J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Paul, you're still in one piece? I'm told you were caught up in a bit of unpleasantness last night. Some kind of police action in the Rue Valentin.'

'Vigilantes. Zander and his bully boys from Eden-Olympia.'

'They do help out the local gendarmerie.' Penrose showed me his teeth, as if advertising a dentifrice. 'I'm sorry you were involved. It sounded rather nasty.'

'It was. Zander and his pals had a thoroughly good time.'

'Pascal can be a little heavy-handed. There's a streak of cruelty there, but at least it's channelled into something socially useful. You've come out of it looking well. There's nothing like a little violence to tone up the system.' He glanced at the upstairs window as Jane shouted to Señora Morales. 'Is Jane calling for help? We ought to be off.'

'Give her five minutes. I kept her awake last night.' I added: 'She finds it hard to sleep – it's a little worrying.'

'Too many sleeping pills?'

'Stronger than that.'

Penrose's face arranged itself into a reflective cast. He put an arm around my shoulders. 'You're concerned, Paul, like any husband. But Jane's too intelligent, she won't come to any harm. Besides, she's exploring herself. If you're worried, come to me.'

'I will. By the way, say nothing about the Rue Valentin.'

'Of course not.' Still gripping my shoulders in his bear-like paw, Penrose gazed contentedly at the Jaguar. 'Halder tells me he's taking you on a tour of Eden-Olympia.'

'Later this afternoon. I assume he'll follow the murder route. I want to stage a reconstruction.'

'Not with live ammunition?' Laughing at his own joke, Penrose slapped my back. I guessed that Halder had told him of my bruised skin. 'Forget that, Paul. You deserve to be encouraged. You're our village historian. Eden-Olympia has its corporate past, stored away in all those disks and annual reports, but it has no vernacular history. May 28 was our Dealey Plaza. Like it or not, it's all the history we have.'

'I'll do my best.'

'Good.' Penrose lowered his voice. 'By the way, what exactly were you doing in the Rue Valentin? It's not your kind of beat.'

'It isn't. I saw this child outside the railway station with a couple of local thugs. Something didn't seem right.'

'That makes sense. So you followed her?'

'Into the Rue Valentin. Then I realized why she was there.'

'Sordid. What can one say? Tragic for the child, but sexual pathology is such an energizing force. People know that, and will stoop to any depravity that excites them.'

'The Russian who attacked me here was some sort of minder. He wanted seven thousand francs.'

'That's a lot. Seven hundred pounds? She must be very pretty.'

'She is. There's a kind of sweetness about her. Along with more or less total corruption.'

'Sad…' Penrose was at his most sympathetic. 'Someone saw you offering money for her. Not true, I take it?'

'I did. I wanted to get her away from there, take her to the nuns at La Bocca. At least, I think that's what I wanted to do.'

'You're not sure?'

'Not entirely. It's hard to admit.'

'Paul, I understand.' Penrose spoke in a conspiratorial murmur. 'It's brave of you to face up to it. These impulses exist in all of us. They're the combustible fuel the psyche runs on.'

'Much too combustible. I could have burned more than my fingers.'

'No…' Penrose pressed a hand to my cheek, speaking in a barely audible voice that seemed to come from the air around us. 'We're talking about thoughts, not deeds. We don't give in to every passing whim or impulse. But it's a mistake to ignore them.'

'And what if…?'

'You feel drawn from thought to deed?' Penrose bunched his huge fists in front of my nose. 'Seize the hour. Pay the price. Be true to your real self, embrace all the possibilities of your life. Eden-Olympia will help you, Paul…'

I waved to Jane as the car accelerated away, but she was already brandishing a position paper in Penrose's face. I assumed that the psychiatrist was watching me in his rear-view mirror. In his playful way he was egging me on, urging me to board the escalator of possibility that had begun to unroll itself at my feet.

Yet his words had been reassuring, and I felt less concerned that I had tried to buy the Russian girl from her minders. Had the vigilante group not burst upon the Rue Valentin I would have taken the child with me, and the journey to La Bocca would have had the character of an unconscious elopement…

Halder's motives were more difficult to read. He arrived soon after three o'clock, when I was working on the latest batch of proofs sent to me by Charles, an act of charity that allowed me to maintain the illusion of my editorship. While I changed, Halder glanced sceptically at the pages, his curiosity roused by the aircraft illustrations. He wandered out to the swimming pool, where he bounced the beach ball across the water in his usual morose way.

'Ready, Mr Sinclair?'

'I hope so. Why not?'

'No reason. This is your day.'

Halder led the way to his Range Rover. Once again I was struck by how detached he seemed from Eden-Olympia. His slender fingers, as sensitive as a neurosurgeon's, touched the controls on the instrument panel, as if retuning the image of the business park in his mind. He reminded me of an experienced embassy official in a foreign capital, always exploring the terrain of possibilities open to him, the concealed entrances to exclusive hotels, the after-hours drinking clubs where the important contacts were made.

In turn, I suspected that he saw me as the naive spouse of a middle-ranking employee, trapped in a self-created maze of two-way mirrors and sexual impulses I scarcely understood.

I wondered how the Reverend Dodgson's Alice would have coped with Eden-Olympia. She would have grown up quickly and married an elderly German banker, then become a recluse in a mansion high above Super-Cannes, with a fading facelift and a phobia about reflective surfaces. Halder might have been her chauffeur but never her lover. He was too fastidious, his sensitive nostrils forever flickering at some passing mood, and too suspicious of other people's dreams. I knew that he was using me for purposes of his own, but I guessed that, despite himself, he almost liked me.

'Mr Sinclair – are you sure? This could be stressful for you.' Halder hesitated over the ignition keys. 'You were very close to Greenwood.'

'I hardly knew him.'

'You know him a lot better now.'

'You're right. By the way, thanks for stepping in last night.'

'Glad to be there.' Halder nodded at my bandaged hand. 'What you ran into was a "ratissage". A bowling-club speciality.'

'They enjoyed themselves. There's nothing more satisfying than a fit of old-fashioned morality.'

'That was nothing to do with morality.' Halder flashed his headlamps at a passing security vehicle. 'Just an evening workout for one of our self-help groups.'

'There are others? What do the Cannes police feel about them?'

'They keep out of the way. Zander and Delage are important people. Be careful, Mr Sinclair.'

'Am I in danger?'

'Not yet. I'll warn you when the time comes.'

'Thanks. Am I asking too many questions?'

'About Greenwood 's death? Who could object to the truth?'

'A lot of people. Especially if Greenwood didn't carry out all the killings.'

'You think he didn't?'

'I'm not sure.' I watched Halder start the engine, and waited for him to drive off, but he seemed in no hurry to move. 'I think Greenwood probably killed Bachelet and Dominique Serrou – an old-fashioned crime of passion. But the others? There are corporate rivalries here fuelled by billions of dollars. One faction decided to seize its chance and settle a few scores. Charbonneau, the chairman of the holding company, was the real target, along with Robert Fontaine. The others were window-dressing – Professor Berthoud, the chief pharmacist, and Vadim, the manager of the TV centre… they're too unimportant, but killing them creates the impression of a series of random murders. A distraught English doctor has just shot his lover and her boyfriend. He's been burning with jealousy for months, practising his marksmanship for the moment he catches them in bed together. Now he's wandering around with a smoking gun, his mind in a daze of death. It's the perfect opportunity to rearrange the chessboard. More shots ring out, and the real killers step back into the looking-glass.'