James Ballard - Kingdom Come - A Novel

‘Sergeant Falconer . . . ?’ I held her arm. ‘Something’s going on. What are you people playing at?’

‘Get into the car.’ Avoiding my breath, she pushed me through the rear door. ‘We’ll give you a lift.’

‘What is it?’ I watched the second police car reverse and speed away. ‘Have they caught the gunman?’

‘Who? Which gunman?’

‘The man who killed my father. They’ve arrested him?’

‘No.’ She fastened her seat belt, beckoning the woman driver to climb the grass embankment around the security barrier. ‘It’s the Metro-Centre. There’s been a bomb attack. Heavy damage, but no casualties. So far . . .’

THE TEMPLE WAS UNDER THREAT, and the congregation was rallying to defend it. Crowds of football supporters filled the streets, running past our police car as it sat in the stalled traffic near the town hall. Urged on by Sergeant Falconer, the woman constable tried to force our way through the throngs of fans and evening shoppers. All the matches in the Thames Valley Olympics had been abandoned as the news broke of the bomb attack at the Metro-Centre. Supporters turned their backs on ice-hockey grudge matches and penalty shoot-outs, and set off through the streets to give succour to the stricken dome.

Six hundred yards from the Metro-Centre we could clearly see the smoke lifting from the roof, dark billows lit by cascades of sparks swept aloft in the updraughts. Still intact, the dome loomed in front of us when we reached the central plaza, as always so huge that I failed to notice the police vehicles, ambulances and fire engines drawn up around the entrance to the underground car park.

A small section of the roof was dark, a narrow triangle the size and shape of a schooner’s jib sail. The huge bomb detonated in the upper level of the basement car park had torn through the floor of the Metro-Centre, the explosive pressure blowing out the glass and aluminium panels two hundred feet above the atrium. The shopping mall, according to the police radio reports, was largely untouched, and the smoke rose from the burning vehicles ignited by the bomb. Opening the passenger window, I gazed at the dark triangle near the apex of the dome. It would soon be repaired, but for the moment a section of space-time had been erased, exposing a deep flaw in our collective dream.

Sergeant Falconer showed her warrant card to the policemen keeping a lane open for emergency vehicles. Above the din of ambulance sirens an officer in a yellow jacket directed us towards the underground garage.

‘Looks like a car bomb,’ Sergeant Falconer told me. ‘Three pounds of Semtex. There’s another maniac on the loose.’

‘Anyone killed or injured?’

‘No one. Let’s thank God for that . . .’

But her relief at the news scarcely left the sergeant any less agitated. Threads of blonde hair were springing loose from their braids. For some reason, the slightest shift from the immaculate left Sergeant Falconer looking frayed and insecure. Impatient to get into the car park, she reached across the driver and gripped the steering wheel, trying to change lanes. The car stalled, and the flustered constable flooded the engine as Sergeant Falconer drummed her fists on the instrument panel.

When we approached the entrance ramp I looked back at the plaza around the Metro-Centre, now occupied by a huge crowd, drawn to the St Peter’s Square of the retail world. Everyone was staring upwards at the billows of smoke that lifted into the night. In the front row was Tom Carradine, the young manager who had first welcomed me to the dome. He darted to and fro, desperate to find a better view, too distraught to express himself in any other way, like a tennis player leaping around a court as he tried to ward off defeat by an invisible opponent with an invisible ball. The notion that anyone might dislike the Metro-Centre and wish to damage it had clearly never occurred to him.

WE ENTERED THEbasement car park, and followed the police guide rails into one of the delivery bays, finding a place between two articulated trucks. The night shift were being questioned by a team of investigators, and the freight carousels were stationary, stopped in mid-track at the moment of the explosion. Three-piece suites sealed in plastic sheeting, video-game consoles and coffee machines leaned against each other in a huge jumble. Over everything hung a stench of petrol and scorched rubber, and the acid dust of pulverized cement.

Police emergency lights shone through the haze, and crime-scene tapes marked out the empty parking bays being searched by forensics officers. A wedge-shaped section of the concrete ceiling had vanished, driven into the changing rooms of a health club near the atrium.

‘All the customers had gone to the sports matches,’ Sergeant Falconer explained. ‘So they’d closed for the night. It’s a miracle no one was hurt.’

I watched the forensics teams picking their way through the rubble. ‘Not much to find. What are they looking for?’

‘Timer fragments. A clock mechanism. Human tissues . . .’ Sergeant Falconer stared at me with concern. ‘This isn’t the place for you, Mr Pearson. It’d be best if you went home.’

‘You’re right.’

My presence unsettled her, and she was eager to get away from me. Why she had brought me to the Metro-Centre in the first place seemed unclear, like Dr Maxted’s motives for driving me all the way to his mental hospital.

I tried to remember where I had parked that morning, but the perspectives of everything in the basement garage seemed to have changed. I had driven around for a few minutes, searching for a place, then lost the numbered ticket during my scuffle with the thugs who attacked Duncan Christie.

A dozen cars caught fire when their petrol tanks exploded, burning fiercely before the sprinkler system came into play. Smothered in foam, the blackened vehicles sat in the wreckage of themselves, windows and doors missing, shreds of tyres peeling from their rims.

At the centre was the car that had carried the bomb, an agony of splayed body panels, exposed seating springs, engine block and drive shaft. The entire roof had vanished, and the forensics officers in white overalls were leaning into the debris, searching the carbonized remains of the instrument panel.

I assumed that the bomber had stolen the car before driving it to the Metro-Centre, and had left the bomb in the boot, directly above the fuel tank. Both the front and rear number plates had vaporized in the fireball, but the large engine had blunted the blast damage to the front of the car. A metal Guards Polo Club badge was still bolted to the front bumper.

A similar badge had been attached to my Jensen when I bought it from the young widow of a Grenadier lieutenant a few months after his death in the Iraq war. As a nod to the dead soldier, I left the badge where it was, hoping that it might catch the eye of his former comrades.

I looked away, shielding my face from the harsh emergency lights. Of all the vehicles to choose from in the Metro-Centre car park, the bomber had left his vicious surprise in my old but still sleek and handsome Jensen . . .

I took out my ignition keys and stared at the ancient fob, all that was left of the stylish tourer from a vanished age of motoring. It occurred to me that the driver, not the car, was the real target, and I had barely escaped being blown through the Jensen’s roof. My hour trapped in Maxted’s penthouse had probably saved me. Had I left Northfield Hospital with Maxted, and taken a taxi back to the Metro-Centre, I would have been driving the Jensen to my father’s flat when the bomb detonated.

I walked towards the forensics officer picking pieces of ragged upholstery from the car’s floor-pan. Within a few days, if not hours, the engine and chassis numbers would lead the police to the Grenadier’s widow, and then to me.