By late afternoon of the second day everyone realized that a further night lay ahead, and that all of them were now hostages. At this point, as the police negotiators lost their patience and the lights faded into the dusk, Carradine made an astute move. He was being closely advised by Sangster, whose huge and shambling figure with its babyish face followed the young manager around like an ambitious fight promoter with a promising featherweight. Tony Maxted approved of the head teacher’s involvement. ‘He’ll keep an eye on things, hold a tight rein on the hotheads,’ he assured me, but I had heard this before. I sensed that Sangster saw the seizure of the Metro-Centre as an interesting social experiment, and was in no hurry to see it end.
When the army helicopters resumed their tiresome patrols above the dome, Carradine called a public meeting in the South Gate entrance hall. Taking up a suggestion made by Sangster, he notified the police negotiators that he would release five hundred hostages on each of the next three days, and demand no concessions in return.
Immediately the crisis eased. The police postponed any attempt to invade the dome. Skilfully finessed by Carradine and Sangster, they were forced to wait until the last of the hostages had stumbled through the emergency hatch into freedom. The mutineers, meanwhile, had rid themselves of a large part of their security problem, lessened the drain on the dome’s resources, and raised the hope of further releases and a peaceful end to the siege.
At seven o’clock that evening, the first tranche of hostages stepped from the dome into a blizzard of flashbulbs. Mostly elderly customers, young mothers and their toddlers, and several dozen teenage mall rats, they were sent by bus to Brooklands Hospital and then rejoined their families. The rest of us selected our suppers from the supermarket shelves and retired to our stifling hotel rooms, exhausted enough to sleep through the helicopters and searchlights.
Forgotten in all this was the lonely figure whose attempted assassination had triggered the uprising. David Cruise still lay in his intensive care unit in a back room at the first-aid station, carefully tended by Julia Goodwin and two off-duty nurses who volunteered to help her. Barely conscious and unable to speak, he hovered in a medical nowhere zone of tubes, drips and ventilator pumps, at once forgotten and the most important person in the dome. Julia protested to Carradine, but the young manager refused to release him, claiming that he would soon recover and take over the leadership of the revolt.
The police, meanwhile, had arrested his would-be assassins, two Bosnian brothers whose motorcycle repair shop had been torched by a gang of football rioters. They walked into the Brooklands police station, confessed to the crime and surrendered the weapon, a gun-club target rifle they had smuggled onto one of the upper-level retail decks above the mezzanine studio. No one needed to question their motives, but whatever their motives were, they clearly fitted the crime.
SITTING IN MY chair on the beach, I finished the whisky in my flask. Part of me was drunk, but at the same time I felt queasily sober, like someone trapped on a runaway roller-coaster. I needed to leave for the South Gate entrance hall and hide myself among the hostages due to be released within the next half-hour. My foot was still badly infected, but in my mind I had detached myself from it, as if the throbbing wound was a tiresome relative who insisted on tagging after me. At the same time I felt reluctant to leave the Metro-Centre, though it was difficult to find a reason for staying. But did I need a reason . . . ?
I lay back in the chair, gathering my strength for the short walk. High above me were the upper decks of the shopping mall, railed terraces filled with fading palms and potted plants, a botanical garden running towards its death in the sky. Now that the lifts and escalators were out of action, almost no one made the long climb to the seventh floor, where the saturated air seemed to perspire into a heavy mist.
But someone was looking down from the seventh-floor railing, partly hidden behind the yellowing fronds of a large yucca. A man stared steadily at me, uninterested in the activity taking place on the floor of the dome, the hostages window-shopping or sitting at the cafés with their week-old newspapers.
I sat up and eased myself from the chair, aware that I was a conspicuous target as I sat alone on my private beach. Was the intruder a police marksman, smuggled into the dome through one of the dozens of ventilator and sewage pipes, with a hit list of prominenti to be disposed of? The man who was watching me carried a small firearm, and a black barrel emerged from his leather jacket. Unlike the police snatch squads, he wore no helmet or chin-strap.
Aware that I had noticed him, he leaned forward over the railing. I could see his face, as sharp as an axe blade, and the odd plates of his forehead, a geometry of disjointed thoughts. A pallid and undernourished skin stretched over the pointed bones, bruised by more than camouflage paste.
‘Christie . . . ? What the hell are we doing . . . ?’
I stood up, speaking to myself in a slurred mutter. Bowing his head, the man stepped back. For a few seconds he vanished behind the yucca, and then reappeared with a hand raised over his shoulder.
‘Christie . . . !’ My voice seemed to dent the dark water that lay listlessly against the beach. ‘Come down, man . . . You’re a target . . . !’
As I stumbled against the chair, knocking it onto the sand, the man hurled something towards me. I lost sight of the object as it flew through the misty air, but it landed ten feet from me, a bronze node that glinted in the scruffy sand.
I tried to steady myself, and felt the strong hands of a marshal grip my arms.
‘Mr Pearson?’ One of the burly weightlifters detailed to keep an eye on me had been sitting in the terrace bar when he heard my shout. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘He missed me. It’s over there.’
‘I didn’t hear a shot. Let’s get you indoors.’
‘Indoors? We’re already indoors. Aren’t we?’ I was mulling this over as he steered me to the terrace steps. I had lost my chance of joining the hostage release from the South Gate entrance, but I needed to see the object on the beach.
In the moments before the marshal’s heavy foot stamped it into the sand I managed to clear my eyes, and recognized the same bullet and cartridge case that Duncan Christie had pressed into my palm outside the Metro-Centre.
34
WORK MAKES YOU FREE
VERY LITTLE HAD CHANGED, I told myself, but nothing was quite the same. By the end of the second week we were still convinced that we would soon be released from the Metro-Centre. That morning the remaining hostages emerged from their hotels, sleepless and dishevelled, and looking as if their dreams had attacked them. They selected a breakfast of sorts from the soft drink and confectionery shelves of the nearest supermarket, washed themselves in a litre of Perrier water, and then assembled in the South Gate entrance hall, ready to play their roles in an eternal baggage handlers’ strike.
By now nearly two thousand hostages had been freed, but those who remained were aware that their value to Tom Carradine and his mutineers had risen steeply. Barely a dozen were released each day, and Julia Goodwin no longer bothered to present her list in person. She had already despaired of me, and shook her head wearily whenever I appeared, asking about David Cruise’s health. Ask about your own health, her tired but punitive gaze seemed to say.
Out of duty, I hobbled to the South Gate entrance and joined the hostages patiently forming themselves into a queue. Tired of waiting, a group of parents with older children tried to force their way through the marshals guarding the fire door. Cheered on, they kicked aside the security rails and demanded to be released.
The reaction was prompt and violent. The marshals drew their batons, and the parents were pushed back with a show of force that hushed everyone in the entrance hall and left two of the husbands bleeding from head wounds. Behind his screen of bully-boys, Sangster watched all this with a resigned but understanding smile.
I wanted to talk to the head teacher, but I felt uneasy with him. He had begun to sway from side to side like a fourth atrium bear, k
eeping time to the music inside his head. His role was too ambiguous for comfort, and he had moved from hostage to principal ringleader without taking off his overcoat.
After the brutal response by the marshals everyone stared silently at the open floor where the scuffles had taken place. Bloody skid marks covered the tiles, and Sangster stepped forward and began to scrutinize them in a strangely obsessive way, like an anthropologist examining the foot paintings of a primitive tribe. Rousing himself from his reverie, he stepped through a service door and reappeared with a mop cart and bucket. Watched by the crowd, he swabbed away at the skid marks, squeezed out the bloodstained mop and worked it up and down the floor until the marble gleamed again. The hostages stared stolidly at their reflections but remained silent.
I said nothing to Sangster or Tony Maxted about my sighting of Duncan Christie, deciding to keep this to myself. The bullet thrown onto the beach, like the one he had pressed into my hand, was his way of reminding me that the Metro-Centre had killed my father, and that the agents of his death were now with me inside the dome. I kept my eyes on the high galleries, but Christie had disappeared into the mist that separated the seventh floor from the sky.
Rumours swerved around the Metro-Centre, phantoms that flew by day. I dozed for an hour behind the enquiry desk, and woke to find the hostages discussing the news that David Cruise had begun to revive in the intensive care unit. He had removed his oxygen mask and spoken to several witnesses about his determination to defend the Metro-Centre and return it to its rightful place in the M25 community.
I dismissed this as a near-hysterical fantasy, but Tom Carradine arrived and confirmed the good news through his megaphone. He looked confident and charismatic in his freshly pressed uniform, but almost too lucid for comfort, speaking with an amphetamine fluency, eyes bright and unblinking as he surveyed the exhausted hostages. Nonetheless, he announced that he would celebrate the good news by freeing a further fifty hostages. His decision was relayed to the police negotiators at their post beyond the fire door, and dominated the lunchtime television bulletins.
Everyone lined up for the selection, trying to look their worst as Carradine and Sangster moved along them. Parents did everything to irritate their already fractious teenagers, wives urged their middle-aged husbands to mumble and drool. Most of us were too tired to think of feigning exhaustion, but Sangster pointed to an ailing widow who had been injured by police truncheons and showed the effects of mild concussion.
The hostages accepted their fate, but a group of well-to-do Pakistanis were convinced that they had been deliberately ignored. They surrounded Carradine in a rage of indignation, shouting and thrusting at his shoulder. Sangster quickly signalled to the marshals, who forced back the gesticulating group and kicked open their parcels. To a chorus of jeers, they held aloft the silkily expensive underwear, then trampled the garments underfoot. The elderly barrister who was the family patriarch worked himself into a fury of anger, shouting abuse at Carradine and by chance spitting on his shirt. Batons were being drawn as I left the ugly scene.
I disliked the violence and limped back to the first-aid post, hoping to see Julia Goodwin. The marshals guarding David Cruise had seen enough of me for the day and turned me away, so I sat on the podium beneath the bears. Half an hour later I heard the emergency hatch clang shut as the last of the returnees stepped shakily into freedom.
About three hundred hostages now remained, and the same number of mutineers. The latter formed a hard core of supporters who had forsaken everything, their homes and families, their jobs and cars and loft extensions, to defend the Metro-Centre.
Despite their efforts, conditions in the dome were steadily deteriorating. Without the powerful air-conditioning units, the temperature inside the mall continued to climb. The supermarket floors were slick with melted ice cream oozing from their cabinets, and a foul air rose from the defrosting meat freezers. The water pressure was too low to fill the lavatory cisterns, and a farmyard stench enclosed the Ramada Inn where the dome’s director and senior staff were held prisoner. The Metro-Centre, once bathed in a cool and scented air, was turning into a gigantic sty.
At two o’clock that afternoon, when the hostages drifted off in search of lunch, they found all the supermarkets closed. They peered through the doors, rattling the chains and padlocks, until the public address system ordered them to assemble in the central atrium. Carradine appeared thirty minutes later, descending the staircase from the mezzanine, and informed us that lunch was off the menu until we cleaned up the supermarkets and returned them to their previously immaculate state. He called on everyone to remember their pride in the Metro-Centre, and repay the debt they owed the mall for transforming their lives. The hostages would be divided into ten work groups and each of these would be assigned a supermarket.
Carradine gazed triumphantly at the glum faces and listened to Sangster whispering in his ear. He then announced that the work groups would take part in a competition. The team that did the best job of cleaning and waste disposal during the next week would be allowed to leave the dome.
As the hostages dispersed, queuing to collect their mops and pails, I caught up with Sangster, still smiling slyly to himself.
‘Richard? Good . . .’ He laid a huge arm across my shoulders. ‘Rather a neat wheeze, don’t you think?’
‘ “Work Makes You Free”?’
‘Who said that? It’s very true. It keeps alive the sporting instinct, and gives them something to live for. At the same time it weeds out the stronger and more determined elements.’
‘Those who might cause trouble?’
‘We can’t lose. A sick hostage is much more valuable than a robust one. And less dangerous. Don’t worry, I’ll see that you’re excused from cleaning duties.’
‘I’m very grateful. It’s good to have a friend in high places. As it happens, I can barely walk.’
‘Your foot?’ Sangster frowned with distaste at my bloodstained bandage. ‘We could find you a sedentary job. Rinsing mops, say? Is it psychosomatic?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll ask Tony Maxted.’
‘I would.’ Sangster stared at me with a straight face, then broke into a cheery grin. ‘You want to stay here, Richard. You know that.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Of course you do. This place is your . . . spiritual Eden. It’s all you have to believe in.’
‘Never. Tell me—the siege, when will it end?’
‘Let’s wait and see.’ Sangster seemed almost gleeful at the remote prospect. ‘That’s what’s so interesting. This isn’t about the Metro-Centre: it’s about England today. Now, go back to your room and rest. You’re too valuable to be ill. When David Cruise wakes, you’ll be there to cheer him up.’
‘Will he wake?’
Sangster turned to wave. ‘He’d better . . .’
I WATCHED THE hostages shuffle to their workstations, with all the enthusiasm of patients ordered to clean their own hospital. Discipline ruled, and a more martial spirit prevailed. The cartons of perished pizzas, the shoals of rotting fish fingers, the thousands of cartons of rancid milk were stripped from the shelves and carted away to the refuse hoppers in the basement. Carradine and Sangster introduced a strict rationing system, and we queued for our modest meals of corned beef, pilchards and baked beans.
Negotiations continued with the police, who were increasingly impatient as the release of hostages slowed, but the lack of violence forced them to bide their time. A full-scale assault would leave scores of hostages dead, and the Metro-Centre was a sniper’s paradise. More to the point, floor-to-floor street battles would inflict millions of pounds’ worth of damage on the unprotected merchandise.
A few hostages, the last of the sick and elderly, were released. On the portable radio that Maxted gave to me in an attempt to keep up my spirits, I listened to an account of their debriefing. All the freed hostages were carefully searched for any plundered jewellery, watches and cameras, but from the very start of the
siege none had been found. No one had slipped a single fountain pen or gold chain into their pockets. The consultant psychologists were baffled by this, but a likely explanation struck me a few days later when I wandered through a large furniture emporium near the Holiday Inn.
Vaguely searching for a more comfortable mattress than my fever-sodden berth in the hotel, I stood in the entrance to the store as the pilot lights shone on the freshly waxed floor. A work party had moved through the ground level, and the tang of polish hung on the unmoving air, making me feel almost giddy. By sweeping out these temples to consumerism, by wiping and waxing and buffing, we made clear that we were ready to serve these unconsecrated altars. Every shop and store in the Metro-Centre was a house of totems. We accepted the discipline that these appliances and bathroom fittings imposed. We wanted to be like these consumer durables, and they in turn wanted us to emulate them. In many ways, we wanted to be them . . .
WATER LAPPED AT my feet, a cooling stream that drained away the fever in my bones. Half asleep in my deckchair beside the lake, I listened to the wavelets tapping at the sand. Somewhere was the rhythmic murmur of deep water, the same tides that my father had sailed as he circled the globe.
The chair legs sank into the wet sand, tipping me forward. I looked down to find the water swilling around my ankles. The lake had come alive, its surface rolling towards the shoreline.
Someone had switched on the wave machine. I stood up as dark water sluiced across my feet, covered by a slick of lubricating oil. Two engineers stood outside the Holiday Inn, working at the fuse box that controlled the lighting arrays around the roof and terrace. Bars of strip neon glowed and dimmed as the emergency generator pushed out its erratic current. Moving through the fuses, the engineers had switched on the wave machine. Roused in its watery vault, the machine stirred and woke, driving the deep water across the lake.
I stepped back onto the dry sand, as the waves washed through the debris of beer cans and cigarette packets, receding when the undertow sucked them into its deeps. A stronger wave rolled in, nudging a greasy freight of floating magazines and a soggy raft that I guessed was a waterlogged cushion from a restaurant banquette, trapped for weeks under the wave machine’s paddle.