Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘I’m all right.’ I pointed to the exit, and the sounds of a motorcycle siren. ‘What about the police? They’ll be looking for the man who killed Frances.’

  ‘They don’t know about it yet. You’re safe, Mr Sinclair. And Frances …’

  ‘The people outside the lift – several of them saw me.’

  ‘They saw a man with blood on his face. A food mixer might have blown up. No one will identify you.’

  ‘A pity.’ I held my hands away from me, repelled by them and their past. ‘Poor woman – why did they need to kill her?’

  ‘She was going to cause trouble. Frances Baring had important friends, and some of them weren’t happy about Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘Everything is winding down – the special actions, the robberies and raids. Penrose is calling them off.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘I talked to him this afternoon. He explained everything – they realize now they were going too far, it was all out of control. That’s why I came here – I wanted to tell Frances it was over.’

  ‘It isn’t over. Penrose was leading you on.’ Halder spoke quietly but firmly, no longer afraid to point out my self-delusions. ‘There are more raids scheduled for the next month than ever before. Penrose and Delage are thinking about Eden II, they want to try out large-scale actions. They’re planning racist attacks in Nice, La Napoule and Cagnes-sur-Mer. I’ve seen the programme at the Villa Grimaldi – it looks like an advent calendar.’

  ‘Armed attacks?’

  ‘Shotguns, pumps, semi-automatics. The bullets have Ahmed and Mohammed written on them. Key security personnel wear sidearms outside Eden-Olympia.’ Halder opened his jacket to expose a holster clipped to his belt. ‘They’re stockpiling weapons at the Villa Grimaldi.’

  ‘I’ve seen them. The CRS will close the whole place down tomorrow.’

  ‘They’ll never be called in. Besides, most people secretly approve. You’ve listened to Penrose. He dresses up in fancy talk what everybody will tell you in a pied-noir bar. Have a few pastis too many after a football match and give some Arab a good kicking – it fires you up. Your wife finds you more of a man and you work better the next day. Same thing for all those top executives.’

  ‘Then why did Penrose say he was ending the programmes?’

  ‘He wanted you here. Then they could deal with you and Frances at the same time. A classic crime passionnel. Or even a sex game that went wrong. You know how the English are …’

  ‘And Jane?’

  ‘They don’t see her as a problem. She’s already one of them, though she doesn’t know it.’

  ‘I need to find her.’

  ‘Right. And then?’

  ‘We’ll head for the airport, drive into Italy, anything to get her away from here. She and the Delages are going to a street party somewhere. Ask the night staff at the clinic to page her.’

  ‘Too risky. Anyway, we know where she’ll be. The street party is in the Rue Valentin.’

  ‘So …’ I thought of Jane’s lurid costume. ‘The whore’s garb – like Antoinette and her milkmaids.’

  ‘Mr Sinclair? You aren’t making sense.’

  ‘You didn’t see what she was wearing. How do you know all this?’

  ‘Delage wanted me to go along. I like Dr Jane, but too much for what he had in mind. Anyway, Penrose earmarked a different job for me.’

  ‘Be careful – they used you to kill Greenwood. Sooner or later they’ll give you another target.’

  Halder turned the ignition key and listened to the sound of the engine. ‘They already have, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘Me?’ I pressed my head against the window, almost hoping that I could break the glass. ‘That’s why you were in Frances’s apartment. You were waiting there, ready to kill me. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because I like you.’ Halder stared at his instruments. ‘And I like Dr Jane. Besides, you’re more useful to me alive. You’re the one person they never predicted, the kind they can’t really handle.’

  ‘Too dull, too normal?’

  ‘Something like that. There are things Eden-Olympia can’t cope with – the key that breaks in the lock, the toilet that backs up, the druggy woman you fall in love with. The everyday world where the human race still lives. It never arrived at Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘And you’re going to bring it there?’

  ‘Exactly. Trashed cars, a few house fires and office break-ins. Eden-Olympia can fight off a billion-dollar takeover bid, but a little dog shit on the shoe leaves it helpless.’

  ‘So the graffiti, the Green slogans – you’re behind them?’

  ‘Along with a few friends. I’m climbing to the top, Mr Sinclair, in my own way …’

  We drove past the parked cars to the exit ramp. When we reached the slip road I pointed to a small crowd dispersing on the steps below the main lobby. I recognized the woman with the child who had shouted at me. Still agitated, she watched resentfully as two traffic policemen remounted their motorcycles. Clearly they had been unimpressed by the story of a blood-stained man in the lift.

  ‘So they haven’t found Frances?’

  ‘Not yet. They’re still waiting for you, Mr Sinclair.’

  As we turned onto the slip road I gripped the steering wheel, forcing Halder to brake. The traffic policemen sat astride their cycles, talking to a sharp-faced man in a camel-hair jacket and patent-leather shoes.

  ‘Alexei … what’s he doing here?’

  ‘Who?’ Halder squinted into the rear-view mirror. ‘The man with the cycle cops?’

  ‘Alexei – a small-time Russian crook. He came to the house after we arrived. I saw him in the Rue Valentin, renting out an eleven-year-old girl.’

  ‘He works for Eden-Olympia now. His name is Golyadkin, Dmitri Golyadkin.’

  ‘He said Alexei.’

  ‘Alice, Mr Sinclair. He thought you’d taken over the library…’

  I watched the Russian talking to the policeman, apparently discussing his illegally parked car. But his eyes never left the balcony far above him. Despite the smart clothes, he looked cheap and unsavoury, like the smell of his body as we wrestled on the grass.

  Then I remembered the coarse odour of a man’s sweat in Frances’s kitchen.

  ‘Golyadkin? Did he kill Frances?’

  ‘I hate to say it, but maybe he did. Alain Delage finds him useful. He has a bunk in the guardroom at the security building. I’ll deal with him later for you …’

  41

  The Streetwalker

  THE PROMENADE OF the night had begun in the Rue Valentin. I turned the Peugeot into a side street, the Avenue des Fleurs, and waited for Halder to park his Range Rover behind me. Groups of Arab and eastern European men smoked their cigarettes, while the young French whores clicked their heels and stared for inspiration into the night air. The older women in their sixties gazed at each other from their street corner, shifting from one tired ankle to the other like stoical commuters.

  I left the car and walked back to the Range Rover.

  ‘Frank, can you see her?’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Sinclair. She’ll be here soon.’

  Halder seemed unsettled, his eyes avoiding the exposed thighs of the transvestites who ambled past like Olympic oarsmen in drag. He pulled a blue trenchcoat from the rear seat and buttoned it over his jacket. Together we walked down the Rue Valentin. Nothing appeared to happen, but a busy invisible commerce was taking place. One of the bored French whores leaned forward on her stilettos and began to walk at a brisk pace. Ten steps behind her a young Arab followed with quick strides, like a messenger with an urgent telegram. Cars cruised the kerb, drivers staring ahead but communicating by some sixth sense with the pimps who stood with their backs to the road. Everyone trafficked in time, sex displaced into blocks of darkness, thirty-minute cages of the night where pleasure flared and was gone like a shooting star. Somewhere in this third-rate hell were Jane and her street party.

  ‘At least there are no children,’ I said. ‘Wha
t is it?’

  ‘Careful, Mr Sinclair …’ Halder stepped around me and nodded to a cobbled side alley. A black Mercedes was parked against a wall, the aerial of a radio telephone rising from the rear deck.

  ‘Frank? The car in the alley? What’s special about it?’

  ‘It’s the Delages’.’ Halder surveyed a film poster above a shuttered tabac. ‘They’re standing in the doorway next to the car.’

  ‘There’s nothing there …’

  ‘Right by the Merc.’ Halder lowered his head and let his eyes drift along the street. Away from Eden-Olympia he was a black man in a trenchcoat, with no secure place in the corridors of the night. At any moment the dark air could open like a trap and release a spasm of hate and violence.

  Over Halder’s shoulder I saw the Delages. They were leaning against each other in a doorway, her head against his chin, like clandestine lovers.

  ‘They’re watching the damned Mercedes. No one’s going to steal it. Where’s Jane?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Sinclair.’ Concerned for my safety, Halder steered me from the path of an aggressive transvestite who shouldered past, looking down at us with an expression of contempt. ‘I’ll take over … she’s here.’

  A rear door of the Mercedes opened, and a young prostitute in high-heels and a sequinned shift dress stepped onto the cobbles. She swayed against the open door, and closed it clumsily with her elbow. Tired by the effort, she leaned on the window, staring into her own fatigue. She seemed drugged by more than narcotics, but turned towards the Delages and made a brief, parodic curtsy. As she straightened her skirt I saw the sequins glitter in the streetlights.

  ‘Jane …?’ I spoke loudly enough for her to hear me, but she was smiling in an unfocused way at the men who passed the alley.

  ‘Frank, I can see her. What’s she playing at? It looks like a stage act.’

  ‘I don’t think it is …’

  ‘No?’ I stepped on a discarded cigarette that glowed near my feet. As its embers flared and died, the air around me seemed to lighten. My anger had passed, and I felt responsible for myself for the first time in months. ‘Wait here while I bring the Peugeot. I want to get her away before the action starts.’

  ‘Move fast, Mr Sinclair.’

  The Delages stood in the doorway beside the Mercedes, arms around each other, watching Jane like concerned foster parents at an amateur-dramatic performance where their much-loved ward was making her début. Simone followed Jane with her familiar devoted gaze, showing the same shy affection that I had noticed at their first meeting. Alain nodded to her, unsure of Jane but still confident in her, the senior bureaucrat glad to put aside his distractions to encourage a family friend, willing her to succeed. Looking across the night air at this dangerous couple, I imagined their Roman predecessors, administrators of colonial Provence, sitting in the arena at Nimes and watching a favourite slave bravely meet her end. Wilder Penrose’s feat was not to have driven the Delages mad but to have made them appear sane.

  Halder caught up with me and held my arm as I stepped into the Peugeot. ‘Mr Sinclair … I can get her for you. They’ve always wanted me to …’

  ‘Thanks, but you’ll be their target for ever. They can write me off as a spoilsport husband.’

  I stopped the Peugeot outside the entrance to the alley. Jane was still leaning against the Mercedes, handbag swinging like a signalman’s lamp. Her eyes stared at nothing, but every few seconds she seemed to wake as she forced herself to breathe. She failed to recognize me, or her car, and gestured towards the interior of the limousine, inviting me to her boudoir. The Delages nodded from the doorway, not realizing who I was, faces hidden inside the collars of their coats.

  A young Frenchman in black trousers and white shirt stopped beside the Peugeot. A smell of stale cooking fat clung to his clothes, and I guessed that he was an off-duty waiter ready to spend his tips. He surveyed Jane like a seasoned racegoer, intrigued by the combination of this back-alley novice and her powerful car. Assuming that the Delages were her pimps, he strolled towards Jane, nodding with approval at her waif-like body.

  I left the Peugeot and strode towards the alley. The Delages were watching the rear seat of the Mercedes, where Jane and her client sat together, as close but as distant as strangers on a scenic railway. The Frenchman unzipped his fly. With one hand he hunted through his wallet, while the other held Jane’s thigh, trying to keep her attention as she lay rigidly against the headrest, a passenger frozen in the last seconds before a collision.

  ‘Paul… over here.’ Seeing me, Alain Delage beckoned me to the doorway and made room for me beside Simone. ‘I’m delighted you came. We thought …’

  He was pleased to see me, glad that I had made the effort to turn up, a valued co-investor. Simone drew me into the doorway, stepping back to allow me the best view. Pressed against her, I noticed that she wore no scent or make-up, as if cleansing her senses and preparing her palate for this most savoury of dishes.

  I pulled away from them and leaned against the roof of the Mercedes. Calmly, I said: ‘I’m glad I came. What exactly is going on?’

  ‘Paul?’ Alain was surprised by my studied but aggressive tone. ‘It’s Jane – she said she told you. She wanted to try it out …’

  ‘It’s interesting for her.’ Simone took my arm reassuringly. ‘Like all wives …’

  Inside the Mercedes the Frenchman had his wallet between his teeth. He gripped Jane’s wrists, trying to restrain her as she struggled against him, small fists striking the roof of the car. When I opened the door he swore and released Jane. He stuffed his wallet into a hip pocket and sprang from the rear seat with a shout of anger. He tried to strike me, but I caught his arm and threw him heavily across the bonnet. He swayed to his feet, thought better of attacking me and strode off, gesticulating at a streetlamp.

  The Delages watched as I drew Jane from the car. They seemed disappointed but resigned, accepting that I had committed a modest social gaffe, an investor so caught up by the drama that he had mounted the stage to rescue the leading actress. Already Simone had opened the rear door and was brushing the seat, sweeping away the loose sequins from Jane’s dress.

  Jane embraced me as we stood by the Peugeot, a shocked child waking from a bad dream. She touched the bruise on her cheek and tried to wipe the lipstick from her mouth. Under the make-up her face was toneless, and I sensed that she still failed to grasp what had happened to her.

  ‘Paul, you came …’ Her hands gripped my shoulders. ‘Something went wrong. It didn’t feel like a game any more.’

  I held her close to me, closer than I had held her since arriving at Eden-Olympia. ‘Jane, dear – it never was a game …’

  She was asleep when I parked behind Halder’s Range Rover. He stood by the door and watched me brush the hair from her face. She woke briefly and stared into my eyes with a kind of dazed surprise, as if I were an old friend from her medical school who had strayed into a blind corner of her life.

  Halder surveyed the passing cars, the elderly drivers and broad-shouldered transvestites. The Delages had driven off in the Mercedes, resigned to their spoilt evening. Halder’s gaze included me in its candid sweep, and I realized that he held me responsible for everything that had happened to Jane.

  ‘She’s all right, Mr Sinclair. You can take her home to London.’ He looked down at the Peugeot’s keys that I had placed in his hand. ‘You’d like me to drive?’

  ‘Yes. But not back to Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘That’s very wise. You’re in danger there.’

  ‘I know. It took me a long time to realize it. Frank, I want you to head for Marseilles. Get Jane to the British Consul.’

  ‘Marseilles? That’s an all-night drive.’

  ‘Good. You’ll be out of the way. Jane will wake up in a few hours. Stop for coffee somewhere. Tell her everything we know – about Frances Baring’s death, the child-sex ring, why Greenwood shot all those people, Wilder Penrose and his therapy classes. Find the British Consul, an
d Jane can claim she lost her money and passport. He’ll issue her with some kind of laissez-passer. Make sure she gets on a plane back to England.’

  ‘And you, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘I’ll join her in London. First, I have a few jobs to do here. I need your Range Rover.’

  ‘All right, if you’re sure. I’ll say it was stolen.’

  ‘And your pistol. Don’t worry, I’ve had weapons training.’

  Halder’s hand moved to his holster. He stared at me through the passing headlamps, unclipped the holster from his belt and handed the weapon to me.

  ‘Mr Sinclair, you’re taking a big risk.’

  ‘Maybe. But there are people who have to be stopped. You know that, Frank. You’ve known it from the day you killed Greenwood.’

  ‘Even so …’ Halder took off his trenchcoat and slipped out of his uniform jacket. He waited as I zipped it over my shirt. ‘Be careful. They’ll be looking for you.’

  ‘They expect me in the Peugeot with Jane. I need to move around Eden-Olympia. Whatever happens, I’ll say nothing about you. One day you’ll be security chief of Eden II. You’ll make a better job of it than Pascal Zander.’

  ‘I will.’ He walked me back to the Range Rover. ‘What exactly are you planning to do?’

  ‘Tie up some loose ends. It’s best that you don’t know.’

  Halder handed me his electronic key card. ‘This will get you through all the doors in Eden-Olympia. When I come back from Marseilles I’ll leave the Peugeot at Nice Airport. They’ll think you flew to London. Take care, Mr Sinclair …’

  I watched him drive away with Jane in the Peugeot. She slept in the passenger seat, her face white and unresponsive, younger even than the teenage physician I had first met at Guy’s, an exhausted Alice who had lost her way in the mirror world.

  42

  Last Assignment

  LIGHT TOUCHED THE wings and tail-fins of the parked aircraft, warming the cold metal as the first hint of dawn appeared between Cap d’Antibes and the Îles de Lérins. I sat in the front seat of the Range Rover, and watched the darkness retreat across the dew-moist grass, stealing away like a thief between the hangars and fire engines. Above my head the night seemed to falter, then tilted and withdrew in a rush behind the Esterel. The scent of aviation spirit crossed the airfield as mechanics fuelled a twin-engined Cherokee for an early flight.