a huge public lavatory, offered a moment’s shelter.
From the shadows I watched the police car pause outside the Odeon, then dip and flash its lights. I recognized the senior police officer in the passenger seat, Superintendent Leighton of the Brooklands force, whose photograph had been printed in the local newspaper that I read in the hospital cafeteria. Beside him, at the wheel, sat Sergeant Falconer, uniform cap over her immaculate Rhine-maiden hair. They waited outside the cinema, like a courting couple deciding whether to see a double feature, then flashed their lights at the empty street and continued their patrol.
Next to the Odeon was the cinema car park, empty except for a mud-spattered Range Rover. The driver was watching the street, speaking into his mobile phone. He wore a heavy Barbour jacket, trilby over his eyes, still unmistakably Geoffrey Fairfax. Beside him was a crop-haired man with a large Roman head, wearing a sheepskin jacket. Together they resembled hunt supporters following the hounds, happy to watch the chase from the comfort of their car, fortified by a thermos of warm brandy.
But were they leading the hunt, rather than following it? In the seat behind them were two men in St George’s shirts, muscled arms pressed against the windows. Both spoke freely to Fairfax and his passenger, pointing to the nearby road junctions as if describing an order of battle and reporting on the morale and enthusiasm of the troops.
A map was passed between the men, and Fairfax switched on the ceiling light. After consulting the map he started the engine, but I had seen clearly that there was a fifth person in the Range Rover.
Sitting in the rear between the two men in St George’s shirts, hair loose around her shoulders, was Dr Julia Goodwin.
I WALKED BACK to my car, stepping through shadows and avoiding the Asian men trying to clear up their shopfronts. Drowned by the glare of stadium lights, flames rose from a burning house.
11
A HARD NIGHT
LIKE ENGLISH LIFE as a whole, nothing in Brooklands could be taken at face value. I passed the next three days in my father’s flat, trying to make sense of this outwardly civilized Home Counties town—a town whose civic leaders, prominent solicitors and police chief were taking part in a pocket revolution. Had I stumbled into a conspiracy that was now shaping itself around me? And had my father been one of its instigators?
The stadium riot, orchestrated by Geoffrey Fairfax under the eyes of the police superintendent, had shaken me badly. Sipping rather too much of the old man’s malt, I watched the car park outside the flats, hoping to see Mr Kumar and convince him that I had not joined the attack on him. During the mêlée someone had punched my forehead, and the imprint of a signet ring starred the skin over my left eye. Staring at myself in the hall mirror, I could almost see Duncan Christie’s bruised face emerging through my own.
All in all, my first taste of street politics left me feeling like an out-of-condition rugby forward in a collapsed scrum. How, at the age of seventy-five, had my father coped with the violence and thuggery? In the evening, watching television with the sound down and the curtains drawn, I listened to the stadium crowds cheering on the Metro-Centre teams. Ambulance sirens wailed through the streets, and fire engines clanged their way to the shabby districts between Brooklands and the M25.
A hard night lay over the motorway towns, far harder than central London’s pink haze. Under the cover of a packed programme of sporting events, an exercise in ethnic cleansing was taking place, with the apparent connivance of the local police. I remembered Sergeant Falconer flashing her headlights at Fairfax’s Range Rover. Using the supporters’ clubs in their patriotic livery, they were moving against the immigrant population, harassing them out of their run-down streets to make room for new retail parks, marinas and executive estates.
But
From the shadows I watched the police car pause outside the Odeon, then dip and flash its lights. I recognized the senior police officer in the passenger seat, Superintendent Leighton of the Brooklands force, whose photograph had been printed in the local newspaper that I read in the hospital cafeteria. Beside him, at the wheel, sat Sergeant Falconer, uniform cap over her immaculate Rhine-maiden hair. They waited outside the cinema, like a courting couple deciding whether to see a double feature, then flashed their lights at the empty street and continued their patrol.
Next to the Odeon was the cinema car park, empty except for a mud-spattered Range Rover. The driver was watching the street, speaking into his mobile phone. He wore a heavy Barbour jacket, trilby over his eyes, still unmistakably Geoffrey Fairfax. Beside him was a crop-haired man with a large Roman head, wearing a sheepskin jacket. Together they resembled hunt supporters following the hounds, happy to watch the chase from the comfort of their car, fortified by a thermos of warm brandy.
But were they leading the hunt, rather than following it? In the seat behind them were two men in St George’s shirts, muscled arms pressed against the windows. Both spoke freely to Fairfax and his passenger, pointing to the nearby road junctions as if describing an order of battle and reporting on the morale and enthusiasm of the troops.
A map was passed between the men, and Fairfax switched on the ceiling light. After consulting the map he started the engine, but I had seen clearly that there was a fifth person in the Range Rover.
Sitting in the rear between the two men in St George’s shirts, hair loose around her shoulders, was Dr Julia Goodwin.
I WALKED BACK to my car, stepping through shadows and avoiding the Asian men trying to clear up their shopfronts. Drowned by the glare of stadium lights, flames rose from a burning house.
11
A HARD NIGHT
LIKE ENGLISH LIFE as a whole, nothing in Brooklands could be taken at face value. I passed the next three days in my father’s flat, trying to make sense of this outwardly civilized Home Counties town—a town whose civic leaders, prominent solicitors and police chief were taking part in a pocket revolution. Had I stumbled into a conspiracy that was now shaping itself around me? And had my father been one of its instigators?
The stadium riot, orchestrated by Geoffrey Fairfax under the eyes of the police superintendent, had shaken me badly. Sipping rather too much of the old man’s malt, I watched the car park outside the flats, hoping to see Mr Kumar and convince him that I had not joined the attack on him. During the mêlée someone had punched my forehead, and the imprint of a signet ring starred the skin over my left eye. Staring at myself in the hall mirror, I could almost see Duncan Christie’s bruised face emerging through my own.
All in all, my first taste of street politics left me feeling like an out-of-condition rugby forward in a collapsed scrum. How, at the age of seventy-five, had my father coped with the violence and thuggery? In the evening, watching television with the sound down and the curtains drawn, I listened to the stadium crowds cheering on the Metro-Centre teams. Ambulance sirens wailed through the streets, and fire engines clanged their way to the shabby districts between Brooklands and the M25.
A hard night lay over the motorway towns, far harder than central London’s pink haze. Under the cover of a packed programme of sporting events, an exercise in ethnic cleansing was taking place, with the apparent connivance of the local police. I remembered Sergeant Falconer flashing her headlights at Fairfax’s Range Rover. Using the supporters’ clubs in their patriotic livery, they were moving against the immigrant population, harassing them out of their run-down streets to make room for new retail parks, marinas and executive estates.
But
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