Cocaine Nights

25 Carnival Day

The residencia Costasol was celebrating itself, saluting its happy return to life. From the balcony of my office on the first floor of the sports club I watched the line of carnival floats across the plaza, bedecked with flowers and bunting, cheered on by an exuberant crowd whose voices almost drowned the selections from Gilbert and Sullivan relayed from the loudspeakers along the route. A cloud of petals and confetti hung in the air over the revellers' heads, borne aloft by the lungs of the tourists drawn into the Residencia from Estrella de Mar and the resorts along the coast.

For three days all thoughts of security had been abandoned. Intrigued by the first firework displays, the visitors had parked their cars along the beach, and soon overwhelmed the guards at the gatehouse. Martin Lindsay, the retired Life Guards colonel who was the elected mayor of the Residencia Costasol, swiftly consulted his fellow-councillors and ordered the security system to shut down its computers for the duration of the festival. The Costasol Arts Fair, scheduled to last a single afternoon, was now in its second day and showed every sign of outrunning another night.

Towed by Lindsay's Range Rover, a float passed the sports club and began its circuit of the plaza. A black silk banner bearing the legend 'The Residencia Philharmonic Players' wafted above the dozen members of the orchestra, who sat at their music stands, bows working across their violins and cellos while the pianist strummed the keyboard of a white baby grand and a graceful harpist in an ivory evening gown plucked the strings of a harp decked with yellow roses. The medley of Vivaldi and Mozart struggled gamely with the cheers of the tourists raising their glasses outside the crowded cafés of the shopping mall.

Two handsome women members, still in their tennis whites, stepped from my office on to the balcony and gripped the rail, waving their rackets at another float that passed below us.

'Good God! Is that Fiona Taylor?'

'How wonderful – she's completely starkers!' Designed by the Costasol Arts Club, the float carried a mock-up of an artist's studio. Six easels stood at one end of the tableau, artists in Victorian smocks sketching away with their charcoal and crayons. A sculptor, Teddy Taylor, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Purley, worked at his clay table, fashioning a model of his decorous blonde wife. Dressed in a flesh-coloured skinsuit, she posed like Lady Godiva on a stuffed studio horse, smiling broadly at the tourists who wolf-whistled at her.

'Bobby Crawford – he's arrived!' One of the tennis ladies began to shriek, almost knocking my vodka and tonic from the rail. 'Come on, Bobby, let's see you pose!'

A newsreel location van of a Spanish TV channel kept pace with the arts float, its cameraman filming the glamorous sitter in close-up. Bobby Crawford stood behind the cameraman, steadying his arm as the convoy of vehicles turned around the plaza. Rose petals covered his blond hair and black batik shirt, and silver confetti spotted his sweating face and forehead, but he was too happy to brush them away. Grinning broadly, he waved to the tourists, toasting them with a glass of wine handed to him by a passing spectator. When the location van brushed against the float he leapt aboard, almost falling across the easels, picked himself up and embraced the beaming Fiona Taylor.

'Take it off! Bobby, you handsome sod!'

'Off, off off! Charles, order him to strip!'

The women beside me bounded like cheerleaders on their tennis pumps, rackets whirling above my head, and Crawford good-naturedly unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his hairless chest, striking a Byronic pose for the sculptor. A news agency photographer ran beside the float, and Crawford peeled off his shirt and hurled it to the crowd. When they reached the shopping mall he leapt from the float and ran bare-chested past the café tables, pursued by a squealing posse of teenage girls in carnival hats.

Exhausted by the noise and relentless good humour, I left the tennis ladies and took refuge in my office. Yet another tableau had reached the plaza, an amateurish effort by the Olde-Tyme Dancing Club, but the elderly couples trying to waltz on the swaying platform received as big a cheer as Lady Godiva.

The Residencia Costasol was happy with itself, and for good reason. During the past two months-the legal documents from Senor Danvila on my desk reminded me that Frank's trial began the next day – the explosion of civic activity had astonished even Bobby Crawford. At dinner with Elizabeth Shand the previous evening he had laughed and shaken his head over what I termed 'a fast-forward renaissance', all too embarrassed by the genie that had sprung from the bottle.

The somnolent township with its empty shopping mall and deserted sports club had transformed itself into another Estrella de Mar, as if an infectious but benevolent virus had floated along the coast, invading the sluggish nervous system of the Residencia and galvanizing it into life. An intact and self-sufficient community had sprung into being. Half a dozen new restaurants thrived around the plaza, all but one financed by Betty Shand and managed by the Keswick sisters. Two nightclubs had opened near the marina, the Milroy for the older set and Bliss's for the younger. The town council met weekly at the Anglican church, whose Sunday congregations packed its pews. Meanwhile, the volunteer security patrols kept the sun-coast riff-raff from any access to the complex. A host of societies pursued every pastime from origami to hydrotherapy, the tango to t'ai chi. And all this, whatever my doubts, seemed to have been conjured into existence by the dedication of one man.

'Bobby, you're a new kind of Messiah,' I often told him. 'The Imam of the marina, the Zoroaster of the beach umbrella 'No, Charles – I'm a facilitator.'

'I'm still not sure that it isn't a huge coincidence, but I take off my hat to you.'

'Put it back on. They did it, not me. I was just the donkey-engine…'

With his unfeigned modesty, Crawford was quick to pass any credit to the people of the Residencia. As I had learned for myself, an immense reservoir of unused talent had lain dormant beneath the shaded awnings. The middle-class professionals who had dozed by their swimming pools were sometime lawyers and musicians, advertising and television executives, management consultants and local government officers. The skills base of the Residencia Costasol might not equal that of the Medicis' Florence, but it was far wider than most comparable towns in Europe or North America.

Even I had been touched by this infection of optimism and creativity. Resting by the pool in the evenings, I had sketched the outline of a book – 'Marco Polo: the World's First Tourist?' – that would be a history of tourism and its eclipse of the age of travel. After despairing of me for so many months, my London agent was now bombarding me with faxes, urging me to provide him with a detailed synopsis. I frequently played bridge with Betty Shand and the Hennessys, reluctant though I was to leave the Residencia for Estrella de Mar and its baleful memories of the Hollinger fire, and had even been tempted to play a small part in a forthcoming production of Orton's What the Butler Saw.

From my office I looked down at the crowded swimming pool, at the busy restaurant and tennis courts, glad that I had played my role in bringing the Residencia back to life. Below me, Betty Shand was holding court at the open-air bar, keeping a motherly, if steely eye on a handsome young Russian, Yuri Mirikov; she had just recruited him as a special 'aerobics' coach. As she gazed at the scene around her, like a silken cobra sated after digesting a succulent goat, I could almost see the accumulating cash totals flicker past her eyes.

The Residencia was booming in every sense, an economy of cash, talent and civic pride that showed no signs of overheating. Newly refurbished yachts and power-cruisers crowded the marina, and Gunnar Andersson had recruited a full-time staff of mechanics to maintain the engines and navigation gear. The waterlogged hulk of the Halcyon still lay against its lighter, like the carcass of a forgotten whale lashed to the tender of a factory ship, but was scarcely visible through the forest of gleaming masts.

Members crowded the balcony outside my office, cheering on another carnival float, a presentation by the rapid response group of the Residencia's security service. Together they enacted the arrest of two car thieves who had strayed down the coast from Fuengirola, expertly pinioning and handcuffing the startled youths. Yet among all this good humour one long face remained, its severe expression unmoved by the festive air. As the thieves' fates were decided in a loudspeaker-borne crackle of walkie-talkies and mobile phones, I noticed Paula Hamilton step on to the balcony. She wore a dark suit and white blouse, and carried her doctor's valise. Glad to see her, I waved through my office windows, though with her disapproving and hangdog look she more and more resembled a mendicant physician wandering through the kingdom of health in search of a single sick patient.

At my urging she had joined the sports club, and would often swim in the early morning, slipping into the water as the last of the night's revellers drove from the car park. She practised with Helmut at the tennis courts, trying to control her unwieldy, big-elbowed game. Once I knocked up with her, but she played in such a lacklustre way that I assumed she had joined the club for reasons of her own, perhaps keeping an eye open for any rival doctors on her turf.

She watched from the balcony as the security tableau passed the café crowds, and smiled briefly when Bobby Crawford, in a borrowed Hawaiian shirt, sprang on to the float and mimed a drunken British lager lout. Within seconds he turned the security exercise into a Keystone Kops routine, with the guards tripping over their own feet and scrabbling for the scattered mobile phones as the earpieces squawked their manic orders.

She turned away, clearly troubled by something, and noticed me watching her from my office. With a shy smile she opened the door and leaned against the glass panel.

'Paula… you look tired.' I offered her my chair. 'All this noise – you probably need a drink.'

'Thanks, I do. Why is other people's happiness so exhausting?'

'They've a lot to celebrate. Sit down, I'll ring for whatever you want. You do the prescribing.'

'Nothing. Just some mineral water.' She smiled brightly, showing her strong teeth, and tossed her black hair over her shoulders. She watched Crawford playing the fool, juggling with three mobile phones in a shower of petals and confetti. 'Bobby Crawford… he's popular, isn't he? Your saintly psychopath. Everyone adores him.'

'Don't you, Paula?'

'No.' She bit her lip, as if trying to erase the memory of a kiss. 'I don't think I do.'

'He meant a lot to you once.'

'Not now. I've seen his other sides.'

'They're well under control. I don't know why you're so obsessed by him.' I gestured to the crowds in the plaza, the hooting sirens and clouds of petals. 'Look at what he's done. Do you remember the Residencia three months ago?'

'Of course. I came here a lot.'

'Exactly. The place was filled with your patients. Not so many now, I dare say.'

'Almost none at all.' She placed her valise on my desk and sat beside it, nodding to herself. 'A few leukaemias I send back to London. Shin-splints from all this unnecessary exercise. Even a few cases of VD. But a little old-fashioned gonorrhoea wouldn't surprise you.'

'Not really.' I shrugged tolerantly. 'You'd expect it, given a bigger turnover of sexual partners. It's a disease of social contact – like flu, or golf.'

'There are other social diseases, some a lot more serious -like a taste for kiddie-porn.'

'Pretty rare in the Residencia.'

'But surprisingly contagious.' Paula treated me to her severest schoolmistressy gaze. 'People who think they're immune suddenly catch a rogue cross-infection from all the other porn they're looking at.'

'Paula… we've tried to keep it down. There's a problem in the Residencia-there are almost no children. People miss them, so sexual fantasies get mixed up with nostalgia. You can't blame Bobby Crawford for that.'

'I blame him for everything. And you – you're almost as responsible as Crawford. He's totally corrupted you.'

'That's absurd. I'm planning a book, thinking about guitar lessons and a stage career, playing bridge again…'

'All noise.' Paula picked up the computer mouse and held it tightly in her hand, as if wanting to crush it. 'When you came here you were the homme moyen sensuel, full of hang-ups about your mother and little guilts about those teenaged whores you fuck in Bangkok. Now you haven't a moral care in the world. You're the right-hand man of the local crime czar and you aren't even aware of it.'

'Paula…' I reached out and tried to rescue the mouse from her. 'I've more doubts than you realize.'

'You're deluding yourself. Believe me, you totally support him.'

'Of course I do. Look at what he's achieved. I couldn't give a damn how many sculpture classes there are, the important thing is that people are thinking again, looking hard at who they are. They're building a meaningful world for themselves, not just fitting more locks to the front door. Everywhere you look – Britain, the States, western Europe – people are sealing themselves off into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake-a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.'

'Maybe.' Paula stood up and strolled around the office, shaking her head at the festive tourists. 'He leaves tomorrow, thank heavens. What are you going to do when he's gone?'

'Things will run as before.'

'Are you sure? You need him. You need that energy and wide-eyed innocence.'

'We'll live without it. Once the carousel is spinning it doesn't need all that much of a push to keep it moving.'

'So you think.' Paula stared at the distant pueblos along the coast, their white walls lit by the sun. 'Where is he going?'

'Further down the beach. Calahonda – it's a huge complex. There are something like ten thousand Brits there.'

'They've got a surprise in store. So he's moving on, bringing cordon bleu and tango classes to the benighted people of the pueblos. He'll recruit another edgy wanderer like you and, at the snap of a few Polaroids, the poor man will see the light.' She turned to face me. 'You'll be at Frank's trial tomorrow?'

'Of course I will. That's why I came here.'

'Are you sure?' She sounded sceptical. 'He needs you. You haven't been even once to the jail in Malaga. Not once in nearly four months.'

'Paula, I know…' I tried to avoid her eyes. 'I should have been to see him. That guilty plea threw me – I felt he was trying to involve me in whatever troubled him. I wanted to crack the Hollinger case, and then Bobby Crawford came along. I felt a load off my shoulders But Paula was no longer listening to me. She stepped to the window as the last of the floats arrived, bearing a mock-sunset of pink roses on which was superimposed 'The End'. A boisterous party was in progress on the float, and a dozen younger residents of the Costasol complex performed a dance medley to music played by a three-piece band. Knees and elbows scissored through a few bars of the Charleston, arms whirled in a forties jitterbug, hips gyrated through the twist.

In the centre of the dancers Bobby Crawford kept time, clapping as he led the troupe through the hokey cokey and the black bottom. His Hawaiian shirt was soaked with sweat, and he seemed to be on a cocaine high, his eyes raised to the clouds of confetti and petals as if he were ready to rise from the dance floor and float away among the helium balloons.

Not all the dancers, however, would join him. Stumbling beside Crawford was the derelict and exhausted figure of Laurie Fox, barely able to lift her feet to the music. Several beats behind, she lurched into the dancers around her and then fell against Crawford's chest, mouth ajar below her unfocused eyes. Her hair had grown into a fuzzy black pelt, through which the scars were still visible like failed attempts to trepan herself. Her grimy vest was stained with blood that had run from her bruised nose, and outlined her breasts as they rolled like moony heads.

As we watched, she fell to the floor, vomited among the petals and began to hunt for the nose-ring that had escaped from her bloody nostril. Barely breaking his dance-step, Crawford lifted her on to her feet, encouraging her with an eager smile and a brief slap.

'Poor child…' Paula hid her face behind one hand as the other reached for the security of her medical valise. 'She's probably had nothing for weeks except tequila and amphetamines. Can't you get Crawford to help her?'

'He has. I'm not being callous, Paula. She's doing what she wants, terrible though it is. Crawling towards her own death 'What on earth does that mean? And what happens when he goes? Will he take her with him?'

'Maybe. I doubt it.'

'He's used her, letting her degrade herself to excite everyone else.'

'This isn't her best day-the festival's too much for her. They love her down at the marina. She sings in a jazz bar by the boatyard. Even Andersson's climbed out of his gloomy shell and started to forget Bibi Jansen. She's better off there than lying in some drug-induced coma at the Princess Margaret Clinic. The sad thing is, you're not the only one who doesn't understand that.'

I pointed to the float as it circled the plaza, the band working itself into a final flourish. Laurie Fox had given up and now sat on the floor among the vomit and dancing feet. Walking abreast of her through the crowd was Dr Sanger, one hand raised in an attempt to touch her shoulder. With a determination that seemed surprising in this slim and diffident man, he pushed the tourists and cameramen out of his way and kept a protective eye on the young woman, calling to her when she seemed to fall asleep. Since her departure from the bungalow he had roamed the streets and cafés of the Residencia, content to catch a glimpse of her shouting from the passenger seat of Crawford's Porsche or shrieking from his speedboat as it sped down the canal to the open sea. I often watched him pacing around his pool and compulsively washing the discarded nightdress. When the float circled the shopping mall I waited for Sanger to leap aboard, but Crawford was unaware of the psychiatrist, his head raised to the sun as he danced through the shower of petals.

'Poor man… I hate that.' Paula turned her back to the scene and paced around my desk. 'I'm going-you'll be at court tomorrow?'

'Of course. But we'll meet at the party tonight.'

'The party?' Paula seemed surprised. 'Where – at your villa?'

'It starts at nine. Hennessy should have phoned you. It's Bobby Crawford's farewell. We're giving him a special send-off. I'll see you there.'

'I'm not sure. A party…?' Paula fiddled with her valise, as if unable to cope with the notion. 'Who will be coming?'

'Everyone. The key Costasol crowd. Betty Shand, Colonel Lindsay, most of his council, the Keswick sisters-all the leading lights. It should be quite a bash. Betty Shand's supplying everything – buffet, champagne, canapés 'And enough Unes of cocaine to burn out my nasal septum?'

'I dare say. Hennessy says there'll be a special barbecue. Let's hope we don't burn the place down.'

'And Crawford will be there?'

'To begin with. Then he'll leave us to it. He has to clear out his things and get off to Calahonda.'

'So it's a hand-over ceremony…' Paula was nodding to herself, her lower Up clamped between her teeth. Her face was paler, as if her blood had suddenly chilled. 'He'll officially pass his Pan-pipes to you.'

'In a way. Before the party I'll play a last game of tennis with him.'

'He'll let you beat him.' She unlocked and closed the valise, then adjusted my inkstand and noticed the set of car keys that I had found in the orchard at the Hollinger house. She picked them up and weighed them in her hand. 'The keys to your kingdom – to all Bobby Crawford's secret places?'

'No, they're a spare set of car keys. I found them in the… changing rooms at the Club Nautico. I've tried them out on dozens of cars, but none of them match. I ought to give them to Hennessy.'

'Hang on to them – you never know when they might come in useful.' Carrying the valise, she walked to the door, then turned to stare at me before kissing my cheek. 'Enjoy the tennis match. Perhaps you should tie your hands behind your back – it's the only way you might lose I stepped on to the balcony and watched her drive away, blaring her horn at the tourists who crowded the plaza, as if refusing to acknowledge the festival cheer. Already I looked forward to dancing with her that evening. As she had said, the party was a transfer ceremony, though in many ways I had already taken over the running of Crawford's activities at the Residencia. For weeks he had spent more and more of his time away from the complex, exploring Calahonda and testing out the possibilities of his tonic regime. The administration of his underground imperium he left to me, confident that I now accepted the importance of everything he had achieved. Of my original doubts, all had gone except for those concerning his treatment of Laurie Fox. He had cared for and charmed her, constantly at her side as they roamed the bars and clubs in the evening. But he made no attempt to curb her cocaine and amphetamine hunger, as if this bruised and deteriorating young woman was an exotic creature to be exhibited in all her feral glory.

I knew that he was punishing Sanger for the sins of those psychiatrists who had failed to help him when he was a child. During the film sessions at the villa, when Laurie had sex in my bed with Yuri Mirikov, Betty Shand's Russian Adonis, Crawford would sometimes remove the black shrouds from the windows, taunting Sanger as the film lights blazed over the bungalow compound. She had slept with Sanger, he seemed to say, and perhaps with her father, and now with any man whom Crawford picked out during their tour of the evening bars.

I took no part in these ugly sessions, which had grown out of the film club I founded, just as I tried not to involve myself too closely in the criminal conspiracy that underpinned the life of the Residencia – the drugs supplied by Mahoud and Sonny Gardner to the network of dealers, the massage and escort services which had recruited so many bored widows and a few adventurous wives, the 'creative' cabarets that entertained the more corrupt parties, and the muscle squad of two former British Airways executives who quietly burgled and vandalized their way across the Residencia, damaging cars and fouling swimming pools in the cause of civic virtue.

Sitting at my desk, I listened to the strains of Iolanthe and thought of Paula Hamilton. Once Crawford had left the Residencia the creative tension he had imposed would begin to relax. I would see more of her again, play tennis with her and perhaps share the costs of a small yacht. I imagined us sailing along the coast, secure in our private world, as the cutwater clicked and the bottles of white Burgundy cooled in our wake…

Spray struck the awning of the poolside bar. A sudden uproar had broken out on the terrace, the sounds of overturned furniture and angry voices, followed by a woman's hysterical cries somewhere between laughter and pain. Drawn by the clamour, tourists were crossing the car park and firing the last of their plastic streamers towards the pool. Cheering each other on, they scrambled over the waist-high perimeter fence and climbed the grass verge to the open-air bar.

I left my office and quickly made my way down to the petal-strewn terrace. The members around the pool had left their sun-loungers and were gathering up their towels and magazines. Some laughed uneasily, but most seemed dismayed, hands shielding their faces from the spray. Elizabeth Shand had retreated behind the counter of the bar, and was snapping at the waiters and urging them towards the water. She shouted to Bobby Crawford, who stood on the diving board, calmly observing the spectacle in the pool.

'Bobby, for heaven's sake, this is too much! Can't you stop them? Charles, where are you? Speak to him!'

I stepped through the tourists crowding against the tables. Laurie Fox was swimming naked in the pool, thrashing the waves with her arms while the blood streamed from her nose. Her thighs were clasped around Mirikov's waist as she tried to have sex with him in the water. Screaming at the sky, she pressed her bloodied breasts to his mouth, then turned and began to shout at the watching tourists. One hand fumbled for the Russian's crotch as the other beat the surface, dashing the bloodied water against the legs of the appalled onlookers.

Then a silver-haired man forced himself past me, drops of spray on his clenched lips. Ignoring Crawford, who stood at ease on the diving board, Sanger pushed through the hooting tourists and kicked aside the tables. Without removing his shoes, he leapt into the shallow end and waded strongly through the waist-deep water. He pulled the embarrassed Mirikov on to his back, dunking the Russian's blond head. As Laurie Fox screamed in her demented way, spitting out the blood she had sucked into her mouth, Sanger seized her around the waist. He lost his footing in the deeper water, and they rolled together in the carmine waves. Silver hair now flecked with blood, Sanger held the young woman to his chest and carried her to the shallow end.

Everyone moved away as I knelt down and lifted her from his arms. Together we laid her on the verge among the sodden petals and confetti. I took a towel from a nearby sun-lounger and draped it over her shoulders, trying to staunch the blood from her nose. Sanger sat beside her, too exhausted to take her hand, water streaming from his silk jacket. He seemed blanched and shrunken, as if emerging from a bath of formaldehyde, but his eyes were steady and unevasive as he stared across the bloodied pool at Bobby Crawford.

When he was strong enough to stand, I helped him to his feet. Still dazed, he stared at the barely conscious young woman, brusquely waving away the now silent tourists who crowded the tables.

'We'll carry her to my car,' I told him. 'I'll give you a lift home. It's best if she stays with you from now on…'