J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights

'Is that Hollinger?' I asked Cabrera. 'Speaking in Los Angeles to some film industry audience?'

'Many years ago,' Cabrera confirmed. 'He was much older when he came to Estrella de Mar. This was his bedroom. According to the housekeeper he slept for an hour before dinner.'

'What an end…' I stared at the mattress springs, like the coils of a huge electric grill. 'I only hope the poor man never awoke.'

'In fact, Mr Hollinger was not in the bed.' Cabrera pointed to the bathroom. 'He had taken refuge in the jacuzzi, probably to spare himself from the flames.'

We stepped into the bathroom, and gazed down at the semi-circular tub filled with tarry water. Roof-tiles lay on the floor, and the blue ceramic walls were streaked with smoke, but the room was almost intact, a tiled execution chamber. I imagined the elderly Hollinger, roused from sleep as the flames leapt from the masts of his four-poster, unable to warn his wife in her nearby bedroom, and driven into the jacuzzi as a fireball erupted from the air-conditioning vents.

'Poor devil,' I commented. 'Dying by himself in a jacuzzi. There's a warning there 'Possibly.' Cabrera moistened his hands in the water. 'Actually, he was not alone.'

'Really? So Mrs Hollinger was with him?' I thought of the elderly couple reclining in the jacuzzi before dressing for dinner. 'In a way it's rather touching.'

Cabrera smiled faintly. 'Mrs Hollinger was not here. She was in another bedroom.'

'Then who was with Hollinger?'

'The Swedish maid, Bibi Jansen. You went to her funeral.'

'I did…' I was trying to visualize the old millionaire and the young Swede in the water together. 'Are you sure it was Hollinger?'

'Of course.' Cabrera turned the pages of his notebook. 'His surgeon in London identified a special type of steel pin in his right hip.'

'Dear Jesus…' Paula released my arm and stepped past Cabrera to the wash-basin. She stared at herself in the cloudy mirror, as if trying to identify her reflection, and then leaned on the ash-strewn porcelain, her head lowered. Already I could see that the visit to the house was a far greater ordeal for her than it was for me.

'I didn't know Hollinger or Bibi Jansen,' I said to Cabrera. 'But it's hard to imagine the two of them together in a jacuzzi.'

'Technically, that's correct.' Cabrera was still noting my responses to everything. 'It would be more accurate to say there were three of them.'

'Three people in the jacuzzi? Who was the third?'

'Miss Jansen's child.' Cabrera helped Paula to the door. 'Dr Hamilton will confirm that she was pregnant.'

As Cabrera surveyed the bathroom, measuring the walls with a steel tape, I followed Paula out of Hollinger's bedroom. Crossing the catwalk of planks, we entered a small room along the corridor. Here the fire had raged even more fiercely. The blackened remains of a large doll lay on the floor like a charred baby, but the torrent of water hosed on to the roof had obliterated all other traces of the room's occupant. In one corner the fire had spared a small dressing-table, which still supported a CD player.

'This was Bibi's room,' Paula told me flatly. 'That heat must have been… I don't know why she was here at all. She should have been by the pool with everyone else.'

She picked up the doll and placed it on the remains of the bed, then dusted the black ash from her hands. Pain and anger seemed to compete within her face, as if she had lost a valued patient as a result of a colleague's incompetence. I put my arm around her, glad when she leaned against me.

'Did you know she was pregnant, Paula?'

'Yes. Four or five weeks.'

'Who was the father?'

'I've no idea. She wouldn't tell me.'

'Gunnar Andersson? Dr Sanger?'

'Sanger?' Paula's fist clenched against my chest. 'For heaven's sake, he was her father-figure.'

'Even so. When were you last here?'

'Six weeks ago. She'd been swimming at night and caught a kidney chill. Charles, who would start a fire like this?'

'Not Frank, that's for sure. God knows why he confessed. But I'm glad we came. Someone obviously hated the Hollingers.'

'Perhaps they didn't realize how fast the fire would burn. It might have been a prank that went wrong?'

'It's too deliberate for that. The re-jigged air-conditioning system… this was a serious business.'

We rejoined Cabrera in a room across the landing. Its door had vanished, sucked into the night air by the vortex of flame and gas.

'This was the room of the niece, Anne Hollinger,' Cabrera explained, staring bleakly at the gutted shell. He spoke more quietly, no longer the police academy lecturer, as drained as Paula and I by the experience of visiting the death-rooms. 'The heat was so intense, she had no way of escape. Since the air-conditioning had been supplying cool air, all the windows were tightly closed.'

The forensic team had dismantled the bed, presumably to detach the niece's carbonized remains from the debris of mattress.

'Where was she found?' I asked. 'Lying on the bed?'

'No – she too died in the bathroom. Not in the jacuzzi, however. She was sitting on the toilet – a macabre posture, like Rodin's "Thinker".' As Paula shuddered against my arm Cabrera added: 'At least she was happy when she died. We found a hypodermic syringe 'What was inside it – heroin?'

'Who can say? The fire was too fierce for analysis.'

Below the window, perhaps cooled by the inrush of cold air through the shattered glass, a television set and video-recorder had survived intact. The remote-control unit lay on the bedside table, melted like black chocolate, blurred numerals still visible in the plastic.

Despite myself, I said: 'I wonder what programme she was watching? I'm sorry – that sounds callous.'

'It is.' Paula wearily shook her head as I tried to turn on the TV set. 'Charles, we've seen the news. Anyway, the current isn't on.'

'I know. What was Anne like? I take it she was a heavy drug-user.'

'She definitely wasn't. Not after her overdose. I don't know what she was injecting.' Paula stared across the sunlit rooftops of Estrella de Mar. 'She was great fun. Once she rode a camel around the Plaza Iglesias, swearing at the taxi-drivers like a haughty torera. One evening at the Club Nautico she picked a live lobster from the restaurant tank and had it brought to our table.'

'She ate it raw?'

'No. She took pity on the thing, waving its claws at her, and released it into the salt-water plunge pool. It took them days to catch the beast. Bobby Crawford was feeding it at night. And then she died here…'

'Paula, you didn't start the fire.'

'And nor did Frank.' She wiped her tears from my jacket. 'Cabrera knows that.'

'I'm not sure if he does.'

The Inspector was waiting for us outside the largest bedroom in the west wing of the house. The windows looked out over an open veranda to the sea, veiled by awnings that hung like black sails. It was from here that the Hollingers had proposed the Queen's birthday toast before retiring. Shreds of burnt chintz clung to the walls, and the dressing room resembled a coal scuttle in a rage.

'Mrs Hollinger's bedroom.' Cabrera held my arm when I stumbled on the catwalk. 'Are you all right, Mr Prentice? I think you have seen enough?'

'I'm fine-let's complete the tour, Inspector. Mrs Hollinger was found here?'

'No.' Cabrera pointed along the corridor. 'She had taken refuge at the rear of the house. Perhaps the flames there were less intense.'

We made our way down the corridor, to a small room with a single window overlooking the lemon orchard. Despite the destructive effects of the fire, it was clear that a sophisticated sensibility had devised a refined if faintly precious private world. A lacquered Chinese screen separated the bed from the living area, and what had once been a pair of handsome Empire chairs faced each other across the fireplace. Two of the walls were lined with books, whose spines peeled from the charred shelves. Above the bed was a small dormer window that contained the only intact glass I had seen on the upper floor of the mansion.