James Ballard - Kingdom Come - A Novel

‘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 THEempty 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.

Holding the key, I readied myself as Christie approached, bruised head emerging from the blanket. Seeing him beyond their grasp, the crowd surged forward, hands drumming on the sides of the van. In the crush of hatless officers trying to dodge the swinging carrier bags I saw Christie’s wife scream abuse at a woman constable trying to reunite her with her daughter.

I raised my fist to aim a blow at Christie, who swayed towards me in an idiot’s trance. But a powerful hand gripped my arm and forced it behind me. Strong fingers expertly stripped me of the ignition keys. I turned to find a large, military-looking man with an untrimmed ginger moustache, his deep chest and shoulders squeezed into a tweed jacket too small for him.

‘Mr Pearson?’ He shook the keys in my face, and steadied me as a policewoman lurched past with an arrested demonstrator. ‘Geoffrey Fairfax, your father’s solicitor. We’ve spoken on the phone. If I’m right, we have an appointment in ten minutes’ time. I must say you look as if you’d rather like to get out of here . . .’