J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'It is.' She spoke calmly, her face only a few inches from mine, and I could smell the sweet Turkish tobacco on her breath. 'Why did he want to kill me? Because I was too much like him.'

'In what way?'

'How we relaxed, the games we played. Sooner or later, though, all games become serious.'

'And serious games are more serious than anything else. What did these games involve?'

Before she could answer, the lights on the terrace of the Cardin Foundation flooded the hillside. An intense electrical whiteness sent huge beams through the porthole windows. The technicians and assistants froze in their places, like figures in a clay burial army.

The make-up specialists applied their last touches to the fur-clad models and then shrank back into the watching throng.

Without thinking, I held my breath, but the filming ended after four or five seconds. The lights dimmed, and everyone began to move around, waiting as the models changed into a new set of furs. Armed security men stood beside a wheeled pantechnicon, checking each garment on their clipboards before returning the silky pelts to their air-conditioned racks.

'Television commercials and mink coats rented by the hour…'

Frances sighed audibly. 'That's glamour for you on the new Côte d'Azur. Garbo and Crawford would be amazed.'

'Why stay?' I sat on the balcony rail, catching the waxy stench of insects burned to a crisp by the film lights. I watched Frances tapping the rail, but she seemed in no hurry to return to her car.

'And why come to Eden-Olympia in the first place?'

'Why? In those days my head was filled with… passionate dreams.'

'I like that.' I took her hands, surprised by how cold they were. 'What exactly?'

'The usual deluded rubbish. Interesting work, a few close friends, a warm relationship with someone who needs me. My foster parents are sure I'll meet him.'

'Good for them. You're an orphan?'

'My mother's still alive. She had a small stroke when my father died and couldn't cope with me. My foster parents are schoolteachers in Cambridge. They pushed me in a really loving way. After the LSE I worked at Lloyd's, and then got headhunted out here.'

'I bet you had a very good time?'

'I loved it. All that alienation. Those huge men shaving after lunch in their private bathrooms. It didn't take long before I felt utterly depraved. A very handsome Elf accountant was on loan to us one day a week, and I let him use my bathroom. I loved the smell of male urine and the reek of his groin on my bath towels after he'd had a shower. He was very sexy. We had a great honeymoon at Aspen, and he taught me to ski. That was about the last I saw of him.'

'Hard to believe.' I massaged her unsettled hands, thinking of all the bedrooms in the darkened house. 'He walked out on you?'

'No. We moved into an apartment at Marina Baie des Anges. But he worked till nine every night. He was always flying to Oman and Dubai. One day I found this mysterious wardrobe full of men's suits and shirts. There were drawers of socks and underpants that didn't seem familiar. I remember thinking: there must be a man attached to these.'

'They were your husband's? So you got divorced?'

'In a friendly way. I kept the apartment, and he moved to Paris…' She stared at her shoes, as if wondering where they would next lead her, and turned to follow my raised hand. 'Paul, what is it?'

'I'm not sure.' Shielding my eyes from the glare, I scanned the Cardin terrace. 'There's some sort of brawl. The Japanese are fighting each other.'

'Makes sense. TV commercials are life-or-death affairs.'

'Wait…'

A huge mélée had engulfed the terrace. Groups of technicians and make-up assistants cowered against the balustrade, watching as vicious fist-fights erupted among the camera crew and the guards near the pantechnicon. A second group of security men had appeared from within the museum, and lashed out with their clubs like warriors in a battle scene from a Kurasawa epic.

A spotlight teetered on its stand, sweeping the terrace with its harsh light before falling on its face. I recognized the leather jackets that I had seen in the Rue Valentin. Three of the assailants were unloading furs from the pantechnicon, while others in the gang stood over the guards they had beaten to the floor. A helmeted man with a raised shotgun threatened the cowed technicians, who crouched on the tiled floor among the light meters and make-up cases. On the steps into the museum a man with a face I almost remembered was filming the assault with a camcorder.

The squealing falsettos of the Japanese women rose across the hillside, and lights flared from the balconies of villas above the coast road.

' Frances…' Without thinking, I drew her from the balcony. 'It's the bowling club…'

'Who?'

'It's another ratissage. A special action.'

'I can't see anything.' She pulled at my arm. 'There's a telescope in the library.'

'Forget it.' I tried to calm her. 'They've gone.'

The snatch squad had left with their booty. Behind them, the terrace resembled the scene after a terrorist bomb attack. Technicians sat on the floor, clutching at each other among the overturned lights and cameras. Many of the women assistants were still shrieking, as the stunned director and his crew shouted into their mobile phones.

From the road above the museum came the sound of accelerating engines. A black Range Rover swept down the hill, its lights off and almost invisible in the darkness. It swerved across the car park of the Tour de l'Esquillon Hotel, and headed at speed towards Théoule.

'God, they're like commandos…' Frances pushed herself from the balcony, as if the slipstream of violence might suck her over the edge. 'Paul, who were they? You recognized them.'

'I can't really say. It might have been…'

Two more Range Rovers swept below us, nose-to-tail as they moved at speed. Their tyres struck the loose gravel in the car park like breakers hitting a shingle beach. Headlamps flared, and they pulled into a sharp right turn, taking the coast road towards St-Raphaël.

At the Cardin Foundation the film crew and their assistants had fled indoors. A confused technician turned on the sound system, and a burst of amplified music drummed into the night, huge fragments of sound that rolled down the hillside like boulders.

Frances stepped into the kitchen and seized the telephone beside the refrigerator. She raised the receiver and pumped the cradle, hunting for a dialling tone. 'I'll call the police. Come on, god dammit… vite, vite!'

' Frances, wait. I need to think.'

'Why? There's nothing to think about…'

'There's everything.'

I took the receiver from her, opened a drawer of the kitchen table and placed the phone next to an old Gault-Millau guide.

When Frances reached into the drawer I closed it with my knee, catching her hand.

' Frances, take it easy. They've gone.'

'Paul…?' Frances rubbed her bruised wrist. 'What are you playing at? You recognized some of them.'

'I might have done.'

'Who were they? Did they come from Eden-Olympia?'

'It's possible.'

'Then let's stop them. Either way, they're trapped on the coast road.'

'Not now. This isn't the time.'

'You're in a trance again.'

She stood in front of me, small fists raised pugnaciously. She had been frightened by the attack, and perspiration soaked her white blouse, exposing the dark roses of her breasts. But my mind was with the leather-clad men racing through the darkness in the Range Rovers. The speed and aggression of the robbers, their brutal efficiency, had almost winded me. I forced myself to breathe, gasping the night air with its reek of burnt insects, fear and Japanese scent. I felt the hair prickling on the nape of my neck, and a stream of sweat cooling between my shoulder blades. A potent odour lifted from my crutch, a deep hormonal call to violence. My penis thickened, and my scrotum gripped my testicles like a fist. I remembered my erection after my first solo landing at the RAF flying school, as all the tension of the unaccompanied take-off released itself.