Kingdom Come: A Novel

by Ballard, J. G.

  After introducing myself, I said: ‘It’s kind of you to see me. You were one of the last people to be with my father. It helps to keep him alive.’

  ‘Good . . . I’m glad.’ She placed her worn hands on the desk, like a blackjack dealer laying out the last two cards. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. Sometimes you try to pull off a miracle and end up making a complete balls of things, but I did my best for him. A horrible business. That awful mall . . .’

  ‘The Metro-Centre?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it?’ She unbuttoned her white coat, revealing a cashmere sweater of stylish cut. ‘That huge atrium, all those people shopping themselves out of their little minds. If you ask me, a standing temptation to any madman with a grudge. Sadly, your father got in the way.’

  ‘Was he conscious at all? When you saw him?’

  ‘No. The bullet . . .’ She touched the mass of dark hair above her left ear and traced a line to the back of her neck, an almost erotic transit that exposed the silky whiteness of her scalp. ‘He felt nothing. Getting him to the Royal Free was his only hope. But . . .’

  ‘You tried, and I’m grateful. You’d met him before?’

  She stared at me, then tilted her hands so that she could read her palms. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘You came to the funeral. I remember seeing you there.’

  She sat back, ready to end our chat, and her gaze drifted over my shoulder. She was uncomfortable with my presence, but wanted to keep me in her office. I had the sense that she had been briefed about me, and knew more of my background than might have been expected of a busy casualty doctor.

  ‘Yes. I drove up to Golders Green with a friend. A hell of a long way, and a lousy service. Who on earth writes those ghastly scripts? You can see why death isn’t exactly popular. They ought to play a little Cole Porter and pass around the canapés.’ She smiled boldly, waving away her little duplicity. ‘He seemed a decent old boy, so I thought I’d go. After all, Brooklands killed him.’

  ‘You felt guilty?’

  ‘In a way. No. What tripe! Do I really believe that? It’s amazing the nonsense that can pop out of your mouth if you aren’t careful.’

  ‘When he was brought in, was he wearing his clothes?’

  ‘As far as I know. You sound like a detective.’

  ‘Brooklands does that to you. Can you remember what he had on?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’ She turned and slammed a metal drawer sticking into her back. ‘Is that important?’

  ‘It might be. Was he wearing a St George’s shirt? You know, the red cross—’

  ‘Of course I know!’ She grimaced and turned to the pedal bin, ready to spit into it. ‘I hate those bloody shirts. I’m sure he wasn’t wearing one. Does it matter? Death doesn’t have a dress code.’

  ‘Easy to say. Those shirts are the signifier for a new kind of . . .’

  ‘Fascism? Hard word to get out, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you hear it that often in the King’s Road. They’re worn by most of our local storm troopers.’ Dr Goodwin spoke firmly, addressing a thoughtless child about to burn himself on a hot stove. ‘Keep away from all that vicious nonsense. Your father would have agreed with me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. This morning I found a whole pile of them in his flat. Freshly ironed by the Filipina maid. A neighbour told me that sports-club members sometimes came to see him.’

  ‘Hard to believe. He was seventy-five. A bit late to be beating up asylum seekers.’

  ‘It might have made him a target. If he was wearing one when he was shot.’

  I waited for Dr Goodwin to respond, but she was staring through the window at two ten-year-old boys roaming around the consultants’ car park. When one of them prised the triton from a Mercedes bonnet she smiled in an almost girlish way, happy to share their freedom and irresponsibility.

  ‘Mr Pearson?’ She looked at me with an odd blend of hostility and raunchiness. ‘You live in London?’

  ‘Chelsea Harbour. Millionaire’s toytown. My flat’s on the market.’

  ‘I might buy it. Anything to get away from this terrible place.’

  ‘You don’t like it? Prosperous Surrey, clean air, leafy lanes to walk the Labrador?’

  ‘All that crap. It frightens me.’ She lowered her voice. ‘There are things going on here . . . you’ve been to the Metro-Centre?’

  ‘It’s very impressive. Pure purchasing power vibrating through the ether.’

  ‘Ugh. It’s a pressure cooker. With the lid screwed down and the hob on high.’

  ‘And what is it cooking?’

  ‘Something nasty, believe me. So, where are you staying?’

  ‘At my father’s flat.’

  ‘Good for you.’ She smiled unaffectedly. ‘That’s pretty brave.’

  She stood up and I assumed our appointment was at an end, but she hovered by the door. Some kind of plan was being hatched by this attractive but edgy woman, so clearly in conflict with herself.

  ‘I go off duty at six.’ Her palm rested on the door handle. ‘I think I need cheering up. You could buy me a drink.’

  ‘Of course.’ Surprised, I said: ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Maybe. Don’t bet on it. I’m in a bit of a mood. I’ll meet you by the Holiday Inn. There’s a bar near the open-air pool. After a couple of gins you can imagine you’re in Acapulco . . .’

  I SAT IN THE CAFETERIA next to the hospital’s retail centre, thinking over my meeting with the troubled Julia Goodwin. She saw herself as setting me up, and I was happy to play along. I was sure that she knew more about my father’s death than she admitted. Busy doctors did not travel across the whole of London to attend the funerals of strangers. I remembered the sly way she had watched me from the crematorium car park. But she was attractive, and at least she was coming towards me. Everyone else I had met—Sergeant Mary Falconer, Geoffrey Fairfax, and my neighbour Mr Kumar—had been retreating behind elaborate screens of their own.

  I opened the local newspaper, which Julia Goodwin had handed to me as I left her office. Its pages were crammed with advertisements for a huge range of consumer goods. Every citizen of Brooklands, every resident within sight of the M25, was constantly trading the contents of house and home, replacing the same cars and cameras, the same ceramic hobs and fitted bathrooms. Nothing was being swapped for nothing. Behind this frantic turnover, a gigantic boredom prevailed.

  Sharing that boredom, I broke an advertising man’s habit of a lifetime and began to read the editorial columns. On page three, the only space in the paper devoted to real news, was an account of the magistrates’ hearing at which Duncan Christie had been discharged. ‘Metro-Centre Shooting . . . Man Released . . . Police Renew Inquiries.’

  I scanned the brief report, and the summaries of witness statements. The three ‘prominent’ witnesses were named, local worthies who testified that they had seen Christie in the South Gate entrance at the moment of the shooting.

  They were named as: Dr Tony Maxted, consultant psychiatrist at the Northfield mental hospital, and William Sangster, head teacher at Brooklands High School. The third was Julia Goodwin.

  9

  THE BEACH AT THE

  HOLIDAY INN

  THE HOLIDAY INN was a seven-storey tower, its terraced bar overlooking a circular swimming pool whose waters lapped a crescent of sandy beach. Umbrellas and sun loungers furnished the beach, and an even-tempered and ultraviolet-free light played over the scene. All this was deep inside the Metro-Centre, in a district dominated by its hotels, cafés and emporia filled with sporting goods. A visitor to the Holiday Inn, or to the nearby Novotel and Ramada Inn, could imagine that this was part of a leisure complex in a suburb of Tokyo or Shanghai.

  I ordered a glass of wine from a waitress dressed like a tennis instructor and gazed over the deserted beach with its immaculate sand and rows of waiting sun loungers. The wave machine had been turned to its lowest setting, and a vaguely gastric swell, like a suppressed vomit reflex, flowed acros
s the colourized water.

  Already I wondered why Julia Goodwin had chosen this rendezvous in the mall where my father had met his death. I watched her approach the terrace, half an hour late, throwing her gum into the sluggish surf. Her hospital identification tag hung from the lapel of her jacket, and she had loosened her hair, a thick black cloud like the smokescreen of a nervous destroyer. She spoke to the waitress as if addressing a subnormal patient, and ordered a tonic water with two dashes of Angostura.

  ‘Comfortable?’ I asked when she sat herself at the terrace table. ‘Why are we meeting here?’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . ?’

  ‘This is kitsch with a strychnine chaser. It’s where my father was shot.’

  Surprised by my sharp tone, she sat forward and lifted the hair from her eyes. ‘Look, I thought we ought to see it together. In a way, it explains why your father died. I didn’t mean to upset you. What do you think of the beach?’

  ‘Better than Acapulco. I’m getting a tan already.’

  ‘As good as the real thing?’

  ‘It’s not meant to be the real thing.’ I decided to calm her, and shaped my mouth into the kind of easy smile favoured by David Cruise. ‘It’s all part of a good-natured joke. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Do they? I hope you’re right. These days even reality has to look artificial.’

  ‘Maybe. My father was real, hit by a very real bullet. Why do you say the Metro-Centre can explain his death?’

  She sipped her tonic and Angostura, letting the points of effervescence bead on her eyelashes. She was still wary, unsure of me and my motives for seeing her. ‘Richard, think about it for a moment. People come in here looking for something worthwhile. What do they find? Everything is invented, all the emotions, all the reasons for living. It’s an imaginary world, created by people like you. A madman walks in with a gun and thinks he’s in a shooting gallery. Perhaps he is, inside his head.’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘Why not start shooting? There are plenty of targets, and no one looks as if they’d mind all that much.’ She stopped suddenly and sat back. ‘Christ . . . what bullshit. Do you believe a word of that?’

  ‘No.’ Won over, I ordered another round from the waitress. ‘But you hate the Metro-Centre.’

  ‘It’s not just this ghastly place. All these retail parks are the same. Rootless people drifting about. The only time they touch reality is when they fall ill and come to see me. Educated, well nourished, kind to their children . . .’

  ‘But savages?’

  ‘Not all, no.’ She reached up with both hands and gathered her hair together. She pinned it inside a rubber band that had probably secured a patient’s medical file, and then moved my wineglass out of the way so that she could speak more forcefully. ‘There’s a new kind of human being who’s appeared on the scene. These are people who behave in strange ways and should know better.’

  ‘Casualty doctors?’

  ‘Doctors, lawyers, police officers, bank managers . . . they get funny ideas in their heads. Some of them start thinking logically.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘Thinking logically? Out here it’s dangerous. Very dangerous. It can lead intelligent people to do things they shouldn’t, like acting rationally and for the public good. Take it from me. Anywhere near the M25 is dangerous.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘I will. First, there are things that need sorting out. I got myself involved in something rather foolish that I wasn’t really bargaining for . . .’

  She stared at a wave advancing towards us. Exposed to the light, her face was pale but surprisingly strong, marked by tremors of doubt like those of an actress unable to understand her lines. When she saw me watching her she reached up to loosen her hair, but I held her wrists and pressed them to the table until she controlled herself.

  ‘Julia . . . take it easy.’

  ‘Right. I’ll join Médecins Sans Frontières. Go to somewhere in the third world where the beaches still smell of dead fish. I might even do some good.’

  ‘You’re doing good here,’ I told her. ‘Try believing in yourself.’

  ‘Impossible. Besides, the A&E thing is self-inflicted. Drunks, car crashes, brawling, fist fights. There’s a huge amount of street violence. People don’t know it, but they’re bored out of their minds. Sport is the big giveaway. Wherever sport plays a big part in people’s lives you can be sure they’re bored witless and just waiting to break up the furniture.’

  ‘You’ll have to move. Just one problem: wherever you go you’ll find nothing except a new kind of boredom.’

  ‘That sounds fun. We could go together. You invent the reality and afterwards I’ll put on the Band-Aids.’

  I liked her, and was glad that she seemed to enjoy the banter. But she withdrew from me as soon as I tried to hold her eyes, watching the waves rather than face up to whatever she was concealing.

  The terrace around us had filled with evening drinkers. Groups of middle-aged men and women, almost all wearing St George’s shirts, stood, glasses in hand, smoking and patting their midriffs. They spilled onto the pedestrian piazza outside the hotel entrance. The embroidered badges on their shirts showed that they were members of a Metro-Centre supporters’ club. They were loud but self-controlled, hailing new arrivals with friendly cheers.

  ‘Football supporters?’ I said to Julia Goodwin. ‘They seem amiable enough.’

  ‘Are you sure? I dare say I’ll be seeing some of them at A&E tonight.’

  ‘The match started at seven—they’ve missed the first half.’

  ‘These are not the sort of supporters who go to matches. They’re here for the punch-up.’

  ‘Hooligans?’

  ‘Definitely not. They’re well organized, practically local militias. Take a good look, and then keep out of their way.’

  The drinkers downed their beers and left the terrace, forming into paunchy platoons each led by a marshal. They moved off to a chorus of ironic cheers, a woman member breaking ranks to dart into a nearby deli. But their marching was brisk and in step, and I guessed that Julia had arranged to meet me at the Holiday Inn so that I would get a glimpse of a darker side of Brooklands.

  She pretended to fiddle with her handbag as smoke drifted across us from a dozen ashtrays. She knew what my next question would be, since she had made a point of giving me the local newspaper. A slow confession was emerging, as sluggish as the simulated wave.

  ‘Julia . . . before I forget. You testified at the magistrates’ court.’

  ‘I did, yes. So?’

  ‘Why, exactly?’

  ‘It was the public-spirited thing to do. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Probably. Did you really see Duncan Christie there? At the time you heard the shots?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘How far away was he?’

  ‘God knows. Ten or fifteen feet. I saw him clearly.’

  ‘In all that crush of people?’ I looked round, hoping that someone would switch off the wave machine. ‘You remembered this one face in the crowd?’

  ‘Yes!’ Julia leaned across the table, angry with me for being so obtuse. ‘I’ve often treated him. He’s always being attacked and beaten up.’

  ‘What was he doing in the Metro-Centre? He hates the place.’

  ‘I haven’t a bloody idea. He likes to keep an eye on it.’

  ‘Hard to believe. For that matter, what were you doing there? You hate the place as much as he does.’

  ‘I can’t remember. I happened to be passing.’

  ‘Like the other witnesses—his own psychiatrist who arranged to have him released that day from his mental hospital. And the head teacher who taught him at the local high school. And you. Three people who just happened to be there and thought of some shopping they needed to do. And you all arrive at the same time . . .’

  ‘Jesus Christ . . . !’ Julia drummed her fists on the table, bouncing my wineglass onto the tiled floor. ‘A lot of people in Brookla
nds know Duncan Christie. He’s the local character, almost the village idiot.’

  ‘Right. He used to be represented by Geoffrey Fairfax’s office. I saw you there the evening Christie was brought back to Brooklands.’

  ‘Geoffrey Fairfax? Sounds unlikely. You’ve been listening to too many garbled stories.’

  ‘Julia . . . for God’s sake.’ Impatient with her mock innocence, I raised my voice, hoping that I could jolt the truth from this likeable young doctor with her almost desperate denials. ‘You were sitting with your back to me in the conference room, hiding behind that wonderful hair. I take it the people you were with were the other witnesses?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Julia stared at the broken wineglass at her feet. ‘They probably were.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s odd? Christie had only just been arrested, but already the key witnesses were lined up, synchronizing their watches. The really strange thing is that I was supposed to see you—the witnesses in the conference room, Mrs Christie in reception, Sergeant Falconer heating the milk. It was laid on like the reconstruction of a crime. Why, Julia? What was it meant to tell me?’

  ‘Ask Geoffrey Fairfax.’ She straightened her jacket, ready to leave. ‘He might tell you.’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s mad, but he’s sly. On the outside, a very pukka, old-fashioned solicitor. On the inside, a raving, right-wing nutter. I wouldn’t expect either to pull out all the stops for this “shabby misfit”.’

  A little weakly, Julia said: ‘People sympathize with Christie.’

  ‘For standing against the mall? Who exactly? Small shopkeepers, Thames Valley Poujadists?’

  ‘Not just the mall. All these retail parks look peaceful to you, but behind them something very nasty is going on. Christie and Geoffrey Fairfax saw this a long time ago.’