J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Paul, what do you think? Is it worth renting?'

Her heels clicked across the parquet of the high-ceilinged drawing room. As she stepped onto the terrace the wind rushed to greet her, filling out her skirt and jacket. Frogs honked at her from the half-filled fountain, but nothing else had disturbed the garden for months. The flowerbeds had run to seed, and globes of unpicked fruit rotted around the lemon and grapefruit trees.

I pointed to the swimming pool, filled with an opaque white fluid. 'I hope that's mare's milk. Ninety thousand francs a month? Are you planning to move here?'

'No fear. Some snobby little yachting resort? I rent villas for corporate visitors and high-powered academics.' She leaned on the balcony and slipped her arm through mine. 'Feeling better?'

'By the second. I'm glad I came.' I held her wrist when she tried to move away. ' Frances, I take it we didn't meet by chance at the Palais des Festivals?'

'Not exactly. I saw you looking a little lost, as usual, and thought you might be interesting.'

'Was I?'

'More than you realize.' She turned her back to the sea. 'You're a political prisoner. You wander round all day, searching for the escape tunnel, while getting more and more involved with the guards.'

'I could drive back to London tonight.'

'Rubbish. And it isn't just Jane who keeps you here. Why do you think you're so obsessed with David? You're in a trance.'

She smoothed my lapel, as if suddenly concerned for me. Her hands were forever brushing away imaginary flecks in a kind of submissive grooming. At the same time she eyed me in an openly calculated way.

'A trance? More than likely. I was the joyrider who stole your car.'

'_You_ took it?'

' Frances… don't be so arch. You invited me to steal it.'

'Did I? I think I was slightly drunk.'

'You left the keys on the passenger seat. Why?'

'I was curious about you. It was a sort of test.'

'To see if I had what it takes to steal? I might have killed myself.'

'Never. You're too cautious.'

'So I failed the test?'

'Six out of ten. I want you to understand Eden-Olympia. Then you might be able to help me.'

'But first I have to change?'

'A little. Admit it, you enjoyed stealing the car. I watched you drive down the Croisette. You had wings again.'

'You're right.' The lights had come on at Port-la-Galère, and I thought of the chauffeurs' widows sitting in their honeycomb apartments. 'Flying, yes… the first take-off after having sex. What's the next test?'

'You decide that. Tell me about the ratissage. The Rue Valentin may be more your street than you realize…'

She took a lighter and cigarette case from her purse. Cupping one hand, she lit the cigarette, but the wind blew a shred of burning tobacco over her shoulder. It landed on the parquet floor of the drawing room and glowed brightly in the air, a fire-creature breathing the wind. Intrigued by it, and tiring of me for the moment, Frances left the terrace. Her feet scattered the embers, which danced around her heels as she crossed the floor.

She began a circuit of the dining room, peering at the baronial fireplace with its andirons the size of torture racks, and heavy oak carvers like gnarled thrones. She jotted a comment in her notebook, but I knew she was covering up her embarrassment.

I had been too slow to respond to her, and she faulted herself for not playing the femme fatale more skilfully. I was attracted to her sexually, but she needed my complete submission if I was to join the secret game she controlled.

A brochure she had left on the terrace table began to flutter in the evening air. I turned it face down, and then read the printed name on the addressee label. 'Mme Frances Delmas, Marina Baie des Anges, Villeneuve-Loubet.'

I remembered the cryptic initials on Greenwood 's target list.

'F. D.'

Carrying the brochure, I followed Frances into the kitchen, where she stood on the small balcony overlooking the hillside. A hundred yards away was a large building that easily eclipsed the oddities of Port-la-Galère. Like a segmented flying saucer, it resembled a spacecraft that had landed by error in the steep hills of the Esterel and then reconfigured itself among the pine trees. A series of interlocking domes were pierced by porthole windows a dozen feet in diameter. Together they sprawled towards a terrace wide enough to stage a football tournament.

Lights flared through the portholes, as if a computer in the control room was waking from its slumbers and testing its own sentience. Teams of athletic young men and women stepped onto the terrace, setting up film lights, cameras and reflector screens. They wore jeans and trainers, money pouches slung from their waists, baseball caps over their Asian faces. To one side, waited on by a retinue of attendants, stood a favoured group of fashion models, dressed for the night in lustrous fur coats, stoles and bolero jackets. The platinum and auburn pelts seemed to drain the last light from the evening air, distilling the lees of the sun in their exquisite filaments. But the models stared expressionlessly at the film cameras, like the chorus in an avant-garde version of Madam Butterfly.

'They're Japanese,' I said to Frances. 'Where exactly are we?'

'The Pierre Cardin Foundation. One day all his paintings and sculpture will be on show here. It's rented out for big functions – a Tokyo advertising agency is making a fur commercial.'

'Bizarre. The whole place looks like a film set.'

'It is – it just happens to be real. David loved it. Last year we went to an Eden-Olympia reception there and got wonderfully drunk with two Nobel Prize winners. They were great sports.'

Smiling to herself, she stared through the fading light at the terrace. Teams of technicians steered their reflectors into position, like players pushing their pieces in a monster game of illuminated chess.

'You knew Greenwood well,' I said. 'He must have been a lot of fun.'

'He was. He worked hard, but he knew how to relax.'

'How long did your affair go on?'

'Affair? Sordid word.' She grimaced at an unpleasant after-taste.

'It sounds like some dodgy business with the petty cash. We were happy, and then… we weren't happy. Let's say I didn't like the way he was changing. Some of the things he got involved with were…'

'Too sophisticated for him?'

'Just a little.' She raised a resigned hand to the darkness, as if waving the night away. 'Idealists can be quite a problem when they get disgusted with themselves. He didn't like what Eden-Olympia had done to him.'

'And the murder plan? He told you -?'

'Absolutely nothing. Believe me, Paul.'

'I do. You were one of his targets.'

'Why do you say that?'

'"Mme Frances Delmas."' I showed her the property brochure.

'You, I take it?'

She stared at the label, then let her arms fall to her sides as the last cigarette smoke left her lungs. 'That was my married name. My husband was an accountant with Elf-Maritime. We separated two years ago, but it takes the computers a long time to catch up.'

'So you're "F. D."? The woman Greenwood called from the car-park roof? He was going to kill you.'

'No!' Her fist drummed on the balcony rail. 'For God's sake, he was standing in front of me with a rifle in his hands. If he wanted to kill me he'd have done it there and then.'

'He hesitated. The guards say he was trying to reload, but I think he wavered when he saw you. For a few seconds, long enough for Halder and Kellerman to reach the roof. He loved you, Frances.'

'I know.' She crushed her cigarette on the rail. 'I helped to get him killed. At least I didn't see what happened – the guards bundled me away. If I'd let him in…'

'He'd have shot you. Why? It could be the clue to everything.'