J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'How did Greenwood know Vadim would be in that particular edit suite? I've been down there – the place is a maze of cubicles and double doors.'

'Vadim's secretary said he always used that suite to check out new videos. Stuff made by amateur film groups at Eden-Olympia.'

'So Greenwood knew he'd be there. Any photos?'

'None. Someone held them back.' Halder shrugged tolerantly. 'I heard they showed certain "forbidden" things, the kind that would be bad for Eden-Olympia's image. Gille told me he switched on the edit machine. It played some very interesting material.'

'Films for the evening's adult channel?'

'More interesting than that.' Halder spoke without irony. His face was toneless, a hollowed black stone. All emotion had withdrawn from his features, hiding behind the sharp bones of his nose and cheeks. He seemed to have aged in the brief time we had toured the murder sites of Eden-Olympia.

Making a guess, I asked: 'Something to do with children?'

'I think so. Keep it to yourself.'

'No wonder the photos are missing.'

A security guard emerged from the TV centre and scanned the parked cars. He noticed the Range Rover and strolled towards us, then saluted when Halder waved to him.

'Time to leave,' Halder said. 'After May 28 they have… expectations of violence. It's the perfect set-up for another David Greenwood. Even the guards don't trust each other.'

'You'll be able to take over. I imagine Captain Kellerman is no longer working for us.'

'He left in June. How did you know?'

'I assumed the pension package was too generous to turn down.'

'You're right. He's running a bar in Martinique. Eden-Olympia helped with the finance.' Halder started the engine and drove between the lines of parked cars towards the exit. '"Take over…" That's a fascinating idea, Mr Sinclair.'

'Thank you. The most interesting one I've had? I dare say you've given it a lot of thought…'

We circled the perimeter road, taking a last look at the TV centre, and then drove down the main avenue, past the office blocks set so securely in their plots of parkland. Halder stopped outside a seven-storey building sheathed in pale travertine marble. The imposing structure overlooked a landscaped roundabout that marked the western limit of the avenue. The administrative headquarters of Eden-Olympia displayed an almost imperial grandeur, with its classical pilasters rising to a stylized post-modern pediment.

This was the first office building to be constructed at the business park, but after a bombastic overture the architecture that followed was late modernist in the most minimal and self-effacing way, a machine above all for thinking in.

As a nerve jumped in his cheek, Halder left the engine running and scanned the satellite dishes hiding behind a Grecian colonnade.

I suspected that he had volunteered his services to Pascal Zander, offering to take me around the murder route, but now regretted the decision. The blood-steeped circuit had become an unwelcome tour of the memories inside his own head.

'The main administration building,' I commented. 'The brain centre of Eden-Olympia. This is where Charbonneau and Fontaine died?'

'Impressive, isn't it? Don't believe what you see. The place looks as tight as Fort Knox but it's as easy to step into as a Vegas hotel.'

'Even so, how did Greenwood get in? These were the two most senior people in the business park. A full-scale alert must have been under way.'

'Not yet. Greenwood was fifteen minutes ahead of us.' For once, Halder sounded almost defensive. 'Remember, we still hadn't found Bachelet or Professor Berthoud. We didn't know who Vadim's killer was or whether he had any more targets. Greenwood was a doctor at the clinic, with top-level clearance, wearing a name-tag and a white coat, carrying an electronic pass-key that could get him through any door.'

'So no one tried to stop him when he walked in.' I thought of Greenwood, parking here only a few months earlier. He had moved around Eden-Olympia like a messenger from the dark gods, leaving little parcels of death. 'Where did he shoot Charbonneau – in his office?'

'In the private suite next door. A six-room apartment fitted with gym, massage table, Jacuzzi. Greenwood told the secretary he'd brought a new prescription. He took Charbonneau into the bathroom, made him strip and shot him dead in the Jacuzzi. The suite was soundproofed.'

'Why was that?'

'For private reasons. The secretary didn't know what had happened until the security alert ten minutes later. Then she had a nervous breakdown.'

'Grim.' I stared up at the roof. 'She was having a nightmare and no one told her she was awake. Any photos?'

'Not available. Charbonneau was naked. I hear the photos are… indelicate.'

'Unpleasant wounds?'

'Not the kind caused by gunshots.'

'What other kind are there?'

'Let's say, recreational.'

'He was into S/M?'

'That kind of thing. Not a good advertisement for Eden-Olympia.'

'That explains the soundproofing.' I reached across Halder and switched off the engine, glad to have a moment's silence. 'Then Greenwood moved off to find Robert Fontaine?'

'He didn't have far to go. Fontaine had a penthouse on the seventh floor.'

'And he let Greenwood in?'

' Greenwood was treating him for prostate problems. Bear in mind it's only 9.05. Captain Kellerman was still trying to contact Bachelet.'

'So Greenwood shot Fontaine dead. In bed?'

'In his political office. Fontaine was planning to run as a deputy in the local elections.'

'Not as a communist, I take it?'

'More right-wing. In fact, so right-wing it's off the scale.'

'National Front?'

'Closely linked.' Halder smiled thinly. 'Fontaine's group targeted "social" opponents. Their identity photos covered the walls where he was shot. His blood was all over them. Greenwood had a nice sense of humour.'

'"Social" opponents.' I echoed Halder's ironic stress. 'Not rival candidates?'

'More the people who might vote for them. People with faces they didn't like.'

'Darker faces? Maghrebians?'

'Blacks, yellows, browns. Anything except pinko-grey. Faces like mine. People of the "other" side.'

'Who might canvass and vote for left-wing candidates. How did Fontaine and his people target them? I take it they used market-research firms?'

'Why bother? They saw them walking down the back streets in La Bocca and Mandelieu.'

'But they had their photos? It sounds very professional.'

'Mr Sinclair…' Halder surveyed me patiently. 'We're talking about coolie labour – factory hands, van drivers, building-site workers. The photos in Fontaine's office were taken after they were dead.'

'After…? How did they die?'

'All kinds of sudden ways. Traffic accidents, mostly. The back streets in La Bocca get very dark at night. It's easy for a truck to swerve. There's a squeal of tyres, and then the photoflash…'

'Halder – you've seen this?'

But Halder made no reply. He waved me away when I reached for the envelope of photographs. Since our arrival at the Bachelet house he had been trying to provoke me, but had succeeded only in provoking himself. He drummed at the gear lever, irritated that he had trapped himself within the loop of his own anger.

'Last one…' Halder turned off the avenue, so sharply that my head struck the window pillar. Without apology, he drove three hundred yards into the park, and stopped outside a dome-shaped building that housed the personnel department of Eden-Olympia. The ground-floor picture windows were filled with dioramas of lakeside apartments, and illuminated displays advertised vacancies for office juniors, cleaners and gardeners, the invisibles of Eden-Olympia, a population who left no shadows in the sun.