The hostages accepted their fate, but a group of well-to-do Pakistanis were convinced that they had been deliberately ignored. They surrounded Carradine in a rage of indignation, shouting and thrusting at his shoulder. Sangster quickly signalled to the marshals, who forced back the gesticulating group and kicked open their parcels. To a chorus of jeers, they held aloft the silkily expensive underwear, then trampled the garments underfoot. The elderly barrister who was the family patriarch worked himself into a fury of anger, shouting abuse at Carradine and by chance spitting on his shirt. Batons were being drawn as I left the ugly scene.
I disliked the violence and limped back to the first-aid post, hoping to see Julia Goodwin. The marshals guarding David Cruise had seen enough of me for the day and turned me away, so I sat on the podium beneath the bears. Half an hour later I heard the emergency hatch clang shut as the last of the returnees stepped shakily into freedom.
About three hundred hostages now remained, and the same number of mutineers. The latter formed a hard core of supporters who had forsaken everything, their homes and families, their jobs and cars and loft extensions, to defend the Metro-Centre.
Despite their efforts, conditions in the dome were steadily deteriorating. Without the powerful air-conditioning units, the temperature inside the mall continued to climb. The supermarket floors were slick with melted ice cream oozing from their cabinets, and a foul air rose from the defrosting meat freezers. The water pressure was too low to fill the lavatory cisterns, and a farmyard stench enclosed the Ramada Inn where the dome’s director and senior staff were held prisoner. The Metro-Centre, once bathed in a cool and scented air, was turning into a gigantic sty.
At two o’clock that afternoon, when the hostages drifted off in search of lunch, they found all the supermarkets closed. They peered through the doors, rattling the chains and padlocks, until the public address system ordered them to assemble in the central atrium. Carradine appeared thirty minutes later, descending the staircase from the mezzanine, and informed us that lunch was off the menu until we cleaned up the supermarkets and returned them to their previously immaculate state. He called on everyone to remember their pride in the Metro-Centre, and repay the debt they owed the mall for transforming their lives. The hostages would be divided into ten work groups and each of these would be assigned a supermarket.
Carradine gazed triumphantly at the glum faces and listened to Sangster whispering in his ear. He then announced that the work groups would take part in a competition. The team that did the best job of cleaning and waste disposal during the next week would be allowed to leave the dome.
As the hostages dispersed, queuing to collect their mops and pails, I caught up with Sangster, still smiling slyly to himself.
‘Richard? Good . . .’ He laid a huge arm across my shoulders. ‘Rather a neat wheeze, don’t you think?’
‘ “Work Makes You Free”?’
‘Who said that? It’s very true. It keeps alive the sporting instinct, and gives them something to live for. At the same time it weeds out the stronger and more determined elements.’
‘Those who might cause trouble?’
‘We can’t lose. A sick hostage is much more valuable than a robust one. And less dangerous. Don’t worry, I’ll see that you’re excused from cleaning duties.’
‘I’m very grateful. It’s good to have a friend in high places. As it happens, I can barely walk.’
‘Your foot?’ Sangster frowned with distaste at my bloodstained bandage. ‘We could find you a sedentary job. Rinsing mops, say? Is it psychosomatic?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll ask Tony Maxted.’
‘I would.’ Sangster stared at me with a straight face, then broke into a cheery grin. ‘You want to stay here, Richard. You know that.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Of course you do. This place is your . . . spiritual Eden. It’s all you have to believe in.’
‘Never. Tell me—the siege, when will it end?’
‘Let’s wait and see.’ Sangster seemed almost gleeful at the remote prospect. ‘That’s what’s so interesting. This isn’t about the Metro-Centre: it’s about England today. Now, go back to your room and rest. You’re too valuable to be ill. When David Cruise wakes, you’ll be there to cheer him up.’
‘Will he wake?’
Sangster turned to wave. ‘He’d better . . .’
I WATCHED THEhostages shuffle to their workstations, with all the enthusiasm of patients ordered to clean their own hospital. Discipline ruled, and a more martial spirit prevailed. The cartons of perished pizzas, the shoals of rotting fish fingers, the thousands of cartons of rancid milk were stripped from the shelves and carted away to the refuse hoppers in the basement. Carradine and Sangster introduced a strict rationing system, and we queued for our modest meals of corned beef, pilchards and baked beans.
Negotiations continued with the police, who were increasingly impatient as the release of hostages slowed, but the lack of violence forced them to bide their time. A full-scale assault would leave scores of hostages dead, and the Metro-Centre was a sniper’s paradise. More to the point, floor-to-floor street battles would inflict millions of pounds’ worth of damage on the unprotected merchandise.
A few hostages, the last of the sick and elderly, were released. On the portable radio that Maxted gave to me in an attempt to keep up my spirits, I listened to an account of their debriefing. All the freed hostages were carefully searched for any plundered jewellery, watches and cameras, but from the very start of the siege none had been found. No one had slipped a single fountain pen or gold chain into their pockets. The consultant psychologists were baffled by this, but a likely explanation struck me a few days later when I wandered through a large furniture emporium near the Holiday Inn.
Vaguely searching for a more comfortable mattress than my fever-sodden berth in the hotel, I stood in the entrance to the store as the pilot lights shone on the freshly waxed floor. A work party had moved through the ground level, and the tang of polish hung on the unmoving air, making me feel almost giddy. By sweeping out these temples to consumerism, by wiping and waxing and buffing, we made clear that we were ready to serve these unconsecrated altars. Every shop and store in the Metro-Centre was a house of totems. We accepted the discipline that these appliances and bathroom fittings imposed. We wanted to be like these consumer durables, and they in turn wanted us to emulate them. In many ways, we wanted to bethem . . .
WATER LAPPED ATmy feet, a cooling stream that drained away the fever in my bones. Half asleep in my deckchair beside the lake, I listened to the wavelets tapping at the sand. Somewhere was the rhythmic murmur of deep water, the same tides that my father had sailed as he circled the globe.
The chair legs sank into the wet sand, tipping me forward. I looked down to find the water swilling around my ankles. The lake had come alive, its surface rolling towards the shoreline.
Someone had switched on the wave machine. I stood up as dark water sluiced across my feet, covered by a slick of lubricating oil. Two engineers stood outside the Holiday Inn, working at the fuse box that controlled the lighting arrays around the roof and terrace. Bars of strip neon glowed and dimmed as the emergency generator pushed out its erratic current. Moving through the fuses, the engineers had switched on the wave machine. Roused in its watery vault, the machine stirred and woke, driving the deep water across the lake.
I stepped back onto the dry sand, as the waves washed through the debris of beer cans and cigarette packets, receding when the undertow sucked them into its deeps. A stronger wave rolled in, nudging a greasy freight of floating magazines and a soggy raft that I guessed was a waterlogged cushion from a restaurant banquette, trapped for weeks under the wave machine’s paddle.