J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'It was a set book at school.'

'You actually read it?'

'The course notes. It was too frightening.' She stood up and straightened her skirt. 'I'm late for work. Paul, why don't you go back to London for a while?'

'I need to look after you.'

'That's sweet – I mean it. How is Frances? There haven't been any messages for days.'

'She's away. Zander's death shocked her badly.'

'Find her. You need her, Paul.'

'Should I marry her?'

'If you want to. I'd be happy for you…'

I walked Jane down to the drive and watched her as she reversed, admiring her wristy gear changes. She looked very elegant and cool in her linen suit, but I noticed a coffee stain on her sleeve. She treated me to the long smile and slow slide of the eyes that I remembered from our happy days. Our marriage would soon be over, but that made me all the more determined to save her.

My knee throbbed again, counting the hours as reliably as Big Ben.

I sat on my bed in the Alice room, the hypodermic wallet on my lap, and listened to Jane's Peugeot leave the residential enclave and set off for the clinic. Its third gear screamed in the French mode that Jane had adopted. Top was a sign of weakness, of defensive driving reserved for the elderly and infirm, an evolutionary relic that had survived into a more advanced age. Jane belonged to an epoch that accelerated and braked, but never cruised.

Through the window I could see Simone Delage on her balcony, setting out her toiletries on the table like the pieces on a chessboard. A thick cosmetic cream covered her face, a mask that hid nothing. On the day after Zander's death we had met while we walked to our cars, but her expression was as depthless as the artificial lakes in Eden-Olympia. Only the presence of Jane brought a tremor of life to her impassive features.

Yet there was nothing prurient about her exploitation of Jane.

She and Alain approached the freeports of sex like sophisticated tourists in a strange souk, exploring any alleyway that might offer an intriguing cuisine. To these educated travellers even human flesh would prompt no more than a mild query about the recipe.

At Eden-Olympia they dined on the à la carte pathologies prepared for them by Wilder Penrose.

I knew that they saw me as a rather dull, voyeurist husband, enjoying my wife's infidelities. They had showed no surprise when I stepped through the cannabis smoke and took Jane from Halder's arms, assuming that I was sexually excited by the sight of them dancing together. By watching our wives have sex with strangers, we dismantled the mystery of exclusive love, and dispelled the last illusion that each of us was anything but alone.

I turned from Simone and considered my knee, as gnarled and rooted in itself as the bole of a lightning-scarred oak. I inserted the needle into the phial of painkiller and drew the pale fluid into the syringe. As I checked the meniscus my eyes strayed to the Alice characters on the wardrobe door. Carroll had furnished his young heroine with every manner of threats to her sanity, but she had survived them all with her unstoppable good sense.

Pondering this, I thought of Sergeant Jucaud's comment that I had been seen acting aggressively towards Zander. It had taken the detective five days to question me, which suggested that his information was part of a deliberate tip-off. He had pretended to admire the Jaguar, but had clearly been searching for signs of collision damage.

Was I being set up as Zander's killer? Months might pass, as I limped around the business park, my mind clouded by Jane's painkillers, a drugged lab animal being saved for a last injection, the final sacrifice when a scapegoat was needed. I could rely on Wilder Penrose to protect me, but Alain Delage might want me out of the way so that he and Simone could have Jane to themselves…

I searched the veins under my knee, a Mandelbrot pattern of shrivelled capillaries that mapped its own kind of addiction. Then I thought again of the ever-sensible Alice, swallowing her 'drink me' potion. I put down the hypodermic and held the phial to the light. The label was printed with my name, but 'inject me' might well have been stamped across it in bold letters.

My knee waited for relief, but for once I put away the syringe and fastened the leather wallet. I needed to be alert if I was to cope with Zander's death and the danger facing me, since other deaths would soon take place. I needed my infected ligaments and the metal pins clawing at my kneecap. I needed to think, and I needed pain.

The supermarket on the main concourse of Antibes-les-Pins was filled with a bounty of attractive merchandise: plates of charcuterie, olive breads, pyramids of a new super-detergent, dory and gurnard fresh enough for the surf to twinkle on their scales.

But there were no customers. The residents of the high-security complex might have retreated so deeply into their defensible space that they had eliminated the need for food, bread and wine. The advertising displays in the estate office overlooking the roundabout on the RN7 had the look of museum tableaux, and the artist's impression of a concourse as crowded as the Champs-Elysées, lined with boutiques and thronged by high-spending customers, seemed to describe a forgotten twentieth-century world.

Only the cyber-café next door was serving any customers. The computer terminals facing the bar were out of use, but three bikers in metallized boots and Mad Max leathers sat at the outdoor tables.

They formed a feral presence in the hyper-modern complex, like carrion-birds on a skyscraper cornice, filling an unplanned niche in the ecology of the future.

The supermarket might have been empty, but the retinal impact of its deserted aisles still surprised me. In the week since putting away the hypodermic syringe my senses had sharpened, as if an anaesthetized world had woken up and seized me in its grip.

Reality had come into sudden focus, and for the first time in many months I was reaching into levels of my mind that had been closed like the floors of an empty telephone exchange. Each morning, after Jane left for the clinic, I drew a measure of painkiller from the phial that she prepared for me, then vented the pale liquid into the washbasin. Curiously, not only was my mind clearer, but the pain in my knee had eased. For once, Alice 's example had not been the best to follow…

I saw Isabel Duval as soon as she entered the supermarket.

Disguised in a headscarf and dark glasses, she hovered like an inexperienced shoplifter beside a display of gourmet cat food.

She was pale and self-possessed, but glanced warily over her shoulder as if sensing a pursuer, only to realize that she had seen herself in a display mirror.

I was glad to meet her again. After speaking on the phone, I mailed the small package to her from a post office in Le Cannet, and expected her to take a month or more to deal with it. But she contacted me within the week.

'Madame Duval… you look well.' I held her hand before she could draw it away from me. 'It's good of you to help me.'

'Not at all…' She peered at me over her sunglasses, unsettled by my restless and eager manner. 'I'm happy to do what I can. You were David's friend.'

'Exactly. I'm still concerned for him. That's why I thought of you. There's a café next door – we'll be less conspicuous.'

We passed a shallow tank filled with lobsters, sidling around each other like airliners looking for a runway. I took Madame Duval's arm and steered her towards the entrance. She frowned at the bikers lounging in the sun, irritated by their presence on her doorstep.

'Mr Sinclair, these young men… are they messengers?'

'Let's hope not. I hate to think what the message might be.'

We sat down at the empty tables, and I ordered mineral water from the waitress. 'Madame Duval, there's no reason why we shouldn't meet.'