J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'You were right to show it to me. I'll pass it to Mr Zander.'

He spoke quickly to his aide, a slim young man who still seemed shaken by our brief confrontation. He took the printout and headed towards the building. Delage watched him disappear through the revolving doors and then turned to me, his manicured hand brushing the last dust from my jacket. He was clearly weighing the seriousness of my message against my scruffy appearance.

'Paul, you've put your spare time to good use. I'm off to Nice Airport, but we can speak en route to the heli-shuttle in Cannes. Afterwards the car will bring you back. It's not often that you see your name on a death list…'

The limousine moved swiftly through the outskirts of Le Cannet, a target safely ahead of any possible attacker. Through the window divider I watched the chauffeur speaking on the carphone, eyes meeting mine in the rear-view mirror. No doubt the security apparatus at Eden-Olympia was at full alert, with a Range Rover parked outside the Delages' house.

But Alain had recovered his poise. The tentative hands that had straightened my shirt and jacket emerged from crisp cuffs that concealed the strong tendons of his wrists. I guessed that he had been a dedicated athlete in his earlier days, handicapped by poor sight and the seriousness of a born accountant. Behind the expensive suiting a masculine tension was waiting to be released.

I could see him ranging along the baseline, playing his methodical returns as he watched for his opponent's weaknesses, now and then attempting a lob or backhand pass that never quite found its mark.

I remembered that he had been present at the brutal beating in the clinic car park, one of the executives who had stopped their cars to watch a display of summary justice at its most unpleasant.

The beatings had probably helped to draw some of the tension from him, but he was a man who would never completely relax, except in the company of his passive and ever-watchful wife.

I assumed that he had already amortised the threat to himself.

In an effort to distract me, he pointed to a heritage sign at the junction with the Mougins road.

'If you're interested in painting, Bonnard's house is here in Le Cannet. Picasso worked at Antibes, Matisse further down the coast at Nice. In many ways modern art was a culture of the beach. They say it's the light, the special quality of quartz in the Permian rock.'

He spoke in the fluent, uninflected English of the international executive, with the kind of arts connoisseurship picked up in the antique shops that lined the lobbies of luxury hotels. I gazed at the roadside, lined with speedboat dealerships, video warehouses and swimming-pool showrooms. Together they crowded the few spaces between the autoroute access ramps.

'The light? Or were people more cheerful then? Picasso and Matisse have gone, and the business parks have taken their place.'

'But that's good. It's the turn of the sciences. Everything is possible again – organisms with radial tyres, dreams equipped with airbags. What do you think of our new silicon valley? You've had the leisure to look around.'

'I'm impressed, though leisure is in short supply. The new Côte d'Azur doesn't have time for fun.'

'That will change.' Delage gripped his briefcase, as if about to offer me a position paper. 'People realize they can work too hard, even if work is more enjoyable than play. Your countryman, David Greenwood, was a sad example.'

'You knew him well?'

'We were neighbours, of course, but he was always busy with the refuge at La Bocca. We never met socially – my wife found him far too earnest. She likes to sunbathe, and it made him uncomfortable, he would even lower the blinds.' Delage stared at his thighs, and then hid them behind his briefcase. 'Now, this list. I'm grateful for your concern, but I doubt if these names are what you think. Perhaps Greenwood was drawing up a group of volunteers for a medical experiment.'

'It's possible. Though he did shoot seven of them. Is there any reason why he might have wanted to kill you?'

'None. It's inconceivable. Believe me, find a different approach. I hear you have new evidence.'

'Three spent bullets. I handed them in to Zander this afternoon. I'm surprised you know.'

'Monsieur Zander and I speak all the time. Tell me, Paul, how good is our security?'

'First class. There's no doubt about it.'

'Even so, you were able to get within a few feet of me. Suppose you had been carrying a gun? Who told you I was leaving for Nice?'

'No one. I wanted to see you at your office. It was pure chance.'

'Chance can work for terrorists. Pursue your enquiries, but keep Zander informed. You may come up with something important.'

'Unlikely. Apart from this list there's nothing to go on. I need to know the exact sequence of deaths that morning. It might explain Greenwood 's state of mind.'

'Ten people were killed – what does the sequence matter?'

Delage pushed his glasses against his eyes, scanning the small print of my quibbles and queries. 'Your friend wasn't designing a ballet.'

'All the same, the pattern of deaths may say something. Who was the first to die?'

'I've no idea. Try Nice-Matin, they have an office in Cannes. The municipal library has back copies of important newspapers.'

'And the police?'

'If you want to waste your time. They're happy to have an Englishman who went mad without cause. That's your historical role.'

'We're the village idiot of the new Europe?'

'The misfit, the holy fool. Think of David Greenwood, this poor poetic doctor with his children's shelter…' Delage spoke with pleasant but cruel humour, part of the sadistic strain in this repressed accountant that I had already noticed. He moved into the corner of the leather seating and observed me in his steely way. 'You're very concerned with Greenwood – it may be that you need a mystery. Did you know him well?'

'Hardly at all.'

'And Jane? Slightly better, perhaps?'

'No husband can ever say.' Moving on from his veiled suggestion, I spoke briskly: 'I'm impressed by Eden-Olympia, but there are things that seem deliberately out of focus. Putting us in Greenwood 's house. Giving Jane the same office. It's as if someone is flashing a torch in the dark, sending a message we should try to decode. Half the victims were senior managers at Eden-Olympia. Suppose there are rival groups locked in a power struggle? You say Greenwood was your holy fool, but a better term might be fall guy. I haven't seen any evidence yet that he fired a single shot.'

Delage flicked at a loose thread on his cuff. I had taken a gamble, rattling my stick in an apparently empty kennel, in the hope that a drowsing beast might emerge.

'The evidence is there, Paul…' Delage had withdrawn behind his watery lenses. 'I'll speak to Zander: we need to be less secretive. Eden-Olympia is home to the greatest corporations in the world. Their chief executives are too valuable to risk in a small local feud. Greenwood killed his victims, stalking them one by one. Secretaries saw him walk through their offices and open fire. As they knelt behind their desks they were showered with their employers' blood.'

'Even so…'

But Delage was speaking to the chauffeur as we rolled down the Boulevard de la République, past the elegant apartment houses that lay below the heights of Super-Cannes. I sat forward when we reached the Croisette, for once needing to get my bearings in the maze of afternoon traffic. Crowds strolled under the palms, enjoying the warm autumn day, like citizens of another world who had come ashore for a few hours. Wilder Penrose had been right to say that there was something unreal about them.

Delage beckoned to me. 'Paul, the Noga Hilton. There are nice shops in the lobby. Buy Jane a present.'