THINKING OF THE Kumars, both fortunately on the mend, I switched off the BBC news. I listened to the passing sirens of police cars and ambulances, by now an integral part of the Brooklands festival. I paced around the lounge, staring at my father’s framed photographs and logbooks. Years in the Middle East had turned him into a right-wing fanatic with his ugly library and Roman banners. But his grip on me still held, and I half believed that he would have supported everything I had done at the Metro-Centre.

Unsettled by so many doubts, I left the lounge and walked past the kitchen to the utility room. I kept the door locked, avoiding even a glimpse of the neatly ironed shirts and Hitler biographies. But now I needed to call again on his support, and the key was in the lock.

   

I sat at the desk, a workstation disguised as a shrine, and began with his computer. My father’s estate was still moving through probate, a process delayed by Geoffrey Fairfax’s death and passed to another of the senior partners, and most of his records were filed away in various computer folders.

I scanned the list of folders: income-tax returns, share holdings, BUPA subscriptions, nursing homes in the Brooklands area, undertakers and their fees, golf courses near Marbella and Sotogrande, light airfields in the Algarve. The last folder was labelled ‘Sports Diary’. Expecting to find a list of veteran car rallies, I opened the folder, ready to read his account of the London-to-Brighton run.

But the diary recorded meetings of a rather different kind. The image of my father in a raccoon coat, sitting high among the brass and leather of an antique Renault or Hispano-Suiza, faded quickly. Turning my eyes from the screen, I could scent the well-thumbed pages of the Hitler biographies, and the peculiar chemical reek of the coated paper that publishers seemed to reserve for atrocity photographs.

The sports diary covered the last three months of my father’s life, and recorded a number of racist incidents he had witnessed, attacks on Asian shops and asylum seekers’ hostels. Each entry described the sporting event that provided cover for the post-match incident, the number of supporters present, the damage inflicted and my father’s general thoughts on the supporters’ esprit de corps, background and professions.

The first entry had been logged on February 3.

A fortnight later my father was at the ice-hockey stadium.

I read through further entries. My father had joined a variety of supporters’ clubs. He seemed aware of the limitations of these saloon-bar racists, and was trying to gain entry to a more senior level of the leadership, if that existed. He was clearly worried that the uncoordinated attacks would slip into anarchy. He listed attacks on Asian property, the assault on a hostel for Kosovan refugees and the trashing of an unofficial gypsy caravan park.

In an April 12 entry he reported:

My father described driving a seriously injured man to Brooklands Hospital.

We laid him in the back seat of the Bristol. Blood all over the leather. I put my foot down, outrunning the police Vauxhalls, earned many heartfelt handshakes. ‘Anything you need, Dad.’ When I asked to meet their leaders they looked blank.

He went on:

I realize there are no leaders. A Metro-Centre newsletter about a discount carpet sale is all that holds them together. They long for authority and some kind of deeper meaning in their lives. They need someone to admire and follow. The destination doesn’t matter. The nearest to a leader is a presenter on the cable channel called David Cruise. He winds them up at matches, but he is inadequate, an ex-actor lost without a script. He is dangerous, because the Metro-Centre is the mainspring of their empty lives.

   

Growing danger of a high-speed stall. The whole town will flip over and head for the ground at 400 knots. Will the passengers mind? Everything I’ve read about the Nazi leaders shows that their followers didn’t fear disaster but actively welcomed it.

   

My chief problem – there’s no one I can talk to about all this. Sport dominates everything, and fringe violence is part of the culture. Police too tolerant, and anyway see immigrants as a source of trouble, even if they aren’t to blame. The only person I’ve met is a Northfield psychiatrist, Dr Tony Maxted. An odd man, with an agenda of his own. Part of him welcomes the violence – it confirms some academic theory. He was very taken with my description of a high-speed stall.

Sadly, the Bristol was stolen during the night. Found torched in a lay-by on the Weybridge road. I loved the old lady, and it’s galling that it had to pay the price. At all costs, avoid being conspicuous. At any level, politics is a herd game …

On April 30:

There’s a limit to the infiltration I can carry out. The demos are getting more violent. I’m fit but no use at street fighting. Took a punch full-face from a young Bangladeshi defending his mother. Didn’t realize I was trying to help her. The group admire my ‘guts’ but tell me to go home.

   

It’s astonishing how well my masquerade has worked. No one suspects an old British Airways pilot. Chief regret is that I have frightened my neighbours, especially Dr Kumar and her husband. But I have to keep up the disguise for a few weeks longer. These Metro-Centre sports clubs are dangerous and need to be stopped. The supporters are turning into a freikorps, though they don’t realize it. That’s the strange thing. When I saw Fairfax about my pension he said: ‘Who are the leaders?’ Obvious question everyone asks. There are no leaders. Yet. Sooner or later some hard-eyed thug with the gift of the gab will seize control in a bloodless coup. Already there’s talk of a new ‘republic’ stretching from Heathrow to Brooklands, the whole M3/M4 corridor. A new kind of dictatorship based on the Metro-Centre. I tried to raise this with Fairfax, but he talked about his golf handicap. He’s part of a curious little cabal, they may have political ambitions of their own.

Then, on May 2, the last entry.

I watched the cable presenter David Cruise. Likeable in an actorish way. A highly developed feel for people’s ‘small’ emotions. Dangerous? He’s a toy, waiting to be wound up by anyone ready to make the effort. He might appeal to a certain kind of rootless person who believes in nothing and has worked out some pie-eyed theory to justify his own emptiness.

   

Tomorrow I will put on my St George’s shirt and try to get on his programme. I’ll play the old BA pilot card and stage a demo of my own. Warn people of the danger of too much sport and nothing else. Sooner or later a messiah is going to appear …

I closed the folder and sat back, my eyes scarcely noticing the führer moustache and forelock on the spine of a Hitler biography. I felt a vast relief, and a surge of confidence in this suburban flat and its memories. I felt close to my father again, and impressed by the bravery of this old man. He had known that something was wrong, and was determined to reach the source of the deep malaise that threatened his pacific community. His apparent membership of the St George’s clubs had convinced his neighbours and convinced me. To a larger extent than I wanted to admit, I had relied on my father to justify my support for the Metro-Centre and its sporting militias.

I now knew the truth, and I could admire my father and accept myself. I no longer needed to avoid the mirrors in the apartment. At the same time, these undercover missions raised a number of questions about his death. Had he been betrayed by a friend in whom he confided? Geoffrey Fairfax would have ratted on him without a qualm. Had someone slipped into the flat and checked his computer files? I thought of the ‘curious little cabal’ led by Fairfax and Superintendent Leighton, which had drawn Julia Goodwin into its fraying web. Had the cabal dealt with the meddling old man, recruiting some disgraced police marksman as their assassin, who had shot my father dead as he climbed the staircase to the mezzanine studio? Out of the smokescreen of rumour they then produced Duncan Christie, misfit and urban scarecrow, and kept him in place long enough for the killer’s trail to be stamped into the dust. Even Sangster and Dr Maxted may have had no idea of Fairfax’s real game. The fool’s mate set out on the chessboard concealed a far more elaborate gambit …

To Fairfax’s dismay, the murdered old man was replaced by his son, an even greater meddler. The bomb in my car, left there by the impatient solicitor, should have removed a minor nuisance from the board.

But at long last the pieces were beginning to fight back against the players.