Outside the dome a column of riot vehicles and military trucks had drawn up. Spotlights were trained on the doors, turning the entrance hall into a giant hallucination of swerving shadows. The police had forced three of the doors, and a squad of a dozen constables approached the barricade, but for the moment made no attempt to dismantle it. A senior officer, an assistant commissioner of the Surrey police, began to address the watching crowd, fragments of his amplified message barely audible above the blare of the helicopters.
‘. . . from tonight the Metro-Centre will close for renovations . . . management in full agreement . . . concern for customers . . . for your own safety leave in an orderly way . . .’
At least five hundred people were crammed into the entrance hall and the nearby shopping aisles. Staff, sports-club supporters, customers caught in the riot, and passers-by driven by panic to seek refuge in the dome were together waiting for something to happen. Many wanted to leave, but fell silent as a militant minority shouted abuse at the assistant commissioner.
At a signal, the constables began to dismantle the barricade, first hurling aside the hamburger kiosk, slipping and sliding in the fat. Scuffles broke out in the watching crowd, and children shrieked at the grappling shadows projected by the spotlights onto the walls of the entrance hall.
‘Right . . .’ I shifted my weight from my injured foot, ready to join the exodus from the Metro-Centre. ‘It’s all over. Small revolution in Thames Valley . . .’
‘Not quite.’ Beside me an elderly man in a grey topcoat, briefcase in hand, smiled to himself in a resigned way. I had noticed him taking shelter behind the enquiry desk, and assumed he was leaving the dome when the riot began. He pointed to the staff entrance near the cloakrooms. ‘I fear we won’t see our beds tonight . . .’
Pushing aggressively through the crowd, and almost marching in step, was a group of marshals, Metro-Centre engineers in orange overalls, and some fifty supporters in St George’s shirts. At their head was Tom Carradine, still in his sky-blue public relations uniform, but no longer the earnest figure whose faith in the mall I found so touching. He seemed small but poised, as watchful and unsmiling as a bullfighter faced with a stupid but dangerous bull. Behind him, forming his personal bodyguard, were the two marshals who had hurled Duncan Christie to the ground as he tried to press a bullet into my palm. Both marshals carried shotguns that I assumed they had looted from the many gun shops in the dome. Carradine’s right hand was raised above his head, and he signalled to the marshals with small movements of his forefinger. He was confident and undaunted, glad to be rising at last to the supreme challenge that faced him.
Hard on the marshals’ heels came William Sangster, broad shoulders swaying from side to side, massive head ducking like a boxer’s before climbing into the ring. His eyes scanned the crowd, as if searching for any former pupils who were still playing truant. He smiled in a disoriented way, unsure of himself and what he was doing with these armed men.
A shot rang out, a sharp roar like the slamming of a door. The concourse fell silent. A raised shotgun pointed to the ceiling, as the faint smoke from its barrel faded on the sweating air. The assistant commissioner lowered his megaphone, and the constables dismantling the barricade stopped to wait for their orders.
Carradine handed the shotgun to the marshals. He took off his peaked cap, revealing his blond hair swept back from a surprisingly steep forehead. He listened to the silence that filled the entrance hall, and then spoke briefly into the microphone passed to him by a marshal. His magnified voice in its motorway accent boomed over the heads of the police and soldiers outside the dome.
‘The Metro-Centre is secure . . . Withdraw all army units . . . Repeat, the Metro-Centre is secure . . . We have hostages . . . Repeat, we have hostages . . .’
The sounds echoed through the mall, drumming against the roof. Carradine, the marshals and engineers were staring upwards, as if expecting salvation to descend from the sky. Even Sangster had stopped ducking his head and leaned back.
‘What are they doing?’ I kept my voice down and spoke to the elderly man standing wearily beside me. ‘They’re waiting for a miracle.’
‘Unlikely . . .’ He tried to summon a signal on his mobile, but gave up. ‘Still, you’re on the right track.’
‘These hostages? Who are they?’
‘That I can tell you. Weare . . .’
There was a gasp from the crowd, and a hundred hands pointed to the ceiling of the security lobby, the narrow vestibule leading to the entrance hall. A steel fire door was slowly falling from its housing, shutting out the barricade, the assistant commissioner and his officers.
A deep metallic rumble like the clenching of a giant’s teeth filled the hall as the fire door settled onto the floor. The vibration moved away, a subsonic wave that seemed to take in smaller tremors from the exit doors of the dome, the answering calls from the furthest outposts of a vast vault that was sealing itself off from the world.
I stared at the heavy shield, and helped the elderly man to the chair by the enquiry desk. He thanked me and said: ‘Your foot’s bleeding.’
‘I know. Tell me—are we sealed in?’
‘It looks like it.’
‘The North Gate entrance?’
‘I imagine that’s also closed.’
‘And the side exits?’
‘Everything. The car parks and freight entrance.’ He raised a hand to calm me, seeing that I was agitated. ‘It’s the fear of fire, you see. Any draught would turn a small blaze into a furnace.’
‘Right . . .’ I was surprised by how calm he seemed, as if he had known what would happen and had detached himself from all the excitement long before it began. He stared in a regretful way at his useless mobile, resigned to the prospect of being unable to contact his wife. Trying to rest my foot, I asked: ‘I take it you work here?’
‘In Accounts. We tend to have a good idea what’s going on. Mr Carradine is a very determined young man, but these shopping malls haven’t learned how to cope with violence. When they do . . .’
‘War will move into the world’s consumer spaces? That’s quite a thought. Up till now, being a washing machine has been a safe option. There was a shooting here this evening.’
‘The television actor? I’m very sorry. It’s probably best not to know if it really happened.’ He shook my hand. ‘I’ll rest here for a bit. You’ll need to find a bed for the night. There’s a huge selection to choose from . . .’
He sat in his chair behind the enquiry desk, a grey-haired sphinx ready to answer all questions but ignored by the crowd drifting across the entrance hall and unable to find its bearing. Carradine and his entourage had set off on an inspection tour of their new domain, apparently uninterested in the fate of all those trapped inside the dome.
I walked over to the steel fire door, so massive that it muffled all sounds of police and army activity. An emergency escape panel was set into the fire door, and I was tempted to make a run for it, but its electrical locks would be too much for me.
Besides, a new and more interesting world was waiting for me inside the dome, a self-contained universe of treasure and promise. The crowd was drifting back into the mall, resigned to a future of eternal shopping. The republic of the Metro-Centre had at last established itself, a faith trapped inside its own temple.
PART III
33
THE CONSUMER LIFE
IN AN HOUR I would be leaving the dome. For the last time I crossed the deserted terrace of the Holiday Inn and stepped onto the beach beside the lake. Within the lobby the latest group of hostages to be released was checking out of the hotel, ready for their transfer to the South Gate entrance. Guarded by their marshals, they shuffled through the doors, several almost too weak to walk. I waved to them, trying to remind them that in a few minutes they would breathe a different air, but none of them noticed me. There were tired mothers with restless teenage daughters, wives steering elderly husbands, a pallid McDonald’s assistant whom Dr Maxted had treated for hysteria, and a young couple barely coping with a fever picked up from the polluted water.