J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'They were looking for a _crime passionel_ among the roulette wheels. Drugs and decadent film stars. Handsome chauffeurs sleeping with the film producer's wife… Someone at Eden-Olympia said she'd heard a report on Riviera News that mapped out Greenwood 's route. I mentioned it to your secretary.'

'I looked it out for you.' Meldrum pushed the transcript across the desk. 'One of our stringers did a round-up piece. He added a few contact numbers you might find useful.'

'It's a big help.' I searched the faded photocopy. 'What's the reporter's name?'

'Roger Leland. That was his last effort. He took off and moved down to the Algarve.'

I started to read the transcript, no more than three paragraphs.

'"One minute, fifty-two seconds…"? A little on the short side?'

'Here that's practically Marcel Proust. Keep it to yourself. The people who run Eden-Olympia have a lot of power.'

'I understand.' I noticed the date of transmission. 'July 25? Nearly two months afterwards?'

'We had some late info.'

'A tip-off? Someone at Eden-Olympia?'

'Who can say? Leland kept his sources to himself. Take it easy, Mr Sinclair.'

I shook his hand and eased myself around the door. 'Do you ever get out to Eden-Olympia?'

'Not if I can help it. People there keep to themselves.'

'Are they popular along the coast?'

'Some are. Some definitely aren't. A bunch of them were making trouble in Mandelieu last weekend. They set up a latenight brawl with the local Arabs in the fruit market.'

He watched me make my way down the stairs. As he waved, I called up to him: 'These brawlers from Eden-Olympia – were they wearing black leather jackets?'

'You know, I believe they were. It looked like they were part of a bowling team…'

I returned to the Place Nationale and sat under the plane trees outside the Oasis restaurant, where the rain had once danced in my soup. Cooling my hands around a vin blanc, I studied the transcript. The transmission times on July 25 were listed: 2.34 p.m., 3.04, 3.34, presumably following the half-hour news breaks. The abrupt end hinted that pressure had been brought to bear from Eden-Olympia, which wanted nothing to rekindle the anxieties of staff and corporate clients.

Roger Leland, speaking from Eden-Olympia, site of the greatest tragedy to hit the Côte d'Azur in recent years. Two months have passed since the horrific day when a young English doctor, thirty-two-years-old David Greenwood, ran amok with an automatic rifle, killing ten victims before turning the weapon on himself.

Investigating judge Michel Terneau is still no nearer finding a motive, but has repeatedly stated that Greenwood acted alone and chose his victims at random.

Riviera News has now uncovered new facts that suggest the killings were carefully planned and involved at least one co-conspirator.

Video film from the business park's surveillance cameras reportedly revealed Greenwood and an unidentified white male in the TV centre car park, transferring weapons from an unmarked van into Dr Greenwood's Renault Espace. Sadly, this film was accidentally destroyed. Mystery also surrounds Greenwood 's movements in the last minutes of his life. Driven back by gunfire as he attempted to enter the Siemens building, Greenwood returned to his villa and immediately murdered his three hostages. Logs of police radio traffic suggest that Greenwood made the 2.8 kilometre journey on foot, taking just over three minutes, a feat even Olympic athletes would find impossible. There were no reports of stolen or hijacked vehicles.

Was there an accomplice who helped Greenwood make his escape? The possibility that a second assassin is still at large, perhaps planning his revenge, has sent alarm bells ringing throughout the business park, still struggling to regain its calm after the tragic events of May 28. Roger Leland, for Riviera News, reporting from Eden-Olympia.

I read the transcript again, disappointed that it provided no details of Greenwood 's murder route. The references to a co-conspirator were speculation, and I turned to the contact list at the foot of the page.

Among the worthies named were Professor Kalman, director of the clinic; Pascal Zander, acting chief of security; Claudine Galante, manager, press bureau.

Scribbled in longhand at the bottom of the page were four more names, each with its telephone number.

Mlle Isabel Duval. Secretary of Dr Greenwood.

Mme Cordier and Madame Ménard. Wives of dead hostages.

Philippe Bourget. Brother of dead hostage.

All, surprisingly, as their phone numbers indicated, were still resident in the greater Cannes area, as if the magnitude of the crime still held them in its grip, part of the business park's baleful gravity that would never release those who came within its orbit.

The elderly boules players in the Place Delaunay stood in their Zen poses, waiting for the click of a metal ball to alter the geometry of their game. Admiring their self-control, I left the Jaguar in the Rue Lauvert. Across the RN7 were the Antibes-Les-Pins apartments, a huge residential complex that covered thirty acres between the Place Delaunay and the sea, another of the security-obsessed compounds that were reshaping the geography and character of the Côte d'Azur.

Surveillance cameras hung like gargoyles from the cornices, following me as I approached the barbican and identified myself to the guard at the reception desk. Once my appointment was confirmed, I followed his directions towards the Résidence de la Plage, the group of seven-storey apartments nearest to the sea.

Decorative gardens in the formal French style surrounded the pathway, refreshed by an irrigation system that left the brickwork perpetually damp. But the shrubs and flowering plants seemed pallid and defeated, the ground beneath them so crammed with electronic ducting that no roots could prosper. Together they awaited their deaths, ready to be replaced by the month's end.

High above me, fluted columns carried the pitched roofs, an attempt at a vernacular architecture that failed to disguise this executive-class prison. Taking their cue from Eden-Olympia and Antibes-les-Pins, the totalitarian systems of the future would be subservient and ingratiating, but the locks would be just as strong.

If this modern-day utopia demanded a new kind of urban survivalist, Isabel Duval personified her, from pale-grey make-up to hand-knitted wool suit. She was a handsome woman in her late thirties with a pleasant but toneless face from which all emotion had long been drained. As she welcomed me into her apartment she reminded me of the deputy principal of a private girls' school who had been passed over for the headship too many times. Any resentment had been carefully defused, wrapped in sterile gauze and placed on a secure back shelf of her mind.

'Monsieur Sinclair…?' Her smile was as quick as a camera shutter, the same flicker of the lips that had beckoned the senior executives of Eden-Olympia towards their cholesterol tests and prostate examinations. I had introduced myself over the phone, explaining that Jane had taken over from Greenwood, whom I posthumously promoted to close family friend.

But Isabel Duval seemed not entirely convinced. Her nostrils trembled, perhaps picking up some intrusive scent from my clothes, the stale cigar smoke from Meldrum's office. She stepped back, giving a wide berth to my rogue gait, unused to the presence of a strange man in her apartment.

'Madame Duval, it's good of you to see me. I must seem like a ghost from the past.'

'Not at all. An old friend of David Greenwood, how could I refuse?'

She guided me to a chair in the sitting room. The balcony windows looked out, not at the sea and beach, but into an inner courtyard, providing a superb view of the cameras beneath the eaves.