Super-Cannes

On the roof of the Noga Hilton the samurai warrior had lowered his sword, as if unable to decide how many of the thousands of heads in the Croisette he would strike from their shoulders. His black helmet, the size of a small car, tilted towards the sea, moving jerkily as the Japanese technicians swarmed over his back, their arms deep in his electromechanical heart.

But the crowd's attention had turned to a trio of stretch limousines emerging from the drive of the Martinez. The onlookers surged against the railings, angry cries sounding a clear threat above the excitement. Hands patted the sleek roofs of the vehicles, fingers pressed at the tinted windows and left their smeared prints on the glass. A middle-aged woman in a baseball cap fired a canister of liquid confetti over the last Cadillac, entrails of iridescent air-weed that clung to the radio masts. Glamour moved through Cannes at five miles an hour, too fast to satisfy their curiosity, too slow to slake their dreams.

I sat at my table in the Blue Bar, waiting for Frances Baring to join me. After avoiding me for a week, hiding behind the answerphone at Marina Baie des Anges, she had called my mobile, a wilfully cryptic edge to her voice. She suggested that we have an early-evening drink in Cannes, though the Croisette was the last place for a secret rendezvous.

Ten feet from my kerbside table the limousines moved on towards the Palais des Festivals between the lines of police and security men.

Helicopters circled the Palm Beach headland, waiting to land at the heliport, like paramilitary gunships about to strafe the beachside crowds. Their white-suited passengers, faces masked by huge shades, stared down with the gaze of gangster generals in a Central American republic surveying a popular uprising. An armada of yachts and motor cruisers strained at their anchors two hundred yards from the beach, so heavily freighted with bodyguards and television equipment that they seemed to raise the sea.

Yet a short walk from the Croisette, as I had seen while driving down the Rue d'Antibes, the Cannes Film Festival might not have existed. Elderly ladies in silk suits and pearls strolled in their unhurried way past the patisseries or exchanged gossip in the salons de thé. Toy poodles soiled their favourite pavements, and tourists scanned the estate agents' displays of new apartment complexes, ready to invest their savings in a prefabricated dream of the sun.

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit.

A limousine with Eden-Olympia pennants paused in the stalled traffic outside the Blue Bar. Hoping to catch sight of Jane, I stood up at my table. With Simone and Alain Delage, she was attending a seven-o'clock reception for a Franco-German film financed by one of the business park's merchant banks. After the premiere they would move on to a fireworks party at the Villa Grimaldi and watch the Cannes night turn into a second day.

As the limousine crept forward, a chorus of fists drumming on its roof, I saw the fleshy figure of Pascal Zander lounging across the rear seat. Three young women, as blankly self-conscious as starlets, sat beside him, together trying to light his cigar. They waved like novice queens at the crowd, aware that they had crossed the threshold where celebrity and the illusion of celebrity at last fused for a few exhilarating hours.

A Chinese man carrying a camcorder strode through the spectators, searching for a target of opportunity. Followed by a Scandinavian woman with a clipboard, he took a short cut through the Blue Bar and brushed my shoulder, almost knocking me from my feet. I sat down clumsily, wincing over my inflamed knee. As Zander's limousine pulled away, I thought again how odd it was that I had to visit the Cannes Film Festival, and be assaulted by tourists, in the hope of meeting my wife.

In the months since Jane's panic attempt to leave Eden-Olympia I had seen less and less of her. We shared the same swimming pool, breakfast room and garage, but our lives were drawing away from each other. Jane had committed herself for good to the business park. Long hours of work, a diamorphine night and weekends with Simone Delage made up her world. I was still uneasy over the syrettes in her dressing table, but she had found professional success at Eden-Olympia. She had been profiled in the London medical press, and was completing the diagnostic tests that would soon link every employee in Eden-Olympia and Sophia-Antipolis.

At the same time, the most advanced system of preventive medicine in Europe had been unable to cure my knee injury. The rogue infection had flared up again, a hospital-bred bacterium that resisted antibiotics, rest and physiotherapy. This old barometer of my discontents was forecasting stormy weather. Taking pity on me as I limped around the house in the small hours, Jane made up a solution of muscle relaxant and painkiller. She taught me how to inject myself, and the modest doses were the only effective relief that any of the clinic's highly paid physicians had offered.

The helicopters clattered above the beach, cameras filming from open doorways. A small riot had started outside the Carlton.

According to an American couple at the next table, a leading Hollywood star had promised to emerge from the front entrance, only to discover that a rival studio's production was advertised on a huge billboard above his head. He had turned back into the hotel and slipped out through a rear exit, leaving a rattled publicity woman to make his apologies. Even as she shouted through her megaphone a dozen hands were rocking a TV location van. A Cannes policeman sprawled across the windscreen like a stuntman, shouting to the hotel's security team as the crowd cheered him on.

Exhausted by the noise, I left the table to a middle-aged German tourist, who managed the feat of sitting in my chair before I could rise fully to my feet. I wiped my hands on his shoulder and limped to the toilets at the rear of the bar. I locked myself into a cubicle, and took the leather hypodermic wallet from my jacket. Leaning against the washbasin, I lifted my injured leg onto the lavatory lid and rolled my trouser to the knee. The surgical scars had faded, but the pain still nagged, a cry for help that sounded steadily from beneath the floorboards of my mind.

I broke the seal on the unlabelled phial and drew three ccs into the hypodermic. Avoiding the cluster of old puncture points, I injected the pale solution into the fold of smooth skin on the inner surface of my knee. I counted to twenty as the subcutaneous shot brought its slow but deep relief, pushing the pain further from me, like furniture moved to the far corners of a stage.

Letting my leg fall to the floor, I shouted through the door at an impatient woman rattling the lock. She stepped into another cubicle, and I sat across the washstand, my back to the mirror, letting the tap water run across my hands. As my chest warmed, I thought of Jane, dazzling as any film star in her minuscule black frock, the fur stole around her shoulders, walking into the Palais des Festivals with Alain and Simone Delage.

I, meanwhile, was stuck in a lavatory on the Croisette, like any junkie after a fix, and with scarcely a greater grip on reality. At Easter my cousin Charles had flown down to visit us, and we amicably agreed that I would give up the pretence of helping to edit the firm's publications. He enjoyed his stay, impressed by Jane's newfound role as international career physician, but puzzled by my transformation into a suntanned but distracted consort, forever listening to the ghosts in the garden. I told him nothing about the secret life of Eden-Olympia.

Meanwhile, my investigation into the Greenwood murders had stalled. Between myself and the truth stood an amiable bully with badly bitten fingernails. Although Wilder Penrose enjoyed my company, and generously allowed me to beat him at chess, I knew that he saw me as another of his experimental animals, to be stroked through the bars as I was fattened for yet another maze.

Trying to lead him on, I listened to him enlarge on his psychopathic credo. He had recruited a dozen more bowling clubs, and I hoped that he would soon overreach himself and drive his demented apocalypse into the buffers. He pressed me to join one of the therapy groups, and I finally gave in, intending to take careful notes of the victims and their injuries.

In the rear seats of cars stolen for the evening, I watched as the photographer – a financial analyst with a Japanese bank – recorded the ratissages on his camcorder. An empty mansion on Cap d'Antibes owned by an Egyptian property tycoon was broken into and thoroughly trashed. Another bowling team, made up of senior managers at Elf-Maritime, carried out a spectacular act of piracy in the Golfe-Juan marina, seizing a motor yacht owned by a family of Omani Arabs. They sailed the gaudy vessel to the Îles de Lérins, where it was beached and set alight. From the terrace of the Villa Grimaldi we watched the flames rise into the night. As sleek in their wetsuits as a chorus line of James Bonds, the corporate perpetrators raised their malt-whisky tumblers and toasted the cause of therapeutic psychopathy.

Gold, I soon noticed, was a special target of the bowling teams.

I pretended to play lookout when a hapless Saudi broker was brutally beaten in the underground garage at the Noga Hilton.

Sexual assaults provided a unique frisson, and older prostitutes received special treatment, for reasons locked deep in childhood pathology. I tried to forget that I had held open the lift doors in a Mandelieu tower block as a handsome Spanish whore who ran a two-room brothel fought to shield her infant daughter.

After this I almost broke with Penrose, warning him that his therapy programme was moving out of control. But he knew that neither I nor any other executives would go to the police. The camcorder footage incriminated us all, as he reminded me, and the radical therapy clearly worked. The members of the bowling teams glowed with health, and Eden-Olympia had never been so successful. The flow of adrenalin, the hair-triggers of fear and flight, had retuned the corporate nervous system and pushed profits to unprecedented heights.

Even I felt better. I sat in the lavatory cubicle in the Blue Bar, listening to the play of water on my hand. As the pain eased, I slipped into a reverie of Jane and our drive through Provence, in those months long ago that now seemed like years…

'C'est stupide… Monsieur!'

'Paul, are you in there? Don't die yet…'

I eased myself from the washbasin, woken by the raised voices.

A fist pounded on the plywood panel. I unlatched the door as a Blue Bar waiter fell against me. He peered into the cubicle, searching the floor between my feet for any sign of an addict's gear.

Behind him stood Frances Baring, blonde eyebrows springing in alarm. She pressed her hands to my cheeks, staring into my still sluggish eyes.

'Paul? You're hiding in here? Is someone after you?'

'No. Why? Sorry, I fell asleep.'

'I thought, maybe…' She slipped a fifty-franc note into the waiter's hand. 'Monsieur is with me. Have a nice day…'

Frances took my arm and eased me out of the cubicle. The scent of her body, the touch of her hands, quickly revived me.

She wore a white trouser suit and sunglasses, as if she had stepped from one of the gangster generals' helicopters. She leaned forward to kiss me, sniffing at my breath before our lips touched.

' Frances, relax…' I noticed the hypodermic wallet jammed behind the washbasin taps and stuffed it into my jacket. 'My knee's been creating hell – I gave myself a shot of Jane's painkiller and drifted off… thinking about you.'

'I hate that stuff. One day we'll be meeting in the local morgue. The barman said he'd seen you – an Englishman, très méchant.'

Still unconvinced, she closed the cubicle door. 'Let's get you out of here.'

'I'm fine, no problems with the knee.' The sleep had refreshed me, and I felt almost euphoric. As we stepped into the crowded restaurant I pointed to the Croisette. 'God, it's dark.'

'It usually is. It's called night.'

Frances steered me to the stools by the bar. Glad to see her, I watched as she fumbled in her purse for cigarettes and lighter.

I liked her quirky humour, her sudden moods of self-doubt when she gripped me tightly and refused to let me leave her bed. She was still trying to turn me against Eden-Olympia, but approved of my taking part in the ratissages, sometimes telling me of a mansion that might be robbed. In return, she asked me to introduce her to some of the pilots at the Cannes-Mandelieu airfield, an engaging crew of French, American and South African flyers who towed the advertising pennants above the beaches of the Côte d'Azur in their ageing Cessnas and met to drink at a Thai restaurant in La Napoule. She commissioned one of the Frenchmen to take aerial photographs of the Var plain near the Sophia-Antipolis science park, ostensibly as part of her property surveys, and later I found his flying jacket at her apartment. But Jane's anaesthetic took care of that pain too…

I kissed the pearl lipstick on her mouth, but she was distracted by the noise on the Croisette. She stabbed her cigarette into a wet pulp, and pushed away her martini.

'All this din,' she complained. 'Let's find somewhere quiet.'

'It's the film festival – everyone's enjoying themselves.'

'Awful, isn't it? You can get knocked down by the world's oldest hooligans.'

' Frances…?' I pressed her hands to the bar. 'What is it? You're as nervous as a bird.'

She glanced into the mirror of her compact, scanning the restaurant behind her. 'I think I'm being followed.'

'I'm not surprised. You look like a movie star.'

'I mean it. That's why I haven't been in touch. There's someone watching me when I leave the office. I'm pretty sure it's one of Zander's security men.'

'What does he do?'

'Nothing. He sits in a parked car on the roof deck, near where David was killed.'

'Maybe he's holding a vigil?'

'Paul, I'm serious.'

'He's just doing his job. Frances, you're an important person in the property office. You help them with the… recreational side of things.'

'That's quite a euphemism. Write it down.' She frowned at the olive in her martini, as if suspecting that it might be bugged.

'At least I don't like doing it. You accept everything.'

'Not true. I'm waiting for Penrose to go over the edge. Then the whole balloon will burst and the police will have to act. I hate the racism and violence, but the ratissages are just an adult version of "ring the doorbell and run".'

'That's very tolerant, coming from someone as straitlaced as you. I'm glad no one rings my doorbell.' She laughed at this, trying to reassure herself, and then stared at me like a shady boxing manager setting up one of his fighters. 'Wilder Penrose impresses you, I can see that. Have you ever thought where it's going to lead? And where he's taking you?'

' Frances… he's not taking me anywhere. Stop working for them. Apply for a transfer. By the way, I assume you picked out the Arab yacht they set alight?'

'So vulgar. A floating brothel. I had a look round – it reeked of semen.' She revived, the flames almost reflected in her eyes. 'You should have joined in, Paul. You'd have fun beating up some rich Arab.'

'I doubt it.' I wanted to calm her, and took away her cigarettes.

Lowering my voice, I said: 'You've been trying to use me ever since we met. Why?'

'Who knows? Revenge, anger, envy – invent a new deadly sin. We need one.' She moved closer to me, and took a cigarette from the packet in my hand. Casually, she said: 'There's going to be an "action" tonight. A really big one.'

'Ringing doorbells?'

'More serious than that. They've rented cars and an ambulance. Because of the film festival they've had to bring them in from Marseilles and Dijon.'

'That's a lot of trouble to go to. How do you know?'

'I booked the drivers' return air tickets. If there's an ambulance it means people will be hurt. I think they plan to kill someone.'

'I doubt it. Who?'

'Hard to say.' She stared at herself in the mirror behind the bar.

'It could be me. Or you. In fact, you're much more likely.'

'Hire cars and an ambulance? Return tickets to Dijon?'

'Why not? They must be tired of you poking around. You haven't discovered anything about David they didn't already know. You're no more part of Eden-Olympia than those African salesmen they're always roughing up. Your wife's practically moved in with one of their senior executives.'

'That's not true.'

'No? I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't mean that.' She smiled dreamily, like a clever child, and then seized her purse. 'I'm getting the Blue Bar blues. Let's get out of here and see some healthy, life-enhancing porn…'

We strolled arm in arm along the Croisette, stepping back when groups of limousine-chasers raced across the pavement, chattering into their mobile phones as they coordinated their celebrity hunt.

I thought of Frances 's talk of a special action. But I was too easy a target, a crippled ex-pilot barely able to pump the clutch pedal of his rebored Jaguar, with a wife who was a key member of the clinic.

But the threat nagged at me, as Frances had intended. She was forever playing with my emotions and loyalties, skilfully weaving them through the woof and warp of her own insecurities. Lying in bed beside me at Marina Baie des Anges, surrounded by the vast, curved night, she would watch me as I caressed her thighs, confused by the affection I felt for her. She had never understood the secret rationale of Eden-Olympia, and still assumed that its senior executives were giving in to a repressed taste for thuggery and violence.

'Paul?' She gripped my arm as I stopped to scan the traffic.

'You've seen something?'

I pointed to the central reservation, sealed off by railings to protect the palms from the graffiti artists. A stout man with reddish hair and a bottle nose stood on a patch of grass, staring over the crowd.

'The Riviera News manager…' Frances turned her back.

'Is that -?'

'Meldrum. Do you want to talk to him?'

'No. He's watching us. He knows something is on tonight.'

'There is. You're in the middle of it.' I waited as the Australian jotted something into a notebook. 'He's a reporter, Frances. He's covering his beat.'

'Let's get away. Here, anywhere…' I could feel her shaking as she dragged me up the steps of a short-let apartment building.

The flats had been rented out to small independent producers, and every balcony was draped with banners advertising the company's latest film.

'"Where Teachers Dare"… "Schoolgirl Killers"…' I read out. ' Manila, Phuket, Taiwan. What Meldrum calls one man, a boy and a dog operations…'

'The man holds the camera while the boy… Paul, are you interested?' Frances had calmed herself, and waited for me to reply. 'They're all on video. You sit on a bed and take your pick from six television sets.'

'Group sex, donkeys, water sports? Krafft-Ebing meets Video-8?'

'Please… this isn't Surbiton or Maida Vale. It's all very normal – paunchy men in their fifties having straight sex with fourteen-year-olds. Nothing pervy, thank you.' She took my arm like a helpful tour guide. 'Cahiers du Cinéma says the porn movie is the true future of film.'

'In that case…'

We entered the lobby of the apartment building. Beyond the glass doors was the reception bureau, which resembled the registration office of a paediatric conference. Two middle-aged Asian women with the faces of retired croupiers sat at a baize-draped table, beside a display board covered with room numbers and film stills. Leaflets and advertisement flyers were stacked on a desk, showing a selection of well-groomed and smiling children barely on the edge of puberty, as if illustrating a seminar on rubella or whooping cough.

' Frances… hold on.'

'What is it? Spoilt for choice?'

'This isn't for me.'

'How do you know? Are you sure, Paul?'

'Absolutely. You've had me wrong from the beginning.'

'Fair enough.' She seemed relieved, but added offhandedly: 'David loved it here.'

' Greenwood? That surprises me.'

'It was a laugh. A huge joke. He was curious – in a way, he was working in the same field.'

'A joke?' I watched the Asian women. One of them was trying to smile, and a strange crevice appeared in the area of her mouth, a vent of hell.

I stepped into the Croisette and the safety of the television lights.

A stretch limousine with Eden-Olympia pennants slowed to a halt, held up by the crowd that surged aimlessly along the pavement like a tide swilling to and fro among the piers of a tropical harbour. I could see clearly into the rear seat, where Jane sat between Alain and Simone Delage. All were in evening dress, Jane with Wilder Penrose's mink stole around her shoulders. She was staring at the sea, as if unaware of the film festival and lost in her thoughts of modem links and mass medical screenings. She was tired but all the more beautiful for it, and I felt proud of her and glad to be her husband, despite what Eden-Olympia had done to us.

On the jump seat sat Pascal Zander, eyes fixed on Jane's cleavage.

He was aggressively drunk, gesturing in a coarse way at Alain Delage, who seemed bored by him. Simone held Jane's hand, trying to distract her from Zander, murmuring a commentary on the crowd into her ear.

When the traffic failed to move, Alain spoke to the chauffeur.

The front passenger door opened and Halder stepped from the car, smartly dressed in dinner jacket and black cummerbund, gold cufflinks flashing at his wrists. He noticed me on the steps of the apartment building, and glanced at the display of film titles hanging from the balconies. Barely pausing, he raised his palms to the night air, as if puzzled by my choice of film fare for the evening.

'Paul, who was that?' Frances waved as the limousine moved off. 'I think I saw Halder…'

'Jane with the Delages and Pascal Zander. She seemed very happy.'

'Good. No one died of boredom during the film. They're off to the party at the Villa Grimaldi.'

'Zander looked drunk. Too drunk for a security chief.'

'People worry about him. They say he's going to be replaced. Pity me, Paul. I have to see him at the party. Those roving hands should be up there on the Noga Hilton with the samurai…'

I watched the tail lights of the limousine, and for a moment thought that Jane had turned to look back at me. 'The Villa Grimaldi? I'll come with you.'

'Did they send you a ticket?'

'I'll gate-crash.'

'You haven't seen the gates.' She stared gloomily at my stained shirt and leather sandals. 'I can get you in, but it's black tie.'

'They'll think I'm one of the security guards.'

'They're dressed like Cary Grant.' She pondered this sartorial impasse, still trying to integrate me into her scheme. 'We'll go back to Marina Baie des Anges. David's old dinner jacket is there. I think you're allowed to borrow it.'

'David's old tux…?' I took her arm. 'Yes, I'd like to wear it. Something tells me it's going to fit…'

32 A Dead Man's Tuxedo

Behind us, Marina Baie des Anges wrapped itself into the night, its curved towers enclosing a deeper darkness of sleep, dreams and seconal. We set off towards Antibes on the RN7, the beach of Villeneuve-Loubet to our left. A windsurfer tacked across the waves, watched by his wife and teenage son, sitting on the shingle slope below their parked car. As the sail caught the shifting air it seemed to vanish for a few seconds, then appeared again as if emerging from a defective space-time.

Frowning at the prospect of the Villa Grimaldi party, Frances leaned into the steering wheel, following the BMW's headlamps as they swerved across the steep camber. I lay back in the passenger seat and let the night air sweep across me, carrying away the last musty scents of Greenwood 's dinner jacket.

The dead man's tuxedo was a tight squeeze, the seams straining against my armpits. Frances had taken the suit from the wardrobe in her bedroom, holding the garment to her shoulders and reluctant to share it with me. She sat on the bed and watched while I smoothed the bruised lapels. A scent of past time clung to the fabric, memories of medical society dinners in London, cigar smoke and long-forgotten aftershave that rose from the worn silk lining.

Yet I felt surprisingly comfortable in the dead doctor's hand-me- down. Gazing at myself in the wardrobe mirror, I sensed that I had become Greenwood and assumed his role. Frances was almost deferential, aware that through me her former lover had returned to her bedroom.

With one of her white yachting shirts and a black tie fashioned from a crepe hatband, I passed muster. We were leaving the flat when I noticed my leather sandals.

' Jesus, Frances – my feet!'

'So? You've got two of them.'

'Look at those toes – they're the size of lobsters.'

'It's a crowded party. Who's going to notice them?' Frances stared at my toes. 'They're prehensile… is that genetic?'

By chance, she found a pair of black espadrilles that I wrenched into shape. As we took the lift to the basement garage she touched the dinner jacket, trying to calm a fleeting ghost. For a moment she seemed to see my face for the first time.

My own memories of Greenwood were less pressing. The booster dose of painkiller that I injected in the bathroom had induced a pleasant torpor. The world could deal with itself, and make its own accommodation with the deranged doctor. When we reached Antibes, passing the harbour and the modest apartment building where Greene had spent his last years, I thought of the two Asian women, sitting like furies at the baize table, guarding their ugly sideshow to the film festival as Greenwood chuckled his way round the video-horrors.

We waited at the long traffic lights near the bus depot in Golfe- Juan. Under the sodium glare Frances smiled approvingly at me.

'You look so smart, Paul. Even your wife might fancy you.'

'I sleep in the children's room now. It's sunny and cheerful, like going back to infancy – Babar, Tintin and Rupert Bear watch over me…'

'The frieze? It's sweet. I helped David put it up.'

'Why, though? He wasn't married. It's an odd thing for a bachelor to do.'

'He had friends in London who came down.'

'The refuge at La Bocca – did any of the girls stay at the house?'

'With their uncles, now and then…'

'Migrant Arab labourers? It's hard to believe.' We were climbing the heights of Super-Cannes, along a smoothly paved road that curved past palatial villas, lit like spectres by firework displays.

'This Alice obsession, lending these incomprehensible books to the teenage girls. He was a one-man British Council, and about as much use. Those tough teenagers can't have made head or tail of them.'

'So why did he bother? Go on, Paul… you're thinking of the Reverend Dodgson and his other interests.'

'It did occur to me.'

We reached the Villa Grimaldi and joined the queue of cars and taxis waiting to enter the estate. In the darkness, the VIP guests sat in their limousines like deposed minor royalty. Security men in Eden-Olympia uniforms took Frances 's invitation and waved her through the gates into the drive, where she handed the BMW to a squad of hyperactive valet-parkers.

Three marble terraces, the lowest enclosing a swimming pool, looked out over a shelving lawn towards La Napoule Bay. Cannes lay beneath us, a furnace of light where the Croisette touched the sea, as if an immense lava flow was moving down from the hills and igniting at the water's edge. The Palais des Festivals resembled a secondary caldera, and the rotating strobes on its roof vented a gaudy fountain above the Vieux Port.

Frances and I strolled forward, eyes stung by the flashes of chemical colour from a firework display. Five hundred guests packed the terraces, some dancing to the music of a marimba band, others helping themselves to champagne and canapés. A forced intimacy ruled the night, an illusion of good humour that seemed part of a complex social experiment.

On the lowest terrace were the business park's more workaday guests, the bureaucracy of local police chiefs, magistrates and senior civil servants. They and their carefully groomed wives stood with their backs to the Croisette, staring coolly at the actors, directors and film agents who occupied the middle terrace. I failed to identify any of the actors, aspiring newcomers who were still prepared to fraternize with their public but displayed the nervy jauntiness of celebrities forced to accept that no one recognized them or had seen their out-of-competition films. They in turn kept a careful watch on the upper terrace. Here an elite of film producers, bankers and investors endured the noise, a collective roar of inaudible voices. The Cannes Film Festival, like the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, momentarily confused them with the suggestion that film was about something other than money.

'The guests are here,' I shouted into Frances 's ear. 'But where are the hosts?'

'This kind of party doesn't have hosts.' Frances ran a hand over my dinner jacket. 'Time for me to go to work, Paul. I hope you find Jane. If you don't, you can take me home…'

She plunged into the crowd, immediately equipping herself with an entourage of intrigued males. Finding my bearings, I realized that she was trying to avoid a far more serious admirer who had seen her arrive. Moving unsteadily down the steps from the upper terrace was Pascal Zander, helped by the ever-watchful Halder, mobile radio in hand. The security chief wore a dinner jacket and tie but seemed dishevelled, and had clearly been forced to dress in a hurry. He was sweating freely, and gazed around the terrace like a vaudeville performer who had emerged through a trap-door and realized he was on the wrong stage.

'Halder…' I caught his arm. 'Is Jane here?'

'Mr Sinclair…?' Surprised to see me, Halder stared at my dinner jacket, eyes running along its worn seams and English cut. He searched my face, concerned that I was trying, unconvincingly, to impersonate someone else.

'Halder, my wife…?'

'Dr Jane? She arrived two hours ago. I think she went home.'

'Was she tired?'

'It's possible. It was a long movie.' Halder's reply was evasive. 'She needed to… rest.'

'But she's all right?'

'I'm not a doctor, Mr Sinclair. She was fine.'

A heavy hand slapped my back. 'Of course she's fine…' Pascal Zander swung towards us and collided with Halder. Steadying himself, he swayed against me like a docking blimp. 'I saw her five minutes ago.'

'At the Villa Grimaldi? Good.'

'Not good for me.' Zander gave a tolerant shrug. 'You should see her, Mr Sinclair. She's a fine doctor.'

'I know she is.'

'You know?' Zander turned an unsteady eye on me, distracted by the dinner jacket I wore. 'Yes, you're her husband. I telephone her every day. We talk about my health.'

'Is anything wrong?'

'Everything is wrong. But not with my health. Jane looks after me, Mr Sinclair. She takes my urine, she tests my blood, she looks in my private places.'

'She's very thorough.'

'She's a serious woman.' Zander leaned against me, and whispered hoarsely into my ear. 'How can a man live with a serious woman? She lacks one thing – no bedside manner.'

He squeezed my shoulder in his large hand, then steadied himself and inhaled the night air. He was bored and drunk, but not as drunk as he pretended, and well aware that Halder was watching him like a guard dog on another master's leash. For all his craftiness, I was surprised that this corpulent beach Beria had been appointed Eden-Olympia's acting head of security. Tactical indiscretion was his forte.

'People at Eden-Olympia play too many games,' he confided, taking my arm and drawing me to the edge of the terrace, where the band and the fireworks were less noisy. A group of police chiefs' wives had begun to sashay to the music, dancing around their tolerant husbands, but Zander dismissed them with a wave. 'I have to be their amah, their nounou, calling them from the garden. When their noses bleed, I have to wipe them. When they soil their behinds, I clean them. They don't like me for that.'

'You know where they hide their toys?'

'Dangerous toys they're not old enough to play with. Wilder Penrose is turning them into children. That's not clever, Mr Sinclair. If someone went to Tokyo or New York and explained the games their people are playing here… what would they think about that?'

'I imagine they'd be concerned.'

'The good name of their companies… Nissan, Chemical Bank, Honeywell, Dupont. They would pay a lot to keep their good name.' Zander pointed to a group of magistrates standing nearby, judiciously silent as a waiter filled their champagne flutes. 'We should leave crime to the professionals. They're happy to work for us, but psychiatrists they don't trust. Psychiatry is for children who wet the bed…'

'Talk to Penrose. He'll be interested to hear it.'

'He has political dreams. In his mind he's a new Bonaparte. He thinks everything is psychology now. But his own psychology – that's the problem he doesn't face.' Zander fingered the lapels of my dinner jacket, as if intrigued by the stitching. 'You've worked hard, Mr Sinclair. You've found so much about your friend. The tragic English doctor…'

'Little you didn't know already.'

'I tried to help you. Was Halder useful?'

'As always. He could run a guided tour for the tourists. He's given himself a starring role in the last act.'

'That I heard. He's very ambitious – he wants my job.' He waved to Halder, who was watching him from across the swimming pool. 'A nice boy – he thinks he's German like I think I'm a Frenchman. We're both wrong, but my mistake is bigger. To the French he's a nègre, while I am an Arab…' He stared bleakly at the party, and then rallied himself, his awareness of his own corruptibility giving him confidence. 'We can help each other, Mr Sinclair. Now that you work for me.'

'Do I?'

'Naturally. Come and see me, I'll tell you more about Dr Greenwood. Maybe about your neighbours…'

He left me and swayed through the crowd, affable and devious in a way I found almost likeable.

Halder and I were not alone in keeping watch on the security chief. On a third-floor balcony of the Villa Grimaldi stood Alain Delage, fastening the cufflinks of his dress shirt as he gazed over the crowded terraces. Beside him was Olivier Destivelle, the elderly banker who had succeeded the murdered Charbonneau as chairman of the Eden-Olympia holding company. Together they followed Zander's progress as he wandered through the guests, slipping an arm around every woman who smiled at him. Destivelle spoke into a mobile phone, and he and Delage withdrew into the high-ceilinged room behind them. Despite Halder's assurance, I was certain that Jane was still somewhere within the Villa Grimaldi, as Zander had told me.

I climbed the steps to the upper terrace and strolled towards the entrance, where signs pointed to the cloakrooms. A flunkey in a brocaded uniform guarded the staircase, flicking the elastic bands of his white gloves.

'Toilettes?'

'Tout droit, monsieur.'

The door of the women's cloakroom opened, and a young German actress emerged, her mobile nostrils moving like hoses around her upper lip, hoovering up the last specks of powder. She exchanged quips with the flunkey, and let him admire her décolletage.

I walked to the staircase and climbed the deep maroon carpet.

I had reached the half-landing when the flunkey turned from his inspection and shouted: 'Monsieur, c'est privé…'

Careful not to break step, I called down: 'Monsieur Destivelle? Troisième étage?'

He saluted and let me go, too bored to follow me up the stairs.

I paused on the first floor, and strolled past the lavish public rooms with their gilt ceiling liners and empire furniture. In the dining room the tables were already laid with breakfast cutlery. A pantry door opened, and kitchen staff shouted above the blare of music from the terrace. A waiter sang to himself, setting silver cruets on a trolley, ignoring me when I returned to the staircase.

The next floor appeared to be disused, teak barriers shutting off the unlit corridors. I moved up the steps to the third floor, where the landing opened into a large reception suite, chandeliers glowing from the high ceiling. Voices, masculine and multilingual, sounded nearby. In a side chamber a lacquered table was laid with maps and aerial photographs, and I stopped to examine a detailed projection of the Var plain between Nice and Grasse. Ground leases marked out in red crayon defined the planned expansion of Eden-Olympia into a vast urbanization larger than Cannes itself.

In front of me, open connecting doors gave onto a formal drawing room. A television set stood on a blackwood table, watched by a man in evening dress sitting on a gilt chair. Without turning, he raised a hand and beckoned me into the room. I walked towards my reflection in the mantelpiece mirror, crèpe tie hanging from the soft collar of Frances 's shirt like a poet's cravat.

'Come in, Paul… I was hoping you'd find me here.'

Wilder Penrose greeted me affably, lifting his huge body from the chair. As always, I was struck by how pleased he was to see me. He stood up and embraced me, hands patting the pockets of my dinner jacket as if searching for a concealed weapon. He tapped my cheek with his open palm, forgiving me for the mild subterfuge that had given me access to the villa. Once again I realized that my role was to play the naive and impressionable younger brother.

'Do join me, Paul.' He pointed with the remote control to a nearby chair. 'How's the party?'

'Hard work. I should have borrowed a wheelchair. Did the footman tell you that I was on the way up?'

'Security, Paul – we're obsessed by it. You walk in wearing an assassin's suit and ask for the chairman. You're lucky you weren't shot dead.'

'I'm looking for Jane. She's here somewhere.'

'She's resting in one of the bedrooms. I'll explain where to find her.' Penrose turned back to the television screen. 'Have a look at this footage before you go. Handheld cameras are so jerky, but you get a sense of what's happening.'

'Recent… therapy classes?'

'Of course. The teams are doing well.'

He pressed the remote control. Propelled by the fast-forward button, a sequence of violent images rushed past, a confused medley of accelerating cars, running feet, doors being hurled from their hinges, startled Arabs in alcoves and shocked women staring across dishevelled beds. The sound was turned down, but I could almost hear the screams and truncheon thuds. Headlights veered across an underground car park, where a trio of olive-skinned men lay on the concrete floor, pools of blood around their heads.

'Brutal stuff…' Penrose grimaced with distaste and switched off the video, relieved to see the blank screen. 'It's getting more difficult to steer the therapy classes. We've seen enough.'

'Don't stop on my account.'

'Well… I don't think you should watch too much. It's bad for your morale.'

'I'm touched. This must be the only censored film showing in Cannes. All the same, you're looking at some really nasty clips.'

'Context, Paul. You have to see it within its therapeutic frame. Routine heart surgery can easily resemble something out of a nightmare. Camcorder film is misleading – it's hungry for the colour red, so it turns everything into a bloodbath.' Aware that he was trying too hard to convince me, he said: 'It's in a good cause – Eden-Olympia and the future. Richer, saner, more fulfilled. And vastly more creative. A few sacrifices are worth it if we produce another Bill Gates or Akio Morita.'

'The victims will be glad to hear it.'

'Do you know, they might. Petty criminals, clochards, Aids-riddled whores – they expect to be abused. We're doing them a good turn by satisfying their unconscious expectations.'

'So it's also therapy for them?'

'Well put. I knew you'd understand. I wish everyone did.' For once, Penrose seemed distracted, openly gnawing at a thumb.

'Keeping a close eye on things can be tricky. I sense a change of direction. Too many of the teams are starting to treat the therapy classes as sporting events. I try to explain that I'm not interested in running a football league. It's their imaginations I want them to use, not their boots and fists.'

'Zander would agree with you. He thinks you're infantilizing them.'

'Zander, yes… his idea of crime comes with a secret Swiss account number. He can't understand why we're developing all this expertise and not putting it to good use. In some ways he's rather dangerous.'

'Doesn't he have a point? All games infantilize, especially when you're playing with your own psychopathy. You begin by dreaming of the übermensch and end up smearing your shit on the bedroom wall.'

'You're right, Paul.' Solemnly, Penrose gripped my hand, nodding at the blank television screen. 'The teams have to work harder, and learn to fight their way into the darkest heart of themselves. I hate to do it, but I need to turn up the ratchet, until the nerve strings sing with anger…'

He turned to the window as a firework rocket whistled through the night air and exploded in a puffball of crimson light. A flush of animation touched his face and faded as the rocket spent itself and fell to earth. He seemed more driven than I first remembered him, frustrated by the sluggish reflexes of his senior executives and their flagging will to madness. Seated in this formal empire room, he was hemmed in by the caution of the executive mind. Though I hated everything he had done, and hated myself for failing to report him to the French authorities, I felt almost sorry for him. Mired in its mediocrity, the human race would never be insane enough for Wilder Penrose.

'Now, Paul…' He noticed me sitting beside him in Greenwood 's dinner jacket. 'You're looking for Jane?'

'Halder saw her earlier. He said she's rather tired.'

'The film was a bit of an ordeal. Swiss bankers don't have the popular touch – the only people they meet are billionaires and war criminals. Jane still works too hard. She should join one of our new therapy groups for women.'

'Are there any?'

'Paul, I'm joking… or at least I hope I am.' He walked me to the door, an avuncular clubman with a favourite guest. 'In the case of women the system of imposed psychopathy is already in place. It's called men.'

I paused by the map table and its vision of a greater Eden-Olympia. 'This ratchet, Wilder – are the murders we saw part of it?'

'Murders?'

'The video you were playing. The three Arabs in the garage looked awfully dead.'

'No, Paul.' Penrose lowered his head, his eyes drifting away from me. 'I assure you, everyone recovered. As usual, large bundles of francs were handed over. Think of these people as film extras, paid for a few minutes' discomfort.'

'I'll try to. No murders?'

'None. Who put the idea into your head? Be careful with Zander. He's an unhappy man, driven by powerful resentments. Some of his personal habits are disgusting. He may well be the only natural psychopath in Eden-Olympia.'

'And our very own police chief?'

'Sadly, there's a long tradition of the two roles coinciding. Senior policemen are either philosophers or madmen…'

The suites on the fourth floor were dark and unoccupied. Following Penrose's directions, I walked the long corridor, past the gilt-framed mirrors whose surfaces had been dulled by time. In the entrance to the west wing I noticed that a pair of carved oak doors stood ajar. I stepped through them, switched on a table lamp and found myself in a well-stocked gunroom. The barred cabinets were filled with shotguns and sporting weapons. Six Nato-issue automatic rifles occupied one cabinet, chained together through their trigger guards.

A notice-board leaned against an easel, listing the fixtures of the Eden-Olympia gun club. The names of the members, all senior executives at the business park, formed a set of rival leagues that I assumed were run independently of Wilder Penrose. Pinned to the board were photographs of well-set men in their fifties, clipped from the financial pages of a local Arab-language newspaper.

In a corner, behind one of the double doors, was a large department-store dumpbin, filled with what I first thought were gunnery-range targets in the form of animal cutouts. I held several of them to the light, and then recognized stuffed-toy versions of the dormouse, the Hatter and little Alice herself.

I laid the Alice back in the bin, and watched the eyelids swivel and close over the glassy stare, almost the first untroubled sleep I had seen in Eden-Olympia.

To the rear of the west wing, far from the terrace party and the fireworks, a waiter was moving a drinks trolley into the corridor. I stopped beside him, and scanned the debris of glasses and crushed napkins. Sharing a tumbler with a champagne cork was an empty syrette.

'Madame Delage?' I asked. 'Doctor Sinclair?'

'Monsieur? They sleep now.'

'Good. Like Alice…' I pressed a few coins into his hand, stepped past him into the suite and closed the door. A single standard lamp lit the empty sitting room, its glow warming the deep pile of a fur stole lying across an armchair.

A coarse masculine odour hung in the air, a blend of sweat and genital steroids, the unmistakable spoor of a man in rut. A bottle of Laphroaig stood on the mantelpiece, and I guessed that a passionate suitor had fortified himself for the rigours of the bed.

Pools of malt whisky lay around the legs of a carriage clock, and stained a Palais des Festivals film programme.

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. I listened with my hand on the doorknob, uneager to catch Simone Delage in the act of clipping her toenails.

'Jane…?'

She was sitting on the tiled floor between the bath and the bidet, knees drawn against her chest, her left hand trailing in the flow of water from the bath tap. She wore a man's black silk dressing gown that lay like a shadow across the white tiles. Her face was composed, but the blush of a hard slap still burned on one cheek. Propped in the bidet was the patent-leather handbag that served as her off-duty medical valise. Her hand covered the syringe lying on the porcelain rim.

'Paul?' She greeted me with a faint tremor of the lips. She raised her chin, focusing on my eyes and mouth, and then took my hands, as if she needed to assemble in stages a recognizable image of her husband. She seemed almost asleep, her voice slurred. 'Glad you came, Paul. I wasn't sure…'

'I had to come. I guessed you'd be here.'

'So many parties in Cannes tonight. We saw the Eden-Olympia film.'

'Any good?'

'Depressing. Everyone's so happy in Cannes and they make these depressing films. Did you see any?'

'One or two. Not the kind in competition.'

'Depressing?'

'Very.' I sat on the edge of the bath and turned off the tap. I pointed to the inner door. 'Is…?'

'Simone? She's sleeping in the bedroom.' Jane tightened the dressing gown, her childlike shoulders swamped by the black silk.

'You look smart, Paul. I like the dinner jacket.'

'It was David's. It doesn't really fit.'

She nodded at this, and touched my sleeve. 'It suits you. Wear it all the time.'

'Frances Baring loaned it to me. God knows why she kept it.'

'So she won't forget David. He's everywhere still, isn't he?'

She straightened her hair in the wall-mirror. 'Too many mirrors in this house. Paul, tell me how you escape inside them.'

'You don't need to escape. Just take things easier. Wilder agrees you work too hard.'

'Wilder agrees with you about everything. That way you do what he wants.' She smiled with the first affection I had seen since our decision to stay. 'Dear Paul. You crash-landed your plane here and can't climb out…'

I listened to the boom of rock music, a dull pulse like a week-long headache. An odd smell caught my nostrils.

'Jane… was Zander here?'

'Zander?' She closed her eyes. 'Why ask?'

'I saw him on the terrace. The cologne he was using – I could smell it when I came in.'

'Nasty, isn't it? Reminds him of Beirut.' She felt the bruise on her cheek. 'It doesn't matter, Paul. High up here in Super-Cannes, nothing matters.'

I held her hand, chilled by the cold tap water, and noticed the torn skin on her wrist, blood clotting between the tendons. 'Did Zander do this?'

'I fell over. Zander was very drunk. He thinks he has serious problems at Eden-Olympia.'

'They want him out. He knows where the bodies are buried, and they've seen him sharpening his spade. What was he doing here?'

'Alain set up one of his little games. He didn't tell me Zander was going to play.'

'What happened?'

'They pushed him into the bedroom and locked the door.'

'Where were you?'

'In the bed.' Jane shrugged inside the dressing gown. 'He was too drunk.'

I sat on the floor and touched her bruised cheek. 'Jane, we should leave.'

'Now?' She gripped her bag, as if holding tight to a lifebelt. 'Can't leave, Paul. Taken my medicine.'

'All this diamorphine. You'll kill yourself.'

'I'm fine.' Jane squeezed my hand, the doctor reassuring an anxious relative. 'I know how much to take. That's what medical school is really for. All the doctors at the clinic need help to relax…'

'Let's pack tonight and set off for London. We can be in Lyons by morning. Jane, we've spent too long in Eden-Olympia.'

'I'll stay.' She spoke in a sleepy but firm voice. 'I'm really happy here. Aren't you? Talk to Wilder.'

'I have. He's downstairs, watching his pornographic films.'

'Lucky man. I have to cope with too much Belgian angst. Alain and Simone are quite prudish, in their own way.'

'They're degrading you.'

'I know. That's why I became a hippie, to see if I could cope with myself. Then all those caftans and dirty feet were a bit of a bore, so I turned into a doctor.'

'You kept the dirty feet.'

'And you still fell in love with me. I didn't wash for weeks. Now I have clean feet and I'm turning into a slut again. But I do my job and it doesn't matter.' Tired of me, she leaned her cheek against the tiled wall. 'Go, Paul. Just go… fly back to London.'

33 The Coast Road

Fireworks leapt into the night sky, ruby and turquoise umbrellas that formed huge cupolas over Super-Cannes, canopies fit for a caliph's throne. Like a hashish dream, they faded and rejoined the dark. Along the Croisette the flicker of flashbulbs marked the end of another premiere, and headlights glowed through the palm fronds as a motorcade left the Palais des Festivals.

Forgotten above the crowds, the samurai on the roof of the Noga Hilton gestured with his sword at the beach restaurants, where the studio parties were in full swing.

I took a flute of champagne from a cruising waiter, and thought of Jane, asleep against the bidet in the fourth-floor suite. Despite my knee, I was strong enough to carry her to a taxi, pack her into the Jaguar and set off northwards with our passports. But once again I had hesitated, just as I had postponed my decision to report Wilder Penrose to the police. In part I resented Jane for no longer needing me. I knew that she would leave me at the first service station on the Paris autoroute and hitch a lift to Cannes without a backward glance. If anyone needed me now, it was Penrose and his faltering dream of social madness, a larger version of that plane crash from whose wreckage, as Jane had said, I had yet to free myself.

The band had turned up its amplifiers, filling the air with immense blocks of reverberating sound. The social stratification of the guests had at last collapsed. In a new-style peasants' revolt, the lawyers, civil servants and police officials had climbed the steps to the middle terrace, overwhelming the actors and film agents. As if expecting the worst, the bankers and producers on the upper terrace stood with their backs to the Villa Grimaldi, an ancien régime faced with the revolution it most feared, a rebellion of its indentured professional castes.

Frances Baring and Zander were alone on the lower terrace, dancing together by the swimming pool. Zander held his jacket like a matador's cape, urging Frances to lunge at him. Playfully, she let him chase her around the pool, watched by Halder, who sat on the diving board, his dark figure almost invisible against the night.

Seeing me, Frances waved her purse. She whispered something to Zander, ducked beneath his groping hands and ran from the pool. She embraced me, reeking of Zander's cologne.

'Paul… don't ever try dancing with a secret policeman. I'm probably pregnant. Do you mind if we go?'

'We'll leave now.' I was glad to see her, but turned to face Zander, who was searching for the sleeves of his dinner jacket.

'Just give me a moment.'

'What is it? Paul?'

'I need a word with Zander.' I flexed my shoulders. 'He's about to be the first policeman I've ever punched.'

'Why?' Frances held my arm. 'I was joking. You sound like a Victorian father. He scarcely touched me.'

'He touched Jane.' I waited while Zander strolled towards us, smiling with all his corrupt charm, as if our real evening together was about to begin. ' Frances, wait here… it won't take long.'

'Paul!' She shouted above the music, shaking her head when Halder caught up with the security chief. 'I'm too tired to watch you three brawling.'

'Right…' I saw Halder raise a slim hand in warning. I could deal with Zander, but Halder would be too fast for me. 'We'll go – I'll talk to Zander another time…'

'Is Jane all right?' Frances steered me down the path towards the car park. 'What happened to her?'

'Nothing. Zander came on a little too heavily.'

'I'm sorry.' Frances handed her ticket to the valet-parkers, and then gripped my arms. 'Forget about Zander. He doesn't matter. None of it matters.'

'That's what Jane said. I almost believe it…'

We moved down the drive towards the gates, queueing behind the Saudi ambassador's Cadillac. Trying not to think of Zander, I realized that once again I had yielded to the greater status quo that was Eden-Olympia. The business park set its own rules, and had effectively switched off our emotions. Violence and aggression were only allowed within the therapeutic regime administered by Wilder Penrose, like rationed doses of a rare and dangerous medicine.

Yet a brawl around the swimming pool of the Villa Grimaldi, in full view of the assembled judges and police chiefs, with Halder lightly hysterical and Zander wallowing in the deep end, would have been a breakthrough of almost surrealist proportions, a genuine lunge for freedom. I was tempted to tell Frances to turn back.

'Paul…' She tapped my injured knee, waking me from my reverie. 'Look up there…'

She pointed across the landscaped lawns to the conservatory entrance of the Villa Grimaldi, where we had parked after the Cardin Foundation robbery. Two immaculate black Mercedes straddled the flowerbeds, as if delivered straight from a showroom. Behind them was a commercial ambulance with curtained windows, its red-cross light switched off, the driver and his paramedic asleep in the front seat.

Frances fumbled with the headlight switch, trying to read the ambulance's numberplate.

' Toulon…' She seemed thrown by this. 'I told you they'd leased a lot of cars. Why bring an ambulance from Toulon?'

'Watch the Cadillac…' I held the wheel, avoiding the Saudi bumper. 'The ambulance is here for the party. Those elderly bankers have to be kept alive – as long as there's a pulse, the money flows.'

Frances stalled the engine, and clumsily restarted it. 'There's something on tonight, a ratissage…'

'Penrose would have told me. He's keen that I'm involved.'

'Only in the fun ones, the rugger club japes. This one is serious. Was Penrose here? He doesn't usually go to parties.'

' Frances, relax…' I moved her edgy hand from the gear lever, trying to calm her. 'He was upstairs, watching his videos. Nasty stuff – he's starting to prescribe some really violent therapy.'

'Then do something about it. At least six senior judges were at the party.'

'And several police commissaires. I appear in a lot of the video footage – I don't want to spend the next ten years in a Marseilles jail. Besides, they turn a blind eye. They won't admit it, but the French upper class are deeply racist.'

We left the gates of the Villa Grimaldi and set off along the high corniche. Despite her edginess, Frances drove at a leisurely pace, reluctant to change up from second gear. I lay back, and let the last traces of Zander's cologne blow away on the night air.

When we reached the Vallauris road Frances stopped at the green traffic lights. Without moving her head, she pointed to the rear-view mirror.

' Frances? Let's go.'

'There's a car following us.'

I gazed back at the darkened road, briefly lit by a salvo of fireworks. A car with dipped headlights approached us, drifting from the verge to the centre line as if the driver suffered from defective night vision.

'Paul?'

'It's all right. He's looking for someone's villa.'

'No. He's after us. The car has Eden-Olympia plates.'

The car, a grey Audi, was fifty yards behind us when the traffic lights turned to red. Frances let out the clutch and accelerated across the empty intersection, turning right towards Golfe-Juan.

The Audi driver cruised through the red lights, and at the last moment swung round to follow us, his nearside wheel clipping the kerb.

I pointed to the first side road. 'Take a left here. He'll go by.'

We turned into an avenue of small houses with well-stocked gardens. The reflector discs of parked cars glowed in our headlights.

The Audi had stopped, as if the driver was unsure where we had gone. Then he pulled off the Vallauris road and resumed his unhurried pursuit.

'Right,' I told Frances. 'He's tailing us. It's probably one of Halder's chums, keeping a routine watch over you. He's a real amateur – we'll soon lose him.'

'Him? It might be a woman.'

'Jane? She was too stoned to switch off the bath taps. Anyway, she doesn't care about us.'

Leaning against the door, I watched the Audi over my headrest. It swayed across the steep camber and its wing mirror struck a parked van. The driver caught himself and straightened out, but soon drifted from left to right across the road.

Below us, at the end of the avenue, was the RN7, the brightly lit coastal highway from Cannes to Golfe-Juan. We drove through the underpass, then paused at the junction. In the amber glare of the sodium lights I watched our pursuer stop thirty yards behind us. A hand emerged from the driver's window and tried to reset the broken wing mirror on its mount.

' Frances, you look exhausted…' Concerned for her, I tried to take the controls. 'Pull in here – I'll get out and talk to him.'

But Frances pressed on, joining the coast road towards Juan-les- Pins and Antibes. She gripped the wheel and glanced over her shoulder, as if fleeing from the night.

' Frances… slow down.'

'Not now, Paul. Our friend isn't alone.'

Afew yards behind the stationary Audi were two large Mercedes limousines, similar models to those we had seen at the Villa Grimaldi. As the Audi followed us, they pulled out onto the RN7, moving nose to tail with their headlights dimmed. The Audi driver seemed unaware of his black escort, and was still grappling with the broken wing mount.

We passed the old Ali Khan house beyond the railway tracks, a crumbling deco ghost above the beach. A slip road crossed the railway line and led to the harbour and waterfront bars of Golfe-Juan. Frances accelerated and hurled the little BMW through the dark air, wheels almost losing their grip on the unlit macadam. At the last moment she braked as we reached the railway bridge. The Audi was now a hundred yards behind us, the driver irritated by the Mercedes trying to crowd him off the slip road.

I saw a fist raised through the window, and his headlights flared when the tank-like limousine jolted his bumper.

'Brake now! Harder!' I leaned across Frances and switched off the lights. I forced the wheel from her hands and slewed the BMW across the beach road. We hurtled into the car park of Tétou's and came to a neck-jarring halt, startling the young attendant who was dozing in an open-topped Bentley.

The Audi sped past, its burly driver hunched over his wheel, followed by the two Mercedes, headlights on full beam, horns blaring as their drivers jockeyed like chariot-racers.

Too breathless to speak, Frances waved away the puzzled attendant. She lay back in the darkness, and stared at the diners in the beach restaurant across the road. She seemed stunned but relieved, as if she had completed an exhilarating fairground ride and was ready to rejoin the strolling crowd.

'Paul?' She smoothed her hair, aware that I was watching her with interest. 'What is it?'

'Nothing… Let's go. They're heading for the beach road to Juan. We'll follow.'

'Why? We've lost them, thank God. Those big cars look nasty.'

'They weren't after us. They were chasing the Audi. You were right all along – it's a ratissage…'

Watched by the perplexed attendant, we left the Tétou car park and drove into Golfe-Juan. Despite the film festival, most of the restaurants facing the marina had closed for the night. Guests were leaving a party aboard a motor yacht, tipsily making their way down a gangway, visitors to a white township that emitted an ivory light like a floating cemetery.

'They've gone.' Frances searched the darkness for a turning.

'We'll go back to the RN7.'

'They're up ahead. I want to see what happens.'

'Forget about it! Did you recognize the man in the Audi?'

'Some tired dentist on his way home.'

'He followed us. Why?'

'You, not us. A midnight blonde on her way back from the festival with her pimp. Our vigilantes must have seen him and didn't approve. He looked a little Maghrebian – they'll teach him a lesson in racial respect.'

Reluctantly, Frances drove along the darkened front. At the eastern edge of Golfe-Juan a new apartment complex stood on the site of the ceramics factory I had once visited with my parents. The Audi was circling a nearby roundabout, chased by one of the Mercedes. Almost rolling the limousine onto its side, the driver rammed the rear of the Audi. The second Mercedes blocked the exit of the return road to Golfe-Juan. Its headlights shone on a violent game, a private demolition derby played out beneath the palm trees. Shards of broken glass from the Audi's tail-lights lay on the road, spitting like embers of a fire as the tyres raked across them.

'Hold back for a second.' I tried to steady Frances, who seemed disoriented by the harsh collisions. 'He's decided to cut and run…'

The Audi swerved from the roundabout, struck the kerb and set off towards Juan-les-Pins. The two Mercedes hurtled after it, engines blowing with an elephant-like roar, headlights picking out their quarry.

' Frances… let's move.'

'Why?' She sat stiffly at the wheel, refusing to look at the windscreen. 'They're crazy, Paul…'

'They're trying to be crazy – that's the point. We need more evidence.'

'Evidence?' Frances hunted the gearbox until I rammed the lever through its gate. 'On top of everything else?'

'Just keep going.'

We followed the deranged motorcade as it moved along the beach road. Waves broke on the strip of sand, their foam sluicing through the debris of beer cans and forgotten rubber flippers where the ageing Picasso had once played with Dora Maar and his children. The rotating beam of the lighthouse at La Garoupe swept along the shore, illuminating the closed bar-cabins and the low sea wall.

Frances slowed when one of the limousines ran alongside the Audi, jostling it as the second Mercedes accelerated and braked, lunging at the rear bumper. On our left, across the railway line, was the apartment complex of Antibes-les-Pins. A single light shone above a balcony, where some insomniac neighbour of Isabel Duval sat alone in her high-security apartment. I searched the balconies, distracted by a rush of noise as the Nice to Paris express emerged from the darkness. It thundered past us in a roar of steel rails and sped away into the night.

Stunned by the sound, Frances lost control of the car as the black vacuum in the wake of the express sucked the BMW from her hands. She gripped the wheel and shouted: 'He's going to crash! Paul!'

'Where?'

She pointed to the road ahead, where brake lights flared in alarm. The Audi overran the stone kerb, struck the sea wall and whirled into the air before plunging onto the beach below.

I took the wheel from Frances 's hands and steered the BMW onto the pedestrian walkway. The two Mercedes slewed around each other and stopped, for a moment vanishing into the darkness as they switched off their lights. We rolled to a halt beside a derelict bar, its wooden walls covered with fading posters for the Juan jazz festival. I turned off the engine and stepped onto the sea wall.

Frances sat stiffly over the wheel, staring at the instrument panel. She touched the brake lever, as if convinced that her clumsy driving had led to the accident.

Leaving her, I walked down the beach and let the cold sea sluice across my feet, soaking the rope soles of the espadrilles. I ran along the dark sand, the night air cutting through the open seams of Greenwood 's dinner jacket.

The Audi lay on its back in the shallow waves, flames lifting from the engine compartment. When the water retreated, I saw the driver's body trapped under the rear seat, an arm pressed to the passenger window. The dying flames flowed across the water that swilled around the car.

Two men in dinner jackets stepped from the first Mercedes, scaled the sea wall and walked to the water's edge, where one of them began to film the scene with a camcorder, waiting until the La Garoupe beam lit the stage for him. When I was twenty yards away he turned the camera and filmed me as I stood exhausted in the sodden espadrilles, my back to the lights of Golfe-Juan.

I walked towards them, pointing to the trapped driver, but the two men climbed the beach and returned to their car.

'Paul! Help him!'

Frances ran along the sand, a high-heeled shoe in each hand, throat muscles working while she gasped at the night air. She strode into the waves and gestured with her shoes at the car.

'My God, they killed him…'

I held her as the waves broke around our knees, and steered her through the undertow onto the beach. A vehicle with a pulsing emergency light moved along the road from Golfe-Juan, slowing to a stop when it approached the burning car.

'Paul, it's the police… talk to them.'

'They aren't police.' I watched the occupants step from the vehicle. 'It's the ambulance you ordered. We saw it outside the Villa Grimaldi…'

We stood at the water's edge as the paramedics pulled the dead driver from the Audi. He was a large, fleshy man in his fifties, and his pallid skin seemed to have been immersed in the sea for days. His dinner jacket clung to one arm, lying beside him like the wing of a drowned bird. The paramedics turned him onto his back and began to work at his chest. On the collars of their white overalls were printed the name and telephone number of an emergency ambulance service in Toulon.

Looking down over their shoulders, I recognized the blanched features of Pascal Zander.

I stared into the security chief 's eyes. Once so sharp and devious, they now gazed at nothing, the flat pupils like empty windows.

All the memories of his professional life, the secret codes and misdemeanours, were being washed away by the sea. One of the paramedics, a blond young man with a surfer's physique, pointed to my feet, and I realized that I was standing on Zander's hand.

I counted the pudgy fingers, their skin impressed with the sole pattern of my espadrilles, and realized that a few hours earlier they had probably fondled my wife's breasts.

Giving up their attempt to revive the dead man, the paramedics returned to the ambulance, where they lit cigarettes and spoke into their radio. I heard Frances gasp as she stood beside me, and turned to see her running along the beach to her car.

' Frances, wait! We'll call the police…'

Carrying her shoes, I set off towards the BMW. I was fifty yards away when I heard its engine begin to race. Frances waved me away, ran the car off the kerb and pulled out to pass the ambulance.

In the pale light reflected from the waves I could see her face, almost stiff with shock. She swerved around the two Mercedes limousines and set off at speed towards Juan-les-Pins.

A mile away, beyond the Golfe-Juan marina, the siren of a police car seesawed through the night. The driver of the second Mercedes stepped from the car and opened the passenger door, beckoning to me. I stared at the dead man on the sand, at his overweight, deflating body. The floating sleeves of his dinner jacket semaphored as the waves swilled up the beach, signalling a death to the sea. I held Frances 's shoes to my face, smelling the perfumed insoles and the fresh scent of brine.

The chauffeur waited while I climbed the sea wall to the Mercedes. He wore evening dress under his bowling jacket, and as I stepped up to him I saw his face and overlit eyes.

'Halder? What are you doing here?'

'Time to leave, Mr Sinclair.'

'You were driving the car? I thought you were guarding Zander…' I pointed to the dead man on the sand, his exposed torso washed by the waves. Halder's face was expressionless. In the headlights of the approaching police car he resembled an accident bystander already bored by the tableau around him, the overturned Audi, a body and the waves. Too distracted to face me, he had distanced himself from any judgement on events.

'We're leaving, Mr Sinclair.' He gestured towards the open passenger door. 'It's best if you come with us.'

A strong hand reached from the rear seat and gripped my wrist.

Too tired to resist, I watched myself step into the car.

'Paul…' Alain Delage drew me towards the jump seat. 'I'm glad we waited for you. I told Jane you'd join us.'

His composed face glowed in the police headlights. As I sat down he smiled with the ready sympathy of a rescuer reaching from a liferaft to help a survivor from the sea.

Facing me, squeezed together in the rear seat, were Jane and Simone Delage, the camcorder across their laps. Jane still wore her black silk dressing gown, and lay half-asleep against Simone's shoulder. Recognizing me, she raised a hand in welcome, and managed a faint flicker of her bloodless lips. I realized that I was still holding Frances Baring's shoes, and placed them on the floor at Delage's feet.

Half a mile behind us, the spotlight of the police car lit up the shacks along the beach. When Halder started the engine of the Mercedes I drummed on the glass behind his head.

'Alain – the police are on their way. We need to talk to them.'

'Not now, Paul.' Delage signalled to Halder. 'The ambulance men will tell them everything. It's been a long day for you…'

He sat back, larger and more confident than I remembered him. The overturned Audi had moved into the deeper water, and the paramedics returned to the beach. They knelt beside the dead security chief, taking a blood sample from his thigh.

Zander's dinner jacket had at last detached itself from his arm. It floated off, working its way across the waves, sleeves moving in a wavering breaststroke, determined to reach the safety of the open sea.

We sped on into an even deeper night.

34 Course Notes and a Tango

'Mr sinclair, you've been most helpful.' Sergeant Jucaud paused at the door and tucked his notebook into his jacket. 'Pascal Zander was a close friend of the Cannes police.'

'As he often said – I'm glad to tell you all I know…'

I shook the young detective's hand and watched him walk back to his car. He paused by the Jaguar, admiring its lines, and knelt by the rear wing. Something out of the ordinary had caught his trained eye, perhaps an unpaid parking ticket snagged by the boot handle. With a small knife he teased a paint fleck from the chromium bumper, then raised it to the sunlight and waved reassuringly to me. The array of dents and scratches marking the Jaguar's venerable bodywork were too slight to suggest that the car had been involved in a serious collision. The miscreant paint fleck had probably come from Wilder Penrose's fibreglass door, still bearing its open wound like a duelling scar. Besides, as Sergeant Jucaud knew, I could hardly have reversed the Audi into the sea.

Careful to remain calm, and glad of the day's first injection, I returned the sergeant's salute. I waited until he had driven away, and then strolled back to the pool. I stared at my reflection in the water, trying to accept that I had spoken for twenty minutes to the sergeant and told him absolutely nothing about the true cause of Zander's death.

A publicity plane was carrying out its morning tour of Eden-Olympia, advertising a clay-pigeon range in the hills beyond Grasse. I lay on the sun-lounger, feeling the guilt and pain ebb from my knee. A faint steam rose from the wet footprints Jane had left on the tiles. Looking at the tiny insteps, I thought of Frances Baring's shoes, with their scent of toes and midnight sea, now wrapped in a supermarket bag in the Jaguar's boot.

In the five days since Zander's death, Frances had not once returned to her office. Her secretary told me that she had taken a fortnight's leave, but her telephone at Marina Baie des Anges had been disconnected. I could still hear her cry of fear when she recognized Zander's body, and her panic as she ran blindly to her car. I needed to see her again, and somehow reassure her that Zander's death had been an accident. Already I had largely convinced myself.

A lethal evening had turned into an even stranger night. I remembered the drive back to Eden-Olympia, when I had been too stunned to demand that Halder stop the car and report the incident to the police. I stared into the night, at the closed filling stations and supermarkets, while Alain Delage flexed his thighs and the two women huddled together in the back of the Mercedes, a secure enclave in a world of violent men. Simone had watched Jane protectively, like a mother with a tired child, warning me away when I tried to take her hands.

As we reached Eden-Olympia I expected a detachment of French gendarmerie to be waiting for us. Too tired to join the others for a nightcap, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and fell asleep with the light on. I woke an hour later, and heard the sprinklers playing on the cycad below my window. Dance music came from the lounge, the sweet strains and swoops of a 1940s tango. I went downstairs, still wearing David Greenwood's kelp-stained dinner jacket, and found that Jane had revived. She was dancing with Halder, one arm outstretched as he bowed her backwards across his thigh.

The Delages sat side by side in the armchairs, watching the dance like impresarios trying out a scene from a new musical, a tale of tragic love across the divide set in a shabby Buenos Aires dance hall. Halder moved with his light-footed grace, but he looked ill at ease, well aware that the dance might continue once the music had stopped. Alain Delage was filming the tango, and behind the camcorder his face bore the same expression that I had seen during the beating of the African trinket salesman.

I realized that a target was being primed. I stepped through the cigarette smoke and slipped my arm around Jane, who moved through a deep dream of her own and scarcely seemed to notice that her partner had changed. Responding to my clumsy steps, she smiled at me as if recognizing an old acquaintance who had strayed briefly into her life. But Halder bowed to me from the door, all too aware of the danger he had faced.

Alain Delage had taken over as Eden-Olympia's security chief, and Wilder Penrose's prize pupil was now his most eager collaborator.

The introverted and mousy accountant so despised by Frances Baring had turned into a confident and well-adjusted sociopath.

I lay on the sun-lounger, listening to Jane's shower, and glad to have shared a late breakfast with her. Sergeant Jucaud had called at seven, delaying the start of her professional day and providing a small window of opportunity to revive a fading marriage. Sitting with us in the kitchen, the sergeant questioned me about Zander's 'state of mind', a euphemism for drunkenness.

Analysis of the dead man's blood had indicated a high level of alcohol in his system. There were no witnesses to the accident, Jucaud told us, and it seemed likely that Zander had fallen into a stupor at the wheel of the Audi and met his death alone on the night sand.

Jane nodded her agreement, but I was surprised to learn that she had signed the death certificate. According to the official account, she was driving along the coast road and saw the paramedics beside the overturned car, stepped out and confirmed that Zander had died from severe head and chest injuries.

I listened to all this without comment. Sergeant Jucaud was a graduate of an elite police college, and certainly no part of any conspiracy between Eden-Olympia and the Cannes police. But one offhand remark unsettled me. Senior officers at the Villa Grimaldi had reported that I was one of the last people to speak to Zander, and had even seemed to threaten him.

Jane emerged from the terrace, dressed in a cream linen suit, hair tied with a black silk ribbon. She carried her coffee cup but barely needed the stimulant, moving in an easy, amphetamine stride. As always, I was amazed by how quickly she could recover her poise and energy. She waved cheerfully to the gardener, Monsieur Anvers, and threw her biscuit to a sparrow watching from the rose pergola. Once again I felt all my old affection for her, a warmth that transcended Eden-Olympia and everything that had happened to us.

At the same time, I could see how much she had changed.

She had put on weight, and the skin of her face seemed grey and toneless. She often apologized for the bloody stools in the lavatory that she forgot to flush away, and blamed the constipating diamorphine. Without thinking, she tossed her coffee dregs into the swimming pool.

'Paul… do you think Jucaud was satisfied?'

'Our stories matched. You sounded very convincing.'

'They weren't stories. It was an accident.'

'Are you sure?'

'I was there.' Jane leaned her head back and let the sun play on her pallid skin. 'We were overtaking and he lost control. I didn't tell Jucaud because it would drag in everyone else.'

'That's thoughful of you. Who was driving?'

'Alain, I think. Zander was very drunk. I could smell it on the beach.'

'I didn't like his cologne either. I'm surprised you could smell it from the car – you never left it.'

'I did.' Jane seemed genuinely indignant. 'Alain and Simone both said I went down to Zander with my valise.'

'I must have missed that. Did you see the accident?'

'More or less. It happened so quickly. The cars barely touched.'

'They didn't need to.' I watched the coffee grounds sinking through the water. 'Three tons of black Merc swerving after you… most people would do anything to get out of the way. Who was in the first car?'

'Yasuda and someone from Du Pont. And a chauffeur I haven't seen before.'

'He was good. That was highly skilled offensive driving. Alain probably brought in a police pursuit specialist.'

'Paul…' Jane stared into my pupils, as if suspecting that I had overdosed myself. 'You're getting obsessive again. First David, now this accident. It was tragic for Zander, but…'

'No one liked him?'

'He was too fleshy for me.' Jane grimaced, exposing the fine cracks in her make-up. 'Still, at least he was human.'

'Human enough to play Alain's games with you?'

'Paul, we agreed not to talk about that. It's my way of relaxing. Men get so nervous when we hitch up our skirts – they think mummy's going to have sex with the milkman.'

I took her discoloured hands, with their chipped nails. 'Jane, listen to me for once. Alain is dangerous. I watched his eyes while you were dancing with Halder. I saw something your telemetric links will never diagnose – the purest strain of plantation owner. The Belgian Congo under Leopold II, very nasty and very racist. Conrad wrote a novel about it.'

'It was a set book at school.'

'You actually read it?'

'The course notes. It was too frightening.' She stood up and straightened her skirt. 'I'm late for work. Paul, why don't you go back to London for a while?'

'I need to look after you.'

'That's sweet – I mean it. How is Frances? There haven't been any messages for days.'

'She's away. Zander's death shocked her badly.'

'Find her. You need her, Paul.'

'Should I marry her?'

'If you want to. I'd be happy for you…'

I walked Jane down to the drive and watched her as she reversed, admiring her wristy gear changes. She looked very elegant and cool in her linen suit, but I noticed a coffee stain on her sleeve. She treated me to the long smile and slow slide of the eyes that I remembered from our happy days. Our marriage would soon be over, but that made me all the more determined to save her.

My knee throbbed again, counting the hours as reliably as Big Ben.

I sat on my bed in the Alice room, the hypodermic wallet on my lap, and listened to Jane's Peugeot leave the residential enclave and set off for the clinic. Its third gear screamed in the French mode that Jane had adopted. Top was a sign of weakness, of defensive driving reserved for the elderly and infirm, an evolutionary relic that had survived into a more advanced age. Jane belonged to an epoch that accelerated and braked, but never cruised.

Through the window I could see Simone Delage on her balcony, setting out her toiletries on the table like the pieces on a chessboard. A thick cosmetic cream covered her face, a mask that hid nothing. On the day after Zander's death we had met while we walked to our cars, but her expression was as depthless as the artificial lakes in Eden-Olympia. Only the presence of Jane brought a tremor of life to her impassive features.

Yet there was nothing prurient about her exploitation of Jane.

She and Alain approached the freeports of sex like sophisticated tourists in a strange souk, exploring any alleyway that might offer an intriguing cuisine. To these educated travellers even human flesh would prompt no more than a mild query about the recipe.

At Eden-Olympia they dined on the à la carte pathologies prepared for them by Wilder Penrose.

I knew that they saw me as a rather dull, voyeurist husband, enjoying my wife's infidelities. They had showed no surprise when I stepped through the cannabis smoke and took Jane from Halder's arms, assuming that I was sexually excited by the sight of them dancing together. By watching our wives have sex with strangers, we dismantled the mystery of exclusive love, and dispelled the last illusion that each of us was anything but alone.

I turned from Simone and considered my knee, as gnarled and rooted in itself as the bole of a lightning-scarred oak. I inserted the needle into the phial of painkiller and drew the pale fluid into the syringe. As I checked the meniscus my eyes strayed to the Alice characters on the wardrobe door. Carroll had furnished his young heroine with every manner of threats to her sanity, but she had survived them all with her unstoppable good sense.

Pondering this, I thought of Sergeant Jucaud's comment that I had been seen acting aggressively towards Zander. It had taken the detective five days to question me, which suggested that his information was part of a deliberate tip-off. He had pretended to admire the Jaguar, but had clearly been searching for signs of collision damage.

Was I being set up as Zander's killer? Months might pass, as I limped around the business park, my mind clouded by Jane's painkillers, a drugged lab animal being saved for a last injection, the final sacrifice when a scapegoat was needed. I could rely on Wilder Penrose to protect me, but Alain Delage might want me out of the way so that he and Simone could have Jane to themselves…

I searched the veins under my knee, a Mandelbrot pattern of shrivelled capillaries that mapped its own kind of addiction. Then I thought again of the ever-sensible Alice, swallowing her 'drink me' potion. I put down the hypodermic and held the phial to the light. The label was printed with my name, but 'inject me' might well have been stamped across it in bold letters.

My knee waited for relief, but for once I put away the syringe and fastened the leather wallet. I needed to be alert if I was to cope with Zander's death and the danger facing me, since other deaths would soon take place. I needed my infected ligaments and the metal pins clawing at my kneecap. I needed to think, and I needed pain.

35 The Analysis

The supermarket on the main concourse of Antibes-les-Pins was filled with a bounty of attractive merchandise: plates of charcuterie, olive breads, pyramids of a new super-detergent, dory and gurnard fresh enough for the surf to twinkle on their scales.

But there were no customers. The residents of the high-security complex might have retreated so deeply into their defensible space that they had eliminated the need for food, bread and wine. The advertising displays in the estate office overlooking the roundabout on the RN7 had the look of museum tableaux, and the artist's impression of a concourse as crowded as the Champs-Elysées, lined with boutiques and thronged by high-spending customers, seemed to describe a forgotten twentieth-century world.

Only the cyber-café next door was serving any customers. The computer terminals facing the bar were out of use, but three bikers in metallized boots and Mad Max leathers sat at the outdoor tables.

They formed a feral presence in the hyper-modern complex, like carrion-birds on a skyscraper cornice, filling an unplanned niche in the ecology of the future.

The supermarket might have been empty, but the retinal impact of its deserted aisles still surprised me. In the week since putting away the hypodermic syringe my senses had sharpened, as if an anaesthetized world had woken up and seized me in its grip.

Reality had come into sudden focus, and for the first time in many months I was reaching into levels of my mind that had been closed like the floors of an empty telephone exchange. Each morning, after Jane left for the clinic, I drew a measure of painkiller from the phial that she prepared for me, then vented the pale liquid into the washbasin. Curiously, not only was my mind clearer, but the pain in my knee had eased. For once, Alice 's example had not been the best to follow…

I saw Isabel Duval as soon as she entered the supermarket.

Disguised in a headscarf and dark glasses, she hovered like an inexperienced shoplifter beside a display of gourmet cat food.

She was pale and self-possessed, but glanced warily over her shoulder as if sensing a pursuer, only to realize that she had seen herself in a display mirror.

I was glad to meet her again. After speaking on the phone, I mailed the small package to her from a post office in Le Cannet, and expected her to take a month or more to deal with it. But she contacted me within the week.

'Madame Duval… you look well.' I held her hand before she could draw it away from me. 'It's good of you to help me.'

'Not at all…' She peered at me over her sunglasses, unsettled by my restless and eager manner. 'I'm happy to do what I can. You were David's friend.'

'Exactly. I'm still concerned for him. That's why I thought of you. There's a café next door – we'll be less conspicuous.'

We passed a shallow tank filled with lobsters, sidling around each other like airliners looking for a runway. I took Madame Duval's arm and steered her towards the entrance. She frowned at the bikers lounging in the sun, irritated by their presence on her doorstep.

'Mr Sinclair, these young men… are they messengers?'

'Let's hope not. I hate to think what the message might be.'

We sat down at the empty tables, and I ordered mineral water from the waitress. 'Madame Duval, there's no reason why we shouldn't meet.'

'No?' She sounded doubtful.

'My wife was a colleague of David's, and you're one of the last people who knew him well. Now, you have the analysis with you?'

'As I promised.' She took off her glasses, her eyes turned inward as she thought about Greenwood. 'When we met, you were looking into the events around David's death. Can I ask if you found anything?'

'Nothing, to be honest. Everyone liked him.'

'That's good. He was an admirable doctor.' She ventured a sip of water. 'Time stands still at Antibes-les-Pins. But the dead go on opening doors in our minds.'

'Isabel, please – the analysis?'

'Forgive me.' She took an envelope from her handbag and drew out a sheet of typewritten paper. 'First, can I ask why you came to me?'

'I didn't want to involve the clinic. One never knows what complications might follow.'

'Any pharmacy would have arranged the analysis. There must be fifty in Cannes.'

'True. But I had no idea what was in the sample. An ordinary pharmacy might contact the police. It struck me that you would know of a suitable laboratory, one that would be…'

'Discreet?' Madame Duval shook her head, finding me a clumsy conspirator. 'What was the source of this phial?'

'I found it in the house.' Doing my best to lie fluently, I said: 'It was among David's old things. It might give a clue to his mood. If he suffered from diabetes…'

'He didn't. I contacted a small laboratory in Nice. David used them for special preparations before the clinic expanded. I may say that the chief pharmacist was surprised.'

'Why?'

'It's an unusual cocktail.' She put on her reading glasses and scanned the sheet. 'There were vitamins, B group and E, an anti-inflammatory preparation and a postoperative painkiller.'

'Good.' I thought of Jane putting together this potion, measuring the constituents like a mother preparing her baby's feed.

'Then it's in order?'

'Not exactly.' Madame Duval placed the sheet on the table, watching me warily as I fiddled with my mineral water. 'They were in very low concentrations, only fifteen per cent of the total. The remaining eighty-five per cent was made up of a powerful tranquillizer, amitryptiline. It's used as a long-term sedative in mental hospitals.'

I took the analysis from her and studied the French orthography with its vagrant decimal points. 'That sounds like a large dose.'

'Very. Assuming five ccs per day, the patient would find himself in a cloudy world like a steam bath. Nothing would bother him, either internally or from surrounding events.'

'It sounds useful.'

'For people under stress, or faced with a mental crisis they are unwilling to resolve.' Madame Duval provided a judicious pause. 'It's unusual to prescribe such a powerful tranquillizer for people in postoperative pain. Surgical patients are encouraged to move about, not sit in a chair all day.'

'There might be other reasons…' I took the analysis sheet and tucked it into my pocket. 'I'm grateful, Madame Duval. You've been a huge help.'

'I don't think so.' She steadied the table as my left knee bounced up and down. 'You're still happy at Eden-Olympia?'

'On the whole, yes.'

'It's a demanding place. Everything seems clear, but… at least pain sharpens the mind.'

I shook her hand warmly, glad that I did not have to spell everything out for this intelligent woman.

When we left the café the bikers were rearranging their legs around the open-air tables. Madame Duval stepped over an outstretched boot, but I waited for its owner to beat a loose heel plate against the pavement. As I leaned against the door I noticed a sandy-haired man with a straw hat in his hand, standing near a parked Renault.

Printed notices intended to pacify the police and traffic wardens were peeling from the inner surface of the windscreen, hinting that the driver was a doctor or vet on urgent call. He turned his back to the café, and perused a map of the Côte d'Azur.

'Meldrum…' I recognized the Australian manager of Riviera News. He was watching Isabel Duval's reflection in the car's passenger window, and I guessed that he already knew who would follow her from the cyber-café.

I paid my respects to Madame Duval, and waited until she reached the entrance to her apartment wing. Walking to the car-park lift I saw that Meldrum was now sitting in the Renault fifty yards from the garage exit.

I rode the lift down to the lower level, where the Jaguar was parked. When I opened the driver's door a card fell to the floor at my feet. Someone had unlocked the door and then carefully closed it, trapping the card against the sill. Only one person had a spare set of the Jaguar's keys. I read: Paul, leave the Jaguar here. My car is parked in the next aisle with the roof up. Keys under your seat. Try not to be seen as you drive out. We'll meet in the Church of La Garoupe by the lighthouse on Cap d'Antibes.

36 Confession

Presiding over the gloomy silence, the gilded wooden statue of Our Lady of Safe Homecoming was barely visible in the darkness that filled the adjoining chapels of the modest church.

Two women in bombazine dresses and dark headscarves sat in the front pew, lost in their thoughts of departed husbands or children. I bought a candle for ten francs, and carried the trembling flame down the side aisle. Dozens of votive offerings hung from the walls, memorials to disasters at sea, to air and road accidents, many illustrated with fading photographs and newspaper cuttings. Faces of the dead hung in brass lockets and plastic frames: a cheerful schoolgirl who had perished in a Nice ferry sinking, sailors who had died during a wartime naval action, fishermen from Antibes run down by a tanker, three scuba divers who had drowned within sight of the church that memorialized their deaths. Among the antique clutter of dusty silk flags and models of nineteenth-century steam yachts was a box with a transparent lid and a plasticine model of an air crash. A child's fingerprints were visible in the broken wings.

The door opened, throwing a brief light across this warehouse of grief. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat and black trouser suit closed the door behind her and searched the darkness.

' Frances?' Carrying the candle, I walked between the pews and held the flame to the woman's face. Shadows wavered across a nervous mouth and lowered eyes. 'Madame, excuse me… are you -?'

'Paul? Good. We'll go outside.'

She pulled at the wooden door, flooding herself with light like a corpse in an opened coffin. Behind me, the two women rose from their seats and walked towards the exit. As they emerged into the sun I recognized Madame Cordier and Madame Ménard, the chauffeurs' widows I had last seen in the apartment at Port-la-Galère.

When they spoke to Frances they turned their backs to me, as if fearing that I might report them to the authorities at Eden-Olympia. After the briefest thanks they walked quickly to a waiting taxi in the car park.

Frances waved to them, but seemed too tired to look at me.

Her hand fell under its own weight and hung by her side. She was thinner than I remembered, and hesitated before touching my shoulder, unsure whether I was still the person she had known. She held my hand for a moment, trying to remind herself that we had once been lovers. The ghosts of emotions past seemed to gather and dissolve in her troubled face.

'Frances…? It's good to see you.'

'Wait. I can't breathe here.'

I followed her across the uneven ground outside the church, and we walked towards the fir trees that shielded the plateau of La Garoupe. A coin-in-the-slot telescope pointed towards the Antibes peninsula, a panorama of the Riviera from Super-Cannes to Juan-les-Pins, and from the crowded Antibes harbour beyond the Napoleonic battlements to the apartment city of Marina Baie des Anges. An airliner made its descent towards Nice Airport, its winged shadow trembling across the faces of the hotels that overlooked the glide path.

'Frances… try to relax. No one followed me.' I wanted to embrace her, but she stepped away from me and clasped the telescope with her hand. I knew that she was thinking of everything except myself. Tapping the telescope, she watched the taxi leave with the two widows.

'The chauffeurs' wives?' I asked. 'What were they doing here?'

'They wanted to see the chapel – it's dedicated to the souls of travellers. I collected them from the station at Antibes.'

'Did I spoil it for them?'

'I doubt it – why?'

'They looked at me…'

'They're very suspicious. Word gets around. You've been seen at some of the ratissages. They think you're part of Eden-Olympia.'

'I am.'

'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 barrier 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 wanted 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…'

' Frances, it wasn't an accident. They killed him.'

'Yes…' Blood flushed her cheeks, and she stared at herself in the driving mirror. Embarrassed, she opened the door and stepped out, then bent down and said to me: 'Yes, they killed him. But I helped them, Paul. I set it up for them…'

37 A Plan of Action

I found frances by the telescope, pacing to and fro under the trees, fingers tearing a pine cone she had picked from a branch. The black-clad women were walking towards the church, bereaved wives and mothers making their annual visit to the Virgin of La Garoupe.

Frances stared irritably at the women, unable to face this chorus of the undead. Aware of her blonde hair and tailored trouser-suit, she pulled at her buttons and scuffed through the gravel to the telescope. Leaning against the brass barrel, she stared across the bay to Golfe-Juan, searching for Zander's overturned car. I realized that she had chosen La Garoupe as our meeting place in order to punish herself.

' Frances, come on. Be honest, you loathed Zander…'

'Where is it?' She pushed me away, and tossed the pine cone from one hand to the other. 'A grey Audi – I can't see it.'

'It's in a police lab – they must be checking the brakes and steering.'

'Why? We can tell them all they need to know. Or will we, Paul? Somehow I doubt it…' She slapped the telescope, and her rings sent out a sharp metal cry that drew the eyes of the widows.

'Give me a coin – ten francs. The car must be there…'

I held her shoulders and steered her to the wooden bench on the observation platform. 'Let's rest here. There's nothing on the beach: I went back to have a look. Frances, we were two hundred yards away when it happened.'

'It was a set-up. Didn't you guess?' Her moment of panic had passed, and she spoke calmly. 'I was the decoy. While you were looking for Jane, I played the vamp with Zander. I told him to follow me back to Marina Baie des Anges.'

'And that's why he trailed us? He must have seen me in the passenger seat.'

'He didn't mind. I said you were a great fan of threesomes.'

'So all that roaming around Super-Cannes in the dark? The back streets near the Vallauris road…?'

'I was giving everyone time to catch up. Alain Delage told me to take the coast road to Juan-les-Pins. Drink-drivers are always ending up in the sea.' She raised her arm and threw the pine cone down the slope, watching it bounce into the deep ferns. 'Believe me, I didn't think they planned to kill him.'

'So you knew nothing – don't blame yourself.'

'I should have known!' Disgusted with herself, she turned her eyes from the beach. 'Until then I could cope with Eden-Olympia. But the waves were on fire. Paul, that was a warning – these people have to be stopped, or others are going to die.'

'They'll pull back now. Delage took a risk in killing Zander. He was head of security.'

'Acting head. He knew too much, and that made him greedy. He had all the videotapes, and he'd started to put pressure on the smaller companies. He wanted huge share options built into his salary package. Besides, there was one other mark against him.'

'He was just another Arab? Still, Yasuda is Japanese. There are Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese in every boardroom. A Mexican CEO lives on my avenue.'

'But they're paid-up members of the new elite. They're the corporate chosen people. Zander ran a security firm in Piraeus before he came here. He was technical services, one up from the janitors. The top managements at Eden-Olympia are deeply racist, but in a new way. The corporate pecking order is all that counts. They know the world would collapse without them, and think they can get away with anything.'

'They probably can.'

'No!' Frances pulled at my shirt. 'Listen to me. Some of the therapy groups are starting to stockpile weapons. They're setting up "hunting lodges" near the immigrant housing estates in La Bocca and Mandelieu. Technically, they'll be safe depositories for pharmaceuticals and industrial diamonds, and the guards will be heavily armed.'

'But their real role will be to provoke the local criminals and layabouts?'

'And then take on the immigrant population as a whole. We're back in Weimar Germany, with a weekend Freikorps fighting the Reds. Sooner or later some corporate raider with a messianic streak will turn up, backed by all the natural gas in Yakut, and decide that social Darwinism deserves another go. Listen to Alain Delage and Penrose talking together and you know they're just waiting for him to arrive.'

'Dictators always step into an open jackboot. How many executives are involved in the therapy classes?'

'Something like three hundred. A lot are off on overseas trips, but most weekends at least a hundred take part. They're operating as far away as Nice and St-Raphaël. There's some grim stuff going on – nasty child porn, rapes of young Arab wives…'

'The police will step in.'

'They're looking the other way. Eden-Olympia is expanding. Destivelle and the holding company are buying thousands or hectares to the west of the D103, right up to the edge of Sophia-Antipolis.' Grimly, Frances gestured towards the open hinterland beyond the coast. 'The taxes paid by Eden-Olympia amount to billions of francs. They pay for new schools and colleges and sports stadia. That's why we're so popular. Wilder Penrose and Delage have to be stopped, along with their lunatic scheme. Not because it's crazy, but because it's going to work. The whole world will soon be a business-park colony, run by a lot of tight-lipped men who pretend to be weekend psychos.'

She stared fiercely at the beaches of Juan and Cagnes-sur-Mer, as if hoping for a tsunami to appear and wash the entire coastline into the sea. I remembered the bored and moody woman I had met at the Palais des Festivals, feigning an interest in me as she pondered how to take her revenge on Eden-Olympia.

But Zander's death had driven her to the edge. For the first time she had looked down at her feet and was ready to jump.

'We'll stop them, Frances. But we need hard evidence. The testimony of Philippe Bourget and a couple of chauffeurs' widows won't be enough.'

'The evidence is there. All the ratissages are filmed. There must be a thousand tapes at the Villa Grimaldi. In Menton I went to see a retired judge I met when we bought his old house. He used to be vice-president of the Alpes-Maritimes Development Council, but fell foul of Jacques Médecin and his gangster cronies. They forced him to resign. He was very interested in what I told him.'

'Be careful, Frances. I need to think of Jane. I'll try to get her back to London.'

'She won't go. You know that.' Frances drummed her fists together, tired of my obtuseness. 'She's one of their main targets. They've given her this huge diagnostic project.'

'It's not a front. The system will work.'

'Naturally! It's a brilliant way of recruiting new entrants to the therapy classes. "Too many summer colds, feeling a little seedy? Try one of our special workouts, rubber truncheons provided." Jane is perfect for them.'

'She's pretty spirited.'

'Not any more. For God's sake, Paul, she's a heroin addict. They need a compliant doctor. One who'll supply all the hard drugs they want, ask no questions about strange bruises and find a hospital bed for any whore who gets hurt when some sadistic game goes wrong. They like a paediatrician who can deal with any underage girls and boys who catch VD. And it's always useful to have a doctor who'll sign death certificates when they're needed. Jane will do all that for them.'

'She's already started. She signed the attestation for Zander's death.'

'She saw what happened?'

'No. She was asleep in the back of Delage's Merc. Still, she was there.'

'That's why Alain brought her along. And she genuinely thinks it was an accident?'

'I'm not sure…' I watched the first of the old women leave the church and make their way back to their coach. 'Frances, there's one thing I've never understood. Why did David try to kill you?'

Frances stared me out, barely masking the self-contempt in her face. 'Did he?'

'You know he did. He was on his way to shoot you when he tried to get into the Siemens building.'

'Maybe he was looking for someone else. I can't say. I let him down.'

'That's hard to believe. You loved him, and yet he broke things off. A few weeks later he tried to kill you.'

'I wish he had. He knew I'd gone too far. I showed him a secret self he'd never seen before.'

'If not drugs, then what? Anything to do with the refuge?'

'Everything to do with it. All those nubile thirteen-year-olds, dying for sex and ready to go all the way for a new sound system. At first I thought I'd put the idea into his head, but it was there all along. The only thing it needed was a helping hand from Wilder Penrose. Then the whole horror of it stepped out of the daylight and stared David full in the face. Poor, sweet man, he was too honest.'

'Thirteen-year-olds? Are you saying that…?'

'Yes!' Frances almost shouted at the widows, as if wanting to shock them out of their pious grief. 'I'm saying it. I encouraged him, the way I encouraged you. I loved David, and I wanted him to be happy. If a thirteen-year-old made him happy, why not? At first David didn't like it, so he went to see Penrose.'

'And Wilder said it was just what he needed? When did this start?'

'Six months before he died. It was a secret thing between us. We never talked about it, even though we knew it was going on.'

'Didn't the nuns try to stop him?'

'They didn't know. The girls soon grew up, there was a huge turnover. It all took place at Eden-Olympia.'

'At the house?'

'It started there. He'd bring one of the girls back for the weekend to help with her English. They'd read Through the Looking-Glass together, which they all thought was a scream. David fitted out one of the bedrooms for them. One thing led to another. Penrose told him not to feel guilty. Being true to himself did him good, and fired up his creativity. To begin with it was very innocent.'

'And then? It's not hard to guess.'

'Penrose said he knew a senior executive who'd like to help the girls with their English. Lewis Carroll was surprisingly popular among the CEOs. The girls could see the joke, but they liked their presents. They realized they were meeting some very important men.'

'So within a short time there was -'

'A full-scale paedophile ring.' Frances shook her head, as if despairing over a strange newspaper report. 'David organized everything. He distributed the Alice books and the lending library became the booking system. If you wanted to give an English lesson you picked your favourite copy. David arranged for the particular girl to be driven to you. Door-to-door service. Beats anything laid on for the Caliph of Baghdad.'

'The Alice books were the reservation system? That explains the Russian who came to the house. He assumed I'd taken over, and offered me little Natasha. I wanted to get her to the police.'

'That confused a lot of people. Paedophiles we could cope with, but acting out of genuine selflessness? Far too original for Eden-Olympia.'

'But David cared for the orphans. Everyone said so. If you knew what was going on, why didn't you stop him?'

Frances stood up and gripped the telescope in her hands. She stared at the apartment houses at Antibes-les-Pins, as if wishing that she could hide herself for ever behind their cameras. She seemed exhausted by everything she had told me, but determined that I hear her out.

'Why? Because I was fond of him. I was like those affectionate wives who look the other way when their husbands stand a little too close to an attractive young man. Most of the time we met at my apartment. I didn't want to know.'

'But that wasn't enough to save you?'

'He blamed me. I was too tolerant, I was involved in the deep sickness of Eden-Olympia. The last time we met I could see the disgust he felt for me. I was his Hindley or Rosemary West, I'd turned him into this perverted librarian. He wanted to destroy all those sick people playing their deranged games – Wilder Penrose, our nail-biting Dr Death. Guy Bachelet, the security chief who ran the robbery circus. Olga Carlotti with her call-girl ring. Charbonneau and Robert Fontaine, with their racist plans. And the others.'

'Dominique Serrou? His partner at the refuge. Was she involved in the paedophile business?'

'She was the recruitment officer. She toured the foster homes around Cannes and Nice, looking for likely talent. Girls with abusive "uncles" or histories of VD.'

'A doctor? It's hard to believe.'

'She was vulnerable.' Frances raised her hands in a gesture of sympathy. 'A plain woman who knew she was getting older. Every day dying a little inside. She saw Bachelet losing interest and moving away from her like a ship in a fog bank. She'd have paid any price to bring him back. Penrose convinced her the health of the senior executives depended on certain special therapies. She went along with it.'

'And that made her a target. So May 28 was David's attempt to clean the stables and wipe out the self-hatred he felt.'

'He wanted to kill the people who'd corrupted him. At least five or six had to die, to make the kind of splash that would reach the evening news and stay there.' Frances sat next to me and held my hands, her face as bleak as a tired child's. 'If it hadn't been for me he might have pulled it off. For a few seconds he lowered his guard, just long enough for Halder to kill him.'

'Frances, don't blame yourself. You didn't pull the trigger.'

'Maybe not.' She inhaled the pine-scented air, trying to rally herself. 'But I have to finish David's work. The madmen are still walking around Eden-Olympia. Paul, I need your help.'

'You have it. But it's hard to know what exactly we can do. People look at the Dow and the Nikkei and think everything is fine. Eden-Olympia is very powerful.'

'And over-confident. Penrose and Alain Delage think nothing can stop them. We need tapes of the special actions, the more violent the better. They incriminate everyone – the senior executives with the big companies, the security guards and off-duty local police.'

'And me. Don't forget that.'

'You're an observer. You sit in the back seat of the Merc while the heavy mob go in. We'll make copies of the tapes and send them to the head offices of Shell and Monsanto and Toyota.'

'That's more or less what Zander planned to do. The tapes are hidden away in the Villa Grimaldi. Security is tight.'

'We're not going to pick the locks.' Irritated with me, Frances kicked the ground. 'You're close to Penrose. He likes you, because you're so easily impressed. You half-believe his scary ideas. Go along with him, play more of a part in the ratissages.'

'Frances, I couldn't.'

'They won't expect you to rape some old whore. Just move into the front seat of the Merc. Help with the planning sessions, offer to look after the cameras. That should get you nearer the tapes. Find out the targets, especially the racist ones. We'll get our own film crew on the scene, some renegade BBC team. Sooner or later Penrose will make you his assistant. Like all great visionaries, he needs a disciple.'

'He does – you're right. The sad thing is, I think he's found one.'

'You?'

'Maybe.'

'Paul, what is it?'

'I'm thinking of Jane.'

'Good. She's Simone Delage's lover. Alain is at the heart of everything now. Use Jane to get closer to him.'

'I don't want to use her. She's my wife. I want to save her and get her back to London.'

'You will. Paul, it's the only way.'

'The only way to get her struck off the register. Plus a long spell in a French jail. I can't involve her.'

'Fair enough. But why so much husbandly concern?' Frances peered at me with a surprisingly cold eye. 'You've watched her turn into a heroin addict.'

'She's not an addict. Doctors work hard, and a lot of them take something to ease the stress. She talked it over with Wilder – it's all under control. You're asking me to incriminate her. Jane is -'

'It's not Jane! It's nothing to do with her.' Frances shook my shoulder, as if trying to rouse a dozing sleeper. 'You're thinking of Penrose. You don't want to damage him.'

'That's not true.'

'Part of you believes in his lunatic ideology. That's why you've been so passive from the start. They corrupted your wife and you sat back and watched. I always wondered why.'

'You say I'm a voyeur.'

'That's not the reason. You secretly think Penrose is right, and a new kind of world is being born here, based on psychopathology. You're deeply impressed by Eden-Olympia. These vast companies with their powerful executives, sitting in their glass atriums like so many minotaurs. Once a year there has to be a sacrifice of six maidens. Except that it isn't once a year. It's every weekend, in the back streets of La Bocca. Still, who cares if a few teenage whores disappear into the labyrinth?'

'I care. Frances, I can see the flaws in Wilder's scheme.'

'Can you?' She turned to stare at me, as if understanding me for the first time. 'I know him a lot better than you do.'

'I'm sure you do. Did you have an affair with him?'

'Nearly.' She nodded bleakly to herself, unsettled by the memory. 'He helped me after the divorce. I needed support, and he was generous with his time. Wilder Penrose can be very attractive.'

'And very dangerous?'

'He frightened me. One moment there was all that smiling charm, the gentle giant with the strange new take on the world. The next moment he was going to hit me. I laughed at him over something and he raised his fist. I got out fast.'

'He was a boxer. Like his father.'

'He wanted to be, but something went wrong. He started to tell me about it – a fight after a rowing-club party with a nightclub bouncer, an old pro with early signs of brain damage that Wilder spotted. The man couldn't see anything coming from his left side…'

'So Wilder gave him a beating. Did he injure the man?'

'Badly, but that wasn't it. He saw all the repressed violence inside himself, the kind of violence his father wouldn't have liked. So Wilder decided other people would be violent for him, and he looked around for a system that could make it happen. Psychiatry was tailor-made for him. Once he'd dreamed up his ideology he could sit back and watch his patients getting their faces bloodied, all these repressed executives like Alain Delage that he's turned into playgroup Nazis. Now Wilder sees himself as a new kind of messiah, and our role is to act out his fantasies for him. Zander was right about Wilder Penrose.'

'And that's why he was killed.' I took her arms and held her to me, feeling her heart as it beat against her breastbone. We left the observation platform and walked back to the BMW.

'Let's leave before anyone notices your licence number – these accident widows must have sharp eyes. Listen to me. David died for something I believe in. I want to put Eden-Olympia on trial. I want Wilder Penrose to take the stand and be our chief witness.'