Maxted gestured at the expensive but anonymous furniture, the black leather sofas and chromium lamps lighting remote areas of carpet that no one had ever visited. It reminded me of the mezzanine television studio where David Cruise held court. In a sense the cable presenter and the psychiatrist were in the same business, redefining the world as a minimalist structure in which human beings were an untidy intrusion. Fittingly, the bookshelves were empty, and in the deserted dining room the table was set for guests who would never arrive.

‘It’s a kind of glamorous shack . . .’ Maxted gestured at the low-ceilinged rooms with a dismissive wave, but he seemed relaxed and confident, springing on his feet as if the penthouse reflected his secret view of himself. ‘The new research wing was financed by DuPont. I helped to raise a lot of the cash. This is one of the perks, like having your own lift. It takes away the pain.’

‘Is there any pain?’

‘Believe me. Still, you’re used to this kind of thing. A big London agency, seven-figure salary, share options, duplexes . . . Am I right?’

‘Wrong. As it happens, I’ve just been sacked.’ There had been a hint of longing in Maxted’s voice, untouched by envy, as if he was happy to live vicariously the elegant life that the penthouse only hinted at. I pointed to the Metro-Centre, unsure why he had brought me to the hospital. ‘It doesn’t look quite so large from here. The best view in Brooklands.’

‘Even though I’m living above a madhouse?’ Maxted laughed generously, walked to the drinks cabinet and came back with a decanter and two tumblers. ‘Laphroaig—private patients only.’

‘Am I a patient?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Maxted steered me into the armchair facing him. His eyes ran over me, lingering on my scuffed but expensive shoes, though I decided not to tell him that I would never be able to afford another pair. He sipped noisily at the whisky, relying on his rough-edged charm to win me over. He was physically strong but insecure, glad to find shelter in the tumbler of malt. I assumed that he knew everything about me, and that Geoffrey Fairfax had told him about my enquiries.

‘So . . .’ Maxted put down his tumbler. ‘Tell me, do you like violence?’

‘Violence? What man doesn’t?’ I decided to let the whisky speak for me. ‘Yes, probably. When I was younger.’

‘Good. Sounds like an honest answer. Rugger brawls, nightclub aggro—that sort of thing?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Did you box at school?’

‘Until they banned it. We formed a martial arts society to get around the ban. We called it self-defence.’

‘Kick and grunt? Slapping mattresses?’ Maxted smiled nostalgically. ‘What’s the appeal?’

‘In a word?’ I looked away from his slightly prurient eyes. ‘Danger.’

‘Go on.’

‘Fear, pain, anything to break the rules. Most people never realize how violent they really are. Or how brave, when your back’s against the wall.’

‘Exactly.’ Maxted sat forward, fists clenched, Laphroaig forgotten. ‘That’s when you rally yourself, even when someone’s beating the blood out of your brains.’

‘Don’t tell me you box?’

‘A long time ago. Half-blue. But I remember how it feels. After three rounds you’re alive again.’ Maxted pulled the stopper from the decanter. ‘That’s the trouble with the video conference. Primal aggression tamped down, no straight lefts, no uppercuts to the chin. We’re a primate species with an unbelievable need for violence. White-water rafting doesn’t quite fit the bill. There must be something else.’

‘There is. You know that, Dr Maxted.’

‘I’d like to hear it from you.’

I stared hard at the dome, trying to guess at the mindset of this maverick psychiatrist, almost as odd as any of his patients. The afternoon had begun to fade, and the interior lights turned the Metro-Centre into an illuminated pumpkin. I said: ‘Danger, yes. Pain, the fear of death. And outright insanity.’

‘Insanity . . . of course.’ Savouring the word, Maxted lay back in the sofa, resting his thick neck against the black leather. ‘That’s the real appeal, isn’t it? The freedom deliberately to lose control.’

‘Doctor, can we . . . ?’

‘Right.’ Having drawn the answer he wanted from me, Maxted clapped his hands. He pushed the decanter away, clearing the table between us. ‘Let’s get down to business. I brought you here, Richard, because there are things we ought to talk over. You’ve been in Brooklands a few weeks, and frankly you’re cutting it a little fine. Every street brawl, every supporters’ punch-up, that daft business this afternoon with the Christies . . . you’re a magnet tuned to violence.’

‘I’m trying to find who killed my father. The police have drifted away.’

‘They haven’t.’ Maxted waved me down. ‘Listen to me. I’m sorry about the old man. A cruel way for him to go. Sometimes the wheel spins and you see nothing but zeroes. A terrible accident.’

‘Accident?’ I rapped the table with my glass. ‘Someone fired a machine gun at him. Perhaps Duncan Christie or—’

‘Forget Christie. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘The police didn’t think so, until you and the other “witnesses” came forward. He was their chief suspect.’

‘The police always jump to conclusions. It’s part of their job, builds confidence with the public. You saw Christie today. He can’t concentrate long enough to mend a fuse, let alone carry through an assassination.’

‘Assassination?’ I turned to stare at the dome, which seemed to grow in size as it glowed in the fading light. ‘That implies someone very important. Who exactly?’

‘The target? Impossible to say. David Cruise?’

‘A cable-channel presenter? I once worked with him. The man’s a nonentity. Why would anyone want to murder David Cruise?’

Maxted simpered into his whisky. ‘There are folk here who’d give you a hundred reasons. He has a big power base. Sales are flat at the Metro-Centre, and without David Cruise they’d be in trouble. There’s even talk of him starting a political party.’

‘The kind that goose-steps? The Oswald Mosley of the suburbs? I don’t think he’d be convincing.’

‘He wouldn’t need to be. His appeal functions on a different level. It’s more your world than mine. Politics for the age of cable TV. Fleeting impressions, an illusion of meaning floating over a sea of undefined emotions. We’re talking about a virtual politics unconnected to any reality, one which redefines reality as itself. The public willingly colludes in its own deception. Is Cruise up to that? I doubt it.’

‘Then who was the target? And who killed my father?’

‘Difficult questions, and obviously you want an answer . . .’

Maxted gestured at the air, as if trying to conjure a genie from the decanter, and I remembered him sitting in the front of Geoffrey Fairfax’s Range Rover, and the headlight signals outside the shabby Odeon. But I decided to say nothing, hoping that he would lead himself into a useful indiscretion. For all his bull-necked toughness, he was uneasy about something, and more vulnerable than I probably realized. I waited as he stood up and paced the carpet, retracing a half-remembered dance step.

Impatient for an answer, I said: ‘We could push the police a little harder. Find out who their main suspects are. Dr Maxted?’

‘The police? They’d be touched by your faith in them. They haven’t realized how much everything has changed out here. They’re not alone in that. People in London can’t grasp that this is the real England. Parliament, the West End, Bloomsbury, Notting Hill, Hampstead—they’re heritage London, held together by a dinner-party culture. Here, around the M25, is where it’s really happening. This is today’s England. Consumerism rules, but people are bored. They’re out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along.’

‘That sounds as if they’re going to be frightened.’

‘They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad. Look around you, Richard. What do you see?’