J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Of what? Security systems?'

'Death. Seven deaths. Or eight, to be exact. We started at the villa and followed Greenwood 's route on May 28.'

'Dear God…' Frances raised a hand to her mouth. 'It sounds gruesome.'

'It was. An extremely graphic reconstruction, with a well-informed commentary, so packed with gory details I nearly missed the subtext. There was even a surprise ending. I feel a lot clearer about everything.'

'What was the surprise?'

'Halder told me who killed Greenwood.'

'So…' Her eyes briefly emptied. 'Who did?'

'Halder claimed he did.'

'And you believe him?'

'Halder's the sort of man who takes a special pride in being honest, especially when it serves his own interests.'

'And where did this happen?'

'He didn't say. But I think I know.'

She picked a spur of plastic from my lapel, trying to delay her question. 'In the garage with the hostages?'

'No. Right here, in this car park. A few feet above where you're standing.'

'No…' She shook her head and backed away from me, as if I had opened one trap-door too many in the floor around her.

'Why here?'

' Frances, I'm sorry…' I hesitated before pressing on. 'My guess is that Greenwood was shot on the roof. He was probably lying wounded against the parapet. I'm surprised you didn't see what happened.'

'No one saw anything. The sun shields were closed. Security moved everyone to the north side of the building.'

'How long did that take?'

'Ten minutes or so. Then we heard some shots. That was the end.'

'It was for Greenwood…' Matter-of-factly, I said: 'There's a cluster of bullet holes in the parapet. Someone filled them in, but forgot to clean the drain pipe.'

'Why bother? It almost never rains here.'

'This time it rained blood. A short deadly shower.' I unfolded my handkerchief and showed Frances the haemoglobin stains.

'Blood?' She picked at the stains with a varnished forefinger, nostrils flicking as they caught some long-lost scent. She stared at a drying smear that my thumb had left on the cuff of her white silk blouse, and smiled brightly. 'I'll get it DNA-tested. If you're right it's part of David. What does it matter where he died?'

'It matters a lot. If Greenwood died here he couldn't have shot the hostages. Someone else ordered them killed. That broadens out the whole picture.'

'Maybe they weren't hostages?'

I followed her eyes as they drifted around the parked cars.

Despite the recent tears, her face was resolute. Once again she had made a course correction, steering me back onto the road she had chosen.

I said: 'They were Greenwood 's partners, not his hostages. None of them ever went near the garage – at least, not until they were dead. They were waiting for David in the TV centre car park.'

'Too many car parks – always a sign of a troubled mind. But why the TV centre? People will kill to get on television, but weren't they going a little far?'

'They wanted to seize the station and expose a scandal at Eden-Olympia. I'm not sure what.'

'Financial swindles?'

'Unlikely. Chauffeurs don't get outraged over corporate skulduggery – it's part of the air they breathe. Have you heard any talk of "ratissages"?'

'Cullings? It's an old French Army term from the Algerian war – thinning out the fedayeen. Not much in use along the Côte d'Azur.'

'I'm not so sure. I was in the Rue Valentin last night…' I gestured at the air, unsure how to explain my interest in an eleven-year-old girl. I leaned against the Saab, my legs aching after the effort of sitting in the Range Rover with the highly strung Halder. ' Frances…'

'What is it? You look worn out. Rest in my car for a minute.'

'I'm fine.'

'Don't talk. I'll give Halder hell for this.' She took the manila envelope from the roof of the Saab and slipped her arm around my shoulders. 'Your wife's a doctor – she ought to look after you more.'

'Patients… they're completely passé.' Glad to feel her strong body against mine, I let her help me through the parked vehicles.

She paused to search the shadows, and approached an open-topped BMW, a similar model to the car I had stolen near the American Express office in Cannes.

Then I recognized the broken brake light, and the heap of estate agents' brochures. Before walking away to her dental appointment Frances had leaned against the car, confident that the world at large would happily submit to the pressure of a handsome thigh. It had never occurred to me that the car was hers, or that the driving keys had slipped from her bag as she checked her teeth.

'A neat little car,' I commented, lying back in the passenger seat. 'Fun to drive?'

'Too much. A joyrider pinched it in Cannes a few days ago. Really thrashed the engine. The garage said he must have been high. Or very repressed.'

'It might have been a woman.'

'No. You can always tell when a man's driven your car. Brakes, accelerator, even the windscreen wipers – they're all keyed up in a peculiar male way.'

I raised the sun visor, and in the vanity mirror noticed a smear of Greenwood 's blood on my cheek. Had Frances dropped the keys deliberately, testing me to see if I could be trained to act impulsively? Already I sensed that I was being auditioned for a role that was about to be assigned to me. I assumed that she had long known the truth about Greenwood 's last moments, that his life had ended on the roof above us. But her grief had been genuine, a touching mix of anger and regret that was impossible to fake.

She reversed from the space and set off down the ramp, missing the parked cars by inches. In the entrance she braked hard before we reached the sunlight, throwing me against the seat belt like a crash-test dummy.

'You look better already,' she told me. 'There's nothing like a woman's driving to revive a man. What about a trip along the coast? I have to look at a house in Miramar.'

'Are you kidnapping me?'

'If you want me to. You need to get away from Eden-Olympia. It's setting up a branch office inside your head.'

'Right, I'm game.'

'Good. First, let's get rid of the war paint.'

She licked a tissue and began to work at the smudge of blood on my cheek. The soft scent of her neck and breasts, the faint bitter-sweetness of her tongue, were belied by her surprisingly rough hands, as if she resented the stain on my skin, and my lack of title to this last signature trace of the dead doctor.

'David's blood…' She spoke to herself. 'All gone. It's rather sad…'

She stared at the ruddy tissue. The stain seemed to glow more brightly in the fading afternoon light, as if revived by the breath between her lips and her memories of Greenwood.

Across La Napoule bay the evening mist veiled the Croisette, and the black breasts of La Belle Otero seemed to float above the Carlton Hotel, like gifts from one pasha to another borne on a cushion of vaporizing silk. The sea was smooth enough to xerox, a vast marbled endpaper. But three hundred yards below me the waves were channelled into the cove that separated Port-la-Galère from the Miramar headland, and spears of foam leapt through the dark air like berserk acrobats.

The vacant house we were visiting was virtually a small chateau, built into the rocks of the Pointe de l'Esquillon, with its round-the- compass views of the sea. The presence of the orienteering platform helped to straighten my own perspectives, after days of unsettling truths and evasions. Now Frances Baring had dealt herself back into the game, playing with her marked cards and her rigged shoe. Already I suspected that I would do anything to lose to her.

Unsure why she had taken me on her house-call, I suggested that we stop at a café in Théoule. She sat over her citron pressé, watching as I poured a cognac into my espresso coffee, and then ordered another for me before I could ask for the bill. Her moods flared and darkened in a few seconds, a shift of internal weather almost tropical in its sudden turns. She reminded me of the women pilots at the flying club, with their wind-blown glamour and vulnerable promiscuities. She still played with the blood-stained tissue, and I took for granted that she had been Greenwood 's lover.