Kingdom Come (7 page)

7

SNAKES AND LADDERS

THE SNAKES ON THE
Brooklands board were only pretending to be asleep, and the ladders led anywhere.

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the darkened flat, lowering my suitcase to the floor. Around me were the few rooms, the now silent spaces of my father’s life, even more unfamiliar than they had been four days earlier. I felt like a student returning after a year at a foreign university, unsettled by the strange shapes of the rooms in the family home.

No one was here to greet me, uncork a bottle of champagne or hand me the keys of my first sports car. But there was a welcome of another kind. I recognized my father’s scent on the air, an old man’s soft breath, the sweet tang of tobacco steeped into the curtains and carpets.

A presence I scarcely knew was already arraying itself around me. Should I sleep in my father’s bed? I hesitated before entering his bedroom. Sleeping on his mattress, my head on his pillow as I dreamed of him, was too close for comfort. I left my suitcase in the hall and drew the curtains, aware that too much daylight would unnerve the ghosts.

In the bookcase beside the bed was a shelf of logbooks tracking his transits of the globe. There were biographies of test pilots of the 1960s, privately published by long-ago aircraft companies—Fairey, De Havilland, Avro—signed and dedicated to my father: ‘For Stuart, who always kept flying speed . . .’

Amazingly, there was a copy of Saint-Exupéry’s
Wind, Sand and Stars
, signed by my mother, sent to him two years after their divorce, a desperate attempt to reach out to him. As she lived with me in our large but sparsely furnished house, with the second-hand Mercedes and the need at all costs to keep up appearances, my father’s life must have seemed effortlessly glamorous, exotic horizons coming up like an unending series of travel films.

I poured myself a small whisky before exploring his chest of drawers. Everyone had a sex life, and their own little habits, not all endearing. But there was nothing on the shelf of the bedside table, apart from a bottle of eye drops and a sachet of beta-blockers, with its line of foil punctures ending on the morning of his death. There were no sleeping pills or tranquillizers. The old pilot slept easily, and sleep was something to be dealt with quickly. My father had been a man who wanted to stay awake.

I carried my suitcase into the second bedroom, and opened the windows with their view of the Metro-Centre. Its presence was curiously inviting, filled with those treasures I had spent my childhood coveting. Despite our large house and Mercedes, the home my mother made for us was bleak. Very rarely did anything new enter our lives. We made do with an elderly TV set, an electric clock that tried bravely to guess the time, and a central heating system that whined ceaselessly to itself. Shops and department stores were places of magic. I was forever showing my mother advertisements for new toasters and washing machines, hoping that they would ease the strain of existence for her. Even my presents were rationed. A proportion of birthday gifts sent to me by her sister and friends was carefully set aside, locked away for future use, so that I was always outgrowing my gifts.

Surprisingly, I turned out to be rather spartan as an adult, living in large apartments that I kept almost unfurnished. I worked all day devising ways of selling people a host of consumer goods, but rarely bought anything unless I needed to. Childhood had inoculated me against the consumer world I longed for so eagerly.

SEARCHING FOR SHEETS
and pillowcases in the utility room, I noticed the workstation in the corner with its computer. My father’s emails were still stacking up, messages and fixture lists from local sports clubs that he supported. I scrolled through the details of ice-hockey matches, archery and basketball contests. My father supported a huge number of teams, and must have exhausted himself trailing around from ice rink to football stadium to athletics ground.

But the books on the nearby shelf were even more of a surprise. Next to the yearbook of a small-arms manufacturer were biographies of Perón, Goering and Mussolini, and a history of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. I pulled down an illustrated guide to Nazi regalia and the ceremonial uniforms of the Third Reich. The heavy, laminated paper was soft from frequent handling, and I could almost feel my father sitting at this desk and turning the pages as he scanned the illustrations of Reichsmarschalls’ batons and leather SS overcoats.

A darker scent had crept into the flat. I sat back from the desk and pulled open the metal drawer. There was a clutter of Metro-Centre knick-knacks, loyalty gold cards and season passes, invitations to consumer clubs and sports events. A bulldog clip held a dozen issues of a Metro-Centre newsletter, filled with photographs of sporting club dinners, everyone in their St George’s shirts. The teams looked as smart and disciplined as paramilitary units.

Present in several of the group portraits was David Cruise, the Metro-Centre cable-channel presenter, with his actor’s handsome but empty face, a suntan like an advertising campaign and a smile that owed nothing to humour. His fleshy jaw made me think of Wernher von Braun posing beside a Redstone rocket in Arizona, Nazi past behind him and the future on hold.

Was my father a National Front supporter? Sleep would be less easy in the flat than I hoped. I opened the window, trying to let out the unpleasant aura, and noticed a banner hanging from the wall behind the door. This bore the emblem of a local football club, the Brookland Eagles. Embroidered in gold thread, two raptors with grotesquely hooked talons grimaced from the scarlet field.

My father’s interests had taken him into some threatening arenas. The modest workstation was almost a neo-fascist altar. I paused by the neatly pressed laundry on the ironing board. Lifting one of the shirts, I unfolded the familiar St George’s Cross, armorial eagles stitched to its left shoulder. I held the shirt to my chest, and imagined my elderly father wearing this threatening costume with its screaming eagles, the oldest football hooligan in Brooklands.

I stared at myself in the half-length mirror above the maid’s kettle and biscuit tin. The tasselled banner hung behind me, as if I were on a podium that faced a chanting crowd. I seemed more aggressive, not in the bully-boy way of the street thugs who had driven the imam from his suburban mosque, but in the more cerebral style of the lawyers, doctors and architects who had enlisted in Hitler’s elite corps. For them, the black uniforms and death’s-head emblems represented a violence of the mind, where aggression and cruelty were part of a radical code that denied good and evil in favour of an embraced pathology. Morality gave way to will, and will deferred to madness.

I tried to smile, but a different self stood behind the shirt. My cautious take on the world, imposed on me by my neurotic mother, had given way to something far less introverted. The focus of my face moved from my eyes and high forehead to my mouth and jaw. The muscles in my face were more visible, the strings of a harder appetite, a more knowing hunger . . .

I threw the shirt into the empty laundry basket.

WHAT DANGEROUS GAME
had my father been playing? Years of mismanaged third world airports brought out a nasty strain of racism in senior pilots. Or was there something fascist about flight itself? Death, far from closing his life, had opened the door to a dozen possible futures. Already he was a different man from the wise and sympathetic figure I had imagined. What sort of father would he have made? I sensed my free and easy childhood, scarcely controlled by my distracted mother, giving way to a more disciplined regime. Discipline as a means of instilling love . . . ?

The flat was airless, and I needed to pace a car park somewhere to clear my head. I closed the door behind me and left the apartment house, listening to my feet on the gravel, a horizontal slide area where nothing was firmly bedded.

I was sitting in the driving seat of the Jensen, waiting for my mental compass to reset itself, when a grey Audi turned into the car park beside me. A tall, middle-aged Asian in a creased business suit stepped out. As his large shoes ploughed their way to the entrance doors, I noticed that he was carrying a rolled-up newspaper in his right hand, tapping the air like a bandmaster beating time. His bulky chest and shoulders reminded me of the intruder I had pinned briefly to the wall.

‘Excuse me . . . ! Sir, can you wait . . . ?’

I caught up with him in the lobby, as he searched for his keys to the ground-floor flat. Startled when I burst through the doors, he dropped the keys onto the tiled floor. None of my neighbours had called on me to express their sympathies, but this Asian resident would have seen me coming and going, and must have guessed who I was.

Trying to calm him, I introduced myself. ‘Richard Pearson—I’m Captain Pearson’s son. He died in the Metro-Centre shooting. You remember . . . ?’

‘Of course. My deepest sympathies.’ His eyes moved quickly over my grey suit and tie and then turned to the lobby doors, as if he suspected that an accomplice might be lurking outside. ‘A shocking affair, even for Brooklands.’

‘For Brooklands . . . ?’ I bent down and retrieved his keys, then handed them to him, conscious of the rolled-up newspaper and the bandage around his right wrist. ‘Tell me, Mr—?’

‘Kumar. Nihal Kumar. I’m resident here for many years.’

‘Good. It’s a pleasant little backwater. We’ve met before, Mr Kumar. No . . . ?’

‘It’s not likely.’ Kumar pumped his doorbell, too confused to use his keys. ‘Perhaps when your father . . . ?’

‘A few days ago. I left the door of the flat open. You probably thought a burglar had broken in. I still have your medical journal. You are a doctor?’

‘Definitely not.’ He gestured wearily. ‘My professional background is in engineering. I’m the manager of Motorola’s research laboratory in Brooklands. My wife is a doctor.’

‘A paediatrician? That makes sense.’ I was still puzzled by his extreme unease with me, and tried to shake his hand. ‘I should have been more careful. My father’s death, I was on edge.’

‘It’s to be expected.’ Kumar seemed to relax a little, reassured that I was not about to harm him. ‘It’s best to keep your door locked. At all times.’

‘Thanks for the tip. There’s a lot of crime here?’

‘Crime, certainly. And violence.’

‘I’ve noticed that. These towns along the M25. There’s something in the air. I take it there are right-wing groups here?’

‘Many. They create real fear.’ Kumar pressed his bell again, impatient to enter his flat. ‘The Asian community is deeply concerned. In the old days there were organized attacks, but they were predictable. Now we see violence for its own sake.’

‘These so-called sports clubs?’

‘Sports? Just one sport. Beating people up.’

‘Asians, mostly?’

‘Asians, Kosovans, Bosnians. Far too many sports clubs. The police should stop them.’

‘I think my father belonged to one.’ When Kumar made no reply, I said: ‘You knew my father?’

‘Lately, not so well. When we first came to Brooklands he was very charming to my wife. He made us feel at home. Later . . .’

‘He changed?’

‘His new friends . . . sometimes they were here. They frightened my wife.’

‘My father wasn’t violent?’

‘Your father was a gentleman. But the atmosphere was different . . . everywhere the red crosses, not to help people but to hurt them.’

‘I’m sorry. Tell me, Mr Kumar, all this violence—where do you think it’s coming from?’

‘The Metro-Centre? It’s possible.’

‘How? It’s just a large shop.’

‘It’s more than a shop, Mr Pearson. It’s an incubator. People go in there and they wake up, they see their lives are empty. So they look for a new dream . . .’

He reached for the bell, but his front door opened quietly. An elegant Asian woman in her fifties with a high forehead and severe face stared out at us. I assumed that Dr Kumar had been listening to everything we said. Her eyes followed me up the stairs, waiting until I was safely out of sight before she stepped aside to admit her husband.

8

ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES

THE WAITING ROOM
in the Accident & Emergency department at Brooklands Hospital was almost empty when I sat down. A teenager with a bruised cheek fiddled with a broken mobile phone. A mildly hysterical woman argued endlessly about a traffic intersection with her passive husband. An elderly man with a damp tissue to his eyes waited for news of his wife. Lastly, there was myself, more uncertain about my father than I had been when I first arrived. Together we were a collection of the ill-equipped and unsaved—a playground brawl, a wrong right turn, a heart too weary to embark on its next beat, and an assassin’s bullet had brought us together.

Dr Julia Goodwin, who had treated my father when he was driven from the Metro-Centre, would see me shortly, according to one of the nurses. But the clock on the wall disagreed, and as usual overruled her. I tried to read the local newspaper, smiled as comfortingly as I could at the elderly man, and watched the TV set.

It was tuned to the Metro-Centre cable channel, and showed an afternoon discussion programme transmitted from the mezzanine studio. The suntanned face of David Cruise dominated everything, and covered the proceedings like a cheap but over-bright lacquer. He was smiling and affable, but faintly hostile, like a bullying valet. Perhaps people in the motorway towns liked to be shouted at.

‘Mr Pearson?’ The nurse positioned her broad hips in front of the set. ‘Dr Goodwin will see you. For a few minutes . . . she’s very busy.’

‘Fine. How lucky to be busy . . .’

DR JULIA GOODWIN
was standing with her back to me in the small office, slamming the metal drawers of a filing cabinet as if playing an arcade pin-table. When she glanced at me through her defensive fringe I recognized the young woman at the Golders Green crematorium, watching me in a morose way as her friend fiddled with the ignition keys. There was the same evasive gaze, and I sensed that she was aware of something about me that I had yet to learn. She was attractive, but had been tired for too long, still trying to scrape a little compassion for her patients from the bottom of a long-exhausted barrel.

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.