‘No? It’s all that does matter. For what it’s worth, I forgive you. I don’t think you knew what you were doing.’
‘Maybe not. Anyway, it’s too late. Just get out of here. Take Dr Goodwin and anyone else. You’re in real danger.’
‘Why? Sergeant . . . ?’
‘They’re coming in. It’s all over, Mr Pearson. You’ll have to find another playgroup.’
‘And Christie?’
‘I’ll arrest him later.’
As she spoke there was a heavy explosion from the South Gate entrance hall. The deck swayed beneath my feet, and the roof of the Metro-Centre lifted slightly and then settled as a cascade of dust fell like talc. The smog cloud that covered the atrium seethed and swirled, billows chasing themselves around the bears.
The siege was ending.
40
EXIT STRATEGIES
AT LAST TOGETHER, our hands gripping the head rail, Julia and I propelled the bed through the doorway of the first-aid post and set off for the South Gate entrance. After twenty yards we were both exhausted. Out of control, the bed veered into an overturned golf cart. The elderly couple who were Julia’s last patients lay strapped to the mattress. As we jolted through the scatter of roof debris they closed their eyes, alarmed by the erratic excursion and the panic that now gripped the dome. Bent over the head rail, I saw them trying to reassure each other that all would be well, neither believing it for an instant.
‘We’re almost there, Mrs Mitchell,’ I told her. ‘You’ll be home soon, warming the teapot.’
‘Home? I don’t think this is the right way, Mr Pearson. We usually go to the No. 48 bus stop. Dr Julia . . . ?’
‘We’ll find it, Mrs Mitchell.’ Julia winced as we slewed across a floor of broken glass, then clung to my shoulder when I straightened the bed’s wayward front wheels. ‘I’ll tell the driver to wait for you.’
‘Maurice . . . did you hear that?’ Mrs Mitchell’s sharp eyes noticed the dust clouds escaping through the fractured roof. ‘It’s all been such a fuss about nothing . . .’
The past, in its small but persistent ways, was returning to the Metro-Centre, though few of those left behind had Mrs Mitchell’s acuity. Carradine’s defenders at the South Gate entrance were falling back, many of them stunned by the controlled explosion that had blown down a section of the fire door. A few die-hard marshals were building a barricade beside the travelator, piling up café chairs and tables. Hostages ran in all directions, distraught and speechless after their forced stay in the Ramada Inn and Novotel. A few huddled in shop doorways, still clutching the carrier bags they held when the siege began. Julia shouted to them, urging them to leave. She pulled my arm and pointed helplessly to two hostages hiding among the mannequins in the window of a dress shop and trying to mimic their calm and plastic detachment.
Almost too weary to walk, she fell behind me, stumbling through the debris and dust. I stopped and took her arms, then made her sit at the foot of the bed.
‘Julia, stay there—I can push on my own . . .’
‘Just for a minute. Richard, where are the police?’
Blocked by a barricade, I reversed and manoeuvred the bed into a side thoroughfare that led past the Holiday Inn. The lake was black as death, a tar pit freighted with horrors, but elsewhere the lights were coming on. Neon tubes stuttered and steadied themselves, logos glimmered through the dust. Strip lighting flooded the shops and stores, revealing a hundred polished counters. Crazed patterns raced across the display screens, the brain tracings of a giant struggling to awake from its deranged sleep.
‘Richard . . . all these lights.’ Julia looked up in a dazed way at the arrays of gleaming bulbs. ‘They’re going to open for business . . .’
‘Not yet. Snipers, I guess. The police need to flush them out.’
I steered us past the Holiday Inn with its familiar glowing sign. The wave machine was stirring the sluggish water into a nightmare brew, but as we approached the South Gate entrance hall an even stranger smell surrounded us, a cool flavour that I had first scented as a child.
‘Richard? What is it?’ Julia stepped down from the bed and nervously filled her lungs. ‘It tastes of . . . trees and sky.’
‘Fresh air! We’re there, Julia . . .’
Ahead of us, though, were a dozen of Carradine’s marshals in St George’s shirts, shotguns and rifles strapped to their shoulders with the barrels facing the floor. They were disciplined and marching in step, but their heads were bowed, like a defeated team leaving the field after a fierce but losing struggle, each player communing with himself.
At their head was Tony Maxted, wearing a crisply white surgical coat that he had secretly saved for this moment. He was tired but confident, doing his best to encourage this breakaway group whom he had persuaded to call an end to the siege. He moved up and down their ranks, smiling and talking to each man in turn as they moved towards the waiting light.
Maxted flinched when another controlled explosion burst through a nearby emergency exit. The strap muscle beneath his bald scalp seized his skull and threw his head back. He stumbled and reached out to two of the marshals, then seemed to lose his bearings in the swirl of dust.
I leaned against the head rail, too weary to push. The entrance hall was covered with debris, and a section of the fire door lay in the sun. Masked figures in dark uniforms moved through the intensely lit air.
Behind us an even brighter glow illuminated the interior of the dome, turning an immense spotlight onto the underside of the roof. Shadows wavered and swayed from every doorway, like nervous onlookers unsure whether to believe their eyes.
Flames rose from the seventh-floor galleries around the atrium, lazy blades of light that seemed to wake together and race around the high keep of the retail citadel. Soon the top three decks were burning briskly, every balcony and doorway bursting into blooms of fire. The petrol-soaked settees and carpets, the demonstration dining rooms and ideal kitchens were giving themselves to their own fiery ends.
The platoon in St George’s shirts stopped to look back, tired faces revived by the fire, colour returning to their cheeks after the twilight weeks. They were roused by the sight of the Metro-Centre consuming itself, as if welcoming this last transformation.
‘Right! Keep going!’ Maxted strode down the ranks, clapping his hands, trying to wake them from their trance. ‘Come on, lads! We’re there . . .’
Debris was falling from the roof, clouds of super-heated dust that had burst into flame as air was drawn into the dome. I could feel the huge mall shifting its weight, its frame members flexing in the heat. A gale rushed past us, cooler air speeding through the vents of a furnace.
‘Wake up, the lot of you!’ Maxted struck one of the marshals on the shoulder, trying to rouse the man and hold his attention. ‘Let’s move! We’ll all be incinerated . . .’
The marshal turned, aware of Maxted for the first time. He seemed to emerge from a deep rigor, and seized the psychiatrist by the collar of his white coat. Other hands gripped his arms, forcing his body into a crouch. A tremor ran through the platoon, a spasm of anger, fear and pride. Together they turned their backs to the entrance hall. They moved forward, carrying Maxted like a totem at their head, running towards the blaze, his hoarse cries lost in the fierce drumming of the inferno.
41
A SOLAR CULT
‘WHAT HAPPENED to Tony Maxted?’ Julia asked.