Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘I know. I regret it now.’

  ‘At least they didn’t catch him. Halder looks as if he’d love to beat the hell out of someone.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ I straightened the row of books. ‘For a library user, the Russian I saw was amazingly aggressive.’

  ‘Of course he was.’ Jane lay back on the bed, savouring her triumph. Still wearing her white hospital coat, she had come home to change before a conference in Nice. ‘The Russians had to fight for the right to read … Mandelstam, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn. Think of it, Paul. You were lining up with all those KGB types against this poor migrant worker and little Natasha.’

  ‘You win.’ I sat beside Jane and massaged her calves. ‘It’s a touching thought, all those Alice books in the refuge, pored over by Véronique and Fatima. Where are they now?’

  ‘Working in some awful factory, I imagine, packing espadrilles for five francs an hour, while they wonder what happened to the kind English doctor. Don’t think too badly of David. He did some good things here.’

  ‘I accept that. How well did you really know him?’

  ‘We worked together. Paul, what are you driving at?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve always been curious.’

  ‘You know I don’t like that. David isn’t coming back, so forget about him.’ Irritated by me, Jane rose from the bed and took off her white coat. She seemed older than I remembered, her hair neatly groomed, the scar from her nasal ring concealed with cosmetic filler. She raised a hand as if to slap me, then relented and took my arm. ‘I keep telling you – I never had many lovers.’

  ‘I thought you had an army of them.’

  ‘I wonder why …’ She stood by the window, looking across the business park towards the sea. ‘You’re still locked into the past. It’s a huge phantom limb that aches and throbs. We’re here, Paul. We breathe this air, and we see this light …’

  I watched her chin lift as she spoke, and realized that she was staring, not at the handsome headland of Cap d’Antibes and the pewter glimmer of the sea, but at the office buildings of Eden-Olympia, at the satellite dishes and microwave aerials. The business park had adopted her.

  ‘Jane, you like it here, don’t you.’

  ‘Eden-Olympia? Well, it has a lot going for it. It’s open to talent and hard work. There’s no ground already staked out, no title deeds going back to bloody Magna Carta. You feel anything could happen.’

  ‘But nothing ever does. All you people do is work. It’s wonderful here, but they left out reality. No one sits on the local council, or has a say about the fire service.’

  ‘Good. Who wants to?’

  ‘That’s my point. The whole place is probably run by a management consultancy in Osaka.’

  ‘Fine by me. It might be a lot fairer. At Guy’s there are two sets of stairs. One at the front for the men that goes up to the roof, and the converted servant’s staircase at the back that ends on the third floor. I don’t need to tell you who that’s reserved for.’

  ‘Things are changing.’

  ‘That old mantra – women have listened to it for too long. How many teaching professors are women? Even in gynae?’ Lowering her voice, she said in an offhand way: ‘Kalman tells me they haven’t filled my post yet. He asked if I’d like to stay on for another six months.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Yes, if I’m honest. Think about it. More time here would do you good. A mild winter, a couple of hours of tennis every day. We’ll find someone to play with you – maybe Mrs Yasuda.’

  ‘Jane…’ I tried to embrace her, but she tensed herself, exposing the sharp bones of her shoulders. ‘I have to get back to London. There’s a business to run. Charles won’t carry me for ever.’

  ‘I know. Still, you could fly out at weekends. It’s only an hour from London.’

  ‘You work at weekends.’

  She made no reply, and stared down at the swimming pool. Her eyes avoided mine, and she seemed to be mentally subdividing her new domain, unpacking her real baggage in the privacy of her mind.

  ‘Paul, relax …’ She spoke brightly, as if she remembered an exciting experience we had once shared. ‘We stay together, whatever happens. You’re my wounded pilot, I have to sew up your wings. Are you all right?’

  ‘Just about.’ For the first time the wifely baby-talk sounded unconvincing. I noticed the transfers of the Hatter, the Dormouse and the Red Queen that Greenwood had pasted to the wardrobe door. Jane was growing up, like the Alice of Through the Looking-Glass, and I sensed something of Carroll’s regret when he realized that his little heroine was turning into a young woman and would soon be leaving him.

  I closed the library door and said: ‘You’d better change. Kalman’s collecting you in an hour. Before you go, I’d like a printout of that appointments list.’

  ‘David’s? Why?’ Jane picked up her white coat. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘No one will know. Can you access it on the terminal downstairs?’

  ‘Yes, but … why do you want it?’

  ‘Just a hunch. I need to track it down. Then I can lay David to rest.’

  ‘Well … keep it to yourself. These senior people don’t like their medical records floating around.’

  ‘It’s a list, Jane. I could have copied it out of the phone book.’ I paused by the stairs. ‘Have you been able to find out why they were seeing David? Was there anything wrong with them?’

  ‘Just sports injuries. Nothing else. Skin lacerations, one or two broken bones. There’s some very rough touch rugby being played at Eden-Olympia.’

  The pressure of Jane’s mouth still dented my lips as I walked to the car. I thought of her with the computer in the study, watching me warily as she searched through Greenwood’s records. Had she been testing me, with her talk of extending the contract? After another six months she would be as institutionalized as any long-term convict, locked inside a virtual cell she called her office. Eden-Olympia demanded a special type of temperament, committed to work rather than to pleasure, to the balance sheet and the drawing board rather than to the brothels and gaming tables of the Old Riviera. Somehow I needed to remind Jane of her true self. In its way her theft of the magazine from the tabac was a small ray of hope.

  I tucked the appointments list into my breast pocket and searched for the car keys. Parked behind the Jaguar on the sloping forecourt was Wilder Penrose’s sports saloon, a low-slung Japanese confection with huge wing mirrors, grotesque spoiler and air intakes large enough for a ramjet. To my puritan eye the car was an anthology of marketing tricks, and I refused even to identify its manufacturer.

  I assumed that Penrose was making a house call on Simone Delage, easing this highly-strung woman through the aftermath of some troubled dream or advising her about the impotence problems of over-promoted accountants. He had deliberately parked a few inches from the Jaguar, rather than on the Delages’ forecourt, forcing me to make a tight turn that would show up the Jaguar’s heavy steering.

  I started the engine, listening with pleasure to the hungry gasp of the rival carburettors, for once ready to sink their differences against a common enemy. I edged forward and swung the steering wheel, but found my way blocked by the plinth of the dolphin sculpture. I reversed, careful not to touch the Japanese car, but at the last moment, giving way to a sudden impulse, I raised my foot from the brake pedal. I felt the Jaguar’s heavy chrome bumper bite deep into soft fibreglass, almost buckling the passenger door of the sports saloon. It rocked under the impact, its hydraulics letting out a chorus of neurotic cries.

  Trying to ignore what I had done, but admitting to a distinct lightness of heart, I rolled down the ramp towards the street.

  9

  Glass Floors and White Walls

  ‘MR SINCLAIR, THERE’S no crime at Eden-Olympia. None at all.’ Pascal Zander, the new head of security, sighed with more than a hint of disappointment. ‘In fact, I can say that the whole concept of criminality is unknown here. Do I exaggerate?’

  ‘Yo
u don’t,’ I told him. ‘We’ve been here two months and I haven’t seen a single cigarette stub or bubble-gum pat.’

  ‘Bubble gum? The idea is unthinkable. There are no pine cones to trip you, no bird shit on your car. At Eden-Olympia even nature knows her place.’

  Zander beamed at me, glad to welcome me to his den. An affable and fleshy Franco-Lebanese, he stood behind his desk, camel-hair coat over his shoulders, more public relations man than security chief. Crime might be absent from Eden-Olympia, but other pleasures were closer to hand. When his secretary, a handsome Swiss woman in her forties, brought in an urgent letter for signature, he stared at her like a child faced with a spoonful of cream.

  ‘Good, good …’ He watched her leave the office and then turned the same lecherous gaze towards me, letting it linger for a few moments without embarrassment. He sat down, still wearing his coat, and shifted his rump on the leather chair. As he flicked dismissively at the onyx pen-stand he made it clear that both the chair and the desk he had inherited from Guy Bachelet, his murdered predecessor, were too small for him. Already bored by my visit, he stared at the distant rooftops of Cannes, to an older Côte d’Azur where the hallowed traditions of crime and social pathology still flourished.

  For an unsavoury character, Pascal Zander was surprisingly likeable, one of the few openly venal individuals in Eden-Olympia, and I found myself warming to him. I had intended to report the brutal beatings in the clinic car park, but here was a police chief who sincerely believed that he had abolished crime. He was sympathetic when I described the Russian intruder who punched me, but plainly saw our brawl as little more than an outbreak of personal rivalry between expatriates, probably over the affections of my wife.

  ‘At Eden-Olympia we are self-policing,’ he explained. ‘Honesty is a designed-in feature, along with free parking and clean air. Our guards are for show, like the guides at Euro-Disney.’

  ‘Their uniforms are actually costumes?’

  ‘In effect. If you want real crime, go to Nice or Cannes La Bocca. Robbery, prostitution, drug-dealing – to us they seem almost folkloric, subsidized by the municipality for the entertainment of tourists.’

  ‘Unthinkable at Eden-Olympia,’ I agreed. ‘All the same, there was one tragic failure.’

  ‘Dr Greenwood? Tragic, yes …’ Zander pressed a scented hand to his heart. ‘Every moment I spend in this chair I feel the tragedy. His behaviour was criminal, but of a kind beyond the reach of the law or police.’

  ‘What happened to Greenwood? No one seems able to say.’

  ‘Speak to Wilder Penrose. A bolt of lightning streaks through a deceased brain. Within minutes seven of my colleagues are dead. Men and women who gave everything to Eden-Olympia. Death stalked us all that morning, with a rifle in one hand and a box of dice in the other.’

  ‘The killings were random?’

  ‘There’s no doubt. Nothing linked the victims to their murderer.’

  ‘Except for one thing – they were his patients. Greenwood may have believed they had some fatal disease.’

  ‘They did. But the disease was inside Greenwood’s mind.’ Zander leaned his plump chest across the desk, lowering his voice. ‘We at security were heavily criticized. But how could we predict the behaviour of someone so deeply insane? You knew him, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘He was a colleague of my wife’s in London. He seemed rather… idealistic.’

  ‘The best disguise. There are many brilliant people at Eden-Olympia. For a few, their minds are lonely places, the cold heights where genius likes to walk. Now and then, a crevasse appears.’

  ‘So it could happen again?’

  ‘We hope not. Eden-Olympia would never survive. But sooner or later, who can say? We are too trusting, Mr Sinclair. So many glass floors and white walls. The possibilities for corruption are enormous. Power, money, opportunity. People can commit crimes and be unaware of it. In some ways it’s better to be like Nice or La Bocca – the lines are drawn and we cross them knowing the cost. Here, it’s a game without rules. One determined man could…’ He seemed to stare into himself, then made an obscene gesture at the air and turned to me. ‘You want my help, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘I’m interested in exactly what happened on May 28. The route Dr Greenwood took, the number of shots fired. They might give me a clue to his state of mind. As an Englishman I feel responsible.’

  ‘I’m not sure …’ Zander’s hands fretted over his gaudy desk ornaments. ‘Violent assassins renounce their nationality as they commit their crimes.’

  ‘Could I talk to the next of kin?’

  ‘The wives of the deceased? They returned to their home countries. Grief is all that’s left to them.’

  ‘The office staff? Secretaries, personal assistants?’

  ‘They’ve suffered enough. What more can they tell you? The colour of Greenwood’s tie? Whether he wore brown or black shoes?’

  ‘Fair enough. An overall report of the incident would help me. I take it you prepared one?’

  ‘One? A hundred reports. For the investigating magistrate, for the Prefect of Police, for the Minister of the Interior, six foreign embassies, lawyers for the companies …’

  ‘So you can lend me one?’

  ‘They’re still confidential. International corporations are involved. Claims of negligence may be brought against Eden-Olympia, which of course we deny.’

  ‘Then –’

  ‘I can’t help you, Mr Sinclair.’ For the first time Zander sounded like a policeman. He studied the scar on my forehead and my still-bruised ear. ‘Does violence intrigue you, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘Not at all. I try to avoid it.’

  ‘And your wife? For a few women …’

  ‘She’s a doctor. She’s spent years in casualty wards.’

  ‘Even so. Some people find violence is a useful marriage aid. A special kind of tickler. You’re so involved with the Greenwood murders, but I’m sure your motives are sincere. Sadly, you are wasting your time. All conceivable evidence was tracked down.’

  ‘Not all…’ I took the three spent bullets from my pocket and rolled them across the desk. ‘Rifle bullets – I found them in the garden at our villa. One was lying on the floor of the swimming pool. How it got there is hard to work out. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the hostages were shot in the garage.’

  Zander took out a silk handkerchief and vented some unpleasing odour from his mouth. He stared at the bullets but made no attempt to examine them.

  ‘Mr Sinclair, you did well to find them. My men told me they made a careful search.’

  ‘You could match them to Dr Greenwood’s rifle.’

  ‘The weapon is held by the Cannes police. It’s best if we don’t involve them again. Other traces of Greenwood will appear. The greater a crime, the longer its effects poison the air. Have you found anything else?’

  ‘Not at the villa. But there are one or two odd things going on at Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Zander opened a window and let in the warm air, which he inhaled in short but hungry breaths. Recovering his poise, he turned to escort me to the door. ‘“Odd things” … I’d almost lost hope for our business park. Good news, Mr Sinclair. Keep your eyes open for me …’

  ‘I will. Now, the hostages …’

  ‘Mr Sinclair, please …’ Zander put an arm around my shoulders, reminding me of the strength that an overweight body can hide. ‘The dead no longer care where they were shot. Tell me about your young wife. Is she enjoying her stay with us?’

  ‘Very much.’ I stepped through a side door into the corridor, where a woman assistant was waiting. ‘She works far too hard.’

  ‘Everyone does. It’s our secret vice. She needs to play a little more. You’ll have to find some new activity that amuses her. There are so many interesting games at Eden-Olympia …’

  His mouth began to purse again, showing the pink lining inside his black lips, but his eyes were fixed upon the three bullets that lay on his desk. />
  10

  The Hit List

  AN ALMOST DRUGGED air floated across the lake, a rogue cloud that had drifted down the hillside, carrying the scent of office-freshener from a factory in Grasse. I walked along the water’s edge, attracting the attention of two security men in a Range Rover parked among the pines. One watched me through his binoculars, no doubt puzzled that anyone in Eden-Olympia should have the leisure to stroll through the midday sun.

  Between the security building and the Elf-Maritime research labs was an open-air cafeteria, a facility intended to soften the public face of the business park and give it a passing resemblance to an Alpine resort. Tired after my meeting with Zander, I sat down and ordered a vin blanc from the young French waitress, who wore jeans and a white vest printed with a quotation from Baudrillard.

  Zander had told me nothing, as I expected. Even his silences provided no useful clues. By now, nearly six months after the event, a relieved Eden-Olympia had erased David Greenwood from its collective memory, filing the tragedy in some administrative limbo assigned to earthquakes and regicides.

  I thought of Zander: thuggish, bisexual and corrupt, qualities no doubt essential for any successful police chief. I could smell his aftershave on my right hand, and was tempted to walk to the water’s edge and wash the scent away, but disturbing the surface would probably trigger a full-scale alert. Yet Zander was a potential collaborator, the only person I had met who saw the flaw at the heart of Eden-Olympia. Given the absence of an explicit moral order, where decisions about right and wrong were engineered into the social fabric along with the fire drills and parking regulations, Zander’s job became impossible. Crime could flourish at Eden-Olympia without the residents ever being aware that they were its perpetrators or leaving any clues to their motives.

  Zander, according to Jane, was the acting head of security, and was still waiting for his appointment to be confirmed. During the interregnum, as he fretted at his desk in his camel-hair coat, he might become a useful ally. I remembered the Alice images I had found in the children’s room. Not for the first time it occurred to me that David Greenwood might never have committed the murders on May 28, and that the surveillance footage that showed him entering and leaving his victims’ offices had been faked.