I walked towards the stranded truck, where the crowd seemed thinner. Radios began to buzz and fret around me, the group hive coming to life in the presence of an intruder. A young man stood by the tailgate, unloading a refrigerator onto the pavement. Already a small crowd had gathered around him, mothers holding back their pointing children. A black woman sat in the driving cab as her daughter played beside her, reading a magazine and ignoring the crowd and her husband.

I had last seen the young man outside the magistrates’ court, and now for the first time I had a good chance of speaking to Duncan Christie.

THE LARGEST OFChristie’s deliveries was still to be unloaded, a double-cabinet refrigerator with chromium doors and an ice-cube dispenser big enough for a hotel bar. Exhausted by the effort of moving his cargo, Christie leaned against the tailgate and smiled at the Metro-Centre blimp lazing above him. He had recovered from his rough treatment at the hands of the police, but his face was bruised and sallow, as if the violent storms seething within him had left their shadows on his skin.

His scarred mouth, self-cropped hair—no doubt sheared with a power tool during a building-site tea break—and general air of neglect made him look erratic and unfocused, a methadone addict forever emerging from rehab. Everything about him, from his large feet in a pair of unmatched trainers to the tic that pulled at an infected ear piercing, fixed him firmly as an urban scarecrow designed to frighten away any circling security cameras.

But his eyes were calm, and he seemed to have made his peace with the lazy blimp five hundred feet above him, as if hoping that the cameramen in the gondola would photograph the modest display of goods he had unloaded from his pick-up.

Lined up along the kerb was a selection of kitchen appliances—a spin-dryer, two refrigerators, a trio of washing machines and a microwave oven. None was new, and rust leaked from their hoses. They were the familiar furniture of every kitchen in Brooklands, but there was something surrealist about their presence that unsettled the small crowd. A middle-aged woman next to me pulled at the leash of her docile spaniel, prompting the beast to look up at me and growl menacingly.

‘Right, little beauty . . .’ Christie roused himself from his communion with the blimp and spat on his scarred hands. ‘Time to mount you, girlie . . .’

He seized the refrigerator around its waist, rocked it from side to side and walked it towards the lowered tailgate. He was stronger than I thought, with a stevedore’s hard arms, but the refrigerator was too heavy for him. When it tilted forward one of its doors fell open and trapped his right hand.

‘ . . . Jesus!’ Unable to move, the refrigerator pressing against his chest, he glared at the unmoving spectators. ‘Is none of you a fucking Christian? Maya!’

His wife watched all this through the rear-view mirror, assessed the situation and went back to playing with her daughter. I stepped forward and closed the refrigerator door, releasing Christie’s numbed fingers, then helped him lower the bulky machine to the ground. He leaned against it, a winded Samson clinging to his temple.

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. A good deed these days takes courage.’

An elderly woman in a serge coat and pillbox hat peered at Christie, irritated by his apparent euphoria.

‘Can you hear me?’ she bellowed as he rolled his head. ‘You’re in the wrong place. Do you want a refund?’

‘Refund?’ Christie roused himself and surveyed the woman. ‘I don’t want a refund, madam. I want retribution.’

‘Retribution? You can’t get that here.’ The woman turned to her husband, who was nodding at the microwave as if recognizing a friend fallen on hard times. ‘Harry, what department is that?’

‘You’re not asking me?’

‘I am asking you.’

Still bickering, they wandered off towards a troupe of drum-majorettes snap-marching beside their pipe band.

Christie took up his position near the display of kitchenware. His manner was affable, but his eyes darkened as a squall blew through his mind. He was a Petri dish of mental infections, a smear-culture of grimaces and tics. He leaned behind the refrigerator and spat on the ground, then deployed himself like a salesman, turning a wild smile onto his customers.

‘Well, what am I offered?’ He caressed the microwave, and addressed a young woman with a daughter pushing a small pram. ‘One careful owner, perfect working order, a few chicken kievs, throw in a cheeseburger. Fully reconditioned.’

‘How much?’ The woman ran a finger over the greasy enamel. ‘There’s a written guarantee?’

‘Written?’ Christie rolled his eyes and confided to me: ‘A sudden trust in literacy. Written, madam?’

‘You know, a printed form.’

‘A form . . .’ Christie raised his voice to a shout above the pipe band. ‘Madam, nothing is true, nothing is untrue! Say nothing, admit nothing, believe everything . . .’

The woman and her daughter moved away, taking the small crowd with them. Seeing that I was the last of his audience, Christie turned to me.

‘Sir, I’ve been watching you. Am I right? You have your eye on that refrigerator. The big fellow . . . ?’

I waited as Christie sized me up. I was the enemy, in my dove-grey summer suit, a creature of the Metro-Centre and the retail parks. I was fairly sure that he no longer remembered me. His arrest, the violent police, his appearance at the magistrates’ court, had disappeared into some garbage chute at the back of his mind.

‘Yes, the big fellow.’ I touched the huge wreck of the refrigerator. ‘Can I assume it works?’

‘Absolutely. Enough ice cubes to freeze the Thames.’

‘How much?’

‘Well . . .’ Enjoying himself, Christie closed his eyes. ‘Seriously, you couldn’t afford it.’

‘Try me.’

‘No point. Believe me, the price is beyond your grasp.’

‘Twenty pounds? Fifty pounds?’

‘Please . . . the price is unimaginable.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s free!’ An almost maniacal grin distorted Christie’s face. ‘Free!’

‘You mean . . . ?’

‘Gratis. Not a penny, not a euro, zilch.’ Christie patted me cheerfully on the shoulder. ‘Free. An inconceivable concept. Look at you. It’s outside your entire experience. You can’t cope with it.’

‘I can cope.’

‘I doubt it.’ Confidentially, Christie lowered his voice. ‘I come every Saturday, sooner or later someone asks, “How much?” “Free,” I say. They’re stunned, they react as if I’m trying to steal from them. That’s capitalism for you. Nothing can be free. The idea makes them sick, they want to call the police, leave messages for their accountants. They feel unworthy, convinced they’ve sinned. They have to rush off and buy something just to get their breath back . . .’

‘Very good.’ I waited as he lit a roll-up. ‘I thought it might be a piece of street theatre. But in fact you’re making a serious point.’

‘Absolutely. Maya, hear the man.’

‘This is your stand against the Metro-Centre, and all the other super-malls. Why not just burn them down?’

‘It could be done.’ Christie sucked the sweet smoke from the spliff. ‘If I lit the fuse, would you hold the torch?’

‘I might. As it happens, I have my own problems with the Metro-Centre. My father died in the shooting there.’

Christie puffed his spliff, and turned to look at me without surprise. For a few seconds all expression drained from his face, but he was devoid of emotion. Pain, sympathy and regret had moved to another floor of his mind. Whether or not he recognized me as the man who had watched him outside the magistrates’ court was now irrelevant. I realized that even if he had been responsible for the shooting he would have long since repressed all memory of it.

‘Your father? That’s a hard buy.’ He stepped away from me, drumming his fists on the washing machines. As his wife climbed from the driving cab he called out: ‘Maya . . . a close shave. I nearly had a customer.’