Kingdom Come (3 page)

I lost my balance and fell across the leather armchair. When I stood up and pulled back the door, gasping at the scented air, the man had gone. Feet sounded unevenly down the stairs, the limping gait of someone with a fractured kneecap. Another door slammed, but when I went to the sitting-room window the car park and gardens were silent.

I drew the curtains and opened the windows, then sat in the armchair and waited for the intruder’s scent to disperse. I assumed that I had been so awed by my father’s flat that I had forgotten to close the front door after me when I arrived. The visitor with the truncheon had behaved more like a housebreaker or a private detective than a neighbour calling to offer his sympathies.

When I left for my appointment with Sergeant Falconer, I found the ‘truncheon’ on the floor beside the door. I picked it up, unrolling a heavy magazine, a copy of the
Journal of Paediatric Surgery
.

3

THE RIOT

‘I’VE THOUGHT OF IT,’
I said to Sergeant Mary Falconer. ‘Cyclops . . .’

‘Is that his name?’ She spoke slowly, as if trying to calm one of her dimmer prisoners. ‘The man in your father’s flat?’

‘No.’ I pointed through the canteen window at the roof of the Metro-Centre. ‘I meant the shopping mall. It’s a monster—it makes us seem so small.’

Without looking up from her notes, she said: ‘That’s probably the idea.’

‘Really? Why, Sergeant?’

‘So we buy things to make us grow again.’

‘That’s interesting. It’s almost a slogan. You should be working for the Metro-Centre.’

‘I hope not.’

‘I take it you don’t do your shopping there?’

‘Not if I can help it.’ Sergeant Falconer glanced into her pocket mirror, permanently to hand beside her files, and threaded a loose blonde hair into its tight braid. ‘I’d keep away from the place, Mr Pearson.’

‘I will. I wish my father had taken your advice.’

‘We all do. That was a terrible tragedy. Superintendent Leighton asked me to convey his . . .’

I waited for the sergeant to complete her sentence, but her mind had drifted away. She turned to the window, her eyes avoiding the Metro-Centre. A fast-tracked graduate entry, she was clearly destined for higher things than consoling bereaved relatives, not an ideal role for a steely but oddly vulnerable woman. She seemed unsure of me, and nervous of herself, forever glancing at her fingernails and checking her make-up, as if pieces of an elaborate disguise were in danger of falling apart. Much of her appearance was an obvious fake—the immaculate beauty-salon make-up, the breakfast TV accent, but was this part of a double bluff? In the interview room I explained that I had hardly known my father, and she listened sympathetically, though keen to get off the subject of his death. In an effort to reduce the tension, she opened her mouth and smiled at me in a surprisingly full-lipped way, almost a come-on, then retreated behind her most formal manner.

She tapped her notebook with a well-chewed pencil. ‘This man you say attacked you . . . ?’

‘No. He didn’t attack me. I attacked him. In fact, I probably injured him. He may be a doctor. You could check the local hospital.’

‘What exactly happened?’

‘I was drawing the curtains, looked round, and he was there, holding a kind of club.’ I rolled up the paediatric journal and raised it across the table, as if about to strike Sergeant Falconer on the head, then let her take it from me. ‘I probably overreacted. It’s a fault of mine.’

‘Why is that?’ The sergeant stared at me for a few seconds. ‘Do you know?’

‘I can guess.’ Something about this attractive but quirky policewoman made me want to talk. ‘My mother never remarried. I always felt I had to stick up for her. If the doctor complains, say I’ve been under a lot of stress.’

‘That’s true. Sadly, it won’t end for some time. Prepare yourself, Mr Pearson.’ In a matter-of-fact tone, as if reciting a bus timetable, she said: ‘This afternoon the accused will be brought back to Brooklands from Richmond police station. He’ll be held here overnight and appear before the magistrates tomorrow.’

‘Full marks to the police. Who is he?’

‘Duncan Christie. Aged twenty-five, white, a Brooklands resident. He’s already been charged with the murder of your father and two other victims. We expect he will be sent for trial at Guildford Crown Court.’ Sergeant Falconer pointed sternly to my bruised hands. ‘It’s important that nothing prejudices the hearing, Mr Pearson. You’ll attend court tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t know whether I can trust myself.’

‘I understand. The trial may not be for six months. By then . . .’

‘I’ll have calmed down? Guildford Crown Court . . . I take it he’ll be found guilty?’

‘We can’t say. I interviewed three witnesses who are certain they saw Christie with the weapon.’

‘All the same, he got away. No one stopped him.’

‘There was chaos, a complete stampede. The paramedics had to fight their way into the Metro-Centre. Four thousand people fled to the exits. Hundreds were injured trying to get out. There’s a moral there, Mr Pearson.’

‘And my father paid the price.’ Without thinking, I took her hand, surprised by its hot palm. ‘Why shoot an old man?’

‘Your father wasn’t the target, Mr Pearson.’ Quietly, she withdrew her hand, and let it lie limply on the table like an exhibit. ‘The sniper fired at random into the crowd.’

‘Insane . . . This Christie fellow, some sort of mental patient. Why was he allowed onto the streets?’

‘He was on day release from Northfield Hospital. The doctors felt he was ready to see his wife and child. It was a judgement call.’

‘You sound doubtful.’

‘We’re not psychiatrists, Mr Pearson. Christie was well known in Brooklands. He was always campaigning against the Metro-Centre.’

‘Quite a target to pick.’

Sergeant Falconer closed her files. I expected a display of passion from her, a denunciation of this psychopathic misfit, but her tone was as neutral as ice. ‘His daughter was injured by a contractor’s lorry. Some steel rails rolled off during one of his demos. The company offered compensation but he refused. He kept breaking the terms of his probation and was sectioned.’

‘Good. They got something right.’

‘It was a way of keeping him out of prison. At the time he had a lot of support.’

‘Support?’ I digested this slowly, trying not to look Sergeant Falconer in the eyes. Despite the neutral tone, I felt that she was trying to tell me something, and had invited me for coffee in the canteen so that she could address the real purpose behind our meeting. I said, calmly: ‘Sergeant? Go on.’

‘Not everyone likes the Metro-Centre. I can’t give you any names, but they think it encourages people in the wrong way. Everyone wants more and more, and if they don’t get it they’re ready to be . . .’

‘Violent? Here, in leafy Surrey? The consumer paradise? It’s hard to believe. Still, you can’t miss the banners and flags, the men in St George’s shirts.’

‘Team leaders. They help us control the crowds. Or that’s what Superintendent Leighton likes to think.’ The sergeant gazed warily at the ceiling. ‘Be careful if you go out at night, Mr Pearson.’

She sat back, turning her face in profile. The mask of the policewoman had slipped, revealing the emotional flatness of a strong-willed but insecure graduate. In her left-handed way she wanted my help. I remembered that not once had she criticized Duncan Christie, despite the pain and tragedy he had wrought.

I said: ‘Right . . . You hate the Metro-Centre, Sergeant?’

‘Not really. In a last-Thursday-of-the-month kind of way. Not hate, exactly.’

‘And the Brooklands area?’

Her shoulders eased, and she put away her pocket mirror, as if she realized that self-vigilance would never be enough. ‘I’ve applied for a transfer.’

‘Too much violence?’

‘The threat of it.’

I wanted to take her hand again, but she seemed to be blushing. As the afternoon ended, a reddish glow lit the deep mirror of the Metro-Centre dome, an inner sun.

I said: ‘It looks like it’s waking up.’

‘It never sleeps. Believe me, it’s wide awake. It has its own cable channel. Lifestyle guide, household hints, especially for households that know when to take a hint.’

‘Racist incitement?’

‘Along those lines. There are people who think it’s preparing us for a new world.’

‘And who’s behind it all?’

‘No one. That’s the beauty of it . . .’

She stood up, gathering her files. I could see that she was closing herself away. To begin with she had talked to me as if I were a child, and I assumed that her role was to defuse my anger and send me back to London. But she had used our meeting to get across a message of her own. In a way, she herself was the message, a bundle of unease and disquiet wrapped inside an elegant blonde package. She had slipped a few ribbons and then quickly retied them.

As we moved through the tables, I asked: ‘Did you find the weapon this Christie fellow used? What was it? Some mail-order Kalashnikov?’

‘It’s not turned up yet. A Heckler & Koch semi-automatic.’

‘Heckler & Koch? That’s a police-issue machine gun. It might have been stolen from a police station.’

‘It was.’ Sergeant Falconer surveyed the empty canteen as if seeing it for the first time. ‘An inquiry is under way. You’ll be kept informed, Mr Pearson.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Tell me, which station was it stolen from?’

‘Brooklands Central.’ She spoke with deliberate casualness. ‘Where we are now.’

‘This station? It’s hard to believe . . .’

But Sergeant Falconer was no longer listening to me. She stepped to the window and peered down into the avenue beside the entrance to the station car park. A crowd was forming, well-dressed Brooklands residents in smart trenchcoats, many carrying Metro-Centre shopping bags. They filled the pavement outside the station, held back by half a dozen constables.

Several burly men in St George’s shirts acted as stewards, steering people away from a young black woman who stood in the centre of the road, holding the hand of a small child. The mother was clearly exhausted, trying to cover her swollen upper lip and cheek. But she ignored the hostile crowd and stared over the glaring faces at the police station windows.

‘Mrs Christie, and their bairn. Did she have to bring her along?’ Sergeant Falconer frowned at her watch. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Pearson. I didn’t want you exposed to all this . . .’

‘Don’t worry.’ I stood next to her at the window, inhaling her scent, a heady mix of Calèche and oestrogen. I stared at the young black woman, standing alone with her anger and fierce intelligence. ‘She’s got guts of a kind.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for her. I’ll get you out into a side street.’

Flashbulbs flickered near the gates to the car park. People in the crowd were hurling bouquets of torn flowers at Mrs Christie. As she brushed away the blood-red petals a set of TV lights lit her tired face.

‘Sergeant . . . the crowd’s working itself up. You’re going to have a riot.’

‘A riot?’ She beckoned me to the staircase outside the canteen. ‘Mr Pearson, people don’t riot in Surrey. They’re far more polite, and far more dangerous . . .’

WE PASSED THE
empty CID offices, where computer screens glimmered at each other across untidy desks. The staircase windows looked out over the station car park, where the crowd pressed against the cordon of constables. Uniformed officers filled the hallway below us, ready to receive the prisoner.

Already spectators were running across the car park. A police car forced its way through, siren keening, followed by a white van with a wire-mesh windscreen guard lowered like a visor. A bottle of mineral water burst against it, sending a spume of frothing Perrier across the glass.

There was a roar from the spectators already inside the gates, the visceral baying of a mob who had scented a nearby guillotine. The police officers in the reception area moved into the yard, forming a cordon around the van as its rear doors opened.

Swept into the centre of the mêlée was the young black woman, daughter clasped in her arms. I waited for someone to rescue her, but my eyes were fixed on the man who was stepping from the van. A constable threw a grey blanket over him, but for a few seconds I saw his sallow, unshaved face, scarred chin pockmarked by acne, forehead flushed by recent punches. He was unaware of the crowd and the policemen jostling him, and stared at the radio aerials above the station, as if expecting a message from a distant star to be relayed to him. His head swayed drunkenly, a vacancy of mind coupled with a deep inner hunger that was almost messianic. I could see years of poor nutrition, self-neglect and arrogance, the face of assassins through the ages, of rootless metropolitan men from an earlier era who had survived into the twenty-first century, as out of place among the four-wheel drives and school runs of prosperous suburbia as Neanderthal Man discovered in a sun lounger beside a Costa Blanca swimming pool. Somehow this misfit and dement had evaded the juvenile courts and social-service inspectors, and had taught himself to hate a shopping mall so intensely that he could steal a weapon and fire at random into a lunch-hour crowd, killing a retired airline pilot about to buy his favourite tobacco.

A scrum of police surrounded him, arms locked together as they propelled the prisoner towards the station. On the outer edge of the scrum was Sergeant Falconer, arms outstretched to calm the shouting spectators. She was watching me as I stood in the staircase window, and I was certain that she had left me on the stairs so that I could see clearly the man who had killed my father.

The reception area was empty now, except for two civilian typists who had left their desks. I stepped past them, and stood by the open doorway as the police readied themselves to rush Christie into the station. I searched my pockets for a weapon, and came up with my car keys. I gripped them inside my fist, the largest key between my index and middle fingers. One lucky blow to Christie’s temple would rid the world of this mental degenerate.