J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'So Greenwood was a patsy – like Lee Harvey Oswald?'

'It's just about feasible. Why did it take the security system here so long to react? Because a secret group of very senior people were talking on their mobile phones. The clocks stopped while they decided on their targets.'

'And Greenwood? What is he doing while all this goes on?'

'Sitting in his office, staring at the blood on his hands. Or he never left Bachelet's house. He lay down next to his dead lover and blew his brains out. That must have been a huge bonus to the conspirators. For an hour or so they could kill anyone they liked and blame it on Greenwood. Halder, the jigsaw fits.'

'It doesn't. It doesn't fit at all.' Halder pressed his slim hands to his face, massaging his drawn cheeks. 'You think too much about Greenwood. I liked him, he helped me get my job, but… Let's assume Greenwood did carry out the killings, and see where that leads us.'

'Fine by me.' I took the Riviera News transcript from my pocket. I paused while Halder reversed into the avenue, realizing from his clumsy gear change that he was as much under strain as I was. 'Everything starts at the TV centre, where Greenwood is supposed to have seized his hostages.'

'Right.' Halder stopped by the kerb and stared at the windscreen, his eyes fixed on a dead fly embedded in a pool of its own amber. When he spoke, his voice was flat and well rehearsed. 'A camera in the car park picked him up at 6.58 a.m. The film is lost, but the security people on duty say he was talking to an unknown man, maybe one of the chauffeurs. We assume Greenwood ordered him into the car at gunpoint. When he drove off it's likely he had all three hostages with him. Agreed, Mr Sinclair?'

'If you believe the story of this "lost" film. I don't think they were hostages, and he certainly didn't kill them. They were there to help him in some way. Bachelet might have suspected that something was brewing up, and kept Greenwood under surveillance. The chauffeurs probably smuggled in the rifle and planned to drive Greenwood over the border into Italy. Nothing else makes sense. Why would he need hostages at all? Why not go straight into the first killing?'

'Who can say? Maybe he was lonely.' Halder raised a hand to calm me. 'I mean it. He has a long day ahead of him. He's been up for three or four hours, assuming he had any sleep at all. He's been cleaning his weapon, checking his ammunition packs. For the first time he realizes what the next hour is going to involve. He's passing the TV centre and sees the chauffeurs and the engineer in the car park. He knows them slightly and feels they'll understand what he's doing.'

'It's possible. Just…'

'Either way, with three hostages he has a fall-back position. He can negotiate a deal if things go wrong. So he bundles them into his car.'

'Quite an achievement,' I commented. 'He can drive a car and keep his weapon fixed on three prisoners.'

'Suppose one of the chauffeurs drove? They knew Greenwood, and could see he was very disturbed. They decided not to excite him.' Halder pointed to the raised garage door. ' Greenwood brings them here and ties them up. It's about 7.20, and he has five minutes to reach the Bachelet house. It's four hundred yards from here, and target number one. Now he's on the move, ready to kill his first victims…'

Halder steadied his breathing, and let the Range Rover roll down the avenue. We cruised under the plane trees and passed a group of Portuguese cleaning girls climbing into their bus. They spent the days polishing the mirror-like parquet floors, wiping the last white crystals from the smeary table-tops, throwing out the condoms stuck in the toilet traps, probing everything except the dreams of their coporate employers.

Were assassins aware of the contingent world? I tried to imagine Lee Harvey Oswald on his way to the book depository in Dealey Plaza on the morning he shot Kennedy. Did he notice a line of overnight washing in his neighbour's yard, a fresh dent in the next-door Buick, a newspaper boy with a bandaged knee? The contingent world must have pressed against his temples, clamouring to be let in. But Oswald had kept the shutters bolted against the storm, opening them for a few seconds as the President's Lincoln moved across the lens of the Zapruder camera and on into history.

Had Greenwood felt the same clamour of the contingent? Had he seen the satellite dishes on the Merck building as they locked onto the sky, downloading Tokyo stock prices and Chicago pig-meat futures? The gun-metal office buildings and unwalked forest paths must have seemed like a film set waiting for the opening credits.

'Three minutes, twenty seconds left…' Halder checked his watch. 'Not much time to change his mind.'

We climbed a small hill, then freewheeled to a halt behind a pick-up loaded with pool maintenance equipment.

'Where are we?' I asked. 'Wilder Penrose lives somewhere here.'

'This is the Bachelet house.' Halder pointed to a three-storey villa with a boxy mansard roof and arsenic-green roof-tiles. High wrought-iron gates were topped by a pair of entry cameras. 'Dr and Mrs Oshima of the Fuji Corporation live here now.'

'Very discreet. It's quite a fortress.' I thought of Greenwood parking his car and drawing the rifle onto his lap as he stared at this house of death. 'I'm surprised he could get in. The windows weren't forced?'

'No sign anywhere. But people get careless, they leave doors unlocked, forget to set the alarm system.'

'Bachelet was head of security. Still, Greenwood might have walked up to the front door and rung the bell. Where were they shot?'

'In Bachelet's bedroom, on the second floor.'

I looked at the immaculate gravel, and almost heard the crunch of Greenwood 's steps as he approached the house, rifle in his hands. I folded the Riviera News transcript, aware that the typewritten text no longer matched the reality of the killing ground. An upstairs window opened, revealing the geisha-like face of a middle-aged Japanese woman wearing a mask of white cream. With the windows closed to seal in the air-conditioning, the brief sounds of gunfire would have been barely audible.

'Mrs Oshima… I don't suppose a well-bred Japanese woman would show us round her bedroom.'

'I doubt it.' Halder pulled a large manila envelope from the instrument panel shelf. He slid out three black-and-white photographs. 'These might give you a feel for the atmosphere.'

I lowered the sun visor to shield my eyes from the afternoon light. Taken by a police cameraman, the first photograph showed a forty-year-old man lying across a double bed, his back to the pillows. An overnight growth of beard stained his chin, and his handsome face was disfigured by the blood that flushed his nose and mouth. This was Guy Bachelet, the former security chief at Eden-Olympia, whose picture I had last seen in the framed group portrait at the La Bocca refuge.

Two bullet holes marked his barrel chest, one in his breastbone and the other below his left nipple. Neither had led to heavy bleeding, but a third bullet wound to his right thigh had leaked a pool of blood that covered his legs in a black mantle.

I assumed that Greenwood had shot Bachelet from the bedroom doorway, first hitting him in the thigh. As blood pumped from his victim's femoral artery Greenwood had taken more careful aim, then shot him twice through the chest.

The second photograph showed an almost naked woman sprawled on the tiled floor beside the bed. She lay face up, one hand pressed against the carved oak footboard, the other raised to her face, as if trying to ward away any further bullets.

Her mouth was open, exposing a gap in her upper teeth, where a partial dental plate had fallen onto the floor. Her pale skin was speckled with black dots, but her face was clearly that of an intelligent Frenchwoman of the professional class.