Impatient for an answer, I said: ‘We could push the police a little harder. Find out who their main suspects are. Dr Maxted?’
‘The police? They’d be touched by your faith in them. They haven’t realized how much everything has changed out here. They’re not alone in that. People in London can’t grasp that this is the real England. Parliament, the West End, Bloomsbury, Notting Hill, Hampstead—they’re heritage London, held together by a dinner-party culture. Here, around the M25, is where it’s really happening. This is today’s England. Consumerism rules, but people are bored. They’re out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along.’
‘That sounds as if they’re going to be frightened.’
‘They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad. Look around you, Richard. What do you see?’
‘Air-cargo warehouses. Shopping malls. Executive estates.’ As Maxted listened to me, nodding gloomily, I asked: ‘Why don’t people leave? Why don’t you leave?’
‘Because we like it here.’ Maxted raised his hands to stop me interrupting him. ‘This isn’t a suburb of London, it’s a suburb of Heathrow and the M25. People in Hampstead and Holland Park look down from the motorway as they speed home from their West Country cottages. They see faceless inter-urban sprawl, a nightmare terrain of police cameras and security dogs, an uncentred realm devoid of civic tradition and human values.’
‘It is. I’ve been there. It’s a zoo fit for psychopaths.’
‘Exactly. That’s what we like about it. We like dual carriageways and parking lots. We like control-tower architecture and friendships that last an afternoon. There’s no civil authority telling us what to do. This isn’t Islington or South Ken. There are no town halls or assembly rooms. We like prosperity filtered through car and appliance sales. We like roads that lead past airports, we like air-freight offices and rent-a-van forecourts, we like impulse-buy holidays to anywhere that takes our fancy. We’re the citizens of the shopping mall and the marina, the internet and cable TV. We like it here, and we’re in no hurry for you to join us.’
‘I don’t want to. Take it from me, I’ll leave as soon as I can.’
‘Good.’ Maxted nodded vigorously. ‘Brooklands is dangerous. You’re going to get hurt. The motorway towns are violent places. We’re not talking about a few individuals who go off the rails. We’re talking about collective psychology. The whole area is waiting for trouble. All these sports-club supporters, they’re just street gangs in St George’s shirts.’
‘My father might have been wearing one when he was shot. A retired airline pilot in his seventies? The Asian family in the next flat were frightened of him. They look at me as if I were National Front.’
‘Maybe you are, without realizing it.’ Maxted spoke without irony. ‘You have to think about England as a whole, not just Brooklands and the Thames Valley. The churches are empty, and the monarchy shipwrecked itself on its own vanity. Politics is a racket, and democracy is just another utility, like gas and electricity. Almost no one has any civic feeling. Consumerism is the one thing that gives us our sense of values. Consumerism is honest, and teaches us that everything good has a barcode. The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and rational self-interest would one day triumph, led directly to today’s consumerism.’
I tried to reach the decanter. ‘In that case, why worry? Look around you here at Brooklands. You’ve found the earthly paradise.’
‘It’s not a paradise.’ Maxted tried to mask his scorn. ‘Brooklands is a dangerous and disturbed place. Nasty things are brewing here. All this racism and violence. Burning down Asian businesses. Naked intolerance for its own sake. And this is only the beginning. Something far worse is waiting to crawl out of its den.’
‘But if reason and light have triumphed?’
‘They haven’t. Because we’re not reasonable and rational creatures. Far from it. We resort to reason when it suits us. For most people life is comfortable today, and we have the spare time to be unreasonable if we choose to be. We’re like bored children. We’ve been on holiday for too long, and we’ve been given too many presents. Anyone who’s had children knows that the greatest danger is boredom. Boredom, and a secret pleasure in one’s own malice. Together they can spur a remarkable ingenuity.’
‘Let’s stuff baby’s mouth with sweets and see if he stops breathing?’
‘Exactly.’ Maxted watched me smiling into my drink. ‘I hope you were an only child. You’ve seen the people around here. Their lives are empty. Install a new kitchen, buy another car, take a trip to some beach hotel. All these sports clubs financed by the Metro-Centre are an attempt to boost sales. It hasn’t worked. People are bored, even though they don’t realize it.’
‘So a lot of babies are going to turn blue in the face?’
‘Not just babies. What’s happening here involves entire communities. All these satellite towns around Heathrow and along the motorways. There’s one thing left that can put some energy into their lives, give them a sense of direction. You’ve run advertising campaigns—any ideas?’
‘None. Narcotics? A complete drug culture?’
‘Too destructive. Think of . . .’
‘War? It makes for good television.’
‘Difficult to organize. The Thames Valley can’t make territorial demands and invade Belgium. What I have in mind comes free, and is readily to hand.’
‘Sex?’
‘They’ve tried sex. Sooner or later, sex becomes hard work. Wife swapping is fun, but you meet too many people you look down on. Decadence demands a certain degree of innocence.’
‘So that leaves . . . ?’
‘Madness.’ Maxted lowered his voice and spoke more clearly, leaving behind his usual rush of words. ‘A voluntary insanity, whatever you want to call it. As a psychiatrist I’d use the term elective psychopathy. Not the kind of madness we deal with here. I’m talking about a willed insanity, the sort that we higher primates thrive on. Watch a troupe of chimpanzees. They’re bored with chewing twigs and picking the fleas out of each other’s armpits. They want meat, the bloodier the better, they want to taste their enemies’ fear in the flesh they grind. So they start beating their chests and shrieking at the sky. They work themselves into a frenzy, then set off in a hunting party. They come across a tribe of colobus monkeys and literally tear them limb from limb. Very nasty, but voluntary madness brought them a tasty supper. They sleep it off, and go back to chewing twigs and picking fleas.’
‘And then the cycle repeats itself.’ I lay back, aware of Maxted’s hot breath on the air. ‘More race riots and arson attacks, more immigrant hostels put to the torch. So the people of the motorway towns are tired of chewing twigs. One question, though. Who organizes these attacks of madness?’
‘No one. That’s the beauty of it. Elective insanity is waiting inside us, ready to come out when we need it. We’re talking primate behaviour at its most extreme. Witch-hunts, auto-da-fés, heretic burnings, the hot poker shoved up the enemy’s rear, gibbets along the skyline. Willed madness can infect a housing estate or a whole nation.’
‘Thirties Germany?’
‘A good example. People still think the Nazi leaders led the German people into the horrors of race war. Not true. The Germans were desperate to break out of their prison. Defeat, inflation, grotesque war reparations, the threat of barbarians advancing from the east. Going mad would set them free, and they chose Hitler to lead the hunting party. That’s why they stayed together till the end. They needed a psychopathic god to worship, so they recruited a nobody and stood him on the high altar. The great religions have been at it for millennia.’
‘States of willed madness? Christianity? Islam?’