J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

She stared fiercely at the beaches of Juan and Cagnes-sur-Mer, as if hoping for a tsunami to appear and wash the entire coastline into the sea. I remembered the bored and moody woman I had met at the Palais des Festivals, feigning an interest in me as she pondered how to take her revenge on Eden-Olympia.

But Zander's death had driven her to the edge. For the first time she had looked down at her feet and was ready to jump.

'We'll stop them, Frances. But we need hard evidence. The testimony of Philippe Bourget and a couple of chauffeurs' widows won't be enough.'

'The evidence is there. All the ratissages are filmed. There must be a thousand tapes at the Villa Grimaldi. In Menton I went to see a retired judge I met when we bought his old house. He used to be vice-president of the Alpes-Maritimes Development Council, but fell foul of Jacques Médecin and his gangster cronies. They forced him to resign. He was very interested in what I told him.'

'Be careful, Frances. I need to think of Jane. I'll try to get her back to London.'

'She won't go. You know that.' Frances drummed her fists together, tired of my obtuseness. 'She's one of their main targets. They've given her this huge diagnostic project.'

'It's not a front. The system will work.'

'Naturally! It's a brilliant way of recruiting new entrants to the therapy classes. "Too many summer colds, feeling a little seedy? Try one of our special workouts, rubber truncheons provided." Jane is perfect for them.'

'She's pretty spirited.'

'Not any more. For God's sake, Paul, she's a heroin addict. They need a compliant doctor. One who'll supply all the hard drugs they want, ask no questions about strange bruises and find a hospital bed for any whore who gets hurt when some sadistic game goes wrong. They like a paediatrician who can deal with any underage girls and boys who catch VD. And it's always useful to have a doctor who'll sign death certificates when they're needed. Jane will do all that for them.'

'She's already started. She signed the attestation for Zander's death.'

'She saw what happened?'

'No. She was asleep in the back of Delage's Merc. Still, she was there.'

'That's why Alain brought her along. And she genuinely thinks it was an accident?'

'I'm not sure…' I watched the first of the old women leave the church and make their way back to their coach. 'Frances, there's one thing I've never understood. Why did David try to kill you?'

Frances stared me out, barely masking the self-contempt in her face. 'Did he?'

'You know he did. He was on his way to shoot you when he tried to get into the Siemens building.'

'Maybe he was looking for someone else. I can't say. I let him down.'

'That's hard to believe. You loved him, and yet he broke things off. A few weeks later he tried to kill you.'

'I wish he had. He knew I'd gone too far. I showed him a secret self he'd never seen before.'

'If not drugs, then what? Anything to do with the refuge?'

'Everything to do with it. All those nubile thirteen-year-olds, dying for sex and ready to go all the way for a new sound system. At first I thought I'd put the idea into his head, but it was there all along. The only thing it needed was a helping hand from Wilder Penrose. Then the whole horror of it stepped out of the daylight and stared David full in the face. Poor, sweet man, he was too honest.'

'Thirteen-year-olds? Are you saying that…?'

'Yes!' Frances almost shouted at the widows, as if wanting to shock them out of their pious grief. 'I'm saying it. I encouraged him, the way I encouraged you. I loved David, and I wanted him to be happy. If a thirteen-year-old made him happy, why not? At first David didn't like it, so he went to see Penrose.'

'And Wilder said it was just what he needed? When did this start?'

'Six months before he died. It was a secret thing between us. We never talked about it, even though we knew it was going on.'

'Didn't the nuns try to stop him?'

'They didn't know. The girls soon grew up, there was a huge turnover. It all took place at Eden-Olympia.'

'At the house?'

'It started there. He'd bring one of the girls back for the weekend to help with her English. They'd read Through the Looking-Glass together, which they all thought was a scream. David fitted out one of the bedrooms for them. One thing led to another. Penrose told him not to feel guilty. Being true to himself did him good, and fired up his creativity. To begin with it was very innocent.'

'And then? It's not hard to guess.'

'Penrose said he knew a senior executive who'd like to help the girls with their English. Lewis Carroll was surprisingly popular among the CEOs. The girls could see the joke, but they liked their presents. They realized they were meeting some very important men.'

'So within a short time there was -'

'A full-scale paedophile ring.' Frances shook her head, as if despairing over a strange newspaper report. 'David organized everything. He distributed the Alice books and the lending library became the booking system. If you wanted to give an English lesson you picked your favourite copy. David arranged for the particular girl to be driven to you. Door-to-door service. Beats anything laid on for the Caliph of Baghdad.'

'The Alice books were the reservation system? That explains the Russian who came to the house. He assumed I'd taken over, and offered me little Natasha. I wanted to get her to the police.'

'That confused a lot of people. Paedophiles we could cope with, but acting out of genuine selflessness? Far too original for Eden-Olympia.'

'But David cared for the orphans. Everyone said so. If you knew what was going on, why didn't you stop him?'

Frances stood up and gripped the telescope in her hands. She stared at the apartment houses at Antibes-les-Pins, as if wishing that she could hide herself for ever behind their cameras. She seemed exhausted by everything she had told me, but determined that I hear her out.

'Why? Because I was fond of him. I was like those affectionate wives who look the other way when their husbands stand a little too close to an attractive young man. Most of the time we met at my apartment. I didn't want to know.'

'But that wasn't enough to save you?'

'He blamed me. I was too tolerant, I was involved in the deep sickness of Eden-Olympia. The last time we met I could see the disgust he felt for me. I was his Hindley or Rosemary West, I'd turned him into this perverted librarian. He wanted to destroy all those sick people playing their deranged games – Wilder Penrose, our nail-biting Dr Death. Guy Bachelet, the security chief who ran the robbery circus. Olga Carlotti with her call-girl ring. Charbonneau and Robert Fontaine, with their racist plans. And the others.'

'Dominique Serrou? His partner at the refuge. Was she involved in the paedophile business?'

'She was the recruitment officer. She toured the foster homes around Cannes and Nice, looking for likely talent. Girls with abusive "uncles" or histories of VD.'

'A doctor? It's hard to believe.'

'She was vulnerable.' Frances raised her hands in a gesture of sympathy. 'A plain woman who knew she was getting older. Every day dying a little inside. She saw Bachelet losing interest and moving away from her like a ship in a fog bank. She'd have paid any price to bring him back. Penrose convinced her the health of the senior executives depended on certain special therapies. She went along with it.'

'And that made her a target. So May 28 was David's attempt to clean the stables and wipe out the self-hatred he felt.'

'He wanted to kill the people who'd corrupted him. At least five or six had to die, to make the kind of splash that would reach the evening news and stay there.' Frances sat next to me and held my hands, her face as bleak as a tired child's. 'If it hadn't been for me he might have pulled it off. For a few seconds he lowered his guard, just long enough for Halder to kill him.'