J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Mr Sinclair?' Halder steadied me when I swayed against the door. 'Hold on for a few minutes. We'll get you out of here.'

'I'm all right.' I pointed to the exit, and the sounds of a motorcycle siren. 'What about the police? They'll be looking for the man who killed Frances.'

'They don't know about it yet. You're safe, Mr Sinclair. And Frances…'

'The people outside the lift – several of them saw me.'

'They saw a man with blood on his face. A food mixer might have blown up. No one will identify you.'

'A pity.' I held my hands away from me, repelled by them and their past. 'Poor woman – why did they need to kill her?'

'She was going to cause trouble. Frances Baring had important friends, and some of them weren't happy about Eden-Olympia.'

'Everything is winding down – the special actions, the robberies and raids. Penrose is calling them off.'

'That's not true.'

'I talked to him this afternoon. He explained everything – they realize now they were going too far, it was all out of control. That's why I came here – I wanted to tell Frances it was over.'

'It isn't over. Penrose was leading you on.' Halder spoke quietly but firmly, no longer afraid to point out my self-delusions. 'There are more raids scheduled for the next month than ever before. Penrose and Delage are thinking about Eden II, they want to try out large-scale actions. They're planning racist attacks in Nice, La Napoule and Cagnes-sur-Mer. I've seen the programme at the Villa Grimaldi – it looks like an advent calendar.'

'Armed attacks?'

'Shotguns, pumps, semi-automatics. The bullets have Ahmed and Mohammed written on them. Key security personnel wear sidearms outside Eden-Olympia.' Halder opened his jacket to expose a holster clipped to his belt. 'They're stockpiling weapons at the Villa Grimaldi.'

'I've seen them. The CRS will close the whole place down tomorrow.'

'They'll never be called in. Besides, most people secretly approve. You've listened to Penrose. He dresses up in fancy talk what everybody will tell you in a pied-noir bar. Have a few pastis too many after a football match and give some Arab a good kicking – it fires you up. Your wife finds you more of a man and you work better the next day. Same thing for all those top executives.'

'Then why did Penrose say he was ending the programmes?'

'He wanted you here. Then they could deal with you and Frances at the same time. A classic crime passionnel. Or even a sex game that went wrong. You know how the English are…'

'And Jane?'

'They don't see her as a problem. She's already one of them, though she doesn't know it.'

'I need to find her.'

'Right. And then?'

'We'll head for the airport, drive into Italy, anything to get her away from here. She and the Delages are going to a street party somewhere. Ask the night staff at the clinic to page her.'

'Too risky. Anyway, we know where she'll be. The street party is in the Rue Valentin.'

'So…' I thought of Jane's lurid costume. 'The whore's garb – like Antoinette and her milkmaids.'

'Mr Sinclair? You aren't making sense.'

'You didn't see what she was wearing. How do you know all this?'

'Delage wanted me to go along. I like Dr Jane, but too much for what he had in mind. Anyway, Penrose earmarked a different job for me.'

'Be careful – they used you to kill Greenwood. Sooner or later they'll give you another target.'

Halder turned the ignition key and listened to the sound of the engine. 'They already have, Mr Sinclair.'

'Me?' I pressed my head against the window, almost hoping that I could break the glass. 'That's why you were in Frances's apartment. You were waiting there, ready to kill me. Why didn't you?'

'Because I like you.' Halder stared at his instruments. 'And I like Dr Jane. Besides, you're more useful to me alive. You're the one person they never predicted, the kind they can't really handle.'

'Too dull, too normal?'

'Something like that. There are things Eden-Olympia can't cope with – the key that breaks in the lock, the toilet that backs up, the druggy woman you fall in love with. The everyday world where the human race still lives. It never arrived at Eden-Olympia.'

'And you're going to bring it there?'

'Exactly. Trashed cars, a few house fires and office break-ins. Eden-Olympia can fight off a billion-dollar takeover bid, but a little dog shit on the shoe leaves it helpless.'

'So the graffiti, the Green slogans – you're behind them?'

'Along with a few friends. I'm climbing to the top, Mr Sinclair, in my own way…'

We drove past the parked cars to the exit ramp. When we reached the slip road I pointed to a small crowd dispersing on the steps below the main lobby. I recognized the woman with the child who had shouted at me. Still agitated, she watched resentfully as two traffic policemen remounted their motorcycles. Clearly they had been unimpressed by the story of a blood-stained man in the lift.

'So they haven't found Frances?'

'Not yet. They're still waiting for you, Mr Sinclair.'

As we turned onto the slip road I gripped the steering wheel, forcing Halder to brake. The traffic policemen sat astride their cycles, talking to a sharp-faced man in a camel-hair jacket and patent-leather shoes.

'Alexei… what's he doing here?'

'Who?' Halder squinted into the rear-view mirror. 'The man with the cycle cops?'

'Alexei – a small-time Russian crook. He came to the house after we arrived. I saw him in the Rue Valentin, renting out an eleven-year-old girl.'

'He works for Eden-Olympia now. His name is Golyadkin, Dmitri Golyadkin.'

'He said Alexei.'

'Alice, Mr Sinclair. He thought you'd taken over the library…'

I watched the Russian talking to the policeman, apparently discussing his illegally parked car. But his eyes never left the balcony far above him. Despite the smart clothes, he looked cheap and unsavoury, like the smell of his body as we wrestled on the grass.

Then I remembered the coarse odour of a man's sweat in Frances 's kitchen.

'Golyadkin? Did he kill Frances?'

'I hate to say it, but maybe he did. Alain Delage finds him useful. He has a bunk in the guardroom at the security building. I'll deal with him later for you…'

The promenade of the night had begun in the Rue Valentin. I turned the Peugeot into a side street, the Avenue des Fleurs, and waited for Halder to park his Range Rover behind me. Groups of Arab and eastern European men smoked their cigarettes, while the young French whores clicked their heels and stared for inspiration into the night air. The older women in their sixties gazed at each other from their street corner, shifting from one tired ankle to the other like stoical commuters.

I left the car and walked back to the Range Rover.

'Frank, can you see her?'

'Not yet, Mr Sinclair. She'll be here soon.'

Halder seemed unsettled, his eyes avoiding the exposed thighs of the transvestites who ambled past like Olympic oarsmen in drag. He pulled a blue trenchcoat from the rear seat and buttoned it over his jacket. Together we walked down the Rue Valentin. Nothing appeared to happen, but a busy invisible commerce was taking place.

One of the bored French whores leaned forward on her stilettos and began to walk at a brisk pace. Ten steps behind her a young Arab followedwith quick strides, like amessenger with an urgent telegram.

Cars cruised the kerb, drivers staring ahead but communicating by some sixth sense with the pimps who stood with their backs to the road. Everyone trafficked in time, sex displaced into blocks of darkness, thirty-minute cages of the night where pleasure flared and was gone like a shooting star. Somewhere in this third-rate hell were Jane and her street party.