Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  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 w
hose 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.’

  24

  Jerry and Jamila waited until four technicians from the forensic service had arrived, all of them waddling around in their white Tyvek suits, taking photographs of David’s cell and the corridor outside, and samples of the blood and fluids from the walls and the floor.

  Eventually David’s body was wheeled away on a trolley, covered by a blue plastic sheet, and the black sweater was picked up with tongs and sealed in a corrugated cardboard evidence box. The sweater had shown no more signs of life – no more twitching – and although Jerry felt that he should have told the forensic team that it had tried to run away from them, he couldn’t find the words. Neither could Jamila or DC Willis or the duty officer. They looked at each other as one of the forensic experts stuck tape around the evidence box, in tacit agreement that they would wait until Dr Fuller had examined the sweater and compared it with his findings from the overcoats.

  It was nearly nine o’clock now. Jamila had phoned Mr Wazir and asked if he preferred to postpone his interview with them until tomorrow, but Mr Wazir told them that he would rather get it over with this evening.

  ‘Are you up for it, Jerry?’ she asked him. ‘You’re not too shaken up?’

  ‘Stirred, but not shaken,’ said Jerry. ‘Come on, let’s do it. There’s no way I’m going straight home now for a beer and a box set and a cosy night’s kip.’

  *

  Mr Wazir was a neat, bald man, with a small black moustache and several gold teeth. He was wearing an immaculate white shirt and a Peshawar Green Cricket Club tie. He led Jerry and Jamila into the living-room while Mrs Wazir retreated into the kitchen. There was a strong aroma of cardamom in the house, and before Mr Wazir closed the door, they could hear the sound of frying.

  They sat down. Mr Wazir had very small feet in maroon corduroy slippers. Jerry felt that they should have taken off their shoes, but Mr Wazir didn’t ask them to. He seemed calm and detached and more business-like than emotional.

  Jamila cleared her throat. ‘First of all, Mr Wazir, we have to offer you our condolences on the tragic loss of Samira.’

  Mr Wazir nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘We know that you want to hold a funeral as soon as possible,’ Jamila went on. ‘The pathologist has advised me that her remains can be released tomorrow. If you can just let us know which funeral directors you’ve chosen.’

  ‘She was a most happy young woman,’ said Mr Wazir. ‘Always laughing, always singing. I have never known anybody so happy.’

  ‘She was happy to be getting married?’ asked Jamila.

  ‘Oh, yes. We were careful to choose a husband who was both handsome and reliable, and would treat her well. After all, she was brought up here in UK, and we knew that she would not tolerate a man who did not respect her. She told me that she was so delighted to be marrying Faraz.’

  ‘We understand that Samira and her mother used to argue a lot,’ said Jerry.

  ‘My wife is very traditional in her beliefs. She believes in obedience to your elders. In UK, girls do not think that way so much, so there was bound to be friction. But my wife would never have lifted a finger to harm her.’

  ‘So who do you think might have killed her?’

  ‘I have no idea at all. Like I told you, she was happy to be marrying Faraz, and she had no jealous boyfriends. She had friends who we
re boys, naturally, but as her mother probably told you, she was ika anavi’āhī.’

  ‘Pure,’ said Jamila, for Jerry’s benefit.

  ‘Do you think she committed suicide?’ asked Jerry.

  ‘Why would she?’ Mr Wazir retorted. ‘She was happy and she was beautiful and everything in her life was perfect. Somebody killed her but I cannot think who it might have been. To be frank with you, isn’t that your job, to discover who did it?’

  *

  ‘These cases are beginning to get me down,’ said Jamila, as they climbed into their car and buckled up their seatbelts. ‘All the forensic evidence so far suggests that there was nobody else in the house when Samira had acid poured over face, and like her father said, everything in her life appeared to be perfect. Except, of course, the fibres in her skin.’

  ‘Well, you know what old Sherlock Holmes’s motto was, don’t you?’ said Jerry, as he started the engine and pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘Yes, but Sherlock Holmes didn’t find himself dealing with coat fibres that grew into people’s skin and sweaters that ran along the floor like spiders.’

  ‘Do you fancy a nightcap?’ Jerry asked her. ‘I only live down the road here. I know you don’t touch booze, but I could make you a cup of tea. My daughter Alice comes to stay over sometimes, so I could even stretch to a mug of cocoa.’

  ‘You have coffee? I would really love a strong cup of coffee. I want something to keep me awake tonight, or else I know what will happen. I will have terrible nightmares about giant spiders.’

  ‘I’ll make you a triple espresso. That should stop you from sleeping for about a week.’

  *

  Jerry’s flat was on the first floor of a grey concrete block of flats on the corner of Prentis Road. Before he opened his door he said, ‘You’ll have to excuse the catastrophic mess. I have a really nice Polish girl who comes around once a week and tidies up for me, but she’s been away this week. Her sister’s getting married or her grandpa’s died, something like that.’

  He switched on the lamps in the living-room. It was furnished with a cream vinyl couch cluttered with newspapers, two mismatched armchairs, one green and one orange, a huge flat-screen television and an oak coffee-table that was crowded with empty Stella Artois cans and scribbled-in notebooks and a half-empty packet of paprika crisps.