J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights

'Let's try to calm things…' Crawford raised his arms to the mourners. 'This isn't a bull-ring. Think of Bibi now.' When the Reverend Davis stepped quickly through the gate with an embarrassed flurry, Crawford shouted: 'Goodbye, Vicar. Our thanks go to you.'

Handing the spade to the impassive gravediggers, he waited for the mourners to move away. He pulled off his black crepe tie and shrugged his crumpled jacket on to his shoulders, the same gesture that I had seen at the Club Nautico when the would-be rapist made his escape.

The cemetery was almost empty. Paula Hamilton slipped away with Hennessy, denying me another chance of speaking to her. Mrs Shand was helped by Sonny Gardner into the rear seat of her white Mercedes, where she sat grim-mouthed. Andersson stared at the grave for a last time. He smiled gamely at Crawford, who waited amiably beside him, saluted the settling earth and walked stiffly to the gate.

The gravediggers nodded without comment as they accepted Crawford's tip, resigned to any behaviour by the foreigners in their midst. Crawford patted their shoulders and stood beside the grave, head lowered as he mused to himself. Almost alone now in the cemetery, he had switched off his ready grin, and a more thoughtful face settled itself over his fine bones. An emotion close to regret seemed to touch his eyes, but he gestured in a resigned way and set off for the gate.

When I left a few minutes later he was staring over the wall at the gilded statues of the Catholic cemetery.

'Cheerful, aren't they?' he commented as I walked past him. 'One good reason for being a Catholic.'

'You're right.' I stopped to size him up. 'Still, I imagine she's happy where she is.'

'Let's hope so. She was very sweet, and that's cold ground in there. Can I give you a lift?' He pointed to a Porsche parked under the cypresses. 'It's a long way back to town.'

'Thanks, but I have a car.'

'Charles Prentice? You're Frank's brother.' He shook my hand with unfeigned warmth. 'Bobby Crawford, tennis pro and dogsbody at the Club Nautico. It's a pity we had to meet here. I've been away a few days, looking at property along the coast. Betty Shand's itching to open a new sports club.'

While he spoke I was struck by his intense but refreshing manner, and by the guileless way he held my arm as we walked towards our cars. He was attentive and eager to please, and I found it hard to believe that he was the man who had carried out the attempted rape. I could only assume that he had lent the car to a friend with far rougher tastes.

'I wanted to talk to you,' I said. 'Hennessy tells me you're an old colleague of Frank's.'

'Absolutely. He brought me into the club – until then I was just a glorified tennis bum.' He grinned, showing his expensively-capped teeth. 'Frank never stops talking about you. In a way I think you're his real father.'

'I'm his brother. The boring, older brother who always got him out of scrapes. This time I've lost my touch.'

Crawford stopped in the middle of the road, ignoring a car that swerved around him. He stared at the air with his arms raised to the sky, as if waiting for a sympathetic genie to materialize out of the spiralling dust. 'Charles, I know. What's going on? This is Kafka re-shot in the style of Psycho. You've talked to him?'

'Of course. He insists he's guilty. Why?'

'No one knows. We're all racking our brains. I think it's Frank playing his strange games again, like those peculiar chess problems he's always making up. King to move and mate in one, though this time there are no other pieces on the board and he has to mate himself.'

Crawford leaned against his Porsche, one hand playing with the tattered roof liner that hung over the passenger seat. Behind the reassuring smile his eyes were taking in every detail of my face and posture, my choice of shirt and shoes, as if searching for some clue to Frank's predicament. I realized that he was more intelligent that his obsessive tennis playing and over-friendly manner suggested.

'Did Frank have it in for the Hollingers?' I asked him. 'Was there any reason at all why he might have set fire to the house?'

'No-Hollinger was a harmless old buffer. I won't say I cared for him myself. He and Alice were two of the reasons why Britain doesn't have a film industry any longer. They were rich, likeable amateurs-no one would have wanted to hurt them.'

'Someone did. Why?'

'Charles… it may have been an accident. Perhaps they microwaved one too many of their god-awful canapés, there was a sudden spark and the whole place went up like a haystack. Then Frank, for some weird reason of his own, begins to play Joseph K.' Crawford lowered his voice, as if concerned that the dead in the cemetery might overhear him. 'When I first knew Frank he talked about your mother a lot. He was afraid he'd helped to kill her.'

'No-we were far too young. We didn't even begin to grasp why she wanted to kill herself.'

Crawford brushed the dust from his hands, glad to acquit us of any conceivable complicity. 'I know, Charles. Still, there's nothing more satisfying than confessing to a crime you haven't committed…'

A car emerged from the Catholic cemetery and turned to cruise past us. Paula Hamilton was at the wheel, David Hennessy beside her. He waved to us, but Dr Hamilton stared ahead, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

'She looks upset.' I winced at a clumsy gear change. 'Why the Catholic cemetery?'

'She's seeing an old boyfriend. Another doctor at the Clinic.'

'Really? A strange rendezvous. Rather macabre, in a way.'

'Paula doesn't have much choice – he's lying under a headstone. He died a year ago from one of these new malarias he picked up in Java.'

'That's hard… Was she close to the Hollingers?'

'Only to their niece and Bibi Jansen.' Crawford stared through the gate into the Protestant cemetery, where the gravediggers were loading their spades on to the cart. 'A pity about Bibi. Still… You'll like Paula. Typical woman doctor – a calm and efficient front, but inside rather shaky.'

'What about the psychiatrist, Dr Sanger? No one wanted him here.'

'He's something of a shady character… interesting in his way. He's one of those psychiatrists with a knack of forming little ménages around themselves.'

'Ménages of vulnerable young women?'

'Exactly. He enjoys playing Svengali to them. He has a house in Estrella de Mar, and owns some bungalows in the Costasol complex.' Crawford pointed to a large settlement of villas and apartment houses a mile to the west of the peninsula. 'No one's sure what goes on there, but I hope they have fun.'

I waited as the gravediggers pushed their cart through the cemetery gate. A wheel lodged in a stony rut, and one of the spades fell to the ground. Crawford stepped forward, ready to help the men, then watched wistfully as the cart moved along the pavement, its wheel-rims grating. In his black suit and sunglasses he seemed a fretful figure, faced for once with a fast service he had no hope of returning. I guessed that he, Anders-son and Dr Sanger were the only ones to mourn the dead girl.

'I'm sorry about Bibi Jansen,' I said when he returned to the car. 'I can see you miss her.'

'A little. But these things are never fair.'

'Why did the others bother to attend? Mrs Shand, Hennessy, the Keswick sisters – for a Swedish housemaid?'

'Charles, you didn't know her. Bibi was more than that.'

'Even so. Could the fire have been a suicide attempt?'

'By the Hollingers? On the Queen's birthday?' Crawford began to laugh, glad to free himself from his sombre mood. 'They'd have been posthumously stripped of their CBEs.'

'What about Bibi? I take it she was once involved with Sanger. She might have been unhappy at the Hollingers.'

Crawford shook his head, admiring my ingenuity. 'I don't think so. She liked it up there. Paula had weaned her off all the drugs she was taking.'