A young woman ran towards me from the drive of the nursing home, propelling a pushchair with a startled child. She seemed distraught, buttons bursting from her blouse, and I raised my hands to calm her.
‘Let me help you, please . . . are you all right?’
I assumed that she was a bereaved relative, and was ready to comfort her. But she pushed past me, swearing when she tripped on the kerb. She pointed wildly at the sky.
‘The dome’s on fire!’
‘The dome? Where?’
‘It’s on fire!’ She waved at the rooftops. ‘They’re burning down the Metro-Centre!’
She fled with her child, the last inhabitant of a stricken city.
30
ASSASSINATION
A SILENCE LOUDER than thunder lay over Brooklands. I could hear the traffic moving along the M25, and pick out the engines of individual trucks and coaches. Stadiums and athletics grounds had emptied, and all evening fixtures were postponed. Everyone was waiting for news from the dome.
Like most people, I spent the afternoon watching my television set. From the living-room windows I could see the narrow column of white smoke that rose from an emergency vent in the roof of the Metro-Centre. In the still air it climbed vertically, trembled and then dispersed into the cloud cover.
I guessed that an electrical fault in the air-conditioning plant was to blame. The fire would be brought under control and the rumours of arson promptly scotched. But the ITN and BBC news teams reporting from the South Gate entrance were uncertain of the cause, and unable to assess the damage. The reporters both confirmed that the dome had not been evacuated, and reassured any relatives watching that there were no casualties. A view of the central atrium, taken with a concealed camera, showed the strolling crowds, the three bears swaying and jigging to the music, and no signs of panic.
By contrast, the Metro-Centre’s three cable channels talked up the threat, claiming that unknown arsonists had tried to burn down the dome. Relays of announcers spoke of serious damage costing tens of millions of pounds, and of sinister enemies determined to raze the entire structure to the ground.
Live coverage showed David Cruise at the forefront of the battle, wearing a red helmet and firefighter’s suit. In a series of handheld shots from the basement garage, he stepped from the cabin of an emergency vehicle, conferred urgently with a white-faced Tom Carradine and a team of Metro-Centre engineers, and pressed his healing hands to the maze of pipes and cable ducts in the generator room. Gasping into his oxygen mask, he shared bottles of a well-advertised mineral water with an exhausted fire crew. When he addressed the camera he was in no doubt about the threat to every Metro-Centre customer and every sports-club supporter. Rubbing his flushed forehead, his cheekbones stylishly marked with a dark commando stain, he said:
‘All of you out there . . . this is David Cruise, somewhere in the front line. Listen to me, if I can still get through to you. We need your support, every one of you watching. Make no mistake, there are people out there who want to destroy us. They hate the Metro-Centre, they hate the sports clubs and they hate the world we’ve created here.’ He coughed into his oxygen mask, brushing aside the attractive paramedic who tried to calm him. ‘This time we’ll have to fight for what we believe. The people who did this will try again. I want you all to be ready. You created this, don’t let them take it away. There are enemies out there, and you know who they are. If I don’t see you again, you can be sure I went down fighting for the Metro-Centre . . .’
AN HOUR LATERthe smoke still rose from the roof, a white plume almost invisible in the late-afternoon light. A BBC journalist had entered the basement, and reported that the source of the fire was now clear. A large hopper filled with cardboard cartons had been set ablaze, but this was under control.
David Cruise, however, was closer to the action. He climbed from an inspection hatch and wearily doffed his helmet, then whispered hoarsely about the dangers of igniting the Metro-Centre’s oil stores. ‘We’re talking about timed devices,’ he darkly informed his cable viewers. ‘Be on the alert, and check your garages and basements. Every one of us is a target . . .’
AT SEVEN O’CLOCKhe would address his cable audience from the mezzanine studio. I watched him play his role, an extra now promoted to be the star of his own towering inferno. The engineers around him looked vaguely embarrassed, but Cruise was completely sincere, the naturalized citizen of a new kingdom where nothing was true or false. Most of his audience probably knew that the fire in a rubbish hopper was a ruse designed to rally support for the Metro-Centre, for reasons not yet clear. They knew they were being lied to, but if lies were consistent enough they defined themselves as a credible alternative to the truth. Emotion ruled almost everything, and lies were driven by emotions that were familiar and supportive, while the truth came with hard edges that cut and bruised. They preferred lies and mood music, they accepted the make-believe of David Cruise the firefighter and defender of their freedoms. Consumer capitalism had never thrived by believing the truth. Lies were preferred by the people of the shopping malls because they could be complicit with them.
Sadly, real fires burned on the outskirts of Brooklands. By the early evening a huge crowd had gathered outside the Metro-Centre, a suburban army dressed in its St George’s shirts. Sports clubs formed up and marched away, heading for the outskirts of the town as if to defend the walls of a besieged city. As I feared, outbreaks of burning and looting soon struck the Asian and immigrant housing estates.
But the gangs were quick to find other targets. Bored by the punch-ups with desperate Bangladeshis and exhausted Kosovans, they attacked the further-education college near the town square with its irritating posters advertising classes in cordon bleu cooking, archaeology and brass rubbings. The public library was another target, its shelves swept clear of the few books on display, though the huge stock of CDs, videos and DVDs was untouched.
Other gangs invaded the Brooklands Cricket Club, where they defecated on the pitch, and the Gymkhana Riding School, a stronghold of the would-be middle class, which was swiftly put to the torch. The TV news showed wild-eyed horses galloping through the Metro-Centre car parks, their singed manes alive with sparks. Even the police station and magistrates’ court were under threat, cordoned off by a thin blue line of officers in riot gear.
Ominously, the BBC reported that fights were breaking out between the supporters’ groups—unable to find any new enemies, they were turning on themselves.
I WAS TRYINGto phone Julia Goodwin, and warn her that the Asian women’s refuge was in danger, when David Cruise began his address to his new ‘republic’, transmitted live from the mezzanine studio in the Metro-Centre. He had swapped his fireman’s overall for a stylish combat jacket, but the make-up girls had left untouched his ruffled hair and oily bruises on his cheeks. He was fighting off his own hysteria, aware that his sports clubs might rampage through a modest county town, but the referee was about to blow the whistle and there would be no extra time. What the television reporters still called football hooliganism was what central government termed civil insurrection. The army and police were waiting.
Cruise leaned forward into the camera, ready to rally his loyal audience, and unable to resist his familiar cheeky smile. But as he opened his mouth, displaying his strong teeth and muscular tongue, he seemed to slip from his chair. A spasm of indigestion brought a hand to his chest, and his eyes lost their focus. He swayed to one side, elbow sliding across the desk, and tore the lapel microphone from his jacket. He reached out to clutch at the air, eyes rolling under their lids. His smile seemed to drift away, an empty smirk deserted like an abandoned ship. He held himself upright, and then fell forward from his chair, head across his bloodstained script.