‘Christ, it’s a massacre,’ said DI Saunders. Even though the car windows were all closed, they could hear the fleeing shoppers screaming in terror, and another sound, too, deep and blustery, like a strong wind blowing.
The police messages on the radio were becoming increasingly panicky.
‘—we’ve got three more men down – we can’t—!’
‘—there’s too many of them – get back!—’
‘Oh God, it’s pulled his head off! It’s only gone and pulled his fucking head off!’
Among the crowds who were rushing along the pavements, they could now see police officers, too. They were beating at the coats and jackets with their batons to keep them away, but it was obvious that they too were running for their lives. Three hooded coats leapt on top of one PC and brought him to the ground, and then more coats piled on top of them until he was almost completely buried.
They heard three shots, and then another two, but they couldn’t see any armed police, and none of the coats seemed to have been hit.
Jerry tried to drive forward, but a bus had pulled out halfway across the road, and the gap was too narrow. He thought at first that he might be able to force his way through by ramming aside the cars on the opposite side. With a harsh metallic squeal, he started to scrape his Mondeo along the side of the Jaguar next to them. The driver shook his fist and started shouting, although Jerry couldn’t hear him, but the two cars were so tightly jammed together that the driver couldn’t open his door.
Jerry revved the Mondeo’s engine, but before he could push any further forward, coats and jackets and dresses began to appear between the cars, beating on them with their sleeves. They flooded across the road, hammering at every car they reached, shattering their windows and reaching inside them to drag out their drivers and their passengers.
A trench-coat came running up to the front of their car and beat its sleeves on the bonnet, denting it. Jamila said, ‘Jerry – we need to get out of here, and fast!’
Jerry put the Mondeo into reverse so that it slowly screeched free from the Jaguar. Then he turned around in his seat, put his foot down, and drove backwards the way he had come, in the middle of the road between the two lines of traffic. He collided four or five times with other cars, and once with an Ocado van, but at last he reached Amen Corner, and managed to reverse the Mondeo into the police station car park, although he hit the wall as he did so, and then knocked over a police motorcycle.
They all climbed out, shaken. DI Saunders said, ‘Let’s find Callow, pronto. He’s probably watching all this but he needs to know that it’s a full-scale Code 13.’
The three of them hurried upstairs. Officers were running up and down the corridors and phones were ringing on every floor. They found Inspector Callow in the control room. He was very tall, with thinning brown hair, glittery little eyes and a long, pointed chin. He was watching the closed-circuit TV screens with his hand pressed over his mouth, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When DI Saunders and Jerry and Jamila came in, he turned to them and shook his head and said, ‘They’re nothing but clothes. There’s nobody in them. I think I must be going mad.’
The shirt-sleeved officer who was operating the camera said, ‘They’re definitely coming this way, sir. They’ve just crossed Avarn Road.’
‘Right,’ said Inspector Callow. ‘I want the station locked down, but keep a couple of PCs on the doors in case any of our own people need to get back in.’
‘What’s the SP?’ asked Jerry.
‘Absolute chaos at the moment,’ said Inspector Callow. ‘They sent us twenty-seven men from Sutton, complete with riot gear, and two armed response vehicles. They tried to kettle the rioters outside the Tube station but they were totally routed. They’re still running. Look at the monitor. There’s one of them. There’s another. They’ve even dropped their shields.’
‘“Rioters”?’ asked Jamila.
‘Well, I don’t know what else to call them,’ said Inspector Callow. ‘It’s surreal. But it’s also real. Two of the armed response officers fired at them, not just once but three or four times. It had no effect on them at all. Why would it? They’re not people – they’re clothes.’
He paused, watching the tide of panicking shoppers as they came nearer and nearer along Mitcham Road.
‘I contacted Deputy Commander Broadbent as soon as I saw that things were getting out of hand. He didn’t believe me at first and I can’t say I blame him. He even asked me if I’d been drinking. Then I sent him the CCTV link and he saw what was happening for himself. He’s appointed me gold commander and I’ve already called for urgent reinforcements from all around the borough. He says we may have to bring in the SAS if we can’t contain the situation within the next couple of hours. God knows what the final death toll’s going to be. How the hell do you stop clothes?’
Jamila said, ‘They’re possessed, sir. Possessed by spirits of some kind, most likely the ghosts of dead people.’
‘Spirits?’ said Inspector Callow. ‘Ghosts?’
‘I know it sounds far-fetched, sir, but look at what we are witnessing here, right in front of our eyes. DC Pardoe and I have interviewed the suspects who claimed that their clothes were responsible for turning them into murderers, and we have both become convinced that possession is the most likely explanation. You can call it “infection” if that sounds more rational. In Pakistan and other Asian countries there are many stories about such possessions. Most of them are simply folk tales, but there are so many and they are so similar – and similar to what is happening here – so I do believe there is a nub of truth in them.’
Inspector Callow turned to DI Saunders. ‘Simon? You’ve been in charge of these investigations. What’s your opinion?’
DI Saunders nodded towards the CCTV screens. Each was showing Tooting Broadway and Mitcham Road from a different angle.
‘Like DS Patel says, sir, we can’t pretend this isn’t happening, just because it’s so bloody weird. I was the same as you, sir, I didn’t want to believe it at first. None of us did.’
‘So you think those suspects were actually telling the truth, and it was their clothes that made them do it?’
Jerry and Jamila knew that DI Saunders hadn’t told Inspector Callow about the way he had been attacked by Mindy’s dead parents – and how they had been stopped by Jerry cutting off the sweater and the dress that had been clinging around their necks.
‘I think there’s a strong possibility,’ said DI Saunders. ‘I mean – up until now I’ve never had any time for psychics or mediums or people who try to make out that there’s life after death. I’ve always thought that when you die, that’s the end of you. Before you were born you were dead for a billion years and it didn’t bother you, did it? But I can’t think of any other explanation for those clothes running around and killing people.’
On the CCTV screens they could see two hooded coats gripping a young woman’s arms and repeatedly hitting her head against the corner of a glass phone box. Blood and brains burst out of her black cornrow hair and splashed across the phone box’s door.
‘My God,’ said Inspector Callow, under his breath. ‘How is it possible?’
‘I have no idea, sir, but there it is, right in front of our eyes,’ said DI Saunders. Jerry had never heard him sound so miserable. ‘Unless somebody else can prove her wrong, I’ll go along with DS Patel.’
Jerry was relieved to hear him say that, and he could see that Jamila was, too. They knew that he had been suppressing the supernatural aspects of these cases for as long as he could, for fear of being ridiculed, but now there was no denying what was happening.
‘Sir – riot squad from Wandsworth nick have just arrived,’ said the CCTV operator.
‘How do you want to deploy them, sir?’ asked DI Saunders.
‘We’ll line them up outside here first and then see if we can push the clothes back along the Mitcham Road,’ said Inspector Callow. ‘There’s reinforcements coming from Feltham and Shepherd
’s Bush and they can bottle them up at the Broadway. A couple of Jankel armoured trucks are being sent down from Heathrow, too, and they should be able to contain them.’
‘And once we’ve contained them?’
Jerry could see by the expression on Inspector Callow’s face that he had no idea what they would do, even if they did manage to kettle the clothes between here and Tooting Broadway. They had been beaten and even shot but it hadn’t deterred them at all. What else could be done to stop them?
43
Three police Transit vans had arrived from Wandsworth and parked nose-to-tail outside the station. DI Saunders went down to meet them, and Jerry and Jamila went with him.
The noise in the streets was hellish. From the direction of Mitcham Road there was screaming and shouting and police sirens, as well as the intermittent banging of gunshots and the smashing of car and shop windows.
Thirty officers in full black riot gear had jumped out of the vans and were lining up along the pavement. DI Saunders went up to the sergeant in charge and said, ‘They’re heading this way. We need to stop them before they come any further, and see if we can push them back towards the Broadway.’
‘You say “they”, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Who exactly are we talking about?’
‘They’re coats and jackets and other clothes,’ said Jamila. ‘They’ve become alive, and they’re extremely violent.’
‘And they’re bloody strong, too,’ Jerry put in. ‘Don’t underestimate them, just because they’re clothes.’
The sergeant stared at them. ‘Coats and jackets? Are you serious? I was told they were rioters, that’s all.’
Jerry was about to say more when the first of the coats appeared around the corner. They were still beating at cars and shattering their windows, but they were advancing more slowly now, fanning themselves out across the road. There was no sign of any more shoppers. The coats must have killed most of them, although Jerry hoped that some of them had managed to escape down one of the side-streets, or hidden in cafés or shops.
‘God almighty,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’m seeing things.’
The coats were joined by jackets and windcheaters and long black dresses. They stopped for a few moments, lined up like warriors in some film about a medieval battle, their sleeves flapping in some unfelt wind. The feeling of war was heightened by the sound of drumming, because the coats that were coming up behind them were beating relentlessly on the bonnets and rooftops of the cars that were jammed along the Mitcham Road. Those drivers who hadn’t been dragged out of their vehicles remained trapped, cowering, behind the wheel, although many of them had managed to climb out of their cars and run away down Southcroft Road.
The sergeant shouted to his men, ‘Let’s have you all spread out across the street! We need to push these buggers back, OK? Move forward slowly, keep your shields together, and don’t let any of them get behind you!’
‘OK, sarge, but what the fuck are they?’ called out one of his PCs.
‘That doesn’t matter! Just push them back and keep on pushing them back!’
The riot squad lined themselves up to face the coats, drawing their batons and shuffling themselves close together so that their transparent shields overlapped. Almost as if the weather could sense the drama of this confrontation, it began to rain again, suddenly and heavily.
Jamila said, ‘I think this is when we pray.’
The first clothes began to float eerily forward, with hundreds more clothes massing behind them. The drumming stopped. There was no sound now except for the pattering of rain on the tarmac, and two distant sirens warbling, and somewhere a woman’s voice calling out ‘Help me! Help me!’ although it was hard to tell where it was coming from.
As the coats approached, the riot police moved to meet them, until they were only ten metres apart, when they both stopped.
Although he couldn’t see their faces, Jerry could guess from the way in which the riot police were uncomfortably shifting their boots that they were deeply unnerved. In front of them, in the drifting rain, they were confronted by parkas with empty hoods, as well as dripping sweaters with nobody in them, and long dresses that were twisted like tied-back curtains. All of these clothes were swaying inches above the roadway, and it was impossible to imagine what was keeping them up.
‘Come on, advance! Push them back!’ the sergeant shouted. He was almost screaming, which showed that he was just as frightened as his men.
The riot police took another few hesitant steps forward, but as soon as they did so the clothes rushed at them with the force of a tidal wave. They collided with the line of riot shields and knocked almost all of the officers off their feet. Some of them fell backwards onto the wet roadway, their shields clattering on top of them. Some of them staggered sideways, but were instantly jumped on by hooded coats and rain-soaked sweaters and dragged down onto the pavement. They started shrieking in fear and agony as the clothes wound their sleeves around their arms and legs and started to wrench them out of their sockets.
DI Saunders hesitated. It was obvious that he didn’t want to look like a coward and abandon all of these officers, but now a whole army of clothes was pouring down the road towards the police station and there was no chance that any of them could be saved. Even the riot squad’s sergeant turned around and started to run. He was almost halfway back to the police station when a grey raincoat came slithering along the ground and entangled his ankles and then a bronze padded anorak with a thick furry collar leapt onto his shoulders. He fell to the ground face-first, his forehead hitting a kerbstone with a crack.
DI Saunders didn’t have to give an order to run. Jerry and Jamila and DI Saunders began to bound up the steps that led to the police station’s front doors. A PC was holding the left-hand door open for them, but Jerry had the horrible feeling that if the clothes caught up with them before they could reach it, he would slam it shut in their faces.
They had nearly reached the top of the steps when Jamila let out a piping scream. Jerry turned to see that a long dark brown dress had caught hold of her arm, and was starting to wind one of its sleeves around her upper arm.
He seized the sleeve and prised it off her. It was so wriggly and strong that it nearly twisted itself free, but he clenched his left fist firmly around it and wouldn’t let it go. Then he reached over with his right hand and snatched at the other sleeve.
For a few moments the two of them were locked in a struggling dance. The dress tried to pull Jerry back down the steps, and he tripped and almost lost his balance, but he managed to steady himself, lean back, and heave the dress back up again.
‘Jerry!’ shouted Jamila. ‘Let it go!’
Jerry was struggling so hard to keep hold of the two wet woollen sleeves that he could only grunt. But he could guess what would happen if he let it go. It wouldn’t try to fly away – it would launch itself at him even more fiercely and wind its sleeves around his neck and try to choke him, just like that duffle coat.
Still gripping the right sleeve, he pushed his fist down between the two white iron handrails that ran up the centre of the steps. Then he forced the left sleeve underneath the nearer handrail, so that he could knot the two together.
The dress struggled against him so fiercely that it took every ounce of strength that he could summon up, but with his teeth gritted he managed to tie one wet sleeve around the other and pull it tight. The dress was now fastened to the handrail, and even though it flapped and curled and lashed against the steps like a landed manta ray, it couldn’t get free.
‘Jerry!’ shouted Jamila, and this time she sounded almost hysterical. He backed away from the furiously struggling dress, catching his heel on the top step behind him so that he sat down, hard, jarring his spine. As he stood up again, he saw that the clothes had reached the bottom step, a sinister crowd of dark hooded coats and jackets, and that they were already floating up towards him.
He turned and with three gazelle-like bounds that would have made him laugh if he hadn’t be
en so terrified, he reached the front doors of the station and staggered inside. The PC who had been holding the door open immediately slammed it shut, and shot the bolts across it, top and bottom. Two seconds later, the doors thundered and shook as the clothes piled into them.
DI Saunders looked grey. ‘Thought you were done for there, Jerry, like those other poor bastards.’
Jerry stood there, panting, trying to get his breath back. He was tempted to say, It takes more than a wet brown dress to get the better of me, Smiley. Instead, he simply nodded. He felt a sharp pain in his left thumb and guessed that he might have sprained it when he was tying the sleeves together.
Jamila came over and without any hesitation or embarrassment she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.
‘You saved my life, Jerry,’ she said, looking up at him, and her dark brown eyes were glistening with tears. ‘I would have died if it hadn’t been for you.’
The reception area was crowded with sergeants and acting sergeants and PCs and PCSOs and other station staff, and they were all milling around looking frightened and utterly baffled. They were being besieged by clothes? All Jerry could do was pull a self-deprecating face to show them that he wasn’t a hero and that he hardly understood what was happening any more than they did. He didn’t want them to realise that he was still trembling from fear and physical strain and the sheer unreality of fighting a dress that had been determined to tear him apart.
The lift doors opened and Inspector Callow quickly walked out. Jamila let go of Jerry and stepped away, but she gave his hand a last affectionate squeeze, right on his twisted thumb, so that it was as much as he could do not to yelp out loud.
Holding up his hands for attention, Inspector Callow said, ‘It’s hard to accept, I know that. It seems like science fiction. But as most of you are now aware, some unknown force has enabled all kinds of clothing to come to life. Coats and shirts and sweaters and dresses: they can walk and run as if they have people wearing them, even though they don’t. Even more alarming than that, they seem to be determined to attack and kill every person they come across.’
Ghost Virus Page 31
