I always stayed until she had forced herself through the tins of frankfurters, condensed milk and foie gras, rewarding me with a plucky smile. Her two volunteer nurses had long since left the dome and returned to their husbands and children, but Julia was still determined to stay to the end. I sensed that in caring for David Cruise, keeping him forever on the edge of death, she was performing a penance similar to the shared bed into which she had drawn me at my father’s flat.
We were now into the second month of the Metro-Centre siege, and time had begun to dilate in unexpected ways. Days of sweaty boredom merged into each other, broken by the unending quest for food and water as Carradine’s quartermasters opened another supermarket for a few hours. Then everything would change abruptly, as Carradine released four or five of the more exhausted hostages. In exchange, the bathroom taps ran for half an hour, enough time to fill the baths and lavatory cisterns and stave off the danger of a typhoid epidemic.
But the patience of the police and Home Office had run out. Unsurprisingly, their willingness to go for the long haul, in the hope that the mutineers would lose heart or fall out among themselves, seemed to fluctuate with public interest in the siege. The television crews around the dome had been drifting away for weeks, and a Home Office junior minister blundered badly when he described the seizure of the Metro-Centre as part of an industrial dispute, a sit-in by disgruntled staff. When the siege was dropped from the main TV bulletins and exiled to late-night discussion programmes on BBC2 I knew that there would be a show of strength.
At three o’clock that morning, as I lay on the sofa beside the window, trying to breathe the humid, microwave air, I heard helicopters crossing the dome. Searchlights swerved and loudspeakers blared. Stun grenades exploded against the metal panels high above the atrium, showering debris on the luckless bears. A powerful explosion blew a hole in the dome above the portico of the North Gate entrance. A joint army and police commando entered the mall, and swiftly overpowered the small group of rebels defending the entrance. Unable to raise the fire door, the commandos moved to their primary target, the eighty remaining hostages held in the banqueting hall at the Ramada Inn.
As it happened, two days earlier Sangster had moved the hostages from their squalid quarters at the Ramada Inn and marched them to the empty Novotel. When the commandos burst unopposed into their original target they found themselves stumbling through the darkness among overflowing latrine buckets. This gave Carradine and his armed defence units time to arrive on the scene and surround the Ramada Inn.
A fierce firefight followed, which the police and army were certain to win. Tragically, a group of hostages at the Novotel made the mistake of overpowering their guards. After leaving the hotel, they raced across the central atrium towards their rescuers.
As a propaganda measure, and to deceive the police spy cameras that Sangster knew would be watching their every move, he had given the hostages a fresh set of clothes, equipping them with St George’s shirts. The commandos, assuming that they were faced with a suicide charge by defiant rebels, opened fire at point-blank range. Five of the hostages, including the general manager of the Metro-Centre and two of his department heads, were killed on the spot. The commandos withdrew, the helicopters ended their patrols, and the police loudspeakers faded into their own huge embarrassment.
But an even stranger phase of the Metro-Centre siege was about to begin.
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK,when there was no sign of police or army activity, I left the Holiday Inn and made my way towards the first-aid post. I wanted to make sure that Julia was unharmed, and help her with any wounded brought in during the night assault. Limping on my shooting stick, which I had filched from the best sporting goods shop in the dome, I followed a circular route that would bypass the central atrium.
A hundred yards from the Holiday Inn, I found myself in a thoroughfare of shops that specialized in electrical goods. All were unshuttered, since none of Carradine’s supporters would think of stealing from them. Their interiors were transformed by darkness into a street of caves crowded with treasure. I paused to gaze into these magical grottoes, aware that I was surrounded by all the toys I had so longed for as a child, and could take whatever I wanted.
Nearby was a store with a still intact pyramid of sample wares in its doorway. A trio of microwave ovens supported columns of computer towers, topped by a plasma television screen, the whole display decorated like a Christmas tree with a dozen digital cameras, lenses gleaming in the half-light. The structure had been lovingly designed to resemble an altarpiece. Bouquets of artificial flowers lay at its base, and a circle of candles surrounded a framed photograph of David Cruise. An almost religious aura glowed from the shrine, a votive offering to the threatened spirit of the Metro-Centre.
A few minutes later, in an alleyway behind the Novotel, I came across another of the pyramids, a modest tableau built from dozens of mobile phones and DVD players. Part sales display and part consumer shrine, it was clearly a prayer point for pilgrims on the great circuits of the Metro-Centre.
Beguiled by this votive trail, I had entered the northern sector of the mall. Little sunlight penetrated the roof, and the seven-storey galleries threw the lower levels into a twilight that even the brightest neon never fully dispelled. The rental charges were the lowest in the dome, and the shopping areas were dominated by cut-price travel agencies, bookshops and charity stores, areas of commerce where the lack of light was no disadvantage.
A spotlight flared in the North Gate entrance hall, briefly blinding me as I moved down a narrow street of car-rental offices and discount air-ticket agencies. From the doorway of a luggage store I watched the repair team at work. Metro-Centre engineers stood on a mobile scaffold, securing the roof section blown out by the police and army commandos. Sparks from a welding arc showered through the gloom, dancing among the glass and metal debris on the floor.
‘Mr Pearson . . . step back.’
Behind me I heard a metal display stand being dragged across the stone floor. The spotlight swung across the ceiling of the entrance hall, and the shadows veered and swerved around me like a demented dance troupe.
‘Richard . . .’
Only a few steps from me, a woman in belted blue overalls was watching from a doorway. The overalls bore no badges, but I was sure that she was wearing a police uniform favoured by crowd-control units. A blue peaked cap covered her eyes, but revealed her carefully braided blonde hair, and I recognized the strong chin and the broad mouth forever downturned in apology.
‘Sergeant Falconer . . . ?’ I moved towards her as she beckoned to me with a pair of night-vision goggles. ‘Be careful, the marshals are armed . . .’
‘Mr Pearson, come with me . . .’ She spoke softly, hissing at me through the gloom. ‘I’ll get you out now.’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Listen! It’s time to leave the Metro-Centre. You’ve been here too long.’
‘Sergeant Falconer . . . I have to stay—they need me here.’
‘No one needs you. Try to think for once.’
‘David Cruise . . . Dr Goodwin . . .’
‘They’re leaving, Mr Pearson. They’re all going.’ Her face was briefly lit by the reflected spotlight. Baring her teeth, she whispered: ‘Soon you’ll be alone here, Mr Pearson. You’re a little boy lost in a toy factory . . .’
‘Sergeant, wait . . .’