J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'No.'

'Frank?'

'They didn't.' Halder spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear him above the engine. He composed himself, waiting for the muscles of his face to calm themselves. 'Take it from me, he wasn't executed.'

'No? Then why are there no photos of Greenwood 's body? Paris Match, Der Spiegel, the London tabloids – they've never printed a single one. I suspect they'd show a few bullets in the back.'

'They don't.' Halder spoke tersely, swaying against the steering wheel as if about to faint again. 'Believe me, Mr Sinclair.'

'Have you seen the photos?'

'I don't need to. I was there when Greenwood died.'

'Frank? You were with the security unit who tracked him down?'

Halder waved me away, reciting his words like a familiar private mantra. ' Greenwood went down fighting… he'd taught himself to handle a firearm. He wasn't afraid at the end, and he didn't care if it all came out. Something went wrong for him at Eden-Olympia, and he tried to put it right. He wasn't interested in what anyone thought about him…'

'Frank… wait. Who shot him?'

I tried to climb back into the car, but Halder closed the passenger door. He thrust the envelope of photographs through the open window, his face fully calm for the first time that day.

'I shot him, Mr Sinclair. I was the rookie here and they told me what to do. I was so scared I couldn't think. David Greenwood was the only man I liked in the whole of Eden-Olympia. And I shot him dead.'

Fanning myself with the manila envelope, I watched the Range Rover roll away beneath the plane trees. Its dark paintwork moved from light to shade, at times becoming almost invisible, a conjuring trick with the eye that seemed part of the huge illusion created by Eden-Olympia. I admired Halder for making his confession, and felt concerned for him, but his motives were just as checkered. Zander and Wilder Penrose were using this moody young black to keep me primed with fresh information, steering me from one loose paving stone to the next, confident that I would peer into every murky space.

But Halder had an agenda of his own. He had used the murder tour to provoke himself, preparing the emotional ground for his confession, but his anger had been addressed to Eden-Olympia.

I could well imagine the sly pleasure that Penrose had taken in assigning the killer of Jane's former colleague and possible lover to our security detail. I remembered Halder bouncing the beach ball across the pool and then spitting into the water, not far from the pumphouse where Greenwood had probably collapsed after making his way back to the villa from the Siemens building.

Halder would have walked towards him, the novice in his crisp new uniform, thinking of his salary cheque and pension plan, and then hearing the command to shoot and kill. Eden-Olympia had used him, but Greenwood 's death had given him a celebrity that he in turn had begun to exploit.

Yet Greenwood, according to Halder, had fired back in the seconds before he died. No doubt Halder had flinched, but his nerve had held, and he had done as he was told. I looked up at the roof of the car park, where the security guard leaned on the parapet, a hand cupped over his eyes as he followed Halder's Range Rover across the park. He saluted smartly, without a hint of irony, displaying the same deference towards Halder shown by all the security men. Only the killing of David Greenwood would have earned the respect of these crude and racist men.

I stepped from the car-park lift onto the overheated roof, a cockpit of sun and death. In the mirror curtain-walling of the office building I could see myself reflected like an unwary tourist who had strayed through the wrong door into the danger-filled silences of a bullring. The guard had withdrawn across the bridge into the cool shadows of the lobby. I waved to him, and strolled to the parapet, pretending to gaze across the green heights of the business park.

I counted three more bullet holes in the parapet, each reamed out and filled with a plug of Ciment Fondu, then covered with a finish of coarse sand. Six bullets had been fired, the full load of a large-calibre revolver discharged at close range.

Leaving the roof, I made my way down the stairs to the welcome shade of the deck below. I moved through the parked cars to the south-east corner, where the drainage pipe emerged from the roof.

A metal clamp locked the plastic tube to the vent above my head, its funnel polished by the abrading tool. The junction was six feet away, well beyond my reach even if I stood on a car roof, but a second clamp was a few inches from the floor, securing the down-pipe to the vertical segment below it. I took out my car keys and searched for a flat edge, then began to turn the metal bolt, loosening the joint between the sections of piping.

Steps sounded from the staircase, the rapid heels of a young man in a hurry. A Japanese executive in a blue suit, chrome-trimmed briefcase in hand, strode across the concrete deck. I crouched behind the rear wing of a nearby Saab, and waited while the Japanese stepped into his sports car. After checking his teeth and tongue in the rear-view mirror, he started the engine and reversed from the parking space, emitting a roar of confidence-building exhaust.

His noisy gear changes masked the sound of tearing plastic as I wrenched the drainage pipe from its roof mount. I laid the tubular section on the floor and pressed my hand into the upper end, then scraped the inside surface with my keys.

Clumps of black organic matter, like the residues of a partly digested meal, covered my fingers with a faint ruddiness. I raised the fragments to my nose, and caught the acrid tang of animal remains.

Already I assumed that I could smell David Greenwood's blood.

He had never returned to the villa, but had died here on the roof of the Siemens Building, in this place of death and the sun.

'You… look at me! What are you doing here?'

I turned from the drainage pipe to find a fair-haired woman in a black business suit calling from the central aisle. She backed away from me, startled to see an intruder kneeling among the parked cars. With one hand she clasped her purse, either protecting her credit cards or reaching for a tear-gas spray.

When I stood up she brushed the blonde hair from her eyes and lowered her head like a pointer.

' Frances?' I asked, unsure of the light. 'Frances Baring?'

'Sinclair? Jesus, that frightened me. You bloody near ruined a new pair of tights. Are you stealing a car?'

'No… checking something. I didn't hear you coming. The sound travels in a peculiar way.'

'Mostly inside your head. Why are you playing with that pipe?'

She stepped towards me and frowned at the hole in the ceiling.

'Did you do this? I work in the property office here. I could have you arrested.'

'Don't bother. I'll put it back.' I took the handkerchief from my pocket and wiped the blood-stains from my fingers. I lifted the drainage pipe and forced it into place, then kicked the loose floor bracket under the Saab. 'Good as new…'

'You're really a very strange man. This garage isn't a Meccano set.' She strolled around me, and then turned towards the parapet. Trying to manoeuvre me into the light, she exposed her nervy beauty to the open air, the lack of confidence and untrusting mouth. Aware of my admiring stare, she donned a large pair of sunglasses, evidently the most potent weapon in her purse. But she stepped forward to steady me when I stumbled against the Saab. 'Paul – are you all right? You look shaky.'

'A little. Pulling that pipe down was an effort. Still, the Chinese boxes are starting to unpack themselves.'

'At last. I saw you on the roof with one of the guards.'

'Halder, yes. He took me on the grand tour.'