‘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 CAFETERIAnext 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 across 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.’