J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

Careful to remain calm, and glad of the day's first injection, I returned the sergeant's salute. I waited until he had driven away, and then strolled back to the pool. I stared at my reflection in the water, trying to accept that I had spoken for twenty minutes to the sergeant and told him absolutely nothing about the true cause of Zander's death.

A publicity plane was carrying out its morning tour of Eden-Olympia, advertising a clay-pigeon range in the hills beyond Grasse. I lay on the sun-lounger, feeling the guilt and pain ebb from my knee. A faint steam rose from the wet footprints Jane had left on the tiles. Looking at the tiny insteps, I thought of Frances Baring's shoes, with their scent of toes and midnight sea, now wrapped in a supermarket bag in the Jaguar's boot.

In the five days since Zander's death, Frances had not once returned to her office. Her secretary told me that she had taken a fortnight's leave, but her telephone at Marina Baie des Anges had been disconnected. I could still hear her cry of fear when she recognized Zander's body, and her panic as she ran blindly to her car. I needed to see her again, and somehow reassure her that Zander's death had been an accident. Already I had largely convinced myself.

A lethal evening had turned into an even stranger night. I remembered the drive back to Eden-Olympia, when I had been too stunned to demand that Halder stop the car and report the incident to the police. I stared into the night, at the closed filling stations and supermarkets, while Alain Delage flexed his thighs and the two women huddled together in the back of the Mercedes, a secure enclave in a world of violent men. Simone had watched Jane protectively, like a mother with a tired child, warning me away when I tried to take her hands.

As we reached Eden-Olympia I expected a detachment of French gendarmerie to be waiting for us. Too tired to join the others for a nightcap, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and fell asleep with the light on. I woke an hour later, and heard the sprinklers playing on the cycad below my window. Dance music came from the lounge, the sweet strains and swoops of a 1940s tango. I went downstairs, still wearing David Greenwood's kelp-stained dinner jacket, and found that Jane had revived. She was dancing with Halder, one arm outstretched as he bowed her backwards across his thigh.

The Delages sat side by side in the armchairs, watching the dance like impresarios trying out a scene from a new musical, a tale of tragic love across the divide set in a shabby Buenos Aires dance hall. Halder moved with his light-footed grace, but he looked ill at ease, well aware that the dance might continue once the music had stopped. Alain Delage was filming the tango, and behind the camcorder his face bore the same expression that I had seen during the beating of the African trinket salesman.

I realized that a target was being primed. I stepped through the cigarette smoke and slipped my arm around Jane, who moved through a deep dream of her own and scarcely seemed to notice that her partner had changed. Responding to my clumsy steps, she smiled at me as if recognizing an old acquaintance who had strayed briefly into her life. But Halder bowed to me from the door, all too aware of the danger he had faced.

Alain Delage had taken over as Eden-Olympia's security chief, and Wilder Penrose's prize pupil was now his most eager collaborator.

The introverted and mousy accountant so despised by Frances Baring had turned into a confident and well-adjusted sociopath.

I lay on the sun-lounger, listening to Jane's shower, and glad to have shared a late breakfast with her. Sergeant Jucaud had called at seven, delaying the start of her professional day and providing a small window of opportunity to revive a fading marriage. Sitting with us in the kitchen, the sergeant questioned me about Zander's 'state of mind', a euphemism for drunkenness.

Analysis of the dead man's blood had indicated a high level of alcohol in his system. There were no witnesses to the accident, Jucaud told us, and it seemed likely that Zander had fallen into a stupor at the wheel of the Audi and met his death alone on the night sand.

Jane nodded her agreement, but I was surprised to learn that she had signed the death certificate. According to the official account, she was driving along the coast road and saw the paramedics beside the overturned car, stepped out and confirmed that Zander had died from severe head and chest injuries.

I listened to all this without comment. Sergeant Jucaud was a graduate of an elite police college, and certainly no part of any conspiracy between Eden-Olympia and the Cannes police. But one offhand remark unsettled me. Senior officers at the Villa Grimaldi had reported that I was one of the last people to speak to Zander, and had even seemed to threaten him.

Jane emerged from the terrace, dressed in a cream linen suit, hair tied with a black silk ribbon. She carried her coffee cup but barely needed the stimulant, moving in an easy, amphetamine stride. As always, I was amazed by how quickly she could recover her poise and energy. She waved cheerfully to the gardener, Monsieur Anvers, and threw her biscuit to a sparrow watching from the rose pergola. Once again I felt all my old affection for her, a warmth that transcended Eden-Olympia and everything that had happened to us.

At the same time, I could see how much she had changed.

She had put on weight, and the skin of her face seemed grey and toneless. She often apologized for the bloody stools in the lavatory that she forgot to flush away, and blamed the constipating diamorphine. Without thinking, she tossed her coffee dregs into the swimming pool.

'Paul… do you think Jucaud was satisfied?'

'Our stories matched. You sounded very convincing.'

'They weren't stories. It was an accident.'

'Are you sure?'

'I was there.' Jane leaned her head back and let the sun play on her pallid skin. 'We were overtaking and he lost control. I didn't tell Jucaud because it would drag in everyone else.'

'That's thoughful of you. Who was driving?'

'Alain, I think. Zander was very drunk. I could smell it on the beach.'

'I didn't like his cologne either. I'm surprised you could smell it from the car – you never left it.'

'I did.' Jane seemed genuinely indignant. 'Alain and Simone both said I went down to Zander with my valise.'

'I must have missed that. Did you see the accident?'

'More or less. It happened so quickly. The cars barely touched.'

'They didn't need to.' I watched the coffee grounds sinking through the water. 'Three tons of black Merc swerving after you… most people would do anything to get out of the way. Who was in the first car?'

'Yasuda and someone from Du Pont. And a chauffeur I haven't seen before.'

'He was good. That was highly skilled offensive driving. Alain probably brought in a police pursuit specialist.'

'Paul…' Jane stared into my pupils, as if suspecting that I had overdosed myself. 'You're getting obsessive again. First David, now this accident. It was tragic for Zander, but…'

'No one liked him?'

'He was too fleshy for me.' Jane grimaced, exposing the fine cracks in her make-up. 'Still, at least he was human.'

'Human enough to play Alain's games with you?'

'Paul, we agreed not to talk about that. It's my way of relaxing. Men get so nervous when we hitch up our skirts – they think mummy's going to have sex with the milkman.'

I took her discoloured hands, with their chipped nails. 'Jane, listen to me for once. Alain is dangerous. I watched his eyes while you were dancing with Halder. I saw something your telemetric links will never diagnose – the purest strain of plantation owner. The Belgian Congo under Leopold II, very nasty and very racist. Conrad wrote a novel about it.'