J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

Stunned by the sound, Frances lost control of the car as the black vacuum in the wake of the express sucked the BMW from her hands. She gripped the wheel and shouted: 'He's going to crash! Paul!'

'Where?'

She pointed to the road ahead, where brake lights flared in alarm. The Audi overran the stone kerb, struck the sea wall and whirled into the air before plunging onto the beach below.

I took the wheel from Frances 's hands and steered the BMW onto the pedestrian walkway. The two Mercedes slewed around each other and stopped, for a moment vanishing into the darkness as they switched off their lights. We rolled to a halt beside a derelict bar, its wooden walls covered with fading posters for the Juan jazz festival. I turned off the engine and stepped onto the sea wall.

Frances sat stiffly over the wheel, staring at the instrument panel. She touched the brake lever, as if convinced that her clumsy driving had led to the accident.

Leaving her, I walked down the beach and let the cold sea sluice across my feet, soaking the rope soles of the espadrilles. I ran along the dark sand, the night air cutting through the open seams of Greenwood 's dinner jacket.

The Audi lay on its back in the shallow waves, flames lifting from the engine compartment. When the water retreated, I saw the driver's body trapped under the rear seat, an arm pressed to the passenger window. The dying flames flowed across the water that swilled around the car.

Two men in dinner jackets stepped from the first Mercedes, scaled the sea wall and walked to the water's edge, where one of them began to film the scene with a camcorder, waiting until the La Garoupe beam lit the stage for him. When I was twenty yards away he turned the camera and filmed me as I stood exhausted in the sodden espadrilles, my back to the lights of Golfe-Juan.

I walked towards them, pointing to the trapped driver, but the two men climbed the beach and returned to their car.

'Paul! Help him!'

Frances ran along the sand, a high-heeled shoe in each hand, throat muscles working while she gasped at the night air. She strode into the waves and gestured with her shoes at the car.

'My God, they killed him…'

I held her as the waves broke around our knees, and steered her through the undertow onto the beach. A vehicle with a pulsing emergency light moved along the road from Golfe-Juan, slowing to a stop when it approached the burning car.

'Paul, it's the police… talk to them.'

'They aren't police.' I watched the occupants step from the vehicle. 'It's the ambulance you ordered. We saw it outside the Villa Grimaldi…'

We stood at the water's edge as the paramedics pulled the dead driver from the Audi. He was a large, fleshy man in his fifties, and his pallid skin seemed to have been immersed in the sea for days. His dinner jacket clung to one arm, lying beside him like the wing of a drowned bird. The paramedics turned him onto his back and began to work at his chest. On the collars of their white overalls were printed the name and telephone number of an emergency ambulance service in Toulon.

Looking down over their shoulders, I recognized the blanched features of Pascal Zander.

I stared into the security chief 's eyes. Once so sharp and devious, they now gazed at nothing, the flat pupils like empty windows.

All the memories of his professional life, the secret codes and misdemeanours, were being washed away by the sea. One of the paramedics, a blond young man with a surfer's physique, pointed to my feet, and I realized that I was standing on Zander's hand.

I counted the pudgy fingers, their skin impressed with the sole pattern of my espadrilles, and realized that a few hours earlier they had probably fondled my wife's breasts.

Giving up their attempt to revive the dead man, the paramedics returned to the ambulance, where they lit cigarettes and spoke into their radio. I heard Frances gasp as she stood beside me, and turned to see her running along the beach to her car.

' Frances, wait! We'll call the police…'

Carrying her shoes, I set off towards the BMW. I was fifty yards away when I heard its engine begin to race. Frances waved me away, ran the car off the kerb and pulled out to pass the ambulance.

In the pale light reflected from the waves I could see her face, almost stiff with shock. She swerved around the two Mercedes limousines and set off at speed towards Juan-les-Pins.

A mile away, beyond the Golfe-Juan marina, the siren of a police car seesawed through the night. The driver of the second Mercedes stepped from the car and opened the passenger door, beckoning to me. I stared at the dead man on the sand, at his overweight, deflating body. The floating sleeves of his dinner jacket semaphored as the waves swilled up the beach, signalling a death to the sea. I held Frances 's shoes to my face, smelling the perfumed insoles and the fresh scent of brine.

The chauffeur waited while I climbed the sea wall to the Mercedes. He wore evening dress under his bowling jacket, and as I stepped up to him I saw his face and overlit eyes.

'Halder? What are you doing here?'

'Time to leave, Mr Sinclair.'

'You were driving the car? I thought you were guarding Zander…' I pointed to the dead man on the sand, his exposed torso washed by the waves. Halder's face was expressionless. In the headlights of the approaching police car he resembled an accident bystander already bored by the tableau around him, the overturned Audi, a body and the waves. Too distracted to face me, he had distanced himself from any judgement on events.

'We're leaving, Mr Sinclair.' He gestured towards the open passenger door. 'It's best if you come with us.'

A strong hand reached from the rear seat and gripped my wrist.

Too tired to resist, I watched myself step into the car.

'Paul…' Alain Delage drew me towards the jump seat. 'I'm glad we waited for you. I told Jane you'd join us.'

His composed face glowed in the police headlights. As I sat down he smiled with the ready sympathy of a rescuer reaching from a liferaft to help a survivor from the sea.

Facing me, squeezed together in the rear seat, were Jane and Simone Delage, the camcorder across their laps. Jane still wore her black silk dressing gown, and lay half-asleep against Simone's shoulder. Recognizing me, she raised a hand in welcome, and managed a faint flicker of her bloodless lips. I realized that I was still holding Frances Baring's shoes, and placed them on the floor at Delage's feet.

Half a mile behind us, the spotlight of the police car lit up the shacks along the beach. When Halder started the engine of the Mercedes I drummed on the glass behind his head.

'Alain – the police are on their way. We need to talk to them.'

'Not now, Paul.' Delage signalled to Halder. 'The ambulance men will tell them everything. It's been a long day for you…'

He sat back, larger and more confident than I remembered him. The overturned Audi had moved into the deeper water, and the paramedics returned to the beach. They knelt beside the dead security chief, taking a blood sample from his thigh.

Zander's dinner jacket had at last detached itself from his arm. It floated off, working its way across the waves, sleeves moving in a wavering breaststroke, determined to reach the safety of the open sea.

We sped on into an even deeper night.

'Mr sinclair, you've been most helpful.' Sergeant Jucaud paused at the door and tucked his notebook into his jacket. 'Pascal Zander was a close friend of the Cannes police.'

'As he often said – I'm glad to tell you all I know…'

I shook the young detective's hand and watched him walk back to his car. He paused by the Jaguar, admiring its lines, and knelt by the rear wing. Something out of the ordinary had caught his trained eye, perhaps an unpaid parking ticket snagged by the boot handle. With a small knife he teased a paint fleck from the chromium bumper, then raised it to the sunlight and waved reassuringly to me. The array of dents and scratches marking the Jaguar's venerable bodywork were too slight to suggest that the car had been involved in a serious collision. The miscreant paint fleck had probably come from Wilder Penrose's fibreglass door, still bearing its open wound like a duelling scar. Besides, as Sergeant Jucaud knew, I could hardly have reversed the Audi into the sea.