Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’ She managed a strained smile, reassuring herself that we were still close friends. ‘Paul, I had to get away. That dreadful business with Zander. I ran to the nearest exit.’

  ‘I felt the same.’ I tried to find her eyes under the dipping brim of the straw hat. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Menton. A small hotel near the old town. There’s a friend I had to see, a retired judge. I needed his advice.’

  ‘I hope you take it. Everything at Eden-Olympia is starting to slide off the table.’

  ‘Only now?’ She studied me in a distracted way. ‘You’ve had a long time to accept that.’

  ‘Not true. I’ve been waiting for the right moment.’

  ‘Waiting? That’s too easy. You can wait for ever.’

  We walked through the trees to the slip road beside the lighthouse, where I had parked the BMW. When she took the keys from me I noticed her frayed nails and raw fingertips.

  ‘You’re sure no one followed you?’ she asked. ‘The man outside the cyber-café?’

  ‘Meldrum? No. He was keeping an eye out for the Jag. Journalists don’t like to pay parking charges.’

  We sat in the car, in the shadowy space under the roof, and Frances gripped the steering wheel as if to brace herself before a collision. Trying to calm her, I moved her hands to her lap.

  ‘Frances, why would Meldrum want to follow me?’

  ‘He probably smells a story. Someone at Antibes-les-Pins might have seen the accident. The apartments are close to the beach.’

  ‘No one there ever looks at the sea. Besides, Meldrum works for Eden-Olympia. They own a large piece of the radio station.’

  ‘Even so. If it pays him enough, he’ll play both ends against each other. He wants a really big story he can sell to the news agencies. I think I can give him one …’

  She nodded to herself and stared up at the lighthouse, patiently waiting for it to come to her aid and bathe the darkness of the Côte d’Azur in its searching rays. The weeks she had spent in Menton had made her both insecure and more resolute. I thought of the elegant but unconfident woman I had met at the orthopaedic conference, and realized that nothing had changed. We had started an affair, but our time together had been stolen from Eden-Olympia and would have to be returned.

  I said: ‘If Meldrum trailed me to Antibes-les-Pins he was very professional. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘You weren’t looking. Some concierge will have tipped him off. A lot of high-powered people keep their girlfriends at Antibes-les-Pins.’

  ‘But why were you there?’

  ‘Isabel Duval told me she was seeing you. She didn’t say why.’

  ‘You’re in touch with her?’

  ‘I always have been. There are still one or two people I can trust.’ She raised her chin, showing something of her old determination. ‘I needed to see you, and I didn’t want to use the phone or e-mail. Jane might have mentioned it to Wilder Penrose. Anyway, that old Jag is an easy car to trail. I had to meet the widows so I parked in the garage and used the spare keys to leave a message.’

  ‘You were following me …? For some reason, it feels odd.’

  ‘Poor man. You’re so naive, I think it’s why you’ve survived.’ A shadow of affection crossed her face. ‘People have been following you since you came to Eden-Olympia. Once in a while try looking in the rear-view mirror.’

  ‘I will. My mind’s been rather foggy – too many painkillers. You’ll be glad to hear I’ve given them up.’

  ‘Good. You look a lot sharper. Who prescribed the painkillers?’

  ‘Jane. Her own special cocktail. Isabel Duval had them analysed for me. Mostly a strong tranquillizer.’

  ‘She’s keeping you sedated, so you won’t ask too many questions. I like Jane, but … think about it, Paul.’

  ‘I have.’ I turned to face Frances. She had relaxed a little, no longer unsettled by my presence, and I guessed that she was ready to speak frankly to me. ‘All right, Frances. Why are we here? It’s an odd place to meet.’

  ‘I wanted to see you. I even missed you. La Garoupe is far away from Eden-Olympia and all those big Mercs and gangster drivers. Besides, I was taking the widows here.’

  ‘But why La Garoupe? Their husbands were shot dead in my garden, along with Jacques Bourget – not one of them, I’m ready to bet, by David Greenwood.’

  ‘The widows know that. They wanted to see the shrine to Bourget’s friend, a junior manager at Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘The man who died in a hit-and-run accident? David was passing by and looked after him. It was quite a coincidence.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident. Or a coincidence. David wouldn’t talk about it but he felt very guilty. It was the early days of the ratissages and he hadn’t realized what was happening. The chauffeurs were assigned to drive the cars and they didn’t like what they saw. That’s why they joined David, along with Jacques Bourget. They’d all seen men run down for fun, and wanted to expose what was going on.’

  ‘By taking over a private TV station?’

  ‘A lot of important conferences are held at Eden-Olympia. There’s a direct link to TF1 and CNN. They were going to broadcast a complete exposé and force the Interior Minister to act.’

  ‘So you knew about the killings in advance?’

  ‘No.’ Frances took my hand and pressed it to her throat, as if to prevent herself from gagging. I could feel her larynx trembling, a sub-vocal rosary. ‘I didn’t know, believe me. But I guessed something was going to happen when David said he’d stored his rifle and ammunition with Philippe Bourget. I told him not to hurt anyone, but he wanted revenge.’

  ‘For what they’d done to Bourget’s friend?’

  ‘No. He wanted revenge for what Eden-Olympia had done to him.’

  Frances rapped the steering wheel with her fist, rousing herself to action. Chin raised, she stared through the windscreen at the Riviera coastline, a battle commander about to launch a beachhead but unsure of the underwater defences.

  ‘Frances … what did Eden-Olympia do to David? He was happy here, running the refuge, lending his Alice library to the teenagers.’

  ‘Alice? That’s ironic.’ Frances pushed up the brim of her hat. ‘David wasn’t happy. He hated himself, so much that it spilled over and he started to hate me.’

  ‘Why did he kill all those people – Dr Serrou, Bachelet, Olga Carlotti? Frances, you know why.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ She sounded almost offhand. ‘I’m the only one who does. No one else is sure. Not even Wilder Penrose. That’s why they used you.’

  ‘They used me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Paul Sinclair, the bored ex-pilot who’d lost his flying licence and was looking for a new way up into the clouds. Married to an oddball young doctor. The ultimate marital hot mix.’

  ‘They knew nothing about me when they recruited Jane. I published aviation books.’

  ‘But the headhunters passed on your background details, and Eden-Olympia seized its chance. Penrose and Professor Kalman and Zander decided to conduct an experiment. They ran a special trial designed to explain what went wrong with David. You were their laboratory rat.’

  ‘All I did was lie around the pool and smoke a little pot with Jane.’

  ‘Just what they wanted. You had time on your hands, and they knew you’d soon be bored. Bored enough to take part in their weekend games. Why did they put you in David’s house? Didn’t that strike you as odd?’

  ‘It did. Remarkably callous, in fact. So the house was part of the experiment?’

  ‘Penrose wanted you to think about David. Where better to start than lying in David’s bed? They knew you’d hear the gunshots as you made love to your child bride. Those murders sent a corporate shudder around the world. Everyone was aware something sinister had happened, and might happen again. Your job was to relive the whole nightmare. They cleaned the place up, but there were traces of David everywhere – the same bathroom, the same kitchen, the sun-loungers marked with his barrie
r cream. Penrose wanted you to take on David’s role, and start to think like him. In case your mind wandered, they picked Señora Morales to be the housekeeper. One very garrulous Spanish lady. She’d seen Bachelet and Dr Serrou lying dead in Guy’s bedroom, all the blood and drugs and Dominique in her erotic underwear. She was just bursting to fill you in with the background material.’

  ‘So they opened the door to the maze and pushed me in. But how did Penrose know where I’d go?’

  ‘He didn’t. You started by nosing the air, and you didn’t like the smell. You talked about going back to London. You were bored with Cannes and a wife who never stopped working. But then you found the bullets in the garden. Zander’s men had missed them, but it was a blessing in disguise.’

  ‘From then on I was hooked?’

  ‘You were playing detective. But Penrose guessed that wasn’t the only reason. You were starting to identify with David. You knew he’d changed since coming to Eden-Olympia. So you, too, wanted to change.’

  ‘Did David take part in the actions? The attacks on blacks and Arabs in La Bocca?’

  ‘No.’ Frances grimaced into her cupped hands. ‘He didn’t like those at all. Penrose and Bachelet kept him in the dark. Anyway, he was developing a recreational side of his own.’

  ‘What exactly? You were with him, Frances. What appealed to him – the rapes, the attacks on prostitutes?’

  ‘He hated those.’

  ‘Wilder must have talked to him. He can be very persuasive, setting out his Sadeian world, his do-it-yourself psychopathy kit.’

  ‘We’ve all had the pep talk. Don’t worry, David could see the benefits. Eden-Olympia was booming. But David didn’t like the human cost.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  ‘At first, Paul.’ Frances stared bleakly at me. ‘Then you changed. Now you don’t take part but you go along for the ride. You’re like all men – violence is your real turn-on, not sex. Penrose teased you, feeding you hints of a secret Eden-Olympia, letting you watch a little tasty truncheon work. Like that beating they gave the trinket salesman in the clinic car park. The whole thing was staged for you. They knew you’d go back to the Jaguar parked on the roof. Halder signalled when you’d left Jane and were on the way. They put the African and the Russian up against the wall and made sure you heard the screams.’

  ‘I can still hear them. Nasty, but …’

  ‘Effective? The raid on the Cardin Foundation really got you going – without all those wailing geishas we’d never have made it into bed.’

  ‘Not true, Frances.’

  ‘You practically came over the kitchen floor. All the while, Penrose was drip-feeding his “explore your own pathology” message to you. And you wanted to hear it. Jane was too tired to have sex with you, but after a little pethidine she’d relax with Simone Delage. That was interesting, and you didn’t mind too much.’

  ‘Easy to say.’

  ‘It intrigued you, for the first time you could stand back from yourself and enjoy a strange new feeling. And you were getting closer to David. Every time you stalled they laid down more scent. The appointments diary in David’s computer. It didn’t take you long to work out it was actually a target list.’

  ‘Penrose supplied that?’

  ‘Of course. Once you saw it, there was no stopping you. Then there was the Riviera News transcript of the special radio report.’

  ‘By the rogue journalist who suddenly moved to Portugal?’

  ‘He didn’t exist. The report was never broadcast.’

  ‘So who wrote the text?’

  ‘I did. Zander and Penrose gave me a rough outline. They told Meldrum to hand it to you and hint at sinister goings-on.’ Frances spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining to a confused tourist how he had lost himself in a strange city. The release of this long-repressed material seemed to calm her, rage diffused into the cooling waters of truth. Before I could interrupt, she pressed on: ‘I added a few interesting contact numbers – Isabel. Duval and the chauffeurs’ widows. The first thing you did was drive out to see them. Once you’d actually met them you knew there was something wrong with the official story.’

  ‘There was. The brainstorm explanation never made sense.’

  ‘You started exploring the death route, feeling yourself into David’s mind when he set off with his rifle. You were always talking about Lee Harvey Oswald, Hungerford and Columbine. So Zander told Halder to take you on a guided tour.’

  ‘My very own Dealey Plaza. It was quite a day. The crime photos showed the nasty little hobbies that people have at Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘They were hobbies – assigned by Penrose as part of the therapy programme. That’s why some of it looks so amateurish. Berthoud with his old-fashioned scales and smuggler’s suitcase: he was acting out a fantasy of a drug-dealer and not doing it very well. Guy Bachelet with the stolen jewellery he couldn’t be bothered to get rid of. The photos drew you in even deeper. You could see that Halder knew more than he let on.’

  ‘He killed David. Did he shoot the hostages?’

  ‘No. Zander led the execution squad. They arrested them outside the TV centre and took them back to the house. Then Kellerman shot them in the garden with David’s rifle. Someone told me that Cordier and Bourget made a run for it and everything was botched. That’s how you came to find the bullets.’

  ‘So Halder was still on the garage roof?’

  ‘They couldn’t get him away from David’s body. He was weeping all over him.’ Frances pressed a fist to her mouth, forcing the blood from her blanched lips. ‘Now he’s using you to take his revenge. Be careful, Paul – you’re a very small piece on Halder’s board.’

  ‘I know that.’ I took her hand and kissed her wrist. ‘Aren’t you playing the same game, Frances? Did Zander and Penrose set up our meeting at the Palais des Festivals?’

  ‘No. That was me. I’d had time to think about David. We’d split up very painfully. He more or less threw me out.’

  ‘But why? I thought you were close.’

  ‘Too close. That was the reason. I was frightened I’d lose him. So I showed him things about himself he didn’t know.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ Frances stared fiercely at the hills beyond Cannes. ‘Eden-Olympia corrupted David and destroyed him. He was the real victim on May 28. I watched him die in the gutter like an animal, crying in pain. After that I wanted to expose Wilder Penrose and Zander and Professor Kalman, but I needed hard evidence.’

  ‘The photographs, the truth about the hostages …?’

  ‘Not hard enough. I’d been David’s lover for months, my flat was full of his things. Zander wanted to frame me there and then. If Penrose hadn’t stepped in I would have been charged as a co-conspirator. They’d have found me guilty.’

  ‘Twenty years in a French prison. Or worse. Good for Wilder Penrose.’

  ‘He knew I’d be useful. So I had to go along with them. I work in the property office, I know about all the lettings on the Côte d’Azur – which Omani millionaire is moving into a particular villa in Californie, which Turkish banker is buying a jewellery store in Villeneuve-Loubet or leasing warehouse space somewhere. I laid on the Cardin Foundation raid, and the marina hijacking at Golfe-Juan. Like it or not, I’ve been deeply implicated from the start. I wanted revenge for David, but there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Until Jane and I arrived?’

  She opened my hand and studied my palm line, then closed it like a book she had decided not to read. ‘Sorry, Paul, but that’s true. They were using you, so I thought I’d do the same. I decided to build a maze of my own. Their maze was Eden-Olympia. Mine was the inside of your head.’

  ‘And I was happy to play there?’

  ‘You were a small boy again. Then I started to like you, which I hadn’t bargained on. But that didn’t affect my real goal.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The same as Penrose’s. I wanted to provoke you, to test you to destruction. I want
ed to find your dirtiest little secret, and then work on it until you became disgusted with yourself and needed to explode. You’d go to the British Consul, talk to your MEP, take the story to Fleet Street.’

  ‘It almost worked.’

  ‘At first you were really coming along. You found those orthopaedic harnesses very perverse.’

  ‘What man doesn’t?’

  ‘So true. There’s nothing too weird to switch a man on sexually. You’d worn a surgical harness when Jane first got you excited. But then you threw everyone. You followed a child whore to the Rue Valentin. Penrose and Zander couldn’t believe their luck. You looked like you wanted to fuck her.’

  ‘No. Not in the sense you mean.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I understand.’ Frances patted my head, as if I were an elderly spaniel who had given dumb but loyal service. ‘You were starting to miss Jane, and little Natasha reminded you of your first love, the doctor’s daughter in Maida Vale. Penrose thought you were a full-blown paedophile, just waiting to climb into the toy cupboard.’

  ‘I let him down. How sad.’

  ‘Never mind. You like girlish young women, that’s all. The paedo line didn’t lead anywhere. I had a last go at the film festival, hoping those Thai mammasans would stir you up with some juicy kiddy-porn. But I could see it in their eyes – they knew you weren’t interested.’

  ‘Sorry, Frances. I was looking for Jane.’

  ‘You missed her, and being a voyeur was the next best thing. You’re curious to see Jane with other lovers – it liberates you from all that old-fashioned jealousy you felt when your mother was fondled by her men-friends. I’m only surprised you drew the line at Zander.’

  ‘A police chief? One has to have a few principles. He wanted to fuck my wife so that Alain and Simone could watch.’

  ‘I’m shocked. That is going too far.’

  ‘Don’t laugh. It was a close thing. Still, I didn’t want him dead. Frances …?’ She had turned away, covering her face as a tourist coach turned into the car park. ‘Has someone seen us? Meldrum …?’

  ‘No. I was thinking of Zander and that terrible road … the water burning around the car.’ Her voice fell away, and she turned almost searchingly towards me, as if I could reassemble her memories. ‘Those nightmare headlights before the accident …’