At six, having destroyed the possibility of sleep, the helicopters withdrew, and dawn began its queasy descent through the dome’s roof, a cumbersome special effect staged for an exhausted audience. The pearly, metallic light exposed the silent plazas of a retail city whose streets were too dangerous to walk, whose crossroads waited like targets for the unwary.
Supermarkets were open all day, for anyone hungry enough to venture between the aisles and risk blundering into a meat locker that incubated every known disease. Freezer cabinets as hot as ovens would suddenly burst from their hinges, each one a vent of hell exhaling a miasma that drifted over the display counters. After digging in the rubble of unwanted cans, I would finally find a few tins of pâté, artichoke hearts in vinegar, jars of butter beans as pale as death.
I would then make my way to Julia, climbing to the second-floor gallery that circled the atrium, take a service staircase to the mezzanine and rush the final few steps past the landing where my father had been shot. An exhausting route, but Julia depended on my modest shopping trips. Limping on my infected foot, which she ritually rebandaged, I made my twice-a-day runs like a gentleman caller in a city under siege. Julia slept in a bed next to the elderly couple, with whom she shared her rations. In the treatment room she made friendly small talk, her eyes on the supermarket bag, like an unfaithful wife determined to survive. She knew I had forgiven her, but she hated me to watch her eat, as if part of her rejected her own right to life. Like everyone, she waited for the siege to end. I urged her to join me in the Holiday Inn, but she refused to leave the first-aid post, the only refuge of sanity in the dome.
AT NOON, WHEN the shadows briefly left us to ourselves, a few people crossed the atrium and began praying to the bears. Loyal supporters too weak to work, they wandered around the dome, rattling the grilles of the empty supermarkets in the hope of finding something to eat. One or two of them had marked barcodes on the backs of their hands, trying to resemble the consumer goods they most admired.
I watched them as I moved along the second-floor deck, feeling sorry for them until I discovered that my favourite deli had been looted during the night. This Polish speciality shop had been a modest haven of eastern European delicacies, spurned by the sweeter palates of Brooklands man and woman. Now it had been stripped of everything remotely edible, its doors chained and padlocked.
Unable to face Julia with an empty shopping bag, I decided to climb to the third floor. Pulling myself up the hand rail was a huge effort, but I rested on every landing, and there was safety on the upper floors. Madness lay below like the mist that covered the atrium.
I reached the third-floor gallery and sat on the top step until my head cleared. Beside me, pools of liquid evaporated in the sunlight. I watched them shrink and dissolve, unsure if I was seeing a mirage. Other drops formed a trail along the arcade, splashes from a casually carried bucket. I dipped my fingers in the nearest pool and raised them to my mouth. Immediately I thought of my Jensen, and the familiar aromatic reek of filling stations.
Petrol? Ten feet away, outside a discount furniture store, was a set of wet shoeprints, a trainer’s sole clearly stamped on the stone floor. I stepped into the foyer and searched the three-piece suites, drawn up like a dozing herd.
Petrol, I was sure. I found the source in a demonstration dining room, a domestic universe of rosewood-effect tables, polished chairs and curtains swagged over glassless windows, missing only the dinner-party chatter relayed from a loudspeaker. A jerrycan stamped with the logo of the Metro-Centre motor pool sat under the dining table, its cap missing, giving off a potent stench in the overheated air.
I backed away from it, aware that the smallest spark would ignite the vapour. I left the store and moved along the deck. The arcade of furniture stores was an arsonist’s paradise, retail space after retail space filled with inflammable sofas and varnished cabinets.
Was this a last-ditch threat by Carradine and his Metro-Centre supporters? Six stores along the arcade, I found a second jerrycan in a bedding store, surrounded by a harem’s wealth of goose-down pillows, fluffy quilts and duvets. The aroma of a hundred filling stations, threatening but somehow enticing, drifted from the silent stores and rose into the haze below the roof.
Fifteen minutes later I reached the top floor, where a third jerrycan sat on the landing above the stairwell, petrol slopped around it. A police helicopter drifted over the dome, throwing its spidery shadows across the galleries, a flicker of rotor blades scrambling through the dead vines and yuccas.
Above the cuffing downdraught I heard the fracture-cry of plate glass falling to the floor. A display stand collapsed in the entrance to a kitchenware store, hurling saucepans and pieces of heavy ovenware onto the landing. I pressed myself against the wall, almost expecting a furnace of petroleum vapour to explode from the store.
Lying at my feet between a colander and a copper steamer was a police-issue firearm, a Heckler & Koch machine gun of the type that had killed my father. I stared down at it in a befuddled way, trying to grasp how it had become a useful kitchen aid for the busy Brooklands home-maker.
Without thinking, I picked the weapon from the floor, surprised by its weight. The firing pin was cocked, and I held the pistol grip, easing my forefinger around the trigger.
I peered into the darkened shop. A woman in a black police uniform, dishevelled blonde hair torn from her scalp, struggled among the scattered saucepans. She thrashed on the floor, kicking at a cascade of falling frying pans, a demented housewife attacking her own home. She lunged at a man who burst from the darkness, and seized him around the waist. He threw her aside and emerged into the light, feet sliding on the saucepan lids, like an enraged husband escaping for ever from suburban life.
He gasped at the air and turned to me, seeing me for the first time. His camouflage jacket stank of petrol, as if he were about to combust spontaneously in the sunlight. He calmed himself, and a scarred hand reached out for the machine gun that I pointed towards him.
Recognizing Duncan Christie, I stepped back and levelled the weapon at his chest. Christie edged forward, aware that I would probably miss him if I fired. His quirky mouth with its unhealed lips worked through a set of grimaces, some whispered message to himself. His hand tried to grip the barrel of the gun, but as he stared into my face, willing me not to fire, he recognized me through my beard.
‘Mr Pearson? Remember? Duncan Christie . . .’
Sergeant Falconer leaned against the doorway, too exhausted to throw herself at Christie. She gasped something into the radio clipped to her left shoulder, then signalled to me with her free hand.
‘Shoot him, Richard! Shoot him now!’
I watched Christie, well aware that I was holding the actual weapon that had killed my father. Looking at this hopeless misfit, sustained by a single obsession, I knew that his life was about to end, expiring in the sights of a police marksman waiting in the upper galleries.
‘Mr Pearson . . .’ Christie exposed his broken teeth. ‘You know what happened. She made me kill your father . . .’
Sergeant Falconer shouted in warning as Christie lunged towards me. I moved across the arcade, raised the weapon above my head and flung it over the rail.
‘Go!’ I shouted at Christie. ‘You know what to do! Run . . . !’
SERGEANT FALCONER STOOD unsteadily among the clutter of saucepans, one hand on an injured knee, the other trying to tether her blonde hair to her head.
‘Mr Pearson? For pity’s sake, you’re madder than he is.’
‘I forgive him.’ I listened to Christie racing along the gallery below us, running through endless arcades of autumn fashions and television sets, fleeing from a universe of digital cameras and cocktail cabinets. ‘He can go—if he can find somewhere.’
‘Forgive him?’ Sergeant Falconer switched off her radio. The bruises on her forehead were showing through her pale skin, but she seemed far more determined than the uneasy woman I had seen making tea in Fairfax’s office. I guessed that she had
put the murder conspiracy behind her and found a new compass bearing in her life. ‘Forgive him? For your father? It doesn’t matter.’
‘No? It’s all that does matter. For what it’s worth, I forgive you. I don’t think you knew what you were doing.’
‘Maybe not. Anyway, it’s too late. Just get out of here. Take Dr Goodwin and anyone else. You’re in real danger.’
‘Why? Sergeant . . . ?’
‘They’re coming in. It’s all over, Mr Pearson. You’ll have to find another playgroup.’
‘And Christie?’
‘I’ll arrest him later.’
As she spoke there was a heavy explosion from the South Gate entrance hall. The deck swayed beneath my feet, and the roof of the Metro-Centre lifted slightly and then settled as a cascade of dust fell like talc. The smog cloud that covered the atrium seethed and swirled, billows chasing themselves around the bears.
The siege was ending.
40
EXIT STRATEGIES
AT LAST TOGETHER, our hands gripping the head rail, Julia and I propelled the bed through the doorway of the first-aid post and set off for the South Gate entrance. After twenty yards we were both exhausted. Out of control, the bed veered into an overturned golf cart. The elderly couple who were Julia’s last patients lay strapped to the mattress. As we jolted through the scatter of roof debris they closed their eyes, alarmed by the erratic excursion and the panic that now gripped the dome. Bent over the head rail, I saw them trying to reassure each other that all would be well, neither believing it for an instant.
‘We’re almost there, Mrs Mitchell,’ I told her. ‘You’ll be home soon, warming the teapot.’
‘Home? I don’t think this is the right way, Mr Pearson. We usually go to the No. 48 bus stop. Dr Julia . . . ?’
‘We’ll find it, Mrs Mitchell.’ Julia winced as we slewed across a floor of broken glass, then clung to my shoulder when I straightened the bed’s wayward front wheels. ‘I’ll tell the driver to wait for you.’
‘Maurice . . . did you hear that?’ Mrs Mitchell’s sharp eyes noticed the dust clouds escaping through the fractured roof. ‘It’s all been such a fuss about nothing . . .’
The past, in its small but persistent ways, was returning to the Metro-Centre, though few of those left behind had Mrs Mitchell’s acuity. Carradine’s defenders at the South Gate entrance were falling back, many of them stunned by the controlled explosion that had blown down a section of the fire door. A few die-hard marshals were building a barricade beside the travelator, piling up café chairs and tables. Hostages ran in all directions, distraught and speechless after their forced stay in the Ramada Inn and Novotel. A few huddled in shop doorways, still clutching the carrier bags they held when the siege began. Julia shouted to them, urging them to leave. She pulled my arm and pointed helplessly to two hostages hiding among the mannequins in the window of a dress shop and trying to mimic their calm and plastic detachment.
Almost too weary to walk, she fell behind me, stumbling through the debris and dust. I stopped and took her arms, then made her sit at the foot of the bed.
‘Julia, stay there—I can push on my own . . .’
‘Just for a minute. Richard, where are the police?’
Blocked by a barricade, I reversed and manoeuvred the bed into a side thoroughfare that led past the Holiday Inn. The lake was black as death, a tar pit freighted with horrors, but elsewhere the lights were coming on. Neon tubes stuttered and steadied themselves, logos glimmered through the dust. Strip lighting flooded the shops and stores, revealing a hundred polished counters. Crazed patterns raced across the display screens, the brain tracings of a giant struggling to awake from its deranged sleep.
‘Richard . . . all these lights.’ Julia looked up in a dazed way at the arrays of gleaming bulbs. ‘They’re going to open for business . . .’
‘Not yet. Snipers, I guess. The police need to flush them out.’
I steered us past the Holiday Inn with its familiar glowing sign. The wave machine was stirring the sluggish water into a nightmare brew, but as we approached the South Gate entrance hall an even stranger smell surrounded us, a cool flavour that I had first scented as a child.
‘Richard? What is it?’ Julia stepped down from the bed and nervously filled her lungs. ‘It tastes of . . . trees and sky.’
‘Fresh air! We’re there, Julia . . .’
Ahead of us, though, were a dozen of Carradine’s marshals in St George’s shirts, shotguns and rifles strapped to their shoulders with the barrels facing the floor. They were disciplined and marching in step, but their heads were bowed, like a defeated team leaving the field after a fierce but losing struggle, each player communing with himself.
At their head was Tony Maxted, wearing a crisply white surgical coat that he had secretly saved for this moment. He was tired but confident, doing his best to encourage this breakaway group whom he had persuaded to call an end to the siege. He moved up and down their ranks, smiling and talking to each man in turn as they moved towards the waiting light.
Maxted flinched when another controlled explosion burst through a nearby emergency exit. The strap muscle beneath his bald scalp seized his skull and threw his head back. He stumbled and reached out to two of the marshals, then seemed to lose his bearings in the swirl of dust.
I leaned against the head rail, too weary to push. The entrance hall was covered with debris, and a section of the fire door lay in the sun. Masked figures in dark uniforms moved through the intensely lit air.
Behind us an even brighter glow illuminated the interior of the dome, turning an immense spotlight onto the underside of the roof. Shadows wavered and swayed from every doorway, like nervous onlookers unsure whether to believe their eyes.
Flames rose from the seventh-floor galleries around the atrium, lazy blades of light that seemed to wake together and race around the high keep of the retail citadel. Soon the top three decks were burning briskly, every balcony and doorway bursting into blooms of fire. The petrol-soaked settees and carpets, the demonstration dining rooms and ideal kitchens were giving themselves to their own fiery ends.
The platoon in St George’s shirts stopped to look back, tired faces revived by the fire, colour returning to their cheeks after the twilight weeks. They were roused by the sight of the Metro-Centre consuming itself, as if welcoming this last transformation.
‘Right! Keep going!’ Maxted strode down the ranks, clapping his hands, trying to wake them from their trance. ‘Come on, lads! We’re there . . .’
Debris was falling from the roof, clouds of super-heated dust that had burst into flame as air was drawn into the dome. I could feel the huge mall shifting its weight, its frame members flexing in the heat. A gale rushed past us, cooler air speeding through the vents of a furnace.
‘Wake up, the lot of you!’ Maxted struck one of the marshals on the shoulder, trying to rouse the man and hold his attention. ‘Let’s move! We’ll all be incinerated . . .’
The marshal turned, aware of Maxted for the first time. He seemed to emerge from a deep rigor, and seized the psychiatrist by the collar of his white coat. Other hands gripped his arms, forcing his body into a crouch. A tremor ran through the platoon, a spasm of anger, fear and pride. Together they turned their backs to the entrance hall. They moved forward, carrying Maxted like a totem at their head, running towards the blaze, his hoarse cries lost in the fierce drumming of the inferno.
41
A SOLAR CULT
‘WHAT HAPPENED to Tony Maxted?’ Julia asked.
We stood by the police railings and gazed across the empty plaza at what remained of the Metro-Centre. Much of the dome was intact, a curved wall like the stand of a circular stadium. But the apex had collapsed, falling into the furnace of shops, hotels and department stores. Three weeks after our escape, smoke and steam rose from the ruin, watched by a dozen fire crews drawn up within fifty yards of the structure. A small crowd appeared each day, staring at the stricken mall as if unable to grasp what had
happened. The Metro-Centre had devoured itself, a furnace consumed by its own fire.
‘Richard . . . poor man, are you still here?’
‘I’m not sure. It feels rather strange. In a way we shouldn’t be watching . . .’
‘No? Where should we be? Sweet man, part of you will be forever beachcombing near the Holiday Inn . . .’
She took my arm to reassure me, but kept a wary eye on my shifting moods. For the first time her hair was reined in over her left shoulder, exposing her face. Three nights under sedation at Brooklands Hospital, and long days of sleep in her bed at home, had transformed her from the haggard refugee I had pushed to safety from the dome. That morning I had heard from her for the first time, when she left a text message suggesting that she drive me to the dome.
Parking outside my father’s flat, she smiled approvingly when I crossed the gravel, stick supporting me as I swung my foot in its surgical boot. I knew there and then that she was at ease with herself and ready to be at ease with me. I had rescued her from the furnace of the Metro-Centre, and in the mysterious logic of the affections this single act erased her guilt over the part she had played in my father’s death. Victims had to pay twice for the crimes committed against them.
By contrast, I was still exhausted, barely able to keep awake, watching the TV news, hobbling around the flat and cooking boiled eggs that I found waiting for me the next day. But the sight of the Metro-Centre woke me. I was glad to be with Julia, and slipped my arm around her waist.
‘Richard . . . ?’
‘Sorry, I was dreaming. What happened to Maxted? They found his body yesterday. Hard to identify in all that ash. One thing you can say about consumer durables, they give off a lot of heat.’
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