J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Doesn't he have a point? All games infantilize, especially when you're playing with your own psychopathy. You begin by dreaming of the übermensch and end up smearing your shit on the bedroom wall.'

'You're right, Paul.' Solemnly, Penrose gripped my hand, nodding at the blank television screen. 'The teams have to work harder, and learn to fight their way into the darkest heart of themselves. I hate to do it, but I need to turn up the ratchet, until the nerve strings sing with anger…'

He turned to the window as a firework rocket whistled through the night air and exploded in a puffball of crimson light. A flush of animation touched his face and faded as the rocket spent itself and fell to earth. He seemed more driven than I first remembered him, frustrated by the sluggish reflexes of his senior executives and their flagging will to madness. Seated in this formal empire room, he was hemmed in by the caution of the executive mind. Though I hated everything he had done, and hated myself for failing to report him to the French authorities, I felt almost sorry for him. Mired in its mediocrity, the human race would never be insane enough for Wilder Penrose.

'Now, Paul…' He noticed me sitting beside him in Greenwood 's dinner jacket. 'You're looking for Jane?'

'Halder saw her earlier. He said she's rather tired.'

'The film was a bit of an ordeal. Swiss bankers don't have the popular touch – the only people they meet are billionaires and war criminals. Jane still works too hard. She should join one of our new therapy groups for women.'

'Are there any?'

'Paul, I'm joking… or at least I hope I am.' He walked me to the door, an avuncular clubman with a favourite guest. 'In the case of women the system of imposed psychopathy is already in place. It's called men.'

I paused by the map table and its vision of a greater Eden-Olympia. 'This ratchet, Wilder – are the murders we saw part of it?'

'Murders?'

'The video you were playing. The three Arabs in the garage looked awfully dead.'

'No, Paul.' Penrose lowered his head, his eyes drifting away from me. 'I assure you, everyone recovered. As usual, large bundles of francs were handed over. Think of these people as film extras, paid for a few minutes' discomfort.'

'I'll try to. No murders?'

'None. Who put the idea into your head? Be careful with Zander. He's an unhappy man, driven by powerful resentments. Some of his personal habits are disgusting. He may well be the only natural psychopath in Eden-Olympia.'

'And our very own police chief?'

'Sadly, there's a long tradition of the two roles coinciding. Senior policemen are either philosophers or madmen…'

The suites on the fourth floor were dark and unoccupied. Following Penrose's directions, I walked the long corridor, past the gilt-framed mirrors whose surfaces had been dulled by time. In the entrance to the west wing I noticed that a pair of carved oak doors stood ajar. I stepped through them, switched on a table lamp and found myself in a well-stocked gunroom. The barred cabinets were filled with shotguns and sporting weapons. Six Nato-issue automatic rifles occupied one cabinet, chained together through their trigger guards.

A notice-board leaned against an easel, listing the fixtures of the Eden-Olympia gun club. The names of the members, all senior executives at the business park, formed a set of rival leagues that I assumed were run independently of Wilder Penrose. Pinned to the board were photographs of well-set men in their fifties, clipped from the financial pages of a local Arab-language newspaper.

In a corner, behind one of the double doors, was a large department-store dumpbin, filled with what I first thought were gunnery-range targets in the form of animal cutouts. I held several of them to the light, and then recognized stuffed-toy versions of the dormouse, the Hatter and little Alice herself.

I laid the Alice back in the bin, and watched the eyelids swivel and close over the glassy stare, almost the first untroubled sleep I had seen in Eden-Olympia.

To the rear of the west wing, far from the terrace party and the fireworks, a waiter was moving a drinks trolley into the corridor. I stopped beside him, and scanned the debris of glasses and crushed napkins. Sharing a tumbler with a champagne cork was an empty syrette.

'Madame Delage?' I asked. 'Doctor Sinclair?'

'Monsieur? They sleep now.'

'Good. Like Alice…' I pressed a few coins into his hand, stepped past him into the suite and closed the door. A single standard lamp lit the empty sitting room, its glow warming the deep pile of a fur stole lying across an armchair.

A coarse masculine odour hung in the air, a blend of sweat and genital steroids, the unmistakable spoor of a man in rut. A bottle of Laphroaig stood on the mantelpiece, and I guessed that a passionate suitor had fortified himself for the rigours of the bed.

Pools of malt whisky lay around the legs of a carriage clock, and stained a Palais des Festivals film programme.

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. I listened with my hand on the doorknob, uneager to catch Simone Delage in the act of clipping her toenails.

'Jane…?'

She was sitting on the tiled floor between the bath and the bidet, knees drawn against her chest, her left hand trailing in the flow of water from the bath tap. She wore a man's black silk dressing gown that lay like a shadow across the white tiles. Her face was composed, but the blush of a hard slap still burned on one cheek. Propped in the bidet was the patent-leather handbag that served as her off-duty medical valise. Her hand covered the syringe lying on the porcelain rim.

'Paul?' She greeted me with a faint tremor of the lips. She raised her chin, focusing on my eyes and mouth, and then took my hands, as if she needed to assemble in stages a recognizable image of her husband. She seemed almost asleep, her voice slurred. 'Glad you came, Paul. I wasn't sure…'

'I had to come. I guessed you'd be here.'

'So many parties in Cannes tonight. We saw the Eden-Olympia film.'

'Any good?'

'Depressing. Everyone's so happy in Cannes and they make these depressing films. Did you see any?'

'One or two. Not the kind in competition.'

'Depressing?'

'Very.' I sat on the edge of the bath and turned off the tap. I pointed to the inner door. 'Is…?'

'Simone? She's sleeping in the bedroom.' Jane tightened the dressing gown, her childlike shoulders swamped by the black silk.

'You look smart, Paul. I like the dinner jacket.'

'It was David's. It doesn't really fit.'

She nodded at this, and touched my sleeve. 'It suits you. Wear it all the time.'

'Frances Baring loaned it to me. God knows why she kept it.'

'So she won't forget David. He's everywhere still, isn't he?'

She straightened her hair in the wall-mirror. 'Too many mirrors in this house. Paul, tell me how you escape inside them.'

'You don't need to escape. Just take things easier. Wilder agrees you work too hard.'

'Wilder agrees with you about everything. That way you do what he wants.' She smiled with the first affection I had seen since our decision to stay. 'Dear Paul. You crash-landed your plane here and can't climb out…'

I listened to the boom of rock music, a dull pulse like a week-long headache. An odd smell caught my nostrils.

'Jane… was Zander here?'

'Zander?' She closed her eyes. 'Why ask?'

'I saw him on the terrace. The cologne he was using – I could smell it when I came in.'

'Nasty, isn't it? Reminds him of Beirut.' She felt the bruise on her cheek. 'It doesn't matter, Paul. High up here in Super-Cannes, nothing matters.'

I held her hand, chilled by the cold tap water, and noticed the torn skin on her wrist, blood clotting between the tendons. 'Did Zander do this?'