat back, picked up one of the samosas, and then put it down again. ‘Do you realise what we sound like? I’m still trying to work out how we’re going to put this to DI Saunders, let alone the media. And this latest report from Lambeth Road… this takes all of these cases to a whole new level.’

‘You mean the coat being new, instead of second-hand?’

‘Of course. The clothes that all of our suspects have blamed for committing their murders might have been possessed or infected by their previous owners. I mean, we’ve discussed that possibility, haven’t we? But this duffle coat didn’t have any previous owners. And the coats that attacked you, nobody was wearing them, either.’

‘Nobody that I could see, let’s put it that way,’ said Jerry. ‘But I could feel them all right. When that one tried to strangle me – Jesus, it was like being throttled by a bloody great boa constrictor. And my motor’s a total write-off. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to explain that to my insurance company. I’ve only got third party, fire and theft. Nothing in the policy about duffle coats.’

Jamila stood up and went to the window. ‘I thought we might be able to sort this out without having to warn the public at large. If it was nothing more than a handful of people suffering psychotic episodes because of the second-hand coats and sweaters they were wearing… well, that’s bizarre enough, wouldn’t you say? But at least we could have explained it, even if we had to bend the truth a little.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like Smiley.’

‘No, Jerry. As I told you on the phone, we can’t possibly keep the lid on this any longer. That raincoat that ran down the road and all those other clothes that came down the stairs – that’s clear evidence that these incidents are all connected. That sweater and that dress that brought Mindy’s parents back to life, they hadn’t been worn by anybody except them, had they, as far as we know? And now it looks like we’ve got brand-new clothes murdering people.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘We’ll have to discuss this with DI Saunders first. But I’m sure he’ll have to take it higher. You and Alice were lucky that you weren’t both killed this evening. We can’t let that happen to anybody else.’

‘I can see the headline in the Evening Standard even now. TOOTING COPS LOSE THEIR MARBLES.’

‘They won’t be saying that if somebody else gets ripped apart.’

*

Sergeant Bristow came up to tell them that a street-by-street search for five suspects wearing black duffle coats had proved fruitless, even though it had covered a three-mile radius from Balham in the north to Collier’s Wood in the south. Numerous black men had been stopped in the street and some of them searched, but all of them had been able to give the officers a convincing alibi, although one of them had been arrested for possession of skunk.

Both Jerry and Jamila were aware how racist it was to have falsely put out a shout for five black men, but they knew that if they had done the same for black duffle coats with nobody in them, none of the patrolling officers would have taken them seriously.

Jerry’s car had been transported to the garage at Lambeth Road, along with its detached passenger door, and it would be examined by forensic specialists in the morning.

Jamila had sent a text to DI Saunders. Shortly before midnight he came in to the station, wearing a dinner-jacket and a black bow-tie and smelling of cigar smoke. An Elastoplast was still stuck to his left ear.

‘You didn’t have to come in immediately, sir,’ said Jamila. ‘We could have discussed this first thing tomorrow morning. DC Pardoe and me – we were both about to call it a night anyway.’

‘No – we need to go over this now,’ said DI Saunders. ‘I’ve just been to the NUJ Extra charity dinner, and that bloody obnoxious crime reporter from the Mail got me in a corner. He said he’d heard rumours that we were deliberately suppressing the connection between several recent homicides. He asked me if the suspects had all been taking some new hallucinatory drug that we didn’t want publicised.’

‘Did he tell you where he’d got his tip-off from?’ asked Jerry.

DI Saunders shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t. But I reckon it was someone at Springfield. Some nurse or some porter must have heard our suspects babbling all that bollocks about being more than one person at once, and thought they were high on some kind of acid. But these bloody coats – they change everything.’

Jerry and Jamila followed DI Saunders into his office and he switched on all the lights. He hung his dinner-jacket over the back of his chair and unclipped his bow-tie and then he said, ‘All right, Jerry. Fill me in. And don’t leave anything out. This could make or break my career. And yours. And yours, DS Patel. We all want to get ourselves out of Much-Tooting-on-the-Marsh and back to the Yard, don’t we? We certainly don’t want to end up in Springfield with the rest of the bloody nutjobs.’

Jerry sat down and described everything that had happened from the moment he had first seen the duffle coats flying across the road from Tooting Bec Common. DI Saunders listened with his head bowed, saying nothing, but Jerry could tell by his expression that he was growing increasingly unhappy with every word he spoke.

When Jerry had finished, DI Saunders leaned back in his chair, tapping his pen on his desk like a metronome.

‘They’re not going to believe us,’ he said. ‘Nobody is going to believe us. They’re going to say that charity-shop jackets don’t make perfectly respectable young women cut the guts out of their boyfriends, and nine-year-old girls slit their parents’ throats. They’re going to think we’re deluded for saying those same dead parents can be brought back to life by a sweater and a frock. And they’re going to recommend that all of us need sacking from the force and locking up for frightening the shit out of the public with stories about duffle coats that can run around with nobody in them, pulling accountants to pieces, limb from limb.’

‘I know,’ said Jamila. ‘But the worst part about it is that it’s all true.’

Jerry thought for a while, and then said, ‘What that Daily Mail reporter said to you about a new mind-bending drug… maybe we should drop him a hint that he might be right. I mean, even we don’t know for sure, do we? Our suspects could have been affected by some substance that turns them into homicidal maniacs. I don’t know… maybe we could call it Scary Spice.’

‘Ha ha,’ said DI Saunders, sardonically. ‘And what about the duffle coats? They’re the greatest danger to the public, as far as I can see. How do we explain them?’

‘I don’t think we need to explain that they don’t have anybody in them,’ said Jerry. ‘And again, I don’t think we’d be lying, exactly. They bloody well feel as if they’ve got somebody in them, so what’s the difference? All we have to do is warn the public to look out for a gang wearing black duffle coats, and to stay well clear of them if they see them, because they’re dangerous, and call 999.’

Jamila said, ‘I think that makes sense, sir. We do need to put out a warning, urgently, but if we tell the public that they need to watch out for coats running around on their own, most of them are going to think it’s a practical joke. I know I would. You’ve seen all the spoof stories that pop up on Twitter and Facebook. There’s a serious risk that if a sceptical member of the public sees those coats, they’ll approach them and try to show them up for being a prank, and get themselves killed.’

‘I have a very bad feeling about this, no matter what we do,’ said DI Saunders. ‘But, yes, Jerry, I think that we’ll tell the media that we suspect some powerful new drug may be responsible, at least for now. What worries me is that somebody might see these duffle coats and take a video of them, and show that they’re flying rather than walking, and that their hoods are empty.’

‘Even if they do, many people will believe that it is just a spoof,’ said Jamila. ‘You can Photoshop your videos in almost any way you like these days.’

‘All right,’ said DI Saunders, looking at his watch. ‘Let’s meet up again in the morning with the borough press officer, and we can formulate the best way of presenting this to the media. He may even want to involve the director of public affairs. How’s progress otherwise?’

‘Very slow, I have to admit,’ said Jamila. ‘In fact almost none at all. We’ve put out an appeal for any retailers or wholesalers who might have found that their duffle coats are missing, but it’s far too early to expect a response yet. I may be able to question Mindy tomorrow, and it’s possible that she can give me some clues. If only I could find some key to what is causing these clothes to behave so aggressively – whether it’s spiritual or whether it’s scientific.’

DI Saunders said, ‘Maybe you’re right, Jamila, and it is a prank. Maybe it’s God, taking the piss out of us poor mortals, and laughing His celestial arse off.’