‘Did Christie kill my father?’
‘No!’ Julia stood up, driving the table into my elbows. She stared wildly at the approaching wave as if it were a tsunami about to climb the beach and overwhelm her. ‘I know Duncan Christie. I’ve stitched his scalp, I’ve set his fractures. He couldn’t . . .’
She was shaking, unable to control herself. I leapt up and held her shoulders, surprised by how frail she seemed.
‘Julia, you’re right. Someone else shot my father. I want you to help me find him. Forget about Duncan Christie and Fairfax . . .’
She let me steer her into her chair. For a few seconds she held tightly to my arms, then pushed me away with a grimace of irritation at her own weakness. She spoke calmly to the wave.
‘I’m sure I saw Christie near the entrance. At least, I think I saw him . . .’
10
STREET PEOPLE
‘THIS PLACE COULD DRIVE anyone completely sane.’ Julia Goodwin scraped a fragment of glass from her shoe. ‘Don’t tell me there aren’t any exits.’
‘I’ll give you a lift home. What happened to your car?’
‘It’s . . . being serviced.’
She strode on ahead as I paid the bill. Her confidence, of a gimcrack kind, had been restored. Her patients rarely spoke back to her, and she had been unnerved by my questions, aware that even if Duncan Christie was innocent she had in some way been lying to herself. But an unusual cover-up was taking place, parts of which I was being allowed to see.
We crossed the central atrium, skirting the giant bears with their patched fur and get-well offerings of treacle and honey. Customers wandered by, like tourists in a foreign city. There were no clocks in the Metro-Centre, no past or future. The only clue to the time was the football match on the overhead monitor screens. Arrays of floodlights shone through the black haze, and the screens at either end of the ground carried the familiar face of David Cruise, a retail messiah for the age of cable TV.
We left the Metro-Centre by one of the exit-only doors, and walked towards the car park. Groups of sports supporters were leaving the dome, bearing the banners of local ice-hockey and athletics teams. They formed up among their four-wheel drives, and marched away in step to the evening’s venues.
Following Julia’s directions, we set off through the empty office quarter of the town, moving past entrances sealed with steel grilles.
‘They’re waiting for something,’ I commented. ‘Where are we going?’
‘South Brooklands. I know a short cut. You’re happy with one-way streets?’
‘One-way? Why not?’
‘The wrong way? It saves time. Risk nothing, lose everything.’
We passed the magistrates’ court, then turned into an area of discount furniture stores, warehousing and car-rental firms. The football stadium seemed to remain for ever on our left, as if we were circling it at a safe distance, uneager to be drawn into its huge magnetic field.
‘Okay.’ Julia leaned into the windscreen. ‘Turn left. No, right.’
‘Here?’ I hesitated before passing a no-entry sign guarding a street of shabby houses. ‘Where are we?’
‘I told you. It’s a short cut.’
‘To the nearest police pound? Doctor, always wear your seat belt. Is this some sort of courtship ritual?’
‘I bloody hope not. Anyway, seat belts are sexual restraints.’
I looked out at the modest houses, with their deco doors and windows, a fossil of the 1930s now occupied by immigrant families. A terrace of small semis stood by untended front gardens, battered vans parked on the worn grass. Everything was bathed in the intense glare of the stadium lights, as if the area was being interrogated over its failure to join the consumer society. Whenever they glanced from their windows, the east European and Asian tenants would see the giant face of David Cruise smiling on his silver screens.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ I braked to avoid a cavernous pothole. ‘What a place to live.’
‘You’re talking about my patients.’ Julia shielded her eyes from the glare. ‘Mostly Bangladeshis. They’re very ambitious.’
‘Thank God. They need to be.’
‘They are. Their biggest dream is to be cleaners and janitors at the Metro-Centre. Remember that when you next have a pee . . .’
We moved to the fringes of the residential area, and passed an ice-hockey arena for the second time, forced to slow down when a group of banner-waving supporters blocked the road. Three hundred yards from the football stadium, among the slip roads that led to the motorway, was an athletics ground laid with a lurid artificial track, bathed in the same intense glare of lighting arrays. Groups of supporters stood in the street, awaiting the result of a long-distance race.
‘Why don’t they go in?’ I asked Julia. ‘The stands are almost empty.’
‘Maybe they’re not that interested.’
‘Hard to believe. What are they doing here?’
‘They’re enforcers.’
‘Enforcing what?’
We reached a crossroads, and turned left into another residential district. The football match had ended, and spectators were spilling out into the streets surrounding the stadium. David Cruise was alone again, talking to his double at the far end of the ground about a range of men’s colognes and grooming aids. Fragments of the sales pitch boomed through the night air, drumming like fists against the windows of the cowed little houses.
‘Julia, we keep heading back to the stadium. What exactly is going on?’
‘The Brooklands story. Look out for an old cinema . . . don’t worry, we’re not going to hold hands in the movies.’
The first spectators passed us, men and their wives in St George’s shirts, good-humouredly banging the roofs of the parked cars. Part of the crowd had broken away from the main body, and was moving down a street of small Asian food wholesalers. The men were burly but disciplined, led by marshals in red baseball caps, shouting into their mobile phones. The crowd marched behind them, jeering at the silent shops. A group of younger supporters hurled coins at the upstairs windows. The sound of breaking glass cut the night like an animal cry.
‘Julia! Seat belt! Where the hell are the police?’
‘These are the police . . .’ Julia fumbled with the catch, losing the buckle in the dark. She was shocked but excited, like a rugby girlfriend at her first brutal match.
Cars were coming towards us, driving three abreast, headlights full on. Behind them came a pack of supporters in full cry, brawling with the young Asians who emerged to defend their shops. Someone was kicked to the ground, and there was a flurry of white trainers like snowballs in a blizzard.
I swung the wheel, throwing Julia against the passenger door, and slewed the Jensen into a parking space as the cars swept past, slamming my wing mirror with a sound like a gunshot. Somewhere a plate-glass window fell to the pavement, and a torrent of razor ice scattered under the running feet.
The crowd surged past us, fists beating on the car roof. An overweight and thuggish man bellowed into his mobile while launching kicks at an elderly Asian trying to guard the doorway of his hardware shop. The supporters strode in step, chanting and disciplined, but seemed to have no idea where their marshals were leading them, happy to shout at the dark and trash whatever street they were marching down.
‘Julia! Don’t leave the car.’
Julia was hiding her face from the men calling to her through the passenger window, urging her to join them. I opened my door and stepped into the street. On the opposite pavement a middle-aged Asian was down on his knees, trying to steady himself against a vandalized parking meter. A thin-faced youth in a St George’s shirt danced around him, feinting and kicking as if he was taking a series of penalties, cheering and raising his hands each time he scored.
‘Mr Kumar . . . !’
I seized the young man by the arm and pushed him away. He shouted good-humouredly, happy to let me have a go at the next penalty. He danced off, feet scattering the broken glass. I helpe
d Mr Kumar to stand, then steered the bulky man towards the service alley beside a small cash-and-carry.
‘Please . . . my car.’
‘Where are you parked? Mr Kumar . . . !’
He was dazed and dishevelled, gazing over my shoulder at the crowd as if trying to grasp who exactly they were. Then he glanced into my face, recognizing me with an appalled stare.
‘No . . . no . . . never . . .’
He broke away from me before I could reassure him, heavy arms thrusting me aside, and stumbled into the darkness of the alley.
TRYING TO CATCH my breath, I followed him into the next street. The marchers were returning to the stadium, and car doors slammed as they sounded their horns and drove away. Mr Kumar had vanished, perhaps taking refuge with local friends he had been visiting. Young Asian men were sweeping glass from the pavement into the gutters, smoking their cigarettes as they listened to the night.
I walked along the deserted street, lost in the glare of the stadium floodlights. Across the road was a disused cinema, a 1930s white-tile Odeon like a shabby iceberg, for years a bingo hall and now a carpet warehouse.
A police car approached, cruising the silent streets as if nothing had happened. I climbed the steps to the shuttered box office. The ancient Odeon was no longer even a ghost of itself, and violence had long since migrated from the screen to the surrounding streets. But its tiled alcoves, like the corners of a huge public lavatory, offered a moment’s shelter.
From the shadows I watched the police car pause outside the Odeon, then dip and flash its lights. I recognized the senior police officer in the passenger seat, Superintendent Leighton of the Brooklands force, whose photograph had been printed in the local newspaper that I read in the hospital cafeteria. Beside him, at the wheel, sat Sergeant Falconer, uniform cap over her immaculate Rhine-maiden hair. They waited outside the cinema, like a courting couple deciding whether to see a double feature, then flashed their lights at the empty street and continued their patrol.
Next to the Odeon was the cinema car park, empty except for a mud-spattered Range Rover. The driver was watching the street, speaking into his mobile phone. He wore a heavy Barbour jacket, trilby over his eyes, still unmistakably Geoffrey Fairfax. Beside him was a crop-haired man with a large Roman head, wearing a sheepskin jacket. Together they resembled hunt supporters following the hounds, happy to watch the chase from the comfort of their car, fortified by a thermos of warm brandy.
But were they leading the hunt, rather than following it? In the seat behind them were two men in St George’s shirts, muscled arms pressed against the windows. Both spoke freely to Fairfax and his passenger, pointing to the nearby road junctions as if describing an order of battle and reporting on the morale and enthusiasm of the troops.
A map was passed between the men, and Fairfax switched on the ceiling light. After consulting the map he started the engine, but I had seen clearly that there was a fifth person in the Range Rover.
Sitting in the rear between the two men in St George’s shirts, hair loose around her shoulders, was Dr Julia Goodwin.
I WALKED BACK to my car, stepping through shadows and avoiding the Asian men trying to clear up their shopfronts. Drowned by the glare of stadium lights, flames rose from a burning house.
11
A HARD NIGHT
LIKE ENGLISH LIFE as a whole, nothing in Brooklands could be taken at face value. I passed the next three days in my father’s flat, trying to make sense of this outwardly civilized Home Counties town—a town whose civic leaders, prominent solicitors and police chief were taking part in a pocket revolution. Had I stumbled into a conspiracy that was now shaping itself around me? And had my father been one of its instigators?
The stadium riot, orchestrated by Geoffrey Fairfax under the eyes of the police superintendent, had shaken me badly. Sipping rather too much of the old man’s malt, I watched the car park outside the flats, hoping to see Mr Kumar and convince him that I had not joined the attack on him. During the mêlée someone had punched my forehead, and the imprint of a signet ring starred the skin over my left eye. Staring at myself in the hall mirror, I could almost see Duncan Christie’s bruised face emerging through my own.
All in all, my first taste of street politics left me feeling like an out-of-condition rugby forward in a collapsed scrum. How, at the age of seventy-five, had my father coped with the violence and thuggery? In the evening, watching television with the sound down and the curtains drawn, I listened to the stadium crowds cheering on the Metro-Centre teams. Ambulance sirens wailed through the streets, and fire engines clanged their way to the shabby districts between Brooklands and the M25.
A hard night lay over the motorway towns, far harder than central London’s pink haze. Under the cover of a packed programme of sporting events, an exercise in ethnic cleansing was taking place, with the apparent connivance of the local police. I remembered Sergeant Falconer flashing her headlights at Fairfax’s Range Rover. Using the supporters’ clubs in their patriotic livery, they were moving against the immigrant population, harassing them out of their run-down streets to make room for new retail parks, marinas and executive estates.
But more than a land grab was going on. Every evening there were soccer, rugby and athletics matches, where Metro-Centre teams competed with rivals from the motorway towns. Illuminated arrays glowed through the night like the perimeter lights of a colony of prison camps, a new gulag of penal settlements where the forced labour was shopping and spending.
The matches ended, but then came the drumming of fists on car roofs, a tribal call to violence. The Audis, Nissans and Renaults were the new tom-toms. Every day the local newspaper reported attacks on an asylum hostel, the torching of a Bangladeshi takeaway, injuries to a Kosovan youth thrown over the fence into an industrial estate. Metro-Centre stewards, the reports usually ended, had ‘headed off further violence’.
On his afternoon cable channel, David Cruise smirked knowingly to his guests. I watched this third-rate actor, on the surface so handsome and likeable, putting his well-polished gloss on the ugly violence.
‘. . . I don’t want to blow the Metro-Centre’s trumpet, but consumerism is about a lot more than buying things. You agree, Doreen? Good. It’s our main way of expressing our tribal values, of engaging with each other’s hopes and ambitions. What you see here is a conflict of recreational cultures, a clash of very different lifestyles. On the one side are people like us—we enjoy the facilities offered by the Metro-Centre, and depend on the high values and ideals maintained by the mall and its suppliers. Together they probably do a better job of representing your real interests than your Member of Parliament. No disrespect, and no emails, please. On the other side are the low-value expectations of the immigrant communities. Their suppressed womenfolk are internal exiles who never share the dignity and freedom to choose that we see in the consumer ideal. Right, Sheila?’
As always, his guests nodded their firm agreement, sitting in their black leather sofas in the mezzanine studio, the giant bears behind them. But that night brought attacks on Asian businesses by gangs of rugby and ice-hockey supporters, and a warehouse of cheap knitwear burned to the ground. And, as always, the police arrived ten minutes after the fire engines. Almost nothing appeared in the national press, where the incidents were lumped in with accounts of sporting violence and binge drinking in provincial towns.
What role had my father played in all this? I thought of the old pilot sitting at his workstation in the cluttered utility room, with the ironing board and its stack of St George’s shirts, surrounded by his sinister library, a shrine to the extremist gods. Was he a casualty of an ultra-right coup, an elderly foot soldier who had lost his balance on the slippery grass of a political turf war? Conceivably, he was not an innocent bystander but the real target of the assassin.
Had the shooting at the mall been an attempt to damage the Metro-Centre? In a special feature on mega-malls the Financial Times reported that turnover at the Metro-Centre had failed to gro
w for the past year, as its novelty wore off and its customers were drawn to more downmarket retail parks in the area.
The shooting, with its dead and injured customers, had cost sales, whatever Tom Carradine claimed. But no well-run conspiracy would have hired a misfit like Duncan Christie. At the same time I found it hard to believe the witnesses who came forward to clear him. I thought of Julia Goodwin, sitting between the beefy marshals in the rear of Fairfax’s Range Rover, while Fairfax consulted his war map.
I wanted to meet her again, but everything about her was almost too elusive. At the Holiday Inn, beside the placid waters of the artificial lake, she had been nervous and aggressive, a little too devious about her reasons for attending my father’s funeral. At the same time I was sure that she wanted to tell me something about his death, perhaps more than I cared to know.
The entire evening had been an elaborate ruse, a clumsily handled tour of Brooklands and its accident black spots. She had known that the race riot would take place, and wanted me to witness it. But was she trying to warn me away, or recruit me into her suburban conspiracy? Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.
Thinking about this moody young doctor, I carried my whisky into the utility room. I was slightly drunk as I gazed at the silent computer and the biographies of fascist leaders. I rested my glass on the ironing board and touched one of the St George’s shirts. Almost without thinking, I picked up the shirt, shook it loose from its geometric folds and pulled it over my head.
I stood in front of the mirror, aware that the street brawl had made my skin glow. My father’s shoulders had shrunk in his last years, as I had seen from photographs of him, and the shirt gripped my chest like the embrace of an approving parent.
12
NEON PALACES