Ghost Virus

Jerry found a patrol car at the rear of the station, undamaged except for a broken blue light and a dented bonnet. While Jamila waited for him in the car park he took the keys from the reception desk, trying to keep his eyes averted from the mess of mutilated bodies. At least ten SAS blades were clearing up heaps of bloodstained fabric, using the station’s snow-shovels. Three trucks were lined up outside, waiting to be filled with all the hundreds of items of clothing that they had sawn to pieces.

Jerry drove them back to his flat. They hardly spoke, but after what they had been through and what they had witnessed, neither of them had very much to say. Jerry was glad in a way that Jamila had stuck with them until the very end, because he didn’t have to describe how gruesome it had been.

He made coffee for them both while she took a shower. When he came out of the shower himself he found her sitting wrapped in a towel in the living-room watching the television news. The newscaster was saying that there had been rioting in some areas of South London, causing multiple casualties and a temporary blackout, but he said nothing about clothes that had come to life or dismembered shoppers, and neither did he mention the SAS assault on Tooting police station.

‘Heavy, heavy censorship,’ said Jamila.

Jerry sat down on the couch beside her. ‘It’ll have to come out sooner or later. Too many people saw those clothes running around to keep it under wraps for very long.’

‘Has anybody from the Yard been in touch?’ Jamila asked him.

‘Not yet. I doubt if they know yet who’s still alive and who’s snuffed it. They’re probably more worried about poor old Callow than anybody else. It’s all total chaos at the moment.’

They finished their coffee and dressed. They hadn’t eaten all day but neither of them could face the idea of food. Jamila closed her eyes and fell asleep on the couch for nearly an hour while Jerry continued to watch television. There were constant reports about the ‘rioting’ and a phone number was posted on the screen for anybody concerned about missing friends or relatives, but there was still no word about how many people had been killed or injured, or how.

Jerry was just coming out of the toilet when his iPhone pinged. It was Major Wallace, telling him that almost all the clothing had been gathered up and tipped into the middle of the Figges Marsh recreation ground.

‘We’d really appreciate it if DS Patel could come along and see it. She seems to know all about this kind of ghost malarkey.’

‘Sure. We’ll be there in ten.’

He woke Jamila. She blinked at him and said, ‘Where am I?’

‘Chez Pardoe. Sorry to disturb you but the major’s ready to light the bonfire. He says he’d like you to be a witness.’

‘Don’t worry about waking me. I was having a horrible dream about black hairy caterpillars crawling around inside my clothes. Do you have any Listerine? The inside of my mouth tastes as if I’ve been licking scaffolding poles.’

They drove down to Figges Marsh, a flat grassy triangle opposite the London Road Cemetery, bordered by oak trees. They parked in front of the houses in Manship Road and walked across the grass to the huge pile of torn clothing that the SAS had cleared out of the police station. Major Wallace was there, as well as twenty of his squadron. Some of them had taken off their black Kevlar helmets, and were bareheaded, or wearing berets.

As they came nearer, Jerry could smell petrol. Two SAS blades were walking around the pile of clothing, sloshing out the last of two twenty-litre jerry cans. The pile was at least a metre taller than they were.

‘Lighting-up time,’ said Major Wallace. ‘I’ve heard from two of our chainsaw squads. They’ve already located and ripped up five gangs of coats and jackets between them, so there’ll be much more to burn later. I just thought it would be a good idea to get this lot cremated first.’

He turned to one of the soldiers beside the pile of clothes and said, ‘That’s it, corporal! You can get it going now!’

The corporal struck a match and dropped it onto the clothes. With a soft rumble, the whole petrol-soaked pile went up in flames, and it gave out such a blast of heat that Jerry and Jamila had to take a few paces back. They stood in silence as the flames leapt and curled and seemed to form patterns in the air.

The fire was still blazing furiously when Jerry heard somebody shouting. He looked around the recreation ground but at first he could see only trees. Then he heard the shouting again, closer, and saw a man running towards them across the grass.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘It’s Liepa!’

Jokubas Liepa came up to them, gasping for breath. His long black hair was wild and his eyes were staring like a man gone mad.

‘What are you doing?’ he shouted at them. ‘What are you doing? These are souls! These are people! You are burning them alive!’

Jerry circled around behind Jamila and caught hold of Liepa’s left arm. ‘These may be souls, mate, but they’re mass-murderers, and they’re getting their come-uppance. And you – you’re getting your come-uppance, too. You’re under arrest for just about everything you can think of.’

‘You can’t do this!’ Liepa protested. ‘These are human souls! These are my followers! Don’t you understand what pain they must be suffering? Put out the fire! Put it out, before all of those poor souls perish!’

‘Not a chance, tosh,’ said Jerry. ‘And how are we going to put it out? Piss on it?’

‘You can’t do this!’ Liepa raved at him. ‘You – you are the killers! You can’t do this!’

He was still shouting when a pattern of flames leapt out of the fire and came dancing towards him. It kept changing shape, so that it was difficult to see exactly what it was, but more than anything it resembled a burning man. It rushed up to Liepa and threw its fiery arms around him.

Jamila screamed, ‘Jerry!’ and seized his coat collar and pulled him away. The burning man embraced Liepa with flames and Liepa threw back his head and let out an extraordinary dog-like howl. As Jerry staggered back, he could see that Liepa’s face was already seared scarlet and that his long black hair was alight.

One of the SAS blades whipped off his jacket and approached Liepa, holding his jacket up ready to wrap it around him, and stifle the flames. But the heat was far too intense for him to be able to get close enough.

Liepa stumbled around and around, blazing from head to foot, and there was nothing that Jerry or Jamila or the SAS men could do to save him. As he stumbled around another fiery figure came leaping out of the pile of burning clothes, and then another, and another, and they all went rushing towards Liepa and clung to him like napalm.

For a few seconds Liepa looked like nothing except a rippling pillar of flames. Watching him, one of the SAS blades crossed himself. Jerry knew that by now all Liepa’s nerve-endings would have been burned away, so that he would no longer be capable of feeling any pain, but when he thought of all the people he had caused to suffer, he almost wished that he was in agony, right until the very end.

At last Liepa collapsed and fell to the grass. The flames dwindled and died out, and soon there was nothing but smoke drifting across the recreation ground. Liepa’s body was totally black and crusted, like a man made out of charcoal.

The bonfire, too, began to subside. It had stopped raining now and a faint night breeze was blowing, so ashes tumbled away towards the trees.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ said Major Wallace. ‘Who was that man? And how the hell did that happen?’

‘That man was Jokubas Liepa,’ said Jamila. ‘It was him who claimed to be responsible for bringing all these clothes to life. Because of that, he said that they regarded him as their god.’

‘My head’s spinning,’ said Major Wallace. ‘This gets harder to understand by the minute.’

‘Don’t you see?’ Jamila told him. ‘When we cut these clothes up and set fire to them, the spirits inside them were faced with dying a second time. So when they felt Liepa’s presence close by, they believed that he could rescue them. They weren’t trying to kill him. They were begging him for salvation. That’s what I believe, anyway.’

‘I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any,’ said Major Wallace. ‘What’s your opinion, DC Pardoe?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Jerry. ‘The only spirit I know anything about is Jack Daniel’s.’

Major Wallace thought for a moment. He looked down at Liepa’s charred body, and then he said, ‘This didn’t happen, OK? I think it’s going to be far better for all of us if we keep our lips zipped. All right, corporal. Carry on.’

*

Jamila spent the rest of the night at Jerry’s flat, sleeping on the couch. By the time Jerry was making toast and coffee for them in the morning, they had still received no contact from the Yard or the Lambeth borough commander, but both of them were reluctant to try to get in touch and report that they had survived.

Although neither of them said anything, they both felt that they needed at least a day to recover from what they had been through. Not only that, the television news programmes were still describing the mayhem that had killed so many innocent people in Tooting as a riot. If Jerry and Jamila checked in and described what had actually happened, they were sure that they would be told to forget it, and that they must have been suffering from overwork. Either that, or they would be accused of trying to cover up the murderous behaviour of some black or Asian gangs in order to be politically correct.

As she spread butter on her toast, Jamila summed up both of their feelings. ‘You know what will happen if we tell the powers that be all about it? They’ll sack us. And if we tell the media, the Met will ruin us, believe me. They’ll make out that you’re a paedophile and I’m a terrorist. There’s no such thing as clothes that come to life and kill people.’

Halfway through the morning, Jamila’s phone rang. It was Dr Stewart, from Springfield hospital.

‘Detective sergeant Patel? Oh, good. I tried to get through to the police station but I got no answer. I gather from the news that there’s been some trouble.’

‘How can I help you, doctor?’ asked Jamila.

‘Well, I’m just calling to tell you that all three of your suspects have made a remarkable overnight recovery. They all seem to be their old selves again. None of them are saying any longer that they have another personality inside them who’s going to die if they’re not fed with human flesh, which I must say is a great relief to all of us. From a psychological point of view, I would say that all three are ready to be released from our care back into yours.’

‘Oh. I’m afraid there might be some problems with that,’ said Jamila. ‘As you rightly say, there has been some trouble, and we may not have any secure accommodation available for them just at this moment in time.’

‘I see,’ said Doctor Stewart. ‘But you can understand that we’re a hospital, not a prison, and if an individual is mentally competent, we cannot be expected to keep them incarcerated.’

‘All right,’ said Jamila. ‘What I’ll do is, come to the hospital and interview each of them, if that’s all right with you. If they’re not trying to pull the wool over your eyes, I’ll see what I can do to have them moved.’

‘DS Patel,’ said Dr Stewart, frostily, ‘I have been a psychiatric consultant for twenty-seven years. Patients do not “pull the wool over my eyes”, as you put it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jamila. ‘It’s just that many offenders have a great talent for deceiving almost everybody, including us.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to come this afternoon,’ said Dr Stewart. ‘The sooner the better.’

Jamila put down her phone and said to Jerry, ‘That was Dr Stewart. She says they’re better – Sophie and Laura and Jamie and Mindy. They’ve all made a miraculous overnight recovery.’

‘You’re kidding. Maybe it was something to do with those clothes. After all, the power came back on after we’d chopped them up, didn’t it? Or maybe it was something to do with Liepa snuffing it.’

‘I’ve said that we’ll go to Springfield this afternoon and talk to them. I don’t want to take them back into police custody until I’m sure that they’re not dangerous any more. You know what some of these schizophrenic murderers are like. They can convince you that it wasn’t them who strangled their wives, it was the fellow next door but one.’

‘All right, sarge, if you say so. Although I must say I’ve had it up to here with homicidal clothes.’

*

It took them nearly three quarters of an hour to drive to Springfield hospital that afternoon, because the centre of Tooting was still cordoned off, and most of the town-bound traffic had been diverted along Tooting Bec Road and Trinity Road.

Dr Stewart was there to meet them herself.

‘We thought you must have had some inkling that they were better,’ she said, as she led them along the corridor. ‘You didn’t send your officer this morning.’

‘No, well, there was some trouble at the police station, as you said.’

‘A riot, that’s what it said on the news. Who was rioting, and what were they rioting about? They didn’t say.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Jamila. ‘Some protest about somebody who’d been arrested, I think.’

‘I blame social media, myself,’ said Dr Stewart. ‘It’s the way that people work themselves up into such a frenzy on Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever. They get quite hysterical about things that are none of their business, and personally don’t affect them in the slightest.’

‘This isn’t the way to your security wing,’ Jerry put in.

‘Oh, no. Their recovery is so complete that we’ve let them out of there. They’re in the quiet room now with Cherry Mwandi. She’s encouraging them to share their experiences. We’re hoping that it will help each of them to understand how they came to be in such an unusual state of mind.’

Jamila glanced at Jerry as if to say, We already know how they came to be in such an unusual state of mind, don’t we? It was the clothes they wore, and the ghost virus that was infecting them.

Dr Stewart led them to the door marked QUIET ROOM. She knocked, and then she entered. ‘Come along in,’ she said.

But then she stopped dead. All of the chairs in the room had been pushed back to the walls so that there was a wide clear space in the centre. Sitting cross-legged around this centre space were Sophie and Laura and Jamie and Mindy. They had looked up as Dr Stewart came in, and their chins were all red-bearded with blood. Their hands, too, wore glistening red gloves.

Lying spread-eagled in between them was Cherry Mwandi. She was staring blindly at the ceiling and her mouth was open as if she were finding it difficult to breathe. She was naked, and all of her clothes were lying on the floor under the window. She had been cut open from her breast bone to her curly black pubic hair, and all of her intestines dragged out, as well as her stomach and her womb. The whole room smelled of blood and excrement.

Jerry and Jamila stood in the doorway, so shocked that they didn’t know what to say. Dr Stewart turned around, pushed her way back into the corridor, and vomited on the floor.

It was Mindy who spoke first. ‘It’s all right now,’ she said, quite chirpily, wiping the blood from her chin with the back of her hand. ‘We’ve found something to eat.’