‘In all that crush of people?’ I looked round, hoping that someone would switch off the wave machine. ‘You remembered this one face in the crowd?’
‘Yes!’ Julia leaned across the table, angry with me for being so obtuse. ‘I’ve often treated him. He’s always being attacked and beaten up.’
‘What was he doing in the Metro-Centre? He hates the place.’
‘I haven’t a bloody idea. He likes to keep an eye on it.’
‘Hard to believe. For that matter, what were you doing there? You hate the place as much as he does.’
‘I can’t remember. I happened to be passing.’
‘Like the other witnesses—his own psychiatrist who arranged to have him released that day from his mental hospital. And the head teacher who taught him at the local high school. And you. Three people who just happened to be there and thought of some shopping they needed to do. And you all arrive at the same time . . .’
‘Jesus Christ . . . !’ Julia drummed her fists on the table, bouncing my wineglass onto the tiled floor. ‘A lot of people in Brooklands know Duncan Christie. He’s the local character, almost the village idiot.’
‘Right. He used to be represented by Geoffrey Fairfax’s office. I saw you there the evening Christie was brought back to Brooklands.’
‘Geoffrey Fairfax? Sounds unlikely. You’ve been listening to too many garbled stories.’
‘Julia . . . for God’s sake.’ Impatient with her mock innocence, I raised my voice, hoping that I could jolt the truth from this likeable young doctor with her almost desperate denials. ‘You were sitting with your back to me in the conference room, hiding behind that wonderful hair. I take it the people you were with were the other witnesses?’
‘Yes . . .’ Julia stared at the broken wineglass at her feet. ‘They probably were.’
‘Don’t you think that’s odd? Christie had only just been arrested, but already the key witnesses were lined up, synchronizing their watches. The really strange thing is that I was supposed to see you—the witnesses in the conference room, Mrs Christie in reception, Sergeant Falconer heating the milk. It was laid on like the reconstruction of a crime. Why, Julia? What was it meant to tell me?’
‘Ask Geoffrey Fairfax.’ She straightened her jacket, ready to leave. ‘He might tell you.’
‘I doubt it. He’s mad, but he’s sly. On the outside, a very pukka, old-fashioned solicitor. On the inside, a raving, right-wing nutter. I wouldn’t expect either to pull out all the stops for this “shabby misfit”.’
A little weakly, Julia said: ‘People sympathize with Christie.’
‘For standing against the mall? Who exactly? Small shopkeepers, Thames Valley Poujadists?’
‘Not just the mall. All these retail parks look peaceful to you, but behind them something very nasty is going on. Christie and Geoffrey Fairfax saw this a long time ago.’
‘Did Christie kill my father?’
‘No!’ Julia stood up, driving the table into my elbows. She stared wildly at the approaching wave as if it were a tsunami about to climb the beach and overwhelm her. ‘I know Duncan Christie. I’ve stitched his scalp, I’ve set his fractures. He couldn’t . . .’
She was shaking, unable to control herself. I leapt up and held her shoulders, surprised by how frail she seemed.
‘Julia, you’re right. Someone else shot my father. I want you to help me find him. Forget about Duncan Christie and Fairfax . . .’
She let me steer her into her chair. For a few seconds she held tightly to my arms, then pushed me away with a grimace of irritation at her own weakness. She spoke calmly to the wave.
‘I’m sure I saw Christie near the entrance. At least, I think I saw him . . .’
10
STREET PEOPLE
‘THIS PLACE COULD DRIVE anyone completely sane.’ Julia Goodwin scraped a fragment of glass from her shoe. ‘Don’t tell me there aren’t any exits.’
‘I’ll give you a lift home. What happened to your car?’
‘It’s . . . being serviced.’
She strode on ahead as I paid the bill. Her confidence, of a gimcrack kind, had been restored. Her patients rarely spoke back to her, and she had been unnerved by my questions, aware that even if Duncan Christie was innocent she had in some way been lying to herself. But an unusual cover-up was taking place, parts of which I was being allowed to see.
We crossed the central atrium, skirting the giant bears with their patched fur and get-well offerings of treacle and honey. Customers wandered by, like tourists in a foreign city. There were no clocks in the Metro-Centre, no past or future. The only clue to the time was the football match on the overhead monitor screens. Arrays of floodlights shone through the black haze, and the screens at either end of the ground carried the familiar face of David Cruise, a retail messiah for the age of cable TV.
We left the Metro-Centre by one of the exit-only doors, and walked towards the car park. Groups of sports supporters were leaving the dome, bearing the banners of local ice-hockey and athletics teams. They formed up among their four-wheel drives, and marched away in step to the evening’s venues.
Following Julia’s directions, we set off through the empty office quarter of the town, moving past entrances sealed with steel grilles.
‘They’re waiting for something,’ I commented. ‘Where are we going?’
‘South Brooklands. I know a short cut. You’re happy with one-way streets?’
‘One-way? Why not?’
‘The wrong way? It saves time. Risk nothing, lose everything.’
We passed the magistrates’ court, then turned into an area of discount furniture stores, warehousing and car-rental firms. The football stadium seemed to remain for ever on our left, as if we were circling it at a safe distance, uneager to be drawn into its huge magnetic field.
‘Okay.’ Julia leaned into the windscreen. ‘Turn left. No, right.’
‘Here?’ I hesitated before passing a no-entry sign guarding a street of shabby houses. ‘Where are we?’
‘I told you. It’s a short cut.’
‘To the nearest police pound? Doctor, always wear your seat belt. Is this some sort of courtship ritual?’
‘I bloody hope not. Anyway, seat belts are sexual restraints.’
I looked out at the modest houses, with their deco doors and windows, a fossil of the 1930s now occupied by immigrant families. A terrace of small semis stood by untended front gardens, battered vans parked on the worn grass. Everything was bathed in the intense glare of the stadium lights, as if the area was being interrogated over its failure to join the consumer society. Whenever they glanced from their windows, the east European and Asian tenants would see the giant face of David Cruise smiling on his silver screens.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ I braked to avoid a cavernous pothole. ‘What a place to live.’
‘You’re talking about my patients.’ Julia shielded her eyes from the glare. ‘Mostly Bangladeshis. They’re very ambitious.’
‘Thank God. They need to be.’
‘They are. Their biggest dream is to be cleaners and janitors at the Metro-Centre. Remember that when you next have a pee . . .’
We moved to the fringes of the residential area, and passed an ice-hockey arena for the second time, forced to slow down when a group of banner-waving supporters blocked the road. Three hundred yards from the football stadium, among the slip roads that led to the motorway, was an athletics ground laid with a lurid artificial track, bathed in the same intense glare of lighting arrays. Groups of supporters stood in the street, awaiting the result of a long-distance race.
‘Why don’t they go in?’ I asked Julia. ‘The stands are almost empty.’