Five seconds later, the screen went blank. There was a brief silence, and then a deep roar rose from the Metro-Centre as the crowd watching the screens above the South Gate entrance let out a cry of anger and pain, the visceral bellow of an animal goaded at the point of death. The sound rose over Brooklands, drumming at the windows and echoing off the nearby roofs.

I turned to the Channel 4 news. The reporter stared uneasily at her autocue, ready to interrupt herself.

‘We’re hearing reports . . . of an assassination attempt at a Brooklands shopping mall. Eyewitnesses claim that a lone gunman . . . we don’t know yet if—’

I switched off the set and stared at the darkened room. Someone had shot David Cruise, but I found it difficult to cope with the notion that he had been seriously injured. I knew him too well, and had helped to create him. He was so pervasive a figure, dominating almost every moment of my life at Brooklands, that he had long since become a fictional character. He had floated free into a parallel space and time where celebrity redefined reality as itself. His anguished slide across the table, the desperate way in which he had torn the microphone from his bursting chest, had been the latest episode in the series of noir commercials I had devised for him. In fact, I had switched off the set to avoid turning back to the cable channel and seeing the consumer product that sponsored the episode.

But already I was forgetting David Cruise. Julia Goodwin would be at her wits’ end, trying to protect her Asian women from the ferocious backlash that would soon follow. Bereft of their champion and cable philosopher, the supporters’ clubs would go berserk, attacking anything in their sights.

I strode into the hall and unlocked the cupboard where I stored my suitcases. My father’s golf bag, clubs untouched for months, leaned against the rear wall. I pulled out the heavy leather bag, felt between the putters and drew my father’s Purdey shotgun into the light.

On the shelf above was a box of twelve-bore shells, enough to see off any hooligans trying to ransack their old school. Nothing was true, and nothing was untrue. But the real was making a small stand against the unreal.

31

‘DEFEND THE DOME!’

A CAR APPROACHED, tyres raking the gravel outside the entrance to the flats. Its headlights were on full beam, flooding the car park like a film set. I leaned through the rear passenger door of the Mercedes and stowed the shotgun on the floor, wrapped in my raincoat. Its butt rested on the transmission hump within easy reach of the driving seat.

The headlights of the visitor’s car still flared in my face. The driver stepped out, a burly man who left his engine running. He stared around him, bald head almost glowing in the dark, then recognized me.

‘Right . . . I thought you’d be here. Leave that and come with me.’

‘Who the hell . . . ? Dr Maxted?’

‘I hope so—nothing’s certain now. Look snappy.’

‘Wait . . . where are we going?’

Maxted stared at me as I hesitated, one hand moving towards the shotgun. He was exhausted but determined, his troubled face openly hostile as he peered at me. Wearily he took my arm.

‘Where? Your spiritual home—the Metro-Centre. For once you’re going to do something useful.’

‘Hold on . . .’ I watched the fires rising into the night sky and pointed to my Mercedes. ‘There’s a shotgun in the back.’

‘Forget it. If we need that, it’s already too late. We’ll take my car.’

‘You heard the news flash? About David Cruise?’

‘Someone put a bullet through him.’ Maxted stepped into the Mazda sports car. ‘On air! My God, I have to hand it to you people. Don’t tell me that was something you dreamed up?’

‘No . . .’ I slid into the cramped passenger seat. In the light reflected from the porch I could see Maxted’s swollen face, knuckle marks bruising his cheek. ‘Is he alive?’

‘Just about.’ Maxted reversed and ran over a rose display. He winced at the hooting horns and the din of traffic in the avenue, the shouts and cheering that had returned to Brooklands. ‘The bullet knocked out a lung—let’s hope he lasts the night.’

‘Who shot him? Do they know?’

‘Not yet. Some Bangladeshi who’s had his shop trashed once too often, maybe a Kosovan who’s seen his wife slapped around.’ Maxted accelerated down the narrow drive, then braked sharply as we reached the avenue, a free-for-all of stalled traffic, veering headlights and panic-stricken pedestrians. He shouted above the din. ‘One thing David Cruise had was an unlimited supply of enemies. That was part of his strategy. You know that, Richard. You planned it that way.’

I ignored this jibe, thinking of the hours I had spent in Cruise’s swimming pool, watched by the Filipina maids. ‘Where is he? Brooklands Hospital?’

‘The first-aid unit at the Metro-Centre. Until he stabilizes it’s too risky to move him. Let’s hope the unit is well equipped. I never thought I’d say it, but David Cruise is one person we need to keep alive.’

‘And if he dies?’

‘People here are ready to flip. Not just Brooklands, but all along the motorway towns. I don’t like what’s been going on, but the next chapter could be a lot nastier.’

‘Elective . . . ?’

‘Psychopathy? You’ve got it. Willed madness.’ Maxted swung the sports car into the traffic stream, a motorized babel of horns and whistles. ‘They don’t know it, but they’ve been waiting for the trigger. Sooner or later some nobody would turn up with the key and put it into the lock for them.’

‘And did he?’

‘Turn up? Oh, yes.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’ Maxted overtook a pick-up truck packed with banner-waving supporters. ‘You wrote the script for our pocket führer. A suburban Dr Goebbels . . . what did you think you were doing? Selling washing machines?’

‘Something like that. It worked.’

‘It worked too well. Late capitalism is scratching its piles and trying to figure out where next to shit. All the privy doors are closed except one. Buying a washing machine is a political act—the only real kind of politics left today.’

We sat in the stalled traffic, the air dinned by a rising clamour of horns. Supporters in St George’s shirts darted between the cars, drumming on the roofs. Everyone in the Thames Valley was converging on the Metro-Centre. It rose above the houses and office blocks, an immense white ghost, a mausoleum readying itself for death.

‘And the fire this afternoon?’ I asked Maxted, shouting over the noise. ‘At the dome?’

‘Don’t be taken in. That was David Cruise trying to light the fuse.’

‘It was a stunt?’

‘Absolutely. He needed to set off an uprising, but he knew he’d left it too late. He’d heard about the army units waiting at the racetrack.’

‘I saw them this afternoon. They look as if they mean business.’

‘They do.’ Maxted laughed into the raucous horns. ‘That must have sobered you up.’

‘I already was sober. I checked my father’s computer and read his diary. He wasn’t a St George’s supporter. He hated all the sports clubs and the whole Metro-Centre thing.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Now you’ve got someone better to look up to.’

‘He tried to infiltrate the movement and find who’s leading it. It’s just possible that’s why he was shot.’

‘Maybe.’ Two ice-hockey fans sat on the Mazda’s bonnet, beating time with their fists, and Maxted sounded the horn until they leapt away through the confusion of headlights. He bellowed at me: ‘No one is leading it. I’m sorry your old man was killed, but this is a bottom-up revolution. That’s why it’s so dangerous. Sangster and I were trying to damp it down. We wanted Cruise out of the studio and into the street where he could see what was going on. But reality was never his thing.’

‘Why haven’t the government moved in? Brooklands has been out of control for months.’