J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Until Jane and I arrived?'

She opened my hand and studied my palm line, then closed it like a book she had decided not to read. 'Sorry, Paul, but that's true. They were using you, so I thought I'd do the same. I decided to build a maze of my own. Their maze was Eden-Olympia. Mine was the inside of your head.'

'And I was happy to play there?'

'You were a small boy again. Then I started to like you, which I hadn't bargained on. But that didn't affect my real goal.'

'Which was?'

'The same as Penrose's. I wanted to provoke you, to test you to destruction. I wanted to find your dirtiest little secret, and then work on it until you became disgusted with yourself and needed to explode. You'd go to the British Consul, talk to your MEP, take the story to Fleet Street.'

'It almost worked.'

'At first you were really coming along. You found those orthopaedic harnesses very perverse.'

'What man doesn't?'

'So true. There's nothing too weird to switch a man on sexually. You'd worn a surgical harness when Jane first got you excited. But then you threw everyone. You followed a child whore to the Rue Valentin. Penrose and Zander couldn't believe their luck. You looked like you wanted to fuck her.'

'No. Not in the sense you mean.'

'Don't worry, I understand.' Frances patted my head, as if I were an elderly spaniel who had given dumb but loyal service. 'You were starting to miss Jane, and little Natasha reminded you of your first love, the doctor's daughter in Maida Vale. Penrose thought you were a full-blown paedophile, just waiting to climb into the toy cupboard.'

'I let him down. How sad.'

'Never mind. You like girlish young women, that's all. The paedo line didn't lead anywhere. I had a last go at the film festival, hoping those Thai mammasans would stir you up with some juicy kiddy-porn. But I could see it in their eyes – they knew you weren't interested.'

'Sorry, Frances. I was looking for Jane.'

'You missed her, and being a voyeur was the next best thing. You're curious to see Jane with other lovers – it liberates you from all that old-fashioned jealousy you felt when your mother was fondled by her men-friends. I'm only surprised you drew the line at Zander.'

'A police chief? One has to have a few principles. He wanted to fuck my wife so that Alain and Simone could watch.'

'I'm shocked. That is going too far.'

'Don't laugh. It was a close thing. Still, I didn't want him dead. Frances…?' She had turned away, covering her face as a tourist coach turned into the car park. 'Has someone seen us? Meldrum…?'

'No. I was thinking of Zander and that terrible road… the water burning around the car.' Her voice fell away, and she turned almost searchingly towards me, as if I could reassemble her memories. 'Those nightmare headlights before the accident…'

' Frances, it wasn't an accident. They killed him.'

'Yes…' Blood flushed her cheeks, and she stared at herself in the driving mirror. Embarrassed, she opened the door and stepped out, then bent down and said to me: 'Yes, they killed him. But I helped them, Paul. I set it up for them…'

I found frances by the telescope, pacing to and fro under the trees, fingers tearing a pine cone she had picked from a branch. The black-clad women were walking towards the church, bereaved wives and mothers making their annual visit to the Virgin of La Garoupe.

Frances stared irritably at the women, unable to face this chorus of the undead. Aware of her blonde hair and tailored trouser-suit, she pulled at her buttons and scuffed through the gravel to the telescope. Leaning against the brass barrel, she stared across the bay to Golfe-Juan, searching for Zander's overturned car. I realized that she had chosen La Garoupe as our meeting place in order to punish herself.

' Frances, come on. Be honest, you loathed Zander…'

'Where is it?' She pushed me away, and tossed the pine cone from one hand to the other. 'A grey Audi – I can't see it.'

'It's in a police lab – they must be checking the brakes and steering.'

'Why? We can tell them all they need to know. Or will we, Paul? Somehow I doubt it…' She slapped the telescope, and her rings sent out a sharp metal cry that drew the eyes of the widows.

'Give me a coin – ten francs. The car must be there…'

I held her shoulders and steered her to the wooden bench on the observation platform. 'Let's rest here. There's nothing on the beach: I went back to have a look. Frances, we were two hundred yards away when it happened.'

'It was a set-up. Didn't you guess?' Her moment of panic had passed, and she spoke calmly. 'I was the decoy. While you were looking for Jane, I played the vamp with Zander. I told him to follow me back to Marina Baie des Anges.'

'And that's why he trailed us? He must have seen me in the passenger seat.'

'He didn't mind. I said you were a great fan of threesomes.'

'So all that roaming around Super-Cannes in the dark? The back streets near the Vallauris road…?'

'I was giving everyone time to catch up. Alain Delage told me to take the coast road to Juan-les-Pins. Drink-drivers are always ending up in the sea.' She raised her arm and threw the pine cone down the slope, watching it bounce into the deep ferns. 'Believe me, I didn't think they planned to kill him.'

'So you knew nothing – don't blame yourself.'

'I should have known!' Disgusted with herself, she turned her eyes from the beach. 'Until then I could cope with Eden-Olympia. But the waves were on fire. Paul, that was a warning – these people have to be stopped, or others are going to die.'

'They'll pull back now. Delage took a risk in killing Zander. He was head of security.'

'Acting head. He knew too much, and that made him greedy. He had all the videotapes, and he'd started to put pressure on the smaller companies. He wanted huge share options built into his salary package. Besides, there was one other mark against him.'

'He was just another Arab? Still, Yasuda is Japanese. There are Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese in every boardroom. A Mexican CEO lives on my avenue.'

'But they're paid-up members of the new elite. They're the corporate chosen people. Zander ran a security firm in Piraeus before he came here. He was technical services, one up from the janitors. The top managements at Eden-Olympia are deeply racist, but in a new way. The corporate pecking order is all that counts. They know the world would collapse without them, and think they can get away with anything.'

'They probably can.'

'No!' Frances pulled at my shirt. 'Listen to me. Some of the therapy groups are starting to stockpile weapons. They're setting up "hunting lodges" near the immigrant housing estates in La Bocca and Mandelieu. Technically, they'll be safe depositories for pharmaceuticals and industrial diamonds, and the guards will be heavily armed.'

'But their real role will be to provoke the local criminals and layabouts?'

'And then take on the immigrant population as a whole. We're back in Weimar Germany, with a weekend Freikorps fighting the Reds. Sooner or later some corporate raider with a messianic streak will turn up, backed by all the natural gas in Yakut, and decide that social Darwinism deserves another go. Listen to Alain Delage and Penrose talking together and you know they're just waiting for him to arrive.'

'Dictators always step into an open jackboot. How many executives are involved in the therapy classes?'

'Something like three hundred. A lot are off on overseas trips, but most weekends at least a hundred take part. They're operating as far away as Nice and St-Raphaël. There's some grim stuff going on – nasty child porn, rapes of young Arab wives…'

'The police will step in.'

'They're looking the other way. Eden-Olympia is expanding. Destivelle and the holding company are buying thousands or hectares to the west of the D103, right up to the edge of Sophia-Antipolis.' Grimly, Frances gestured towards the open hinterland beyond the coast. 'The taxes paid by Eden-Olympia amount to billions of francs. They pay for new schools and colleges and sports stadia. That's why we're so popular. Wilder Penrose and Delage have to be stopped, along with their lunatic scheme. Not because it's crazy, but because it's going to work. The whole world will soon be a business-park colony, run by a lot of tight-lipped men who pretend to be weekend psychos.'