‘Richard? What happened?’

‘Nothing.’ I tried to prompt a smile from her. ‘Nothing’s happened for days. We could be here for ever.’

‘You were supposed to leave. What are you doing here?’

‘Julia . . . I’ll make some tea.’ I pulled a packet of Assam breakfast tea from my shirt. ‘I’ve been tracking this down for days. Leaf, please note, not tea bags . . .’

‘Wonderful. That’ll block the drain for good.’ She held my shoulders, yellowing eyes under her uncombed hair. ‘You shouldn’t be here. I’ll speak to Carradine.’

‘No. I was held up at the hotel.’ I decided not to alarm her over the dead barrister. ‘There was a security problem—someone thought he saw Duncan Christie.’

‘Not again. People are seeing him all the time. It must be some sort of portent, like flying saucers.’ She took my hands and turned my anaemic palms to the light. ‘You have to get out of here, Richard. If there’s a release tomorrow . . .’

‘I will. I will. I want to leave.’

‘Do you? Maybe. Let’s have a look at that foot.’

Julia rebandaged my foot, using a fresh strip of lint, part of a consignment supplied, reluctantly, by the police. We were sitting in the pharmacy next to the treatment room, and our chairs were close enough for me to embrace her. Her fingers fumbled at the tie, and I took over when she seemed to lose interest. Her mind was elsewhere, in one of the high galleries closer to the sun, rather than in this airless clinic with its erratic air conditioning.

‘Good . . .’ I patted the bandage with its clumsy bows. ‘That should keep me going.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She leaned briefly against my shoulder, and then watched me with a faint smile. She was waiting for me to produce a ‘gift’ from my pockets, perhaps a foil sheet of antibiotics looted from a chemist’s shop. ‘It’s been a hell of a night. I keep hearing helicopters. Tomorrow, go straight to the entrance hall—you’ll be on the list.’

‘I’ll get there. Don’t worry.’

‘I do worry. We’re short of everything. We might as well close up shop.’

‘Why? The chemists here are packed with enough drugs to fit out a hospital.’

‘Haven’t you heard? It’s all got to stay as it was. We’re not allowed to touch a thing.’

‘Even for emergencies? I don’t get it.’

‘Dear man . . .’ Julia placed her worn hands around mine, for once glad of the physical warmth. ‘Emergencies don’t exist any more. For Carradine and his people everything is normal. He and Sangster did their ward round this morning and decided all the patients were getting better. Even the old pensioner who died in the night.’

‘And David Cruise?’

‘He’s holding on . . .’ She avoided my eyes and listened to the faint sighing of the ventilator from the empty storeroom, converted into Cruise’s intensive care unit. ‘I ought to take a look—I keep forgetting about him.’

I followed her into the storeroom, where Cruise lay in his makeshift oxygen tent. As always, the sight of him stretched inertly in his maze of wires and tubes made me deeply uneasy. The lithe and athletic figure with his tactile charm had vanished, as if the monitors and gauges were steadily pumping his life from him and transferring his blood and lymph to their voracious machines.

Only his hair survived, a blond mane lying across the phlegm-soaked pillow. I stood beside Julia as she adjusted the ventilator, now and then stroking the hair like the pelt of a sleeping cat. Cruise’s head had shrunk, his cheeks and jaw folding into themselves, as if his face was a stage set being dismantled from within. A transfusion bag hung from its stand and dripped serum into a relay tube, but the television presenter seemed so empty of life that I wondered if Julia was trying to revive a corpse.

‘Richard? He won’t recognize you.’ She led me back to the treatment room. ‘Now, we’ll find something for you to do.’

‘Julia . . .’ I put my arm around her shoulders, trying to steady her. ‘How is Cruise?’

‘Not good.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I’ve got to get him to the hospital, but Carradine won’t let him leave. Sangster says he’ll be up in a couple of days.’

‘How long can he last?’

‘Not long. We’ll have to use car batteries to run the ventilator.’

‘How long? A day? Two days?’

‘Something like that.’ Her eyes darkened. ‘If he died . . .’

‘Would it matter?’

‘They believe in him. If anything happened . . .’ She laughed to herself, a desperate chuckle. ‘It’s a pity they can’t see him now, all those people who marched and stamped.’

‘Julia, hold on.’

‘You corrupted him, you know.’ She spoke matter-of-factly. ‘Still, it’s a kind of revenge.’

‘For what? Losing my job?’

‘Your job? Your father’s death, for God’s sake. This pays for it. In a way, I’m glad for you.’

‘Why?’ I took her arm, trying to hold her attention before her mind could slide away. ‘David Cruise had nothing to do with my father’s death.’

‘Cruise? No. But . . .’

‘Others did? Who? Is that why you went to the funeral?’

Her gaze, once so thoughtful and concerned, drifted away into the borders of fatigue. But her hands touched my chest, searching for refuge. The attempted murder of David Cruise had relieved her of the guilt I had sensed since our first meeting, an anger at herself that had always come between us.

‘Julia? Who . . . ?’

‘Quiet!’ She smoothed her hair. ‘The consultants are here. They’re starting their ward rounds.’

THREE MARSHALS INSt George’s shirts had entered the first-aid post and were strolling around the ward. Ignoring Tony Maxted, they began to read the clinical notes attached to the bed frames. With heavy earnestness, they bent over the patients and tried to take their pulses.

I started to protest, but Maxted caught my arm and bundled me through the entrance.

‘Right. We can take a breather.’ He was ruffled but unabashed. ‘They know I’m a psychiatrist—not the most popular profession in the Metro-Centre. I can’t think why . . .’

We sat on the plinth below the bears in the centre of the atrium, surrounded by jars of honey and the fading get-well messages. Trying to ease my ankle, I took off my shoe and stood up. I wanted to be with Julia, and resented being frogmarched from the first-aid post. But Maxted wearily pulled me against the baby bear’s massive paw.

‘Maxted . . . is Julia safe?’

‘Just about. Rape isn’t a problem . . . yet, I’m glad to say. The Metro-Centre is more important than sex.’

‘What are we doing here?’

‘Keeping you out of harm’s way. The bears are a tribal totem—you should be safe for a while.’

‘Am I in danger? I didn’t know.’

‘Come on . . .’ Maxted examined me wearily, taking in the sweat caked into my jacket, my hands bruised from prising the lids off corned beef tins, the tramp-like appearance that would once have barred me from the Metro-Centre. By contrast, Maxted was still wearing a shirt and tie, and maintained his professional air under the shabby lab coat. ‘As long as Cruise hangs on, you’ll be okay. Once he goes, all hell is going to break loose.’

‘I thought it had.’

‘Not yet. Take this siege—what’s the strangest thing you’ve noticed?’

‘No looting?’

‘Spot on. Not a diamond stud pinched, not a Rolex trousered. Look around you. These aren’t consumer goods—they’re household gods. We’re in the worship phase, when everyone believes and behaves.’

‘And if Cruise dies?’

‘When, not if. We’ll move into a much more primitive and dangerous zone. Consumerism is built on regression. Any moment now the whole thing could flip. That’s why I’m still here—I need to see what happens.’

‘Nothing will happen.’ I tried to push away the probing paw of the baby bear. ‘The siege will end any day now. Everyone’s bored. It could end this afternoon.’

‘It won’t end. Carradine doesn’t want it to end. His mind’s been under siege ever since he arrived at the Metro-Centre. Sangster doesn’t want it to end. All those years trapped in that terrible school, teaching those kids how to be a new kind of savage.’