J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Good…' He watched the girl playing with the radio. Then, with a flick of his cigarette, he signalled to the Pole, who seized my shoulders in his heavy hands. 'First, we take your shoes, Mr Sinclair…'

He was staring, unbelievingly, at my thonged sandals when lights flooded the narrow street, as if a master switch had illuminated a darkened stage. Three Range Rovers swerved into the Rue Valentin and swept past us, tyres thudding across the cobbles, headlamps flashing along the doorways and side alleys. The streetwalkers and matronly whores, the pimps and Volvo dealers were frozen among the veering shadows.

Then the headlamps dimmed and everyone was running towards the Avenue St-Nicolas. Burly men in black helmets, like the members of a police parachute brigade, leapt from the Range Rovers. All wore the tight-waisted bowling jackets I had first seen in the clinic car park. Clubs in hand, they set upon the fleeing crowd. Two of them chopped a Volvo dealer to the ground, raining blows on his head and back. The streetwalkers I had followed from the Rialto Bar emerged from the scrum, tight skirts rucked around their waists. As they fell to the ground, huge limbs uncoupling from their torsos, legs spread under the whipping truncheons, I saw that both of them were men.

I knelt on the cobbled road, my hands cut by shards of glass from the broken ampoule. The posse moved past, and a flurry of truncheons shattered the windscreen of the van. The schoolgirl had taken shelter behind the steering wheel. Ignoring the violence around her, she fumbled with the radio and picked fragments of windscreen glass from her blouse. She had chewed away part of her silver lipcoat, and the raw flesh showed through the shiny lacquer, as if a too eager lover had taken a bite from her mouth.

'Natasha…!' Trying to reassure her, I tapped the passenger window. Then a hand gripped my shoulder.

'Mr Sinclair… it's time to leave.'

'Halder?' I turned to face the dark-skinned security guard. He had appeared suddenly from the shadows, stepping from the alley behind me, but I sensed from his nervous feet and fixed eyes that he had been only a few steps from me since my arrival in the Rue Valentin. He was dressed in black trousers, sneakers and sweater, as if he had spent the day among the yachting fraternity at Port-la-Galère. He was unarmed, and ducked when a confused Arab searching for his glasses ten feet from us was clubbed to the ground.

'Halder!' I pulled at his sweater. 'Are you with the police? What's happening here?'

'Let's go, Mr Sinclair… we can talk later.' Halder seized my elbow and steered me into the alley behind the builder's warehouse.

He grimaced at my cut hands, but pointed to the helmeted men at the end of the Rue Valentin. Having cleared the street, they were striding back to the Range Rovers. One of the drivers sat at his open door, filming the scene with a small camcorder.

I assumed they were all members of an auxiliary police unit, a group of volunteer constables recruited to the vice squad.

'They're coming back. It's best if we wait here.' Halder pressed me against a shuttered doorway. He silenced me with a hard hand over my mouth. 'Not now, Mr Sinclair…'

Headlamps flared from the Range Rovers, again illuminating the cobbled street, littered with stiletto heels, sequinned purses, pieces of underwear and cigarette lighters. Alexei had held on to his expensive brogues, but the white nodes of broken teeth lay among the fragments of the pethidine ampoule.

The leader of the posse led his squad back to the cars. When he pulled off his helmet I recognized Pascal Zander, panting hard as he stuffed his truncheon into his belt. His fleshy face seemed even coarser in the heat and sweat of violence, his engorged tongue too large for his mouth. He shouted at the camcorder operator, then spat onto the bloody cobbles at his feet.

Around him were three others I knew by sight: Dr Neumunster, chief executive of a German investment bank, who lived on the same avenue in the enclave; Professor Walter, head of cardiology at the clinic; and an American architect named Richard Maxted, a bridge partner of Wilder Penrose. They lounged against the Range Rovers, joking with each other like hunters returning from a boar shoot, happily charged by adrenalin and the camaraderie of the chase.

Within seconds they had gone, the heavy vehicles reversing in a flurry of slamming doors, headlamps hunting for the Avenue St-Nicolas, heading towards Super-Cannes and the presiding powers of the night.

'Mr Sinclair? We can move now.'

I felt Halder's trapped breath leave his lungs, a coarse reek of garlic, spice and fear. He calmed himself, trying to steady his pulse, relieved that I had made no attempt to provoke the posse.

'What about the girl?' I pointed to the damaged van. 'We can't leave her here.'

Natasha sat behind the steering wheel, bobbing to herself in the silence. Flecks of glass gleamed like jewels on her blouse. She seemed unaware of the violence that had erupted around her, as if nothing in her life could ever be a surprise.

'Halder, we need to get her to the police.'

Wearily, Halder held my arm. 'She's best here. Her friends will be back for her.'

'Friends? Halder, she's a child…'

'It's been a long day, Mr Sinclair. I'll take you to the garage.'

As we left, the police sirens wailed down the Rue Jaurès, and the first of the barefooted streetwalkers were making their way towards their shoes.

'Are you all right to drive? You look shaky, Mr Sinclair.' Halder helped me into the Jaguar. 'I'll call a taxi. You can collect the car tomorrow.'

'I'm fine.' I felt a painful weal across my right shoulder, realizing for the first time that one of the posse had struck me with his truncheon. 'Those clubs are hard.'

'They were having fun.' Halder pointed to the blood dripping onto the passenger seat. 'You cut your hands. When you get back, see a doctor.'

'I'm married to one.' I took an engine rag from the glove compartment. 'Thanks for helping me. It's a good thing you were there. They wanted heads to crack.'

'Someone needs to keep an eye on you, Mr Sinclair.' Halder nodded at this sage advice, his eyes scanning the cars in the garage.

His nostrils flickered at the scent of exhaust fumes, but he still breathed through his mouth. I knew from his huge pupils how frightened he had been, and the special danger in which his darker skin had placed him.

'This Russian, Alexei, and the young Pole – they'll go back for the girl?'

'Of course. She's valuable to them.'

Trying to explain myself, I said: 'I saw them take her to the Rue Valentin. I tried to buy her… you know, for an hour. I wanted to get her into the refuge at La Bocca. '

'I understand.' Halder's expression was deliberately neutral, the gaze of a security man who had glanced into too many bedrooms ever to be shocked. 'You were worried for her.'

'They asked for seven thousand francs. Who carries that kind of cash around? What does the girl have to do to earn it?'

'Nothing much. Being eleven is enough.'

'She was lucky the Range Rovers arrived on time. Who were they? Zander was leading the whole thing.'

'That's right. It's a special action group.'

'Volunteer police? Very public-spirited.'

'Not exactly. Think of it as… therapeutic.'

'And the Rue Valentin is the disease? That makes sense. Were you with them?'

'No. Let's say I was passing by.' Halder took the car keys from my bloody hand and slid them into the ignition. He wrenched the gear lever into neutral and turned on the engine, using the manual choke to set a fast idling speed. Above the clatter of unaligned carburettors he shouted: 'Go back to Eden-Olympia. See Dr Jane about those hands.'

'Frank…' I wanted to thank him, but he had already withdrawn from me, annoyed with himself for having shown his fear.