‘Maybe they’re not that interested.’
‘Hard to believe. What are they doing here?’
‘They’re enforcers.’
‘Enforcing what?’
We reached a crossroads, and turned left into another residential district. The football match had ended, and spectators were spilling out into the streets surrounding the stadium. David Cruise was alone again, talking to his double at the far end of the ground about a range of men’s colognes and grooming aids. Fragments of the sales pitch boomed through the night air, drumming like fists against the windows of the cowed little houses.
‘Julia, we keep heading back to the stadium. What exactly is going on?’
‘The Brooklands story. Look out for an old cinema . . . don’t worry, we’re not going to hold hands in the movies.’
The first spectators passed us, men and their wives in St George’s shirts, good-humouredly banging the roofs of the parked cars. Part of the crowd had broken away from the main body, and was moving down a street of small Asian food wholesalers. The men were burly but disciplined, led by marshals in red baseball caps, shouting into their mobile phones. The crowd marched behind them, jeering at the silent shops. A group of younger supporters hurled coins at the upstairs windows. The sound of breaking glass cut the night like an animal cry.
‘Julia! Seat belt! Where the hell are the police?’
‘These are the police . . .’ Julia fumbled with the catch, losing the buckle in the dark. She was shocked but excited, like a rugby girlfriend at her first brutal match.
Cars were coming towards us, driving three abreast, headlights full on. Behind them came a pack of supporters in full cry, brawling with the young Asians who emerged to defend their shops. Someone was kicked to the ground, and there was a flurry of white trainers like snowballs in a blizzard.
I swung the wheel, throwing Julia against the passenger door, and slewed the Jensen into a parking space as the cars swept past, slamming my wing mirror with a sound like a gunshot. Somewhere a plate-glass window fell to the pavement, and a torrent of razor ice scattered under the running feet.
The crowd surged past us, fists beating on the car roof. An overweight and thuggish man bellowed into his mobile while launching kicks at an elderly Asian trying to guard the doorway of his hardware shop. The supporters strode in step, chanting and disciplined, but seemed to have no idea where their marshals were leading them, happy to shout at the dark and trash whatever street they were marching down.
‘Julia! Don’t leave the car.’
Julia was hiding her face from the men calling to her through the passenger window, urging her to join them. I opened my door and stepped into the street. On the opposite pavement a middle-aged Asian was down on his knees, trying to steady himself against a vandalized parking meter. A thin-faced youth in a St George’s shirt danced around him, feinting and kicking as if he was taking a series of penalties, cheering and raising his hands each time he scored.
‘Mr Kumar . . . !’
I seized the young man by the arm and pushed him away. He shouted good-humouredly, happy to let me have a go at the next penalty. He danced off, feet scattering the broken glass. I helped Mr Kumar to stand, then steered the bulky man towards the service alley beside a small cash-and-carry.
‘Please . . . my car.’
‘Where are you parked? Mr Kumar . . . !’
He was dazed and dishevelled, gazing over my shoulder at the crowd as if trying to grasp who exactly they were. Then he glanced into my face, recognizing me with an appalled stare.
‘No . . . no . . . never . . .’
He broke away from me before I could reassure him, heavy arms thrusting me aside, and stumbled into the darkness of the alley.
TRYING TO CATCH my breath, I followed him into the next street. The marchers were returning to the stadium, and car doors slammed as they sounded their horns and drove away. Mr Kumar had vanished, perhaps taking refuge with local friends he had been visiting. Young Asian men were sweeping glass from the pavement into the gutters, smoking their cigarettes as they listened to the night.
I walked along the deserted street, lost in the glare of the stadium floodlights. Across the road was a disused cinema, a 1930s white-tile Odeon like a shabby iceberg, for years a bingo hall and now a carpet warehouse.
A police car approached, cruising the silent streets as if nothing had happened. I climbed the steps to the shuttered box office. The ancient Odeon was no longer even a ghost of itself, and violence had long since migrated from the screen to the surrounding streets. But its tiled alcoves, like the corners of a huge public lavatory, offered a moment’s shelter.
From the shadows I watched the police car pause outside the Odeon, then dip and flash its lights. I recognized the senior police officer in the passenger seat, Superintendent Leighton of the Brooklands force, whose photograph had been printed in the local newspaper that I read in the hospital cafeteria. Beside him, at the wheel, sat Sergeant Falconer, uniform cap over her immaculate Rhine-maiden hair. They waited outside the cinema, like a courting couple deciding whether to see a double feature, then flashed their lights at the empty street and continued their patrol.
Next to the Odeon was the cinema car park, empty except for a mud-spattered Range Rover. The driver was watching the street, speaking into his mobile phone. He wore a heavy Barbour jacket, trilby over his eyes, still unmistakably Geoffrey Fairfax. Beside him was a crop-haired man with a large Roman head, wearing a sheepskin jacket. Together they resembled hunt supporters following the hounds, happy to watch the chase from the comfort of their car, fortified by a thermos of warm brandy.
But were they leading the hunt, rather than following it? In the seat behind them were two men in St George’s shirts, muscled arms pressed against the windows. Both spoke freely to Fairfax and his passenger, pointing to the nearby road junctions as if describing an order of battle and reporting on the morale and enthusiasm of the troops.
A map was passed between the men, and Fairfax switched on the ceiling light. After consulting the map he started the engine, but I had seen clearly that there was a fifth person in the Range Rover.
Sitting in the rear between the two men in St George’s shirts, hair loose around her shoulders, was Dr Julia Goodwin.
I WALKED BACK to my car, stepping through shadows and avoiding the Asian men trying to clear up their shopfronts. Drowned by the glare of stadium lights, flames rose from a burning house.
11
A HARD NIGHT
LIKE ENGLISH LIFE as a whole, nothing in Brooklands could be taken at face value. I passed the next three days in my father’s flat, trying to make sense of this outwardly civilized Home Counties town—a town whose civic leaders, prominent solicitors and police chief were taking part in a pocket revolution. Had I stumbled into a conspiracy that was now shaping itself around me? And had my father been one of its instigators?
The stadium riot, orchestrated by Geoffrey Fairfax under the eyes of the police superintendent, had shaken me badly. Sipping rather too much of the old man’s malt, I watched the car park outside the flats, hoping to see Mr Kumar and convince him that I had not joined the attack on him. During the mêlée someone had punched my forehead, and the imprint of a signet ring starred the skin over my left eye. Staring at myself in the hall mirror, I could almost see Duncan Christie’s bruised face emerging through my own.
All in all, my first taste of street politics left me feeling like an out-of-condition rugby forward in a collapsed scrum. How, at the age of seventy-five, had my father coped with the violence and thuggery? In the evening, watching television with the sound down and the curtains drawn, I listened to the stadium crowds cheering on the Metro-Centre teams. Ambulance sirens wailed through the streets, and fire engines clanged their way to the shabby districts between Brooklands and the M25.