Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

‘I can’t believe Greenwood killed himself.’ Ignoring Halder, I pressed on. ‘I’m sure he gave himself up. He’d killed seven people and he needed to explain why. He wanted to go to trial.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous theory. Keep it to yourself.’

  ‘He knew the police photographs would prove his case. Other witnesses would come forward and confirm what he’d seen. But he hadn’t counted on the enormous power that Eden-Olympia controls, or the total ruthlessness. Somewhere near here, probably only a few hundred yards away, he surrendered to the security people chasing him. Almost certainly, they took him back to the villa and executed him there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘They didn’t.’ Halder spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear him above the engine. He composed himself, waiting for the muscles of his face to calm themselves. ‘Take it from me, he wasn’t executed.’

  ‘No? Then why are there no photos of Greenwood’s body? Paris Match, Der Spiegel, the London tabloids – they’ve never printed a single one. I suspect they’d show a few bullets in the back.’

  ‘They don’t.’ Halder spoke tersely, swaying against the steering wheel as if about to faint again. ‘Believe me, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘Have you seen the photos?’

  ‘I don’t need to. I was there when Greenwood died.’

  ‘Frank? You were with the security unit who tracked him down?’

  Halder waved me away, reciting his words like a familiar private mantra. ‘Greenwood went down fighting … he’d taught himself to handle a firearm. He wasn’t afraid at the end, and he didn’t care if it all came out. Something went wrong for him at Eden-Olympia, and he tried to put it right. He wasn’t interested in what anyone thought about him …’

  ‘Frank … wait. Who shot him?’

  I tried to climb back into the car, but Halder closed the passenger door. He thrust the envelope of photographs through the open window, his face fully calm for the first time that day.

  ‘I shot him, Mr Sinclair. I was the rookie here and they told me what to do. I was so scared I couldn’t think. David Greenwood was the only man I liked in the whole of Eden-Olympia. And I shot him dead.’

  24

  Blood Endures

  FANNING MYSELF WITH the manila envelope, I watched the Range Rover roll away beneath the plane trees. Its dark paintwork moved from light to shade, at times becoming almost invisible, a conjuring trick with the eye that seemed part of the huge illusion created by Eden-Olympia. I admired Halder for making his confession, and felt concerned for him, but his motives were just as checkered. Zander and Wilder Penrose were using this moody young black to keep me primed with fresh information, steering me from one loose paving stone to the next, confident that I would peer into every murky space.

  But Halder had an agenda of his own. He had used the murder tour to provoke himself, preparing the emotional ground for his confession, but his anger had been addressed to Eden-Olympia. I could well imagine the sly pleasure that Penrose had taken in assigning the killer of Jane’s former colleague and possible lover to our security detail. I remembered Halder bouncing the beach ball across the pool and then spitting into the water, not far from the pumphouse where Greenwood had probably collapsed after making his way back to the villa from the Siemens building. Halder would have walked towards him, the novice in his crisp new uniform, thinking of his salary cheque and pension plan, and then hearing the command to shoot and kill. Eden-Olympia had used him, but Greenwood’s death had given him a celebrity that he in turn had begun to exploit.

  Yet Greenwood, according to Halder, had fired back in the seconds before he died. No doubt Halder had flinched, but his nerve had held, and he had done as he was told. I looked up at the roof of the car park, where the security guard leaned on the parapet, a hand cupped over his eyes as he followed Halder’s Range Rover across the park. He saluted smartly, without a hint of irony, displaying the same deference towards Halder shown by all the security men. Only the killing of David Greenwood would have earned the respect of these crude and racist men.

  I stepped from the car-park lift onto the overheated roof, a cockpit of sun and death. In the mirror curtain-walling of the office building I could see myself reflected like an unwary tourist who had strayed through the wrong door into the danger-filled silences of a bullring. The guard had withdrawn across the bridge into the cool shadows of the lobby. I waved to him, and strolled to the parapet, pretending to gaze across the green heights of the business park.

  I counted three more bullet holes in the parapet, each reamed out and filled with a plug of Ciment Fondu, then covered with a finish of coarse sand. Six bullets had been fired, the full load of a large-calibre revolver discharged at close range.

  Leaving the roof, I made my way down the stairs to the welcome shade of the deck below. I moved through the parked cars to the south-east corner, where the drainage pipe emerged from the roof.

  A metal clamp locked the plastic tube to the vent above my head, its funnel polished by the abrading tool. The junction was six feet away, well beyond my reach even if I stood on a car roof, but a second clamp was a few inches from the floor, securing the down-pipe to the vertical segment below it. I took out my car keys and searched for a flat edge, then began to turn the metal bolt, loosening the joint between the sections of piping.

  Steps sounded from the staircase, the rapid heels of a young man in a hurry. A Japanese executive in a blue suit, chrome-trimmed briefcase in hand, strode across the concrete deck. I crouched behind the rear wing of a nearby Saab, and waited while the Japanese stepped into his sports car. After checking his teeth and tongue in the rear-view mirror, he started the engine and reversed from the parking space, emitting a roar of confidence-building exhaust.

  His noisy gear changes masked the sound of tearing plastic as I wrenched the drainage pipe from its roof mount. I laid the tubular section on the floor and pressed my hand into the upper end, then scraped the inside surface with my keys.

  Clumps of black organic matter, like the residues of a partly digested meal, covered my fingers with a faint ruddiness. I raised the fragments to my nose, and caught the acrid tang of animal remains.

  Already I assumed that I could smell David Greenwood’s blood. He had never returned to the villa, but had died here on the roof of the Siemens Building, in this place of death and the sun.

  ‘You … look at me! What are you doing here?’

  I turned from the drainage pipe to find a fair-haired woman in a black business suit calling from the central aisle. She backed away from me, startled to see an intruder kneeling among the parked cars. With one hand she clasped her purse, either protecting her credit cards or reaching for a tear-gas spray.

  When I stood up she brushed the blonde hair from her eyes and lowered her head like a pointer.

  ‘Frances?’ I asked, unsure of the light. ‘Frances Baring?’

  ‘Sinclair? Jesus, that frightened me. You bloody near ruined a new pair of tights. Are you stealing a car?’

  ‘No … checking something. I didn’t hear you coming. The sound travels in a peculiar way.’

  ‘Mostly inside your head. Why are you playing with that pipe?’ She stepped towards me and frowned at the hole in the ceiling. ‘Did you do this? I work in the property office here. I could have you arrested.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ll put it back.’ I took the handkerchief from my pocket and wiped the blood-stains from my fingers. I lifted the drainage pipe and forced it into place, then kicked the loose floor bracket under the Saab. ‘Good as new …’

  ‘You’re really a very strange man. This garage isn’t a Meccano set.’ She strolled around me, and then turned towards the parapet. Trying to manoeuvre me into the light, she exposed her nervy beauty to the open air, the lack of confidence and untrusting mouth. Aware of my admiring stare, she donned a large pair of sunglasses, evidently the most potent weapon in her purse. But she stepped forward to steady me when I stumbled against the Saab. ‘Paul
– are you all right? You look shaky.’

  ‘A little. Pulling that pipe down was an effort. Still, the Chinese boxes are starting to unpack themselves.’

  ‘At last. I saw you on the roof with one of the guards.’

  ‘Halder, yes. He took me on the grand tour.’

  ‘Of what? Security systems?’

  ‘Death. Seven deaths. Or eight, to be exact. We started at the villa and followed Greenwood’s route on May 28.’

  ‘Dear God …’ Frances raised a hand to her mouth. ‘It sounds gruesome.’

  ‘It was. An extremely graphic reconstruction, with a well-informed commentary, so packed with gory details I nearly missed the subtext. There was even a surprise ending. I feel a lot clearer about everything.’

  ‘What was the surprise?’

  ‘Halder told me who killed Greenwood.’

  ‘So …’ Her eyes briefly emptied. ‘Who did?’

  ‘Halder claimed he did.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘Halder’s the sort of man who takes a special pride in being honest, especially when it serves his own interests.’

  ‘And where did this happen?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But I think I know.’

  She picked a spur of plastic from my lapel, trying to delay her question. ‘In the garage with the hostages?’

  ‘No. Right here, in this car park. A few feet above where you’re standing.’

  ‘No …’ She shook her head and backed away from me, as if I had opened one trap-door too many in the floor around her. ‘Why here?’

  ‘Frances, I’m sorry …’ I hesitated before pressing on. ‘My guess is that Greenwood was shot on the roof. He was probably lying wounded against the parapet. I’m surprised you didn’t see what happened.’

  ‘No one saw anything. The sun shields were closed. Security moved everyone to the north side of the building.’

  ‘How long did that take?’

  ‘Ten minutes or so. Then we heard some shots. That was the end.’

  ‘It was for Greenwood …’ Matter-of-factly, I said: ‘There’s a cluster of bullet holes in the parapet. Someone filled them in, but forgot to clean the drain pipe.’

  ‘Why bother? It almost never rains here.’

  ‘This time it rained blood. A short deadly shower.’ I unfolded my handkerchief and showed Frances the haemoglobin stains.

  ‘Blood?’ She picked at the stains with a varnished forefinger, nostrils flicking as they caught some long-lost scent. She stared at a drying smear that my thumb had left on the cuff of her white silk blouse, and smiled brightly. ‘I’ll get it DNA-tested. If you’re right it’s part of David. What does it matter where he died?’

  ‘It matters a lot. If Greenwood died here he couldn’t have shot the hostages. Someone else ordered them killed. That broadens out the whole picture.’

  ‘Maybe they weren’t hostages?’

  I followed her eyes as they drifted around the parked cars. Despite the recent tears, her face was resolute. Once again she had made a course correction, steering me back onto the road she had chosen.

  I said: ‘They were Greenwood’s partners, not his hostages. None of them ever went near the garage – at least, not until they were dead. They were waiting for David in the TV centre car park.’

  ‘Too many car parks – always a sign of a troubled mind. But why the TV centre? People will kill to get on television, but weren’t they going a little far?’

  ‘They wanted to seize the station and expose a scandal at Eden-Olympia. I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Financial swindles?’

  ‘Unlikely. Chauffeurs don’t get outraged over corporate skulduggery – it’s part of the air they breathe. Have you heard any talk of “ratissages”?’

  ‘Cullings? It’s an old French Army term from the Algerian war – thinning out the fedayeen. Not much in use along the Côte d’Azur.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. I was in the Rue Valentin last night …’ I gestured at the air, unsure how to explain my interest in an eleven-year-old girl. I leaned against the Saab, my legs aching after the effort of sitting in the Range Rover with the highly strung Halder. ‘Frances …’

  ‘What is it? You look worn out. Rest in my car for a minute.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Don’t talk. I’ll give Halder hell for this.’ She took the manila envelope from the roof of the Saab and slipped her arm around my shoulders. ‘Your wife’s a doctor – she ought to look after you more.’

  ‘Patients … they’re completely passé.’ Glad to feel her strong body against mine, I let her help me through the parked vehicles. She paused to search the shadows, and approached an open-topped BMW, a similar model to the car I had stolen near the American Express office in Cannes.

  Then I recognized the broken brake light, and the heap of estate agents’ brochures. Before walking away to her dental appointment Frances had leaned against the car, confident that the world at large would happily submit to the pressure of a handsome thigh. It had never occurred to me that the car was hers, or that the driving keys had slipped from her bag as she checked her teeth.

  ‘A neat little car,’ I commented, lying back in the passenger seat. ‘Fun to drive?’

  ‘Too much. A joyrider pinched it in Cannes a few days ago. Really thrashed the engine. The garage said he must have been high. Or very repressed.’

  ‘It might have been a woman.’

  ‘No. You can always tell when a man’s driven your car. Brakes, accelerator, even the windscreen wipers – they’re all keyed up in a peculiar male way.’

  I raised the sun visor, and in the vanity mirror noticed a smear of Greenwood’s blood on my cheek. Had Frances dropped the keys deliberately, testing me to see if I could be trained to act impulsively? Already I sensed that I was being auditioned for a role that was about to be assigned to me. I assumed that she had long known the truth about Greenwood’s last moments, that his life had ended on the roof above us. But her grief had been genuine, a touching mix of anger and regret that was impossible to fake.

  She reversed from the space and set off down the ramp, missing the parked cars by inches. In the entrance she braked hard before we reached the sunlight, throwing me against the seat belt like a crash-test dummy.

  ‘You look better already,’ she told me. ‘There’s nothing like a woman’s driving to revive a man. What about a trip along the coast? I have to look at a house in Miramar.’

  ‘Are you kidnapping me?’

  ‘If you want me to. You need to get away from Eden-Olympia. It’s setting up a branch office inside your head.’

  ‘Right, I’m game.’

  ‘Good. First, let’s get rid of the war paint.’

  She licked a tissue and began to work at the smudge of blood on my cheek. The soft scent of her neck and breasts, the faint bitter-sweetness of her tongue, were belied by her surprisingly rough hands, as if she resented the stain on my skin, and my lack of title to this last signature trace of the dead doctor.

  ‘David’s blood …’ She spoke to herself. ‘All gone. It’s rather sad …’

  She stared at the ruddy tissue. The stain seemed to glow more brightly in the fading afternoon light, as if revived by the breath between her lips and her memories of Greenwood.

  25

  The Cardin Foundation

  ACROSS LA NAPOULE BAY the evening mist veiled the Croisette, and the black breasts of La Belle Otero seemed to float above the Carlton Hotel, like gifts from one pasha to another borne on a cushion of vaporizing silk. The sea was smooth enough to xerox, a vast marbled endpaper. But three hundred yards below me the waves were channelled into the cove that separated Port-la-Galère from the Miramar headland, and spears of foam leapt through the dark air like berserk acrobats.

  The vacant house we were visiting was virtually a small chateau, built into the rocks of the Pointe de l’Esquillon, with its round-the-compass views of the sea. The presence of the orienteering platform helped to straighten m
y own perspectives, after days of unsettling truths and evasions. Now Frances Baring had dealt herself back into the game, playing with her marked cards and her rigged shoe. Already I suspected that I would do anything to lose to her.

  Unsure why she had taken me on her house-call, I suggested that we stop at a café in Théoule. She sat over her citron pressé, watching as I poured a cognac into my espresso coffee, and then ordered another for me before I could ask for the bill. Her moods flared and darkened in a few seconds, a shift of internal weather almost tropical in its sudden turns. She reminded me of the women pilots at the flying club, with their wind-blown glamour and vulnerable promiscuities. She still played with the blood-stained tissue, and I took for granted that she had been Greenwood’s lover.

  ‘Paul, what do you think? Is it worth renting?’

  Her heels clicked across the parquet of the high-ceilinged drawing room. As she stepped onto the terrace the wind rushed to greet her, filling out her skirt and jacket. Frogs honked at her from the half-filled fountain, but nothing else had disturbed the garden for months. The flowerbeds had run to seed, and globes of unpicked fruit rotted around the lemon and grapefruit trees.

  I pointed to the swimming pool, filled with an opaque white fluid. ‘I hope that’s mare’s milk. Ninety thousand francs a month? Are you planning to move here?’

  ‘No fear. Some snobby little yachting resort? I rent villas for corporate visitors and high-powered academics.’ She leaned on the balcony and slipped her arm through mine. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘By the second. I’m glad I came.’ I held her wrist when she tried to move away. ‘Frances, I take it we didn’t meet by chance at the Palais des Festivals?’

  ‘Not exactly. I saw you looking a little lost, as usual, and thought you might be interesting.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘More than you realize.’ She turned her back to the sea. ‘You’re a political prisoner. You wander round all day, searching for the escape tunnel, while getting more and more involved with the guards.’