J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

The entire London press made the tragedy its main story.

'Nightmare in Eden ' was the repeated headline above photographs of Riviera beaches and bullet-starred doors in the offices of the murdered executives. Jane hardly spoke about Greenwood, but insisted on watching the television coverage of French police holding back the sightseers who invaded Eden-Olympia. Blood-drenched secretaries, too speechless to explain to the cameras how their bosses had been executed, stumbled towards the waiting ambulances, while helicopters ferried the wounded to hospitals in Grasse and Cannes.

The investigating magistrate, Judge Michel Terneau, led the inquiry, reconstructing the murders and taking evidence from a host of witnesses, but came up with no convincing explanation.

Greenwood 's colleagues at the clinic testified to his earnest and intense disposition. An editorial in Le Monde speculated that the contrast between the worldly power of Eden-Olympia and the deprived lives of the Arab immigrants in Cannes La Bocca had driven Greenwood into a frenzy of frustration, a blind rage at inequalities between the first and third worlds. The murders were part political manifesto, so the newspaper believed, and part existential scream.

When the case at last left the headlines Jane never referred to Greenwood again. But when the vacancy was advertised she immediately called the manager of the supply agency. She was the only applicant, and quickly convinced me that a long break in the Mediterranean would do wonders for my knee, injured in a flying accident nine months earlier and still refusing to mend. My cousin Charles agreed to take over the publishing house while I was away, and would e-mail me copy and proof pages of the two aviation magazines that I edited.

Eager to help Jane's career, I was happy to go. At the same time, like any husband from a different generation, I was curious about my young wife's romantic past. Had she and Greenwood once been lovers? The question was not entirely prurient. A mass-murderer had perhaps held her in his arms, and as Jane embraced me the spirit of his death embraced me too. The widows of assassins were forever their armourers.

On our last night in Maida Vale, lying in bed with our packed suitcases in the hall, I asked Jane how closely she had known Greenwood. She was sitting astride me, with the expression of a serious-minded adolescent on her face that she always wore when making love. She drew herself upright, a hand raised to hit me, then solemnly told me that she and Greenwood had never been more than friends. I almost believed her. But some unstated loyalty to Greenwood 's memory followed us from Boulogne to the gates of Eden-Olympia.

Baring her teeth, Jane started the engine. 'Right… let's take them on. Find the clinic on the map. Someone called Penrose will meet us there. Why they've picked a psychiatrist, I don't know. I told them you hate the entire profession. Apparently, he was hurt in David's shoot-out, so be gentle with him…'

She steered the Jaguar towards the gatehouse, where the guards had already lost interest in their screens, intrigued by this confident young woman at the controls of her antique car.

While they checked our documents and rang the clinic I stared at the nearby office buildings and tried to imagine Greenwood 's last desperate hours. He had shot dead one of his colleagues at the clinic. A second physician, a senior surgeon, had suffered a fatal heart attack the next day. A third colleague had been wounded in the arm: Dr Wilder Penrose, the psychiatrist who was about to introduce us to our new Eden.

A robust, bull-browed man in a creased linen suit strode from the entrance of the clinic, arms raised in a boxer's greeting. I assumed he was a local building contractor delighted with the results of his prostate test and waved back as a gesture of male solidarity. In reply, a fist punched the air.

'Paul?' Jane sounded wary. 'Is that…?'

'Wilder Penrose? It probably is. You say he's a psychiatrist?'

'God knows. This man's a minotaur…'

I waited as he strode towards us, hands raised to ward off the sun.

When Jane unlatched her door he swerved around the car, displaying remarkable agility for a big man. His heavy fists took on an almost balletic grace as they shaped the dusty contours of the Jaguar.

'Magnificent… a genuine Mark II.' He held open Jane's door and shook her still grimy hand, then smiled good-naturedly at his oil-stained palm. 'Dr Sinclair, welcome to Eden-Olympia. I'm Wilder Penrose – we'll be sharing a coffee machine on the fourth floor. You don't look tired. I assume the Jag sailed like a dream?'

'Paul thinks so. He didn't have to change the spark plugs every ten miles.'

'Alas. And those twin carburettors that need to be balanced? More art than science. The old Moss gearbox? Wonderful, all the same.' He strolled around the car and beckoned to the clouds, as if ordering them to listen to him, and declaimed in a voice not unlike my father's: 'Peeling off the kilometres to the tune of "Blue Skies", sizzling down the… Nationale Sept, the plane trees going…'

'Sha-sha-sha…' I completed. 'She with the Michelin beside me, a handkerchief binding her hair…'

'Mr Sinclair?' Leaving Jane, the psychiatrist came round to the passenger door. 'You're the first literate pilot here since Saint-Exupéry. Let me help you. They told me about the accident.'

His strong upper arms lifted me easily from my seat. He wore sunglasses of pale plastic, but I could see his eyes scanning my face, less interested in the minor flying injuries to my forehead than in whatever strengths and weaknesses were written into the skin.

He was in his late thirties, the youngest and by far the strongest psychiatrist I had met, a giant compared with the grey-haired specialists who had examined me at Guy's for the Aviation Licensing Board. His welcoming banter concealed a faintly threatening physical presence, as if he bullied his patients to get well, intimidating them out of their phobias and neuroses. His muscular shoulders were dominated by a massive head that he disguised in a constant ducking and grimacing. I knew that the tags we had swapped from The Unquiet Grave had not impressed him as much as the Jaguar, but then his patients were among the best educated people in the world, and too distracted for vintage motoring.

When I swayed against the car, feeling light-headed in the sun, he raised a hand to steady me. I noticed his badly bitten fingernails, still damp from his lips, and backed away from him without thinking. We shook hands as I leaned on the door. His thumb probed the back of my hand in what pretended to be a masonic grip but was clearly a testing of my reflexes.

'Paul, you're tired…' Penrose raised his arms to shield me from the light. 'Dr Jane prescribes a strong draught of vodka and tonic. We'll go straight to the house, with a guided tour on the way. Freshen up, and then I'll borrow your wife and show her around the clinic. Arriving at Eden-Olympia is enough culture shock for one day…'

We settled ourselves in the car for the last lap of our journey.

Penrose climbed into the rear seat, filling the small space like a bear in a kennel. He patted and squeezed the ancient leather upholstery, as if comforting an old friend.

Jane licked her thumb for luck and pressed the starter button, determined to hold her own with Penrose and relieved when the overheated engine came to life.

'Culture shock…?' she repeated. 'Actually, I love it here already.'

'Good.' Penrose beamed at the back of her head. 'Why, exactly?'

'Because there isn't any culture. All this alienation… I could easily get used to it.'

'Even better. Agree, Paul?'

'Totally.' I knew Jane was teasing the psychiatrist. 'We've been here ten minutes and haven't seen a soul.'