Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good.’ Penrose lowered his voice. ‘By the way, what exactly were you doing in the Rue Valentin? It’s not your kind of beat.’

  ‘It isn’t. I saw this child outside the railway station with a couple of local thugs. Something didn’t seem right.’

  ‘That makes sense. So you followed her?’

  ‘Into the Rue Valentin. Then I realized why she was there.’

  ‘Sordid. What can one say? Tragic for the child, but sexual pathology is such an energizing force. People know that, and will stoop to any depravity that excites them.’

  ‘The Russian who attacked me here was some sort of minder. He wanted seven thousand francs.’

  ‘That’s a lot. Seven hundred pounds? She must be very pretty.’

  ‘She is. There’s a kind of sweetness about her. Along with more or less total corruption.’

  ‘Sad …’ Penrose was at his most sympathetic. ‘Someone saw you offering money for her. Not true, I take it?’

  ‘I did. I wanted to get her away from there, take her to the nuns at La Bocca. At least, I think that’s what I wanted to do.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  ‘Not entirely. It’s hard to admit.’

  ‘Paul, I understand.’ Penrose spoke in a conspiratorial murmur. ‘It’s brave of you to face up to it. These impulses exist in all of us. They’re the combustible fuel the psyche runs on.’

  ‘Much too combustible. I could have burned more than my fingers.’

  ‘No …’ Penrose pressed a hand to my cheek, speaking in a barely audible voice that seemed to come from the air around us. ‘We’re talking about thoughts, not deeds. We don’t give in to every passing whim or impulse. But it’s a mistake to ignore them.’

  ‘And what if…?’

  ‘You feel drawn from thought to deed?’ Penrose bunched his huge fists in front of my nose. ‘Seize the hour. Pay the price. Be true to your real self, embrace all the possibilities of your life. Eden-Olympia will help you, Paul …’

  I waved to Jane as the car accelerated away, but she was already brandishing a position paper in Penrose’s face. I assumed that the psychiatrist was watching me in his rear-view mirror. In his playful way he was egging me on, urging me to board the escalator of possibility that had begun to unroll itself at my feet.

  Yet his words had been reassuring, and I felt less concerned that I had tried to buy the Russian girl from her minders. Had the vigilante group not burst upon the Rue Valentin I would have taken the child with me, and the journey to La Bocca would have had the character of an unconscious elopement …

  20

  The Grand Tour

  HALDER’S MOTIVES WERE more difficult to read. He arrived soon after three o’clock, when I was working on the latest batch of proofs sent to me by Charles, an act of charity that allowed me to maintain the illusion of my editorship. While I changed, Halder glanced sceptically at the pages, his curiosity roused by the aircraft illustrations. He wandered out to the swimming pool, where he bounced the beach ball across the water in his usual morose way.

  ‘Ready, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘I hope so. Why not?’

  ‘No reason. This is your day.’

  Halder led the way to his Range Rover. Once again I was struck by how detached he seemed from Eden-Olympia. His slender fingers, as sensitive as a neurosurgeon’s, touched the controls on the instrument panel, as if retuning the image of the business park in his mind. He reminded me of an experienced embassy official in a foreign capital, always exploring the terrain of possibilities open to him, the concealed entrances to exclusive hotels, the after-hours drinking clubs where the important contacts were made.

  In turn, I suspected that he saw me as the naive spouse of a middle-ranking employee, trapped in a self-created maze of two-way mirrors and sexual impulses I scarcely understood. I wondered how the Reverend Dodgson’s Alice would have coped with Eden-Olympia. She would have grown up quickly and married an elderly German banker, then become a recluse in a mansion high above Super-Cannes, with a fading facelift and a phobia about reflective surfaces. Halder might have been her chauffeur but never her lover. He was too fastidious, his sensitive nostrils forever flickering at some passing mood, and too suspicious of other people’s dreams. I knew that he was using me for purposes of his own, but I guessed that, despite himself, he almost liked me.

  ‘Mr Sinclair – are you sure? This could be stressful for you.’ Halder hesitated over the ignition keys. ‘You were very close to Greenwood.’

  ‘I hardly knew him.’

  ‘You know him a lot better now.’

  ‘You’re right. By the way, thanks for stepping in last night.’

  ‘Glad to be there.’ Halder nodded at my bandaged hand. ‘What you ran into was a “ratissage”. A bowling-club speciality.’

  ‘They enjoyed themselves. There’s nothing more satisfying than a fit of old-fashioned morality.’

  ‘That was nothing to do with morality.’ Halder flashed his headlamps at a passing security vehicle. ‘Just an evening workout for one of our self-help groups.’

  ‘There are others? What do the Cannes police feel about them?’

  ‘They keep out of the way. Zander and Delage are important people. Be careful, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘Am I in danger?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll warn you when the time comes.’

  ‘Thanks. Am I asking too many questions?’

  ‘About Greenwood’s death? Who could object to the truth?’

  ‘A lot of people. Especially if Greenwood didn’t carry out all the killings.’

  ‘You think he didn’t?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I watched Halder start the engine, and waited for him to drive off, but he seemed in no hurry to move. ‘I think Greenwood probably killed Bachelet and Dominique Serrou – an old-fashioned crime of passion. But the others? There are corporate rivalries here fuelled by billions of dollars. One faction decided to seize its chance and settle a few scores. Charbonneau, the chairman of the holding company, was the real target, along with Robert Fontaine. The others were window-dressing – Professor Berthoud, the chief pharmacist, and Vadim, the manager of the TV centre … they’re too unimportant, but killing them creates the impression of a series of random murders. A distraught English doctor has just shot his lover and her boyfriend. He’s been burning with jealousy for months, practising his marksmanship for the moment he catches them in bed together. Now he’s wandering around with a smoking gun, his mind in a daze of death. It’s the perfect opportunity to rearrange the chessboard. More shots ring out, and the real killers step back into the looking-glass.’

  ‘So Greenwood was a patsy – like Lee Harvey Oswald?’

  ‘It’s just about feasible. Why did it take the security system here so long to react? Because a secret group of very senior people were talking on their mobile phones. The clocks stopped while they decided on their targets.’

  ‘And Greenwood? What is he doing while all this goes on?’

  ‘Sitting in his office, staring at the blood on his hands. Or he never left Bachelet’s house. He lay down next to his dead lover and blew his brains out. That must have been a huge bonus to the conspirators. For an hour or so they could kill anyone they liked and blame it on Greenwood. Halder, the jigsaw fits.’

  ‘It doesn’t. It doesn’t fit at all.’ Halder pressed his slim hands to his face, massaging his drawn cheeks. ‘You think too much about Greenwood. I liked him, he helped me get my job, but … Let’s assume Greenwood did carry out the killings, and see where that leads us.’

  ‘Fine by me.’ I took the Riviera News transcript from my pocket. I paused while Halder reversed into the avenue, realizing from his clumsy gear change that he was as much under strain as I was. ‘Everything starts at the TV centre, where Greenwood is supposed to have seized his hostages.’

  ‘Right.’ Halder stopped by the kerb and stared at the windscreen, his eyes fixed on a dead fly embedded in a pool of
its own amber. When he spoke, his voice was flat and well rehearsed. ‘A camera in the car park picked him up at 6.58 a.m. The film is lost, but the security people on duty say he was talking to an unknown man, maybe one of the chauffeurs. We assume Greenwood ordered him into the car at gunpoint. When he drove off it’s likely he had all three hostages with him. Agreed, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘If you believe the story of this “lost” film. I don’t think they were hostages, and he certainly didn’t kill them. They were there to help him in some way. Bachelet might have suspected that something was brewing up, and kept Greenwood under surveillance. The chauffeurs probably smuggled in the rifle and planned to drive Greenwood over the border into Italy. Nothing else makes sense. Why would he need hostages at all? Why not go straight into the first killing?’

  ‘Who can say? Maybe he was lonely.’ Halder raised a hand to calm me. ‘I mean it. He has a long day ahead of him. He’s been up for three or four hours, assuming he had any sleep at all. He’s been cleaning his weapon, checking his ammunition packs. For the first time he realizes what the next hour is going to involve. He’s passing the TV centre and sees the chauffeurs and the engineer in the car park. He knows them slightly and feels they’ll understand what he’s doing.’

  ‘It’s possible. Just …’

  ‘Either way, with three hostages he has a fall-back position. He can negotiate a deal if things go wrong. So he bundles them into his car.’

  ‘Quite an achievement,’ I commented. ‘He can drive a car and keep his weapon fixed on three prisoners.’

  ‘Suppose one of the chauffeurs drove? They knew Greenwood, and could see he was very disturbed. They decided not to excite him.’ Halder pointed to the raised garage door. ‘Greenwood brings them here and ties them up. It’s about 7.20, and he has five minutes to reach the Bachelet house. It’s four hundred yards from here, and target number one. Now he’s on the move, ready to kill his first victims …’

  Halder steadied his breathing, and let the Range Rover roll down the avenue. We cruised under the plane trees and passed a group of Portuguese cleaning girls climbing into their bus. They spent the days polishing the mirror-like parquet floors, wiping the last white crystals from the smeary table-tops, throwing out the condoms stuck in the toilet traps, probing everything except the dreams of their corporate employers.

  Were assassins aware of the contingent world? I tried to imagine Lee Harvey Oswald on his way to the book depository in Dealey Plaza on the morning he shot Kennedy. Did he notice a line of overnight washing in his neighbour’s yard, a fresh dent in the next-door Buick, a newspaper boy with a bandaged knee? The contingent world must have pressed against his temples, clamouring to be let in. But Oswald had kept the shutters bolted against the storm, opening them for a few seconds as the President’s Lincoln moved across the lens of the Zapruder camera and on into history.

  Had Greenwood felt the same clamour of the contingent? Had he seen the satellite dishes on the Merck building as they locked onto the sky, downloading Tokyo stock prices and Chicago pig-meat futures? The gun-metal office buildings and unwalked forest paths must have seemed like a film set waiting for the opening credits.

  ‘Three minutes, twenty seconds left …’ Halder checked his watch. ‘Not much time to change his mind.’

  We climbed a small hill, then freewheeled to a halt behind a pick-up loaded with pool maintenance equipment.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘Wilder Penrose lives somewhere here.’

  ‘This is the Bachelet house.’ Halder pointed to a three-storey villa with a boxy mansard roof and arsenic-green roof-tiles. High wrought-iron gates were topped by a pair of entry cameras. ‘Dr and Mrs Oshima of the Fuji Corporation live here now.’

  ‘Very discreet. It’s quite a fortress.’ I thought of Greenwood parking his car and drawing the rifle onto his lap as he stared at this house of death. ‘I’m surprised he could get in. The windows weren’t forced?’

  ‘No sign anywhere. But people get careless, they leave doors unlocked, forget to set the alarm system.’

  ‘Bachelet was head of security. Still, Greenwood might have walked up to the front door and rung the bell. Where were they shot?’

  ‘In Bachelet’s bedroom, on the second floor.’

  I looked at the immaculate gravel, and almost heard the crunch of Greenwood’s steps as he approached the house, rifle in his hands. I folded the Riviera News transcript, aware that the typewritten text no longer matched the reality of the killing ground. An upstairs window opened, revealing the geisha-like face of a middle-aged Japanese woman wearing a mask of white cream. With the windows closed to seal in the air-conditioning, the brief sounds of gunfire would have been barely audible.

  ‘Mrs Oshima … I don’t suppose a well-bred Japanese woman would show us round her bedroom.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Halder pulled a large manila envelope from the instrument panel shelf. He slid out three black-and-white photographs. ‘These might give you a feel for the atmosphere.’

  I lowered the sun visor to shield my eyes from the afternoon light. Taken by a police cameraman, the first photograph showed a forty-year-old man lying across a double bed, his back to the pillows. An overnight growth of beard stained his chin, and his handsome face was disfigured by the blood that flushed his nose and mouth. This was Guy Bachelet, the former security chief at Eden-Olympia, whose picture I had last seen in the framed group portrait at the La Bocca refuge.

  Two bullet holes marked his barrel chest, one in his breastbone and the other below his left nipple. Neither had led to heavy bleeding, but a third bullet wound to his right thigh had leaked a pool of blood that covered his legs in a black mantle.

  I assumed that Greenwood had shot Bachelet from the bedroom doorway, first hitting him in the thigh. As blood pumped from his victim’s femoral artery Greenwood had taken more careful aim, then shot him twice through the chest.

  The second photograph showed an almost naked woman sprawled on the tiled floor beside the bed. She lay face up, one hand pressed against the carved oak footboard, the other raised to her face, as if trying to ward away any further bullets. Her mouth was open, exposing a gap in her upper teeth, where a partial dental plate had fallen onto the floor. Her pale skin was speckled with black dots, but her face was clearly that of an intelligent Frenchwoman of the professional class.

  She had been shot once through the heart at close range, and burns from the explosive charge had seared the white skin around the wound. She wore a cupless black brassiere that exposed her small breasts, one of them licked by the tongue of blood that flowed from the entry wound. I guessed that she and Bachelet had been playing some erotic game the previous evening, and that she had been too sleepy or too drugged to remove the garment.

  The third photograph was a close-up of the bedside table. Behind the digital clock, a corporate gift from Monsanto, were a crack pipe and a plastic bag holding half a dozen cocaine pellets. Matches, paper spills and twists of silver foil filled an ashtray, and a video remote control rested on two cassettes with handwritten labels. Below, lying in the open drawer, was a collection of jewellery, triple-stranded pearl necklaces, diamond chokers and emerald pendants, all with their sales stickers still attached.

  ‘Sweet dreams …’ With a shudder, I held the photographs at arm’s length. ‘What films were they watching?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Halder frowned at my morbid question. ‘If you want, I can find out.’

  ‘Forget it – I think we know. Where did you get hold of the prints?’

  ‘The security files. There are other sets. No one knows I borrowed them.’

  ‘These scene-of-the-crime photos freeze the blood. We’re looking into Greenwood’s head.’

  ‘Greenwood’s?’

  ‘More than the victims’.’ I ran my finger over the background details, the deco lamp on the bedside table, the marks on the wall where the headboard had chafed the plaster, perhaps during bouts of cocaine-driven sex between the security chief and his
mistress. The spectacle of their intimate clutter, the crack pipe and cassettes, must have burned themselves into Greenwood’s mind. Only this blood-stained tableau was left, the postures of death and the peek-a-boo bra of a middle-aged doctor.

  ‘Dr Serrou …’ I commented. ‘The selfless lady of the refuge.’

  ‘She was. People have private lives, Mr Sinclair. Even you. It’s possible he didn’t mean to kill her. She just picked the wrong bedroom to wake up in.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I pointed to the floor around the bed. Bloody footprints marked the tiles, so clear that even Dr Serrou’s quirky toes, hooked by a lifetime of ward rounds and constricting shoes, were clearly visible. ‘Imagine what happened. The first shot wakes her up. Bachelet’s blood is pumping all over the bed, her legs are covered with the stuff. Then Greenwood steps forward and shoots Bachelet through the chest. There’s a roar of noise, a red spray in her face. Greenwood turns the rifle on her, but perhaps he hesitates – after all, they were colleagues, they’d started the refuge together. She looks pleadingly at this English doctor she knows so well, now obviously out of his mind. She gets off the bed and walks towards him, leaving footprints in her lover’s blood. Somehow she hopes to calm him.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He shoots her dead. At the last moment she realizes that friendship counts for nothing and that she’s about to fade into Greenwood’s dream of death.’

  ‘So …’ Halder pinched his nose, and calmed his fluttering nostrils. ‘Was it a crime passionnel?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. I was wrong there. Completely wrong.’

  ‘He would have shot her first?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But she and Bachelet weren’t having a secret affair. This was a long-standing relationship – the crack pipe, the porno-cassettes, the underwear. These were two people who’d spent a lot of time exploring each other. She owed nothing to David Greenwood.’