J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'All the same, there's something going on. It's not a conspiracy, or even a cover-up. David may have killed those people, but no one will say why.' I took a spare copy of the appointments list from my breast pocket and placed it in front of Frances. 'Recognize the names?'

'All of them.' She ran a varnished finger down the column, stabbing at those who had died. 'Mostly the great and the good.'

'I took it from David's computer. I think it's a hit list.'

'That makes sense. It even includes Wilder Penrose. Good for David – let's kill all the psychiatrists.'

'You don't like Penrose?'

'He's charming, in that brutal way of his. Eden-Olympia is a huge experiment for him. All that brochure-speak about the first intelligent city, the ideas laboratory for the future. He takes it seriously.'

'Don't you?'

'Sure. We're the vanguard of a new world-aristocracy. Penrose would get a shock if he knew that one of his prize pupils set out after breakfast to kill him.'

'I don't think he'd mind.'

'Of course not. He'd be flattered.' She scanned the names. 'Robert Fontaine – he was rather charming. Very Walloon, loved Clovis Trouille and all those nuns being buggered. Olga Carlotti, head of personnel. Tough luck, she was Eden-Olympia's uncrowned queen. A cool, glamorous dyke.'

'Are you sure?'

'You sound shocked. She had the pick of the office juniors. Guy Bachelet, head of security. Superbly lecherous, a great loss. He often needed a safehouse for the private detectives he brought in from Marseilles. Spent his time gazing at my legs.' Frances returned the list to me. 'Sad, isn't it? One moment you're propositioning the hired help, and the next you're looking down at your own brains spattered across the desk…'

'You heard the shots?'

'Not really. Alarms started ringing, all the elevators stopped. I was amazed at the number of doors that automatically locked. David got onto the roof of the car park next to our building.'

'And then?'

'The security people pulled their fingers out.'

'So David knew it was all over and went back to the villa?'

'I suppose so.' Frances stared hard at her knuckles. 'David was very sweet. It's sad that Eden-Olympia changed him.'

'How, exactly?'

'The way it changes everyone. People float free of themselves…'

She frowned at the flushed cheeks in her compact mirror, and picked up the bill. Suddenly keen to leave, she said: 'There's an English-language radio station in Antibes – Riviera News. Last July they broadcast a special feature. The reporter followed the death route. Give them a call.'

We left the mezzanine and walked down to the floor below.

As Frances swayed against the display cases I realized that we were slightly drunk, though not from the two glasses of wine.

Frances stopped by the mannequins in their orthopaedic cell.

'All that armour – can you see yourself wearing it to make love?'

'Can you?'

'It might be worth a try. Why not?'

'I wore a knee-brace after my accident. It did nothing for my sex life.'

'How sad…' Frances took my arm, as if I were a near-senile cripple who had renounced all earthly pleasures. 'That's the saddest thing I've heard all day…'

On the steps of the Palais des Festivals the orthopaedic surgeons were emerging from their lecture. I followed Frances into the narrow streets to the west of the Gray d'Albion Hotel, happy to be in the company of this distracted but glamorous woman. As we passed the American Express office she slipped on the crowded pavement and steadied herself against an open-topped BMW parked by the kerb. She peered into her compact, and examined her teeth.

'My mouth smells like a bar. I'm seeing my dentist in ten minutes. Remember Riviera News.'

'I will.' I touched her cheek, removing a loose eyelash. 'You've helped me a lot over David Greenwood. We could meet here again. I may have more questions you can answer.'

'I'm sure you will.' She stared at me over her sunglasses. 'That's very forward of you, Mr Sinclair.'

'I mean well.'

'I know what you mean.' Her hips pressed against the BMW, and the curvature of its door deflected the lines of her thigh, as if the car was a huge orthopaedic device that expressed a voluptuous mix of geometry and desire. She rooted in her handbag. 'Tell me, how's your car?'

'The Jaguar? Ageing gracefully.'

'I was worried about it. I hear it was involved in a small collision with a Japanese sports saloon.'

'Did Penrose tell you that?'

'Who knows? He's very forgiving. But I'm interested in why you damaged his car.'

'The light was bad.'

'It wasn't.' She waited as three French sailors stepped past, each carefully inspecting her deep cleavage. 'You don't dislike Penrose. So why?'

'It's hard to explain. I was… corrupting myself. Eden-Olympia encourages that.'

'Very true. The first sensible thing you've said. We desperately need new vices. Yes, we might well meet…'

Before I could reply she waved and strode away, losing herself in the afternoon tourists. I stood in the sunlight, savouring the scented air she had left behind her. I realized that she had never explained what she wanted to talk about, but it no longer mattered.

A group of schoolchildren emerged from a nearby travel agency, and forced me against the BMW. I leaned back, supporting myself on the windscreen. A clutch of holiday brochures lay on the open passenger seat. Tucked beneath them was a set of keys, linked to a medallion that bore the BMW logo, forgotten by the car's owner when he left for a nearby appointment.

The schoolchildren returned in a noisy posse, shouting at a missing friend. As they shielded me from the travel agency windows I unlatched the door of the BMW and slipped into the driver's seat. Traffic blocked the street as I started the engine.

When it cleared I pulled out in front of a municipal water cart.

Careful not to attract the interest of the policemen on duty outside the Palais des Festivals, I turned onto the eastbound carriageway of the Croisette.

I passed the Majestic, the Carlton and the Martinez, my eyes watching the rear-view mirror, and followed the Croisette towards the Palm Beach casino. Rounding the point, I set off along the free beach where off-duty waiters lounged in their skimpy briefs, watching the young women play volleyball on the chocolate sand.

As I joined the fast corniche road to Golfe-Juan a publicity aircraft was towing its pennant above the lighthouse at La Garoupe.

Powerboats cut through the waters around the Îles de Lérins. The cool air moved over the windscreen, carrying away the sweat of fear from my face, urging everything to flow faster through an afternoon of eroticism and possibility.

Relaxing on the coast highway, I changed down to third gear.

For the next thirty minutes I drove like a Frenchman, overtaking on the inside lanes, straddling the central marker lines on the most dangerous bends, tailgating any woman driver doing less than seventy, my headlamps flashing, slipping the clutch at traffic lights as the exhaust roared through the muffler and the engine wound itself to a screaming 7000 revs, swerving across double yellows and forcing any oncoming drivers to dig their wheels in the refuse-filled verges.

Only once, surprisingly, did I have a minor accident. Reversing from a cul-de-sac at Cagnes-sur-Mer, I cracked a rear brake light against a badly sited lamp standard. But the highway police who haunted the RN7 had taken off for the day, leaving me alone with the wind and the slipstream.

Three hours later I parked the Jaguar outside our villa. Dusk lay over the lakes and forest trails, and the upper floors of the office buildings seemed to drift above the autumn mist that filled the valley. I switched off the engine, and listened to the sounds of Jane showering in the bathroom. I had left the BMW near the main entrance of Eden-Olympia, and then walked across the business park to the administration building, where earlier that afternoon I had caught up with Alain Delage. Routine security checks the next morning would log the BMW's licence number into the Cannes police computer, and soon reunite the owner with his vehicle. I regretted the irritation and anxiety I had caused him, but stealing the car had satisfied an urgent need, in some way triggered by Frances Baring and the orthopaedic mannequins at the Palais des Festivals.