Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  He saw two yellow eyes reflected in the beam of his flashlight, and he froze. Only seconds later, though, a grey tortoiseshell cat stalked warily out of the darkness and jumped up onto the fence of the house next door. Jerry thought that the cat was lucky that he wasn’t armed, because he probably would have shot it or Tasered it before he realised what it was.

  He had almost finished circling the church without seeing any sign of the coats when he heard a loud banging coming from the direction of the road. It went on and on, bang! bang! bang! and then he heard a crunch like a window breaking, followed by a high, penetrating scream.

  Oh, Christ, that’s Alice!

  He ran around to the front of the church. The five hooded coats were surrounding his car, and they were beating at the roof and the bonnet and the doors with their sleeves. These sleeves didn’t flap, though. They struck the sides of the car as if they were heavy wooden flails, and they had already smashed the rear window and one of the rear side windows.

  Alice was cowering inside the car, her hands covering her head, and she was screaming and screaming in absolute terror.

  Jerry pelted across the grass and yanked open the gate. He crossed the pavement and seized the shoulders of the coat that was trying to beat open the front passenger door. The coat was coarse and dry, just like an ordinary duffle coat, but he could actually feel that there was somebody or something inside it – something muscular, but muscular like a squid’s tentacle rather than a human arm. He tried to drag the coat away from the side of the car, but it swung itself around and one of its sleeves smacked him hard against his cheekbone and sent him flying backwards. He landed on his left hip and knocked his head against the railings.

  He felt as if his head had split open and his hair was wet with blood, but he pulled himself back up onto his feet and seized the coat a second time. He managed to grab the back of its hood, but as he tried to pull the hood down, another coat came round from the back of the car and wrapped one of its sleeves around his upper arm, twice, as quickly as cracking a whip. It was like having his blood pressure taken, only ten times tighter.

  ‘Get the fuck – off me,’ Jerry panted, but the coat pulled him away from the car and dragged him, stumbling, backwards. The other four coats were still beating at the roof and the bonnet, and Jerry heard another window break. On the opposite side of the street he could see doors opening and curtains being pulled back as people peered out to see what all the noise was about.

  The coat dragged him even further back, and as it did so the streetlight shone into its hood, but there was nobody inside it. It was empty, or appeared to be empty, just as it had no visible hands or feet, and all he could see was its tartan lining. Even so, it possessed an extraordinary strength – stronger than any man that he had ever encountered, either in a street scuffle or in the gym when he was kick-boxing. Alice was shrieking in panic, and he felt so angry and helpless that he could have burst into tears.

  The coat’s right sleeve wrestled towards his neck. He tried to bat it away, but it was relentless. It forced its way underneath his arm and snaked itself around his wet collar, and then it tightened, hard.

  Jesus – it’s going to strangle me.

  He punched the coat as hard as he could, but although it was so strong his fists connected with nothing except thick billowing fabric. He tried to kick it, in the same way that he would have kicked a man in the crotch, but his foot thumped into nothing but coat-tails.

  Now the sleeve that was wound around his neck was gripping him tighter and tighter – so tight that he had to tilt up his chin, and he felt that it was going to wrench his head clean off his shoulders. He could hardly breathe, and tiny points of light were swimming in front of his eyes.

  His vision began to grow dark, and he was on the point of passing out when he heard a loud metallic screeching sound, followed by a loud clatter. The coat’s right sleeve suddenly unwound itself from his neck, and its left sleeve released its hold on his arm. He staggered back, almost losing his balance and falling over again, but he could see why the coat had let him go. Two other coats had torn the passenger door off his car and thrown it across the pavement, and one of them was trying to reach over the top of the front seats. Alice had climbed into the back, and she was pressing herself against the opposite door, so that the coat wouldn’t be able to seize her and pull her out. The other coats were clustering around it, as if they were hungry for their share.

  Alice wasn’t screaming now. Her face was deathly white and her mouth was turned down with absolute dread.

  Jerry didn’t hesitate. He limped and hopped around the back of the car like Long John Silver, pulling his keys out of his trouser pocket and opening up the driver’s door. He dropped down behind the wheel, jabbed the key into the ignition and started the engine. The coat that was leaning into the car hit him hard on the shoulder and then on the side of the head, and then tried to wrap one of its sleeves around his elbow. He forced the gearstick into first and jammed his foot down on the accelerator pedal, and the car shot forward, its tyres screeching in chorus.

  The coat tried to clamber right inside, holding onto the handbrake with one sleeve and the back of the passenger seat with the other. Jerry swerved right and left, trying to make it lose its grip, but it kept clinging on. In the back seat, Alice was sobbing with fear, although Jerry couldn’t see her in his rear-view mirror because she had dropped down onto the floor.

  He tried to change gear because the engine was screaming in protest, but the sleeve was now tangled around the gearstick as well as the handbrake, and preventing him from shifting into third. He tugged at the gearstick again and again, without being able to engage it, but then he saw a lamp-post up ahead, on the corner of the next street. He twisted the steering-wheel sharply to the left and drove up onto the pavement, hitting the kerb with a spine-jarring jolt. With a dull thump that sounded just like a human body, the coat collided with the lamp-post and was knocked out of the car, rolling over and over on the pavement and into the road.

  Jerry could see it in his mirror, but he didn’t slow down. Instead, he drove at nearly fifty miles an hour until he reached the main Upper Tooting Road, with all its lights and restaurants and shops. It was only then that he pulled into the side of the road and climbed out, although he shaded his eyes and looked back along Brudenell Road to make sure that the coats hadn’t come after them. If they were strong enough to tear a car door off its hinges, God alone knew how fast they could run.

  He opened the rear passenger door and lifted Alice out. She clung to him, quaking and crying.

  ‘You’re not hurt, are you, sweetheart?’ Jerry asked her.

  ‘I want Mummy! I want to go home!’ Alice wept.

  ‘That’s all right, I’ll take you back to Mummy. But I can’t take you in this car. I’ll call DS Patel and she’ll send someone to pick us up.’

  ‘Those weren’t men!’ said Alice. ‘They were only coats! How could coats do that? How could coats smash up your car?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I don’t know the answer to that any more than you do. But you’re right, yes, they were only coats. I just hope you don’t have any bad dreams about them. Me and DS Patel, we’re going to find out how they can run around like that, scaring people, and we’re going to stop them. So you don’t need to worry about them any more, I promise you.’

  Jerry sat her gently down on the back seat of the car and called Jamila, all the while keeping an eye on the far end of Brudenell Road.

  ‘Skip?’

  ‘Yes, Jerry, where are you? PC Rollins has just called in from All Saints Church and says there’s nothing there to see except a ripped-off car door. The local residents have told him that your car was attacked by five black men, and then you shot off.’

  ‘Not black men, skip. Coats. And if you ask me, Alice and me were lucky to get away from there without being killed.’

  As succinctly as he could, Jerry told her how the coats had tried to break into his car to get to Alice, and how one
of them had nearly choked him.

  ‘Well, there’s no sign of them now,’ said Jamila. ‘Sergeant Bristow sent out another three cars to box off the area but so far there isn’t any sign of them.’

  ‘They do know they’re looking for coats, and not for black men?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘“Not exactly”? Either they do or they don’t.’

  ‘They don’t. But I’m going to have a word with DI Saunders. There’s no way that we can keep this a secret any longer.’

  Jerry said, ‘OK.’ He had been about to say something stinging, but he had seen that Alice had found her iPhone on the floor of the car and was calling Nancy.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m on the corner of Upper Tooting Road and Brudenell Road, and my car’s a write-off. Alice is very upset, as you can imagine, and I need to take her back home to her mother. So if you could send a car for us.’

  ‘Is she all right? Those coats must have scared her half to death.’

  ‘She wasn’t hurt, thank God. But, yes, she was crapping herself, not to put too fine a point on it. And I can tell you something for nothing – she wasn’t the only one.’

  38

  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 inc
idents 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.’