‘A lot. He did the right thing.’ I finished my whisky and carefully centred the empty glass on its coaster. To myself I thought: a first rebuff from the old man, a warning from beyond the grave. ‘I won’t contest the will.’
‘Good. I was sure of that when I first saw you. The flat is yours, of course.’ Fairfax treated me to a sly smile. ‘People can be surprisingly high-minded when it comes to making their wills. Doctors bequeath their bodies to anatomy schools, even though they know they’ll be cut into tripes. Wives forgive philandering husbands. I’m glad your father didn’t change his will.’
‘Did he say he might?’
‘No. Your father was never impulsive. Except towards the end, perhaps . . . I really can’t say.’
I waited for Fairfax to continue, aware that I was watching a well-rehearsed performance by one of the last actor-managers in Brooklands. Grieving but avaricious relatives were his main audience, and he clearly relished every moment. Looking around his oak-panelled office, I wondered how his cavalier ways fitted into the new Brooklands. Conveyancing office blocks in a fast-food economy of automated cash tills and shopping malls was not Geoffrey Fairfax’s thing. He belonged to a world before the coming of the M25.
Framed photographs on a side table showed him as a half-colonel in the Territorial Army, and on horseback at an outing of the local hunt, before the foxes of west Surrey abandoned their ancestral farmland and took off for a better world of filling-station forecourts and executive housing patios. Like a lot of directors of old-style companies I had known, Fairfax was arrogant, vaguely threatening, and inefficient. One of the papers from my father’s box-file had floated to the floor at his feet, but he ignored it, trusting that the cleaner would return it to his desk. And if she stuffed it into the waste-paper basket, who would know or care? His pink-faced intelligence had a malicious edge. He sat behind his desk in his clubman’s armchair, head barely visible so that his clients were forced to strain to see him.
For a large man in his fifties he had shown quick reflexes when he rescued me from the riot at the police station, propelling me with a firm hand to the rear entrance of the car park, where a roofed pathway led to the section house and a side street off the main road. He sat me in the passenger seat of his Range Rover, and watched the crowd disperse through his wing mirror. He drove pugnaciously, almost running down two elderly women who were slow to get out of his way. Geoffrey Fairfax was an example of a rare species, the middle-class thug. There was a strain of brutality that had little to do with punch-ups on the rugby field and much more to do with teaching the natives a lesson.
‘My father . . . ?’ I reminded him. ‘You were about to say?’
‘A remarkable man. To tell the truth, we hadn’t seen him at the club for a few months. Sadly, he seemed to have changed. He made some new friends, rather unusual company . . .’
‘Who, exactly?’
‘Hard to say. I wouldn’t have thought they were really his type, but there you are. He used to be keen on bridge, liked amusing the ladies, played a wristy game of squash.’ Fairfax pressed his hands against the lid of the box-file, as if concerned that my father’s ghost might escape from its casket. ‘Terrible business, I hope they find whoever was responsible.’
‘I thought they had.’ I sat forward, picking up an odd note in the solicitor’s voice. ‘This fellow the police brought in, the local misfit or mental case . . . ?’
‘Duncan Christie? Misfit, yes. Mental case, no. Two hours in a police van can be quite an assault course. He goes before the magistrate tomorrow.’
‘He looked deranged to me. I take it he’s guilty?’
‘It does seem like it. But let’s wait and see. Calm yourself, Mr Pearson. I assume Christie will be sent for trial and almost certainly convicted. Curiously enough, we used to represent him.’
‘Isn’t that a little odd? A firm like yours, dealing with mental cases?’
‘Not at all. We couldn’t survive without them. Christie kept us busy for years. Public mischief cases, antisocial behaviour orders, attempts by various busybodies to have him sectioned. One of my junior partners acted for him when he sued the Metro-Centre.’
‘Christie hated it.’
‘Who doesn’t? It’s a monstrosity.’ Fairfax’s voice had deepened, as if he was berating a parade ground of slacking troopers. ‘The day they broke the first sod any number of people feared what it might do. We were right. This used to be a rather pleasant corner of Surrey. Everything has changed, we might as well be living inside that ghastly dome. Sometimes I think we already are, without realizing it.’
‘Even so.’ I searched for some way of calming him. ‘It’s only a shopping mall.’
‘Only? For God’s sake, man. There’s nothing worse on this planet!’
His temper up, Fairfax propelled himself from his chair, heavy thighs rocking the desk. His strong hands drew back the brocaded curtains. Beyond the leafy square and a modest town hall was the illuminated shell of the Metro-Centre. I was impressed that a suburban solicitor should give in to such a display of anger. I realized now why the curtains had been drawn when we arrived, and guessed that they remained drawn throughout the day. The interior of the dome glowed like a reactor core, an inverted bowl of light shining through the glass panels of the roof. A ten-storey office building stood between the mall and Fairfax’s burly figure, but the lights of the Metro-Centre seemed to shine through the structure, as if its intense luminance could penetrate solid matter in its search for this hostile lawyer squaring his shoulders.
Undaunted, Fairfax turned to me, stubby forefinger raised in warning. Eyeing me shrewdly, he nodded at my scuffed shoes.
‘You may not know that the place is open twenty-four hours a day. That’s an extraordinary thought, Mr Pearson. A structural engineer at the club tells me that the design life is at least a hundred years. Can I ask what business you’re in? Your father did tell me.’
‘Advertising. I’m thinking of a career change.’
‘Thank God for that. Still, you’re probably sympathetic to these so-called super-malls. But you enjoy the luxury of not living here.’
‘You make it sound like hell.’
‘It is hell . . .’ Fairfax hunched over the whisky decanter and replaced the stopper, a signal that our appointment was over. When I stood up, he turned aggressively to face me, as if about to knock me to the floor. A confused pride made him struggle with his words. ‘You’re from London, Mr Pearson. It’s a huge flea market and always has been. Cheap goods and cheaper dreams. Here in Brooklands we had a real community, not just a population of cash tills. Now it’s gone, vanished overnight when that money-factory opened. We’re swamped by outsiders, thousands of them with nothing larger on their minds than the next bargain sale. For them, Brooklands is little more than a car park. Our schools are plagued by truancy, hundreds of children haunting the Metro-Centre every day. The one hospital which should be caring for local residents is overwhelmed by driving accidents caused by visitors. Never fall ill near the M25. Evening classes were popular here—conversational French, local history, contract bridge. They’ve all closed. People prefer to stroll around the mall. No one attends church. Why bother? They find spiritual fulfilment at the New Age centre, first left after the burger bar. We had a dozen societies and clubs—music, amateur dramatics, archaeology. They shut down long ago. Charities, political parties? No one turns up. At Christmas the Metro-Centre hires a fleet of motorized Santas. They cruise the streets, blaring out tapes of Disney carols. Checkout girls dressed up as Tinkerbell flashing their thighs. A Panzer army putting on its cutest show . . .’
‘It all sounds terrible.’ I was thinking about the quickest route back to London. ‘Rather like the rest of England. Does it matter?’
‘It matters!’ Fairfax stepped around his desk, opened a glass cabinet behind the curtains and drew out a shotgun. Expertly, he snapped the breech, checking whether it was loaded. His face was flushed with more than rage, a deep tribal loathing of the people of the plain who had settled around him. ‘It matters . . .’