Читать книгу Kingdom Come - J. G. Ballard, John Lanchester, Robert MacFarlane - Страница 16

LIKE ALL GREAT shopping malls, the Metro-Centre smothered unease, defused its own threat and offered balm to the weary. I stood in the sunshine fifty yards from the South Gate entrance, watching the shoppers cross the wide apron that surrounded the mall, a vast annular plaza in its own right. In a few moments they would be bathed in a light more healing than anything on offer from the sun. As we entered these huge temples we became young again, like children visiting the home of a new schoolfriend, a house that at first seemed forbidding. Then a strange but smiling mother would appear and put the most nervous child at ease with a promise that small treats would appear throughout the visit.

All malls subtly infantilized us, but the Metro-Centre showed signs of urging us to grow up a little. Uniformed stewards stood by the entrance, checking bags and purses, a response to the tragedy in which my father had died. An elderly Asian couple approached the entrance, and were quickly surrounded by volunteers in St George’s shirts. No one spoke to the couple, but they were stared at and shouldered about until a Metro-Centre security man intervened.

Tom Carradine, the public relations manager who turned up so cheerfully at the funeral, had arranged to meet me by the information desk. He was now leading the unit that offered assistance to the injured and bereaved. A printed plan that resembled a new share-issue prospectus had arrived by special messenger, outlining the many discounts and concessionary terms available at Metro-Centre stores, all on a sliding scale that strongly suggested one’s death in a terrorist attack hit the maximum pay-off.

After returning to London I had slept uneasily in my Chelsea flat, and was woken by an early phone call from David Carradine. He was helpful and concerned, eager to tell me everything he knew about the circumstances of my father’s death. If anything, he was rather too keen, talking about angles of fire and bullet velocities as if describing a computer game that had malfunctioned. He told me that the magistrates’ hearing had been postponed to the next day, given the extent of Christie’s arrest injuries and security fears after the police station riot.

I spent the day pacing the flat, irritated by its silent rooms. By now I had decided I would be present at the court. David Carradine would take me on a tour of the Metro-Centre, and I would then see Christie committed for trial. Already I was unsure about everything – the sight of Mrs Christie in my solicitor’s reception area, Sergeant Falconer warming milk for her child, Fairfax’s aggressive behaviour, virtually accusing me of being responsible for the giant mall on his doorstep. At the least, Christie’s committal would draw a firm line under all this suburban unreality.

Turning my back on the sun, I stepped through the doors at the South Gate entrance. In front of me was a terraced city, tiers of overhead streets reached by escalators and elevator pods. A stream of aerated water marked the edge of the entrance hall, bubbling under small bridges that led to miniature landscaped gardens, each an Eden promising an experience more meaningful than self-knowledge or eternal life. Stewards patrolled the area, and desk staff recruited volunteers into the Metro-Centre security force.

As I passed the desk, a steward offered me a leaflet urging every customer to become one of the eyes and ears of the shopping mall. Two middle-aged men, a trio of off-duty secretaries and several youths in baseball caps signed their forms and were given badges to pin to their lapels. Consumer announcements broke through the background music, emphasizing that airport security ruled.

Surprisingly, no one was embarrassed by the uniformed guards and their volunteer auxiliaries. As the martial music blared, they straightened their backs and walked more briskly, like Londoners during the Blitz. In front of me was a married couple with a child in a pushchair, and without thinking I found myself in step with them.

Breaking my stride, I paused by one of the bridges, and noticed that the white paint on the rail had begun to flake. The stream splashing among the artificial rocks had lost its direction. Eddies of scum circled aimlessly, exhausted by the attempt to return to the main channel. Even the floor of the entrance hall, worn down by a hundred thousand heels, revealed a few cracks.

Despite these portents, Tom Carradine was unfailingly optimistic. Barely out of his teens, he was smiling, friendly and crushingly earnest, with the pale skin and overly clear eyes of a cult recruiter. As he sprang from the crowd and took my hand I guessed that I was the first bereaved relative to visit the Metro-Centre, and that he had already decided how to make my visit a success.

‘We’re delighted to have you with us, Mr Pearson.’ He shook my hand warmly, appreciating that I had crossed a desert to reach this air-conditioned oasis. ‘We hope you’ll visit us again. Here in the Metro-Centre we’re great believers in the future.’

‘As I am, Tom …’

He guided me towards a nearby travelator, and nodded approvingly when I mounted the walkway without stumbling. He waved genially to the shoppers, his hands beating time to the music. At exactly fifteen-second intervals he turned a huge smile on me, like a safety light illuminating an underground garage.

‘I like the music,’ I commented. ‘Though maybe it’s a little too martial. Somewhere in there I can hear the Horst Wessel song.’

‘It’s good for morale,’ Carradine explained. ‘We like to keep people cheerful. You know …?’

‘I know. Has business fallen off at all … since the shooting?’

Carradine frowned, unable to grasp the concept of a trade downturn, from whatever cause. ‘At first, just a little. Out of respect, of course. But our customers are giving us wonderful support.’

‘They’ve rallied round?’

‘Absolutely. If anything, I think it’s brought us all together. I know you’ll be pleased to hear that, Mr Pearson.’

He spoke forcefully, unblinking eyes fixed on mine. I took for granted that he distrusted me, above all for having a father who had allowed himself to be killed, like the member of a congregation with the bad manners to drop dead beside the high altar in the middle of evensong. Death had no place in the Metro-Centre, which had abolished time and the seasons, past and future. He probably knew that I was hostile to the mall, another middle-class snob who hated glitter, confidence and opportunity when they were taken up too literally by the lower orders.

In an almost combative way, he launched into a tour guide’s patter, describing the huge dimensions of the Metro-Centre, the millions of square feet of retail space, the three hotels, six cineplexes and forty cafés. ‘Did you know,’ he concluded, ‘that we have more retail space than the whole of Luton?’

‘I’m impressed. Still …’ I pointed to the shops on either side of the travelator, filled with familiar brands of jewellery, cameras and electrical goods. ‘… You’re selling the same things.’

‘But they feel different.’ Carradine’s eyes seemed to glow. ‘That’s why our customers come here. The Metro-Centre creates a new climate, Mr Pearson. We succeeded where the Greenwich dome failed. This isn’t just a shopping mall. It’s more like a …’

‘Religious experience?’

‘Exactly! It’s like going to church. And here you can go every day and you get something to take home.’

I watched his eyes tilt upwards as he listened to his words echo inside his head. He was barely an adult, but already a middle-aged fanatic in the making. I assumed he had no life outside the Metro-Centre. All his emotional needs, his sense of self, were satisfied by this huge retail space. He was naive and enthusiastic, serving a novitiate that would never end. And I had helped to create him.

The travelator reached the end of its journey, carrying us into the heart of the Metro-Centre. We were now in the central atrium, a circular concourse where shoppers strolled to the escalators that would carry them to the upper retail decks. A diffused aura filled the scented space, but now and then the beam of a concealed spotlight caught my eye. I felt that I was on the stage of a vast opera house, surrounded by a circle and upper circle packed with spectators. Everything seemed dramatized, every gesture and thought. The enclosed geometry of the Metro-Centre focused an intense self-awareness on every shopper, as if we were extras in a music drama that had become the world.

‘Tom? What is it?’

Carradine had turned from me. He was staring at one of the glass elevators that climbed the floors nearest to us. On the third level, between the elevator and the railings of the pedestrian walkway, was the open hatch of a fire-control station, the brass nozzle of a high-pressure hose pointing towards us. Uncomfortable to be with me, Carradine buttoned and unbuttoned his jacket. I assumed that it was from this sniper position that my father and his fellow victims had been shot, among the sock and cosmetic counters, the vintage wine stores and laptop clinics.

Surprisingly, now that I was here, in the centre of the killing ground, I felt completely calm. Surrounded by this cave of transient treasures, guided by this nervous public relations man, death lost its power to threaten, measured in nothing more fearful than bust sizes and kilobyte capacities. The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only about the corporate logos on its shroud.

‘Mr Pearson? I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking …’

‘It’s all right, Tom. No need to worry.’ Trying to calm the young manager, I placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘The hatchway on the third floor. I take it the shots came from there?’

‘That’s correct.’ Carradine steadied himself with a visible effort of will. He stiffened his neck and breathed deeply to a count of six. Nothing in his training had prepared him for this reconstruction. He spoke rapidly, as if reading from a press handout. ‘Two bursts of fire, at 2.17 p.m., before anyone realized what had happened. Witnesses say everyone stopped and listened to the echoes, thinking they were more shots.’

‘And then?’

‘Then? Total panic. All the down escalators were full, people on the upper floors were fighting to get into the lifts. It took us three days to identify all the shopping bags left behind. You can imagine the scene, Mr Pearson.’

‘Sadly, I can.’

‘Two people died instantly – Mrs Holden, a local pensioner, and a Mr Mickiewicz, a Polish visitor. Your father and fifteen others were wounded.’ Carradine clenched his fists, ignoring the shoppers who paused to listen to him, under the impression that he was leading a conducted tour. ‘It was so crowded, Mr Pearson. You have to understand the gunman couldn’t miss.’

‘That must have been his idea. The lunchtime surge.’ I gazed around the concourse, and imagined a gunman opening fire at random. ‘It’s surprising more people weren’t hit.’

‘Well …’ Carradine nodded ruefully as a middle-aged woman with two heavy shopping bags strained forward to whisper to him. ‘The bears were hit.’

‘The bears?’

‘The Three Bears … the Metro-Centre mascots. People were very affected …’

Carradine pointed to the centre of the concourse. On a circular plinth stood three giant teddy bears. The father bear was at least fifteen feet tall, his plump torso and limbs covered with a lustrous brown fur. Mother and baby bear stood beside him, paws raised to the shoppers, as if ready to make a consumer affairs announcement about the porridge supply.

‘Impressive,’ I said. ‘Completely bear-like. They look as if they can speak.’

‘They can’t speak, but they can move. They dance to the music. “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” was their favourite.’ Soberly, Carradine added: ‘We switched off the motors. Out of consideration …’

‘Sensitive of you. And the bears were hit? I’m glad they weren’t seriously injured.’

‘It was a close thing.’ Carradine pointed to the rounded abdomen of the mother bear, and to the left ear of the father bear. Darker squares of fur had been stitched over the original fabric, giving both creatures a rather rumpled look, as if they had been scuffling over the breakfast table. ‘Our customers were very upset. They sent in hundreds of letters, get-well cards …’

Without thinking, we had walked over to the bears. I noticed the cards decorating the plinth, many carrying messages in adult handwriting. There were flowers, a row of miniature teddy bears, one wearing a tiny St George’s shirt, and a dozen jars of honey and treacle.

Listening to myself, I said: ‘It’s almost a shrine.’

‘Definitely.’

‘Let’s move on.’ I beckoned Carradine away from the stuffed trio, though I was aware that my sympathy for the bears had brought us closer together. ‘It’s a pity about the bears, but they seem to be well cared for. Now, which of these escalators did my father take?’

‘He didn’t take an escalator, Mr Pearson.’

‘Sergeant Falconer said he was going up to the third floor. He bought his tobacco from a shop …’

‘Dunhill’s. But not that morning. He took the staircase to the exhibition area.’

A mezzanine deck jutted over the concourse between the ground and first floors, reached by a staircase with white rails. There was an observation platform where shoppers could rest and look down on the crowds below. A section of the mezzanine was a public gallery, hung with dioramas of new housing estates and science parks.

‘We donate the space to local businesses,’ Carradine explained. ‘It’s part of our public education programme.’

‘Enlightened of you.’ I waited for Carradine to inhale deeply. ‘Now, where was my father shot?’

Without speaking, Carradine pointed to the observation platform. He had begun to sweat copiously, and buttoned his jacket, trying to hide the damp stain under his tie. He watched me stiffly when I climbed the dozen steps to the platform, then turned and fixed his gaze on the giant bears.

I stood on the platform, almost expecting to see my father’s blood staining the metal floor. He had spent his last moments resting against the rail, tired by his walk to the Metro-Centre. The fire-control hatch was little more than twenty feet away, and I tried to imagine a bullet passing through my head. Following its possible track, I noticed a shallow groove in the railing. The staircase had been repainted, but I placed my index finger in the groove, taking the last pulse of my father’s life, a final contact with a man I never knew.

‘Mr Pearson – everything all right?’ Carradine was relieved that the tour was over, an ordeal he had clearly never anticipated. ‘If we go to my office …’

‘I’m fine. You’ve earned yourself a stiff drink. First, though, I need to take a look at the fire-control point.’

‘Mr Pearson? That’s not a good idea. You might find it …’

I held his elbow and turned him to face the bears. A technician was working on the instrument panel inside the plinth, and the mother bear gave a skittish twitch, as if ducking another bullet. I said: ‘I need to see the whole picture. My father died in your store, Tom. You owe it to me and the bears.’

We stood in the narrow chamber behind the fire hose, the high-pressure pump and gas cylinders next to us. The hose would project a stream of foam at the pedestrian decks and smother any burning debris that fell from the roof. Leaning through the open hatch, I could see the observation platform, the mezzanine deck and the entire concourse.

‘Good. Tell me, Tom, how did Christie get in here?’

Carradine straightened his tortured body. The sweat from his hands left damp prints on the metal wall. ‘The fire crews have key cards. Christie must have stolen one from their locker room.’

‘It’s a miracle he made it here.’ We had emerged from a maze of service corridors, tunnels and freight elevators. ‘It’s not easy to find. Did Christie have a friend on the inside?’

‘Unthinkable, Mr Pearson.’ Carradine stared at me, shocked by the thought. ‘Christie is very devious. He was always hanging around.’

‘All the same, no one actually saw him fire the weapon. How did he smuggle it in here?’

‘Sergeant Falconer told me he hid it behind the gas cylinders.’

‘Sergeant Falconer? For someone so uptight she gets around …’

‘Two women leaving the staff toilet saw Christie run to the emergency exit. Several people recognized him in the car park.’

‘They all knew him?’

‘He’s a local troublemaker, a very nasty type.’

‘That’s the problem.’ I moved the foam gun in its gimbals, training the brass barrel on the bears. ‘All that screaming and panic – anyone running away would look like an assassin. Especially the local misfit.’

‘He’s guilty, Mr Pearson.’ Carradine nodded vigorously, his confidence returning. ‘They’ll convict him.’

I gazed down at the mezzanine, wondering what had drawn my father to a property developer’s pitch. Beyond the exhibition space, separated by chromium rails and a security gate, was a small television studio. There was a hospitality area of black leather sofas, and a circle of cameras and lighting arrays grouped around a commentator’s desk and the guest banquettes.

‘Consumer affairs programme,’ Carradine explained. ‘It’s very popular. Customers come on, talk about their shopping experiences. The Metro-Centre has its own cable channel. In the evenings we have higher ratings than BBC2.’

‘People go home and watch programmes about shopping?’

‘More than shopping, Mr Pearson. Health and lifestyle issues, sports, current affairs, key local concerns like asylum seekers …’

A monitor in the control room had come on, and a familiar face appeared, with the same deep tan and sympathetic smile that I had seen on the giant screens at the football stadium.

* * *

The face followed us around the dome, its sunbed charm glowing from the television screen in Carradine’s office, a windowless space deep in the dome’s administration area. As I sipped a double espresso, glad to sink my nose in its reassuring vapour, Carradine sorted through the photographs he had pulled from his filing cabinet.

He and his assistants had spent endless hours editing out any bloodstains or panic-filled faces. The surveillance-camera stills he passed to me showed a retreat as calm and heroic as Dunkirk, younger customers helping the elderly, uniformed staff guiding children towards their grateful parents. Spilled shopping bags, scattered groceries, a screaming three-year-old with a blood-smeared face were all cropped and consigned to that vast amnesia that the consumer world reserved for the past. At the sales counter, the human race’s greatest confrontation with existence, there were no yesterdays, no history to be relived, only an intense transactional present.

I dropped the photos on Carradine’s desk and turned to the television screen where the suntanned presenter was interviewing housewives about their experiences with a new reusable cat litter. I guessed that the recorded clip would not be appearing on air.

‘I’ve seen him before,’ I told Carradine. ‘Years ago. EastEnders, The Bill. He tended to play paedophiles and widowers who’d murdered their wives … it’s that faint shiftiness.’

‘David Cruise.’ At the sound of the name Carradine straightened his shoulders. ‘He runs the Metro-Centre cable channel. He’s very popular, our customers like him.’

‘I bet. He fronted a few product launches for us. I remember a cinema ad for a new micro-car. He was too big to get into it and we had to drop him. The television screen is small enough for him.’

‘He’s good. We’re all glad he’s here. The local constituency chairman thinks he’d make a great Member of Parliament.’

‘He would. Today’s politics is tailor-made for him. Smiles leaking everywhere, mood music, the sales campaign that gets rid of the need for a product. Even the shiftiness. People like to be conned. It reminds them that everything is a game. No disrespect –’

There was a rapid knock on the door and Carradine’s secretary burst in. Close to tears, she spoke urgently to Carradine, then paused by the door as he picked up his telephone.

‘Christie? What do you mean?’ As he listened he struck his mouth with the palm of his hand. ‘When? The court? Mr Pearson is here. How do I explain that?’

He held the receiver in one hand and carefully depressed the cradle with the other, staring at the photographs on his desk.

‘Tom? What’s the problem?’ I walked around the desk. ‘Family news?’

‘Your family.’ Carradine pointed the receiver at me. ‘Duncan Christie.’

‘What about him? Is he dead? Don’t tell me he hanged himself in his cell?’

‘He’s alive.’ Carradine stepped back, trying to leave as much space as possible between us. He stared in a level way at me, unsure whether I would be able to cope with his news. For the first time he no longer looked like a teenager. ‘Very much alive. There was a special court hearing this morning. It just ended. The magistrate discharged him. He ruled there was no case to answer.’

‘How? I don’t believe it.’ I seized the telephone receiver from Carradine and pressed it hard into its cradle, trying to silence this absurd oracle. ‘It’s a hoax. Or a cock-up, some legal blunder. They’re talking about a different case.’

‘No. It’s Duncan Christie. The Crown Prosecution Service offered no evidence. The police withdrew their charges. Three witnesses have come forward, saying they saw Christie in the South Gate entrance hall when the shots were fired. They picked him out in a line-up. Christie was nowhere near the mezzanine. I’m sorry, Mr Pearson …’

I turned away, and stared at the presenter still smiling and teasing his housewives. I felt dazed, but I noticed that David Cruise preferred his left profile, which concealed the receding hairline above his right temple. In an almost reassuring way, his soft and ingratiating presence offered the only reality in the absurd world that my father’s death and the Metro-Centre had created between them.