J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'I'm glad you were there. I don't know how you managed it.'

'Easy, Mr Sinclair. I followed you all day.' Halder stared at me in his distant way, then relented and slapped the roof above my head as I reversed out of the parking space. 'Tomorrow I'll come round and collect you. We'll go on a special tour.'

'Where exactly?'

'Eden-Olympia. You've never really been there…'

Pain au chocolat in hand, I watched from the breakfast terrace as Jane climbed from the pool and walked dripping to the diving board. She blew her nose into her fingers, and strutted down the board with the clipped steps of a dressage horse. She sprang into the air and jack-knifed into a clumsy pike before following her hands into the water.

She surfaced with a scowl, and swam to the poolside. Unable to lift herself onto the verge, she waded through the seething foam to the ladder.

'Paul, towel… did I make a splash?'

'Dear, you always make a splash.'

'Here. In the pool.'

'A small one. You can dive through a keyhole.'

'Not any longer.' She frowned at the unsettled water. 'That was a lousy dive. I'm out of practice.'

'You work too hard.'

She let me swathe her in the towel. Her hair was flattened to her scalp, exposing a scratch-mark from her broken nails, her eyebrows sleeked back and blanched lips set in a chalky face. She panted as I embraced her shoulders, her skin as cold as a shark's.

'Jane, you're freezing. The pool heater must be on the blink.'

'I switched it off last night. Need to be awake today. Very awake.'

'More committees? Try seeing a patient or two. It might relax you.'

'I'm off to Sophia-Antipolis. We may share medical databanks.'

'So their computers will snuggle up with ours?'

'That's the way the future's going.'

She kissed me with her cold lips, tongue teasing a flake of chocolate from my mouth. She stepped back when I winced at the pressure of her hands on my back.

'Paul? What's happened?'

'Nothing. I caught myself on the car door.'

'Poor man. That's fifties design for you. Time to forget about the Harvard, Paul…'

I sat on the terrace, sharing the last of the pastry with a sparrow that had followed me across the garden. Señora Morales was moving around the lounge, discreetly clearing the ash from the settee cushions before the maids arrived.

I had reached home at midnight to find the front door ajar.

In the lounge the cannabis and cigarette smoke hung in layers, a microclimate like a volcano's crater. Ash lay on the carpet and coffee tables, marked with curious doodles. Through the blanket of pot I could smell Simone Delage's pallid scent, a pheromone emitted by an ice queen.

Jane was asleep, a Sabena face-mask over her forehead. Careful not to wake her, I soaked my hands in the bathroom, hunting with her eyebrow pincers for any shards of glass. Through the mirror I noticed her lying on her side, staring at my bruised back. She was barely awake, drifting in a dull, narcotic stupor, eyes focusing with an effort as I bandaged my right hand.

'Paul…? What are you doing here?'

'Going to bed. Did I wake you?'

'Can't sleep. Too tired…'

'I'll get something for you.'

'Already did. Helps me relax. Your back…?'

She drifted away, sinking her face into the airline mask. I sat beside her, waiting until she breathed steadily, unsure whether to call the night staff at the clinic. As I tried to take her pulse I saw the fresh puncture mark in the crook of her left arm.

By morning she had recovered, refreshed by the deep diamorphine night. Making coffee for her before Señora Morales arrived, I listened to Riviera News for a bulletin on the incident in the Rue Valentin. As I expected, no one had reported the vigilante raid to the Cannes police.

Feeling the bruise on my back, I remembered the truncheons fracturing the windscreen of the van. The violence had been deeply satisfying for Pascal Zander and his senior executives.

Entombed all day in their glass palaces, they relished the chance to break the heads of a few pimps and transvestites and impose the rule of the new corporate puritanism.

Yet no one had been concerned about the child-whore sitting alone in the ransacked van. For that matter, I was still unsure about my own motives, and why I had followed little Natasha from the car park. I thought of her stepping confidently into the lurid night, but still childish enough to be pleased by the sound of tumbling coins. Sitting at the kitchen table, I looked through the change in my pocket, the nickel and brass that had bought her smile. Eden-Olympia was an engine of self-deception.

'Paul, is Penrose here?'

'Not yet.'

'It's 9.30. He's supposed to be driving me to Sophia-Antipolis.

God, I've been stood up by a psychiatrist.'

'That's professional disgrace. I'll report him to the GMC for ungallantry.'

'Wilder would love that. He's dying to be struck off.'

Jane strode around in her crispest underwear, gazing at the suits and skirts laid out on the bed. Her gestures seemed coarser, but she had recovered her pep and bounce, as if lit by a powerful stimulant.

Admiring her, I found it easy to forget the drugged young woman slumped across the pillows. Physicians, Jane assured me, often prescribed themselves a sedative or booster, no more threatening to health than a double gin or a pan of Turkish coffee.

When she stumbled on the carpet I caught her arm. 'Jane, are you well enough to go?'

'Sure. Why not?'

'I was late last night – problems with the car. Who was here?'

'Alain Delage and Simone. We had fun, watching some screwy sex film. I couldn't sleep, so I gave myself a toot.'

'Bad for you? Your diving is really off.'

'Fuck the diving. I'm the doctor here.' Jane gripped my hands, her numbed fingers missing the bandage on my right palm. 'How did yesterday go?'

'More detective work. I went over to Port-la-Galère and met the widows of the hostages.'

'That must have been awkward. Were they very hostile?'

'Not at all. They knew David and liked him a lot. They still do.'

'Isn't that a little odd? He's supposed to have killed their husbands.' Jane shuddered, and then reached up to smooth my eyebrows, still flaring after the evening's violence. 'It's time you gave up this whole David business.'

'Why? I've found almost nothing.'

'That's what I mean. You're much too involved. All these theories. You're setting up some kind of strange crime rather than trying to solve one. Still, it sounds like quite a day. Then what?'

'I ran into Halder on the Croisette. We had a few drinks together.'

'Halder?' Jane sniffed the crutch of her trouser suit. 'He's rather sweet. He helps me park my car, and hangs around the clinic with those calm eyes. He's waiting for something to happen.'

'He probably fancies you.'

'All men fancy me. It means zilch. The real question is…?'

'Do you fancy him?'

'A little. He's so heroically above it all. He offered me his copy of Tender is the Night. Don't sneer, Paul – how many men have tried to improve my mind?' She broke off when a horn sounded from the avenue. 'Wilder… Tell him to let me drive. I refuse to die in a car crash with a psychiatrist…'

The Japanese sports saloon was parked across the drive, again blocking the Jaguar, its damaged door provocatively close to the chromium bumper whose contours it so closely matched. But Wilder Penrose seemed delighted to see me. He beamed at me as he rolled his large body from the driver's seat. The grimace of pleasure seemed to migrate around his face, colonizing new areas of amiability. With his silk suit and heavy shoulders he resembled a retired boxer who, to his own surprise, had transformed his reserves of aggression into universal goodwill. He kept his fists near his waist, but his upper arms feinted at me as he approached.