J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'It did. Remarkably callous, in fact. So the house was part of the experiment?'

'Penrose wanted you to think about David. Where better to start than lying in David's bed? They knew you'd hear the gunshots as you made love to your child bride. Those murders sent a corporate shudder around the world. Everyone was aware something sinister had happened, and might happen again. Your job was to relive the whole nightmare. They cleaned the place up, but there were traces of David everywhere – the same bathroom, the same kitchen, the sun-loungers marked with his barrier cream. Penrose wanted you to take on David's role, and start to think like him. In case your mind wandered, they picked Señora Morales to be the housekeeper. One very garrulous Spanish lady. She'd seen Bachelet and Dr Serrou lying dead in Guy's bedroom, all the blood and drugs and Dominique in her erotic underwear. She was just bursting to fill you in with the background material.'

'So they opened the door to the maze and pushed me in. But how did Penrose know where I'd go?'

'He didn't. You started by nosing the air, and you didn't like the smell. You talked about going back to London. You were bored with Cannes and a wife who never stopped working. But then you found the bullets in the garden. Zander's men had missed them, but it was a blessing in disguise.'

'From then on I was hooked?'

'You were playing detective. But Penrose guessed that wasn't the only reason. You were starting to identify with David. You knew he'd changed since coming to Eden-Olympia. So you, too, wanted to change.'

'Did David take part in the actions? The attacks on blacks and Arabs in La Bocca?'

'No.' Frances grimaced into her cupped hands. 'He didn't like those at all. Penrose and Bachelet kept him in the dark. Anyway, he was developing a recreational side of his own.'

'What exactly? You were with him, Frances. What appealed to him – the rapes, the attacks on prostitutes?'

'He hated those.'

'Wilder must have talked to him. He can be very persuasive, setting out his Sadeian world, his do-it-yourself psychopathy kit.'

'We've all had the pep talk. Don't worry, David could see the benefits. Eden-Olympia was booming. But David didn't like the human cost.'

'Nor did I.'

'At first, Paul.' Frances stared bleakly at me. 'Then you changed.

Now you don't take part but you go along for the ride. You're like all men – violence is your real turn-on, not sex. Penrose teased you, feeding you hints of a secret Eden-Olympia, letting you watch a little tasty truncheon work. Like that beating they gave the trinket salesman in the clinic car park. The whole thing was staged for you. They knew you'd go back to the Jaguar parked on the roof. Halder signalled when you'd left Jane and were on the way. They put the African and the Russian up against the wall and made sure you heard the screams.'

'I can still hear them. Nasty, but…'

'Effective? The raid on the Cardin Foundation really got you going – without all those wailing geishas we'd never have made it into bed.'

'Not true, Frances.'

'You practically came over the kitchen floor. All the while, Penrose was drip-feeding his "explore your own pathology" message to you. And you wanted to hear it. Jane was too tired to have sex with you, but after a little pethidine she'd relax with Simone Delage. That was interesting, and you didn't mind too much.'

'Easy to say.'

'It intrigued you, for the first time you could stand back from yourself and enjoy a strange new feeling. And you were getting closer to David. Every time you stalled they laid down more scent. The appointments diary in David's computer. It didn't take you long to work out it was actually a target list.'

'Penrose supplied that?'

'Of course. Once you saw it, there was no stopping you. Then there was the Riviera News transcript of the special radio report.'

'By the rogue journalist who suddenly moved to Portugal?'

'He didn't exist. The report was never broadcast.'

'So who wrote the text?'

'I did. Zander and Penrose gave me a rough outline. They told Meldrum to hand it to you and hint at sinister goings-on.' Frances spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining to a confused tourist how he had lost himself in a strange city. The release of this long-repressed material seemed to calm her, rage diffused into the cooling waters of truth. Before I could interrupt, she pressed on: 'I added a few interesting contact numbers – Isabel Duval and the chauffeurs' widows. The first thing you did was drive out to see them. Once you'd actually met them you knew there was something wrong with the official story.'

'There was. The brainstorm explanation never made sense.'

'You started exploring the death route, feeling yourself into David's mind when he set off with his rifle. You were always talking about Lee Harvey Oswald, Hungerford and Columbine. So Zander told Halder to take you on a guided tour.'

'My very own Dealey Plaza. It was quite a day. The crime photos showed the nasty little hobbies that people have at Eden-Olympia.'

'They were hobbies – assigned by Penrose as part of the therapy programme. That's why some of it looks so amateurish. Berthoud with his old-fashioned scales and smuggler's suitcase: he was acting out a fantasy of a drug-dealer and not doing it very well. Guy Bachelet with the stolen jewellery he couldn't be bothered to get rid of. The photos drew you in even deeper. You could see that Halder knew more than he let on.'

'He killed David. Did he shoot the hostages?'

'No. Zander led the execution squad. They arrested them outside the TV centre and took them back to the house. Then Kellerman shot them in the garden with David's rifle. Someone told me that Cordier and Bourget made a run for it and everything was botched. That's how you came to find the bullets.'

'So Halder was still on the garage roof?'

'They couldn't get him away from David's body. He was weeping all over him.' Frances pressed a fist to her mouth, forcing the blood from her blanched lips. 'Now he's using you to take his revenge. Be careful, Paul – you're a very small piece on Halder's board.'

'I know that.' I took her hand and kissed her wrist. 'Aren't you playing the same game, Frances? Did Zander and Penrose set up our meeting at the Palais des Festivals?'

'No. That was me. I'd had time to think about David. We'd split up very painfully. He more or less threw me out.'

'But why? I thought you were close.'

'Too close. That was the reason. I was frightened I'd lose him. So I showed him things about himself he didn't know.'

'Such as?'

'It doesn't matter now.' Frances stared fiercely at the hills beyond Cannes. 'Eden-Olympia corrupted David and destroyed him. He was the real victim on May 28. I watched him die in the gutter like an animal, crying in pain. After that I wanted to expose Wilder Penrose and Zander and Professor Kalman, but I needed hard evidence.'

'The photographs, the truth about the hostages…?'

'Not hard enough. I'd been David's lover for months, my flat was full of his things. Zander wanted to frame me there and then. If Penrose hadn't stepped in I would have been charged as a co-conspirator. They'd have found me guilty.'

'Twenty years in a French prison. Or worse. Good for Wilder Penrose.'

'He knew I'd be useful. So I had to go along with them. I work in the property office, I know about all the lettings on the Côte d'Azur – which Omani millionaire is moving into a particular villa in Californie, which Turkish banker is buying a jewellery store in Villeneuve-Loubet or leasing warehouse space somewhere. I laid on the Cardin Foundation raid, and the marina hijacking at Golfe-Juan. Like it or not, I've been deeply implicated from the start. I wanted revenge for David, but there was nothing I could do.'