Super-Cannes

Applause eddied across the rows of guests, an approving murmur barely audible above the flapping of the canvas marquee.

Sitting beside Penrose in the second row of gilt chairs, I watched Olivier Destivelle, chairman of the Eden-Olympia holding company, bowing his thanks. With a theatrical flourish he accepted a silver trowel, presented on a velvet-lined tray by an attractive aide in a sky-blue uniform.

In front of the platform was a short section of newly laid brick wall, the pointing between the courses still damp and creamy. Set into the wall was a marble plaque, celebrating the foundation of Eden-Olympia Ouest, better known in the international business community as Eden II.

Dressed in his morning suit, and as plumply convivial as a retired matinée idol, Destivelle held the silver trowel in his manicured hands. He beamed at the audience of notables as he plucked a scoop of fresh mortar from a trestle table. Distracted by the photographers' flashbulbs, the television lights and the distant drone of advertising aircraft, he raised the mortar in a proud gesture, his nostrils flicking at the scent of quicklime.

Penrose leaned back in his chair, treating me to a stage whisper.

'Is he recommending a new truffle pâté? He's poncing about like the maître d' at Maxim's. Lay it, Olivier, don't taste it.'

Already bored, Penrose loosened his tie. He took off the jacket of his dark suit, exposing his heavy shoulders and crumpled sleeves. Nibbling at a thumbnail, he ignored the glares of the sleekly dressed women around us, wives of the Riviera elite in their ribboned hats and couture gowns. Humming loudly to himself, he gazed over the greenfield site towards the Alpes-Maritimes.

Buoyed by the prospect of the new business park that would be his next ideas laboratory, Penrose had been in good humour during our drive to the ground-breaking ceremony. Collecting me from the house, he was handsomely at ease in his black silk suit, and adjusted the rear-view mirror so that he could watch himself turn the ignition key. He made no attempt to reset the mirror, and waved my worries aside. 'Paul, do we need a rear-view mirror?' he asked as we left the enclave. 'Nothing can overtake us, so why look back into the past?'

The future was a second Eden-Olympia, almost twice the size of the original, the same mix of multinational companies, research laboratories and financial consultancies. Hyundai, BP Amoco, Motorola and Unilever had secured their plots, investing in long-term leases that virtually financed the whole project. The site-contractors were already at work, clearing the holm oaks and umbrella pines that had endured since Roman times, surviving forest fires and military invasions. Nature, as the new millennium dictated, was giving way for the last time to the tax shelter and the corporate car park.

A line of tractors and graders waited by the forest edge, drivers sitting at their controls, like a squadron of tanks at a military display.

The grass cover had been pared away, exposing the pale granitic marl to a few moments of sunlight before it was sealed away for ever under a million tons of cement.

'Progress, Paul, it's palpable…' When we left the car Penrose strolled to the refreshment tent, and gazed at the architect's model surrounded by a sea of canapés. Munching an anchovy, he smiled with pride at the landscaped office blocks, like a renaissance pope inspecting a model of his chapel and dreaming of the frescos he would never see. 'Look at it, Paul – the new Europe…'

'I hope not,' I commented. 'Eden II? It's another business park. You make it sound like Winthrop's City on a Hill.'

'It is, Paul, it is.' He seemed almost light-headed. 'A hundred cities on a hundred hills…'

A second round of applause rose from the guests as Olivier Destivelle patted the wet mortar into place. Within a year the ten-storey bulk of Eden II's administrative headquarters would tower above the plaque. As if signalling their approval, the massed engines of bulldozers and graders roared into life. Gearboxes rasped, metal tracks dug their cleats into the hard soil and a parade of yellow vehicles began.

Destivelle beamed at the lumbering parade, urging the spectators to applaud. But his eyes began to scan the sky. Half a mile to the north, a single-engined aircraft was heading towards us, towing a long green pennant like an agitated snake. It cleared a pine-covered hill, its fixed undercarriage almost scraping the canopy. The pilot flew on, scattered a flock of martins and set course for the phalanx of bulldozers, apparently intending to strafe them. Drivers watched over their shoulders, and already two of the huge vehicles had locked their scoops together.

But the pilot had a second target in his sights. When he was four hundred yards away he raised an arm over his windscreen and fired a signal flare from the open cockpit. The flare rose into the air, hovered above the refreshment tent and exploded in a globe of emerald light. It hung in the sky like a melting chandelier, and then fell into the car park, its green embers setting fire to the grass.

Already the first guests were rising from their seats, suspecting that this aerial display was not part of the official programme. Men buttoned their jackets as wives held their hats, coughing when fumes from the flare drifted through the marquee. A grim-faced Alain Delage, once again the harassed accountant, was calling to his aides, who sprang to life and began shouting into their mobile phones.

The pilot changed course, banked his wings and began a circuit of the site. Caught by the crosswind, his green banner had wrapped itself into a knot, turning the lettered slogan into an unreadable Moebius strip.

'Is that it?' Penrose made a two-fingered salute to the pilot. 'Not much of a show.'

'He hasn't got your resources. Wait, though…' I pointed to the fir-topped hills. The drone of competing engines made its Doppler run towards us. Three more publicity planes sped down the valley, towing their pennants and followed by a straggler who had joined the fly-past at late notice. I guessed that the pilots had joined the protest in a show of solidarity, leaving their allotted circuits of the Côte d'Azur to rendezvous above Sophia-Antipolis.

They flew towards us, shadows crossing the canvas roof above our heads, engines drumming against the hulls of the graders and bulldozers. The metal scoops amplified the mushy drone, a muffled anthem played by an involuntary steel band. Banners fluttered across the air, advertising a supermarket in Le Cannet, a kitchenware store and a sale of demonstration Renaults in Cagnes-sur-Mer. They crossed the D103 and set off for their beach patrols, rolling their wings in farewell.

The pilot with the green pennant circled the site, waiting until his companions had gone. A passenger sat in the open cockpit behind him, and as the sun struck the windscreen I caught a glimpse of blonde hair under an antique helmet and goggles.

Satisfied, the pilot banked steeply and climbed into the sun, his wings shedding light into the air.

Groups of guests walked to their cars, while others sat among the overturned chairs. Olivier Destivelle stood by the plaque, pointing to the empty sky with his silver trowel. Alain Delage spoke to a senior police officer, but his men were distracted by the limousines jamming the car-park exits, horns blaring at each other.

'A slight cock-up…' Penrose swung his gilt chair in his hand, as if debating whether to climb into the sky. 'So much for security. Did you catch the slogan?'

'Used Renaults, a supermarket somewhere. Quite a threat.'

'Paul, be serious for once.' Penrose tried to wave away the pall of burnt aviation fuel. 'The pilot with the flare pistol. He was the organizer.'

'"Eden II – Extinction is For Ever." Mean anything?'

'Green nonsense.' Penrose shrugged and stared back at the sky, but I could see he was nettled. 'Still, the pilot made his point. Progress has been held back by a microsecond. A shame, though. It's an important day.'

Forgetting me, he set off for the refreshment tent. A few journalists were picking at the buffet tables as they spoke into their cassette recorders, but the television crews were climbing into their vans, ready to relay their footage to the evening news programmes.

Penrose listened to the last drone of the aircraft echoing through the valleys towards the coast. Barely able to control his irritation, he sucked the meat from a lobster claw. 'Paul, what sort of aircraft was it? Someone should have jotted down the registration number.'

'A Czech air force basic trainer. Slow, but fun to fly.'

'I bet. You recognized the pilot.'

'Four hundred yards away? Pilots don't sign their slipstreams.'

'I thought they did. Frances Baring may know him. She's chummy with the rodeo pilots at Cannes Airport.' Penrose held a smoked salmon fillet to his nose, smelling the pink flesh. 'You understand her, Paul. I'd hate to think she was involved in this nonsense.'

'She isn't. Wilder, she works hard for Eden-Olympia.'

'Everyone works hard – it proves nothing. People are impressionable, they snatch powerful emotions out of the air. The one thing Eden-Olympia doesn't need is its own Green movement. Why doesn't anyone want to save the planet's concrete?'

'I guess it can look after itself.'

'Can it?' Penrose turned to stare at me, as if I had conveyed a unique insight. He swallowed the canapé, took the glass of wine from my hand and gulped it back. 'Right, that was lunch. Let's go for a drive above Grasse. I need the high air to think in…'

The first signs of revolt had appeared, but not in a way that Wilder Penrose expected. As we set off for Grasse he watched the rearview mirror, suspicious of any following cars. The pinpricks of the past weeks – the graffiti and vandalized cars in the Eden-Olympia garages – had begun to penetrate even the well-upholstered hide of the corporate elephant.

It was a pleasure to see Penrose in the role of quarry, for once.

As Frances had predicted, the ratissages had grown more violent, but sooner or later the victims would turn on their attackers. One evening, in an immigrant neighbourhood, the residents would at last act together, corner a therapy class of senior executives and hold them until the television cameras arrived. Then the conspiracy would collapse and witnesses would come forward: the chauffeurs' widows, the girls at the refuge, brutalized whores and assaulted Arab workmen.

Yet, despite myself, I still admired Penrose, and the core truth of his bold but deranged vision. I hated the violence but remembered the brutal hazings at the RAF flight school, and how they had energized us all. Those fraternal beatings had been the closest we would ever come to tormenting our prisoners, part of the cruel but necessary pleasures of war. At Eden-Olympia, psychopathy was being rehabilitated, returned like a socialized criminal to everyday life.

For all his success, Penrose had been on edge in the two months since Zander's death. Often he knocked over his chesspieces as we played beside the pool. In the middle of a move he would leave the table and pace alone around the tennis court, then walk to his car without a word. At times he seemed to doubt that he was equal to the huge test of his talents posed by Eden II, and was searching for an even more radical leap of faith.

As we climbed the mountains above Grasse he patted my arm, treating me to the conspiratorial smile he turned upon waitresses and filling-station personnel who met his approval. He pointed to the rev counter, trembling in the red zone. 'Feel the power, Paul? When I'm bored you can take over.'

'As long as you're in control.'

'Who wants to be in control? Haven't I taught you anything?' He drummed a hand on the wheel. 'Those publicity planes – they spoilt the show.'

'No one noticed. They were glad to get back to the office. A kitchenware sale, some clapped-out cars…'

'You're wrong, Paul.' Penrose pointed to a billboard advertising a new hair spray. 'That's just the point. Reality is always a threat. I'm not worried by any rival ideology – there isn't one. But all these ads for aquaparks and swimming pools… they're the real enemy. They subvert everything. Frances probably arranged it deliberately.'

'Why should she?'

'To unsettle me. She's restless. You know that, Paul. She thinks she's a rebel, but doesn't realize that Eden-Olympia is the biggest rebellion of all.'

Frances would disapprove of my accepting a lift in Penrose's car. We met rarely now, and she said nothing of her plans to expose Eden-Olympia. Our hour together near the lighthouse at La Garoupe had been a closing of accounts. She had tried to use me again, hoping to trigger an outburst against Eden-Olympia, but I was too uncommitted for her. We met for dinner at the Vieux Port, and I told her that I was working my way into Penrose's confidence. She nodded, lit a cigarette and stared at the Arab yachts.

Meanwhile, the first graffiti and damaged surveillance cameras at Eden-Olympia seemed too feeble a protest to be her handiwork. The cryptic signs aerosolled across windscreens resembled teenage graffiti tags, and were soon scrubbed away by teams of maintenance men, but the stains of rebellion remained.

Curiously, I had become one of the first victims. Three days before the ground-breaking ceremony at Eden II, the Jaguar was brutally savaged. Vandals slashed the tyres and engine hoses, and wrenched the gear lever from its housing. Mr Yasuda was so impressed that he formally congratulated me, his wife bowing three paces behind him, under the impression that the Jaguar had served heroically in a ratissage of Pearl Harbor proportions.

But I no longer joined the bowling clubs on their outings, and distanced myself from the secret life of the business park. I moved from my Alice bed to a maid's room overlooking the tennis court.

I said nothing to Jane about Greenwood's tragic end, and how her sometime lover had died in a paroxysm of self-disgust. At night, when I woke, I would step into Jane's bedroom and watch her as she slept, Simone's lipstick smudged across her mouth, the young woman I had loved, and one day, perhaps, would love again.

At the Col du Pilon, a few miles above Grasse, we parked by the observation point with its devil's view over the Var plain. Penrose filled his huge chest with the cold air, holding his breath as if only an over-oxygenated brain could envisage all the possibilities of his new kingdom.

'Spectacular, Paul? There are times when you feel the wind of history under your wings. You've watched the future break out of its egg. The Greenwich line of this millennium runs through Eden-Olympia.'

'All the same, it's time to go back to London. I have to persuade Jane.'

'But why?' Penrose turned his back to the sun, and concentrated all his professional sympathy on me, as if I had admitted to bedwetting or shoplifting. 'Eden II is the only future we have.'

'Not for me.'

'We'll find you a job. You can start a publishing house for us, edit a monthly magazine.'

'Thanks, but everything looks less certain now. I couldn't take the risk.'

'You won't have to. You and Jane are safe, you're with us.'

'Along with those hundreds of senior executives arriving soon at Eden II? You're about to create a major crime wave.'

'Paul… the crime wave is already there. It's called consumer capitalism. Dear chap, I haven't asked you to defecate on the tricolour. A small social cost has to be borne, but we compensate the victims.'

'People like Zander?'

'That was an accident.'

'Wilder, I was there. It was an execution.' I lowered my voice as two elderly Chinese walked from their car and stood beside us at the observation rail. 'He knew about the paedophile ring and the jewellery raids, the strangled streetwalkers… I should have gone to the police.'

'They came to you. Sensibly, you said nothing.' Penrose raised his strong chin to the sun, inhaling the cool air. 'Who told you about the paedophile ring – Halder?'

'Not Halder.'

'I'm glad. He's too ambitious to be disloyal. We think very highly of Halder.'

'Good. Alain Delage shouldn't play games with him.'

'Does he? That's unpleasant. I'll tell him to pick another deprived group – English tourists, say. If Halder didn't talk to you, who did? Frances Baring?'

'She's said nothing.'

'You spend a lot of time with her. She must talk about something. She's always had friends outside Eden-Olympia – an attractive woman in the property office, who visits a lot of very rich people. Some of them have axes to grind, and carry weight in Paris and Brussels.'

'She's never talked to me. Besides, she knows nothing.'

'She knows more than you think. I worry about Frances. For her, the clocks stopped on May 28…'

He broke off as the drone of a publicity plane rose from the valley below. He snatched at the air, trying to seize the miniature aircraft, no larger than a gnat against his outstretched hand. 'Those planes. Paul, don't you find them annoying? Like all the graffiti at Eden-Olympia – a fifty-million-dollar office building and a few francs' worth of paint turn it into something from the Third World.'

'When Eden II opens you'll have larger problems on your mind.'

'You're right, Paul. It's an enormous challenge. Still, we have to press on. The therapy classes unsettle you, but they've proved their worth.'

'For the moment. Too many people know that something nasty happens after dark at Eden-Olympia. Sooner or later, the authorities will act.'

'Of course they will. It's a gamble we had to take.' Penrose took my arm, moving me closer to the observation rail. He had perspired heavily during the aerial protest at Eden II, and the wind lifted a stale scent of unease and frustration from his damp shirt. 'I don't want you to worry, Paul. Forget about going back to London. I need you here – you're one of the few people I can trust. You've seen the truth of what we're doing, and that's why you've never betrayed the therapy programme.'

'I'm an observer. Frances tells me I'm too dull and normal for Eden-Olympia.'

'Normal? Careers have foundered trying to define what that means. Be careful, we've moved into a world where it's dangerous to be normal. Extreme problems call for extreme solutions. As it happens, the therapy programmes aren't needed now. We're scaling them back.'

'Are you sure?' Penrose's offhand tone surprised me. 'Why? Are they getting out of control?'

'No, but Eden II changes everything. What worked so well for a small group of elite professionals can't be applied to a huge population. Eden II will employ 20,000 people. I don't want to start a race war – or not yet. That Green pilot was a warning. Besides, we have to look ahead. A titanic battle is about to begin, a Darwinian struggle between competing psychopathies. Everything is for sale now – even the human soul has a barcode. We're driven by bizarre consumer trends, weird surges in the entertainment culture, mass paranoias about new diseases that are really religious eruptions. How to get a grip on all this? We may need to play on deep-rooted masochistic needs built into the human sense of hierarchy. Nazi Germany and the old Soviet Union were Sadeian societies of torturers and willing victims. People no longer need enemies – in this millennium their great dream is to become victims. Only their psychopathies can set them free…'

He drove cautiously down the hillside towards Grasse, allowing other cars to overtake us, waving them on with a large hand.

He seemed tired but at peace. I realized that he had conducted a private experiment, taking himself up to a high place and offering himself the kingdoms of the new earth. He had accepted the offer, and was already working out his strategy for dealing with the huge possibilities that Eden II brought with it.

When we reached Eden-Olympia he scarcely noticed the fresh graffiti aerosolled across the glass doors of the administration building.

He dropped me at the house, gripping my arm as I stepped from the car. 'I'm glad you came, Paul. You've helped me a great deal.'

'I hope not.'

'There's a small thing you can do. I'm worried about Frances. Some of my medical records have gone missing.'

'The videotapes?'

'Exactly. They're highly confidential; we wouldn't want them in the wrong hands. Do tell Frances that the therapy programmes are coming to an end.'

'She'll be glad to hear it.'

'Good. When are you next seeing her?'

'Tonight. I'm picking her up at Marina Baie des Anges. She'll be impressed.'

'Invite her out to dinner. Explain that it may take a little time. She's obsessed with David Greenwood, and nothing else matters to her. That's dangerous for us.'

'It makes sense. She loved the man.'

'So did I.' Penrose's smile slipped from his face. He stared at his hands, then pulled back his sleeves and exposed the scars on his forearms. 'It's true, Paul. I owe him my life.'

'You were on the target list, along with Berthoud. If he'd seen you he would have killed you.'

'He did see me. I never told you.' Penrose nodded to himself. 'He shot Berthoud through the glass door, stepped forward and saw me bleeding on the floor in the corridor. I can still remember his eyes. He wasn't in the least mad, you know.'

'Then why didn't he kill you? He certainly planned to. You were the architect of everything he hated.'

'I know.' Penrose gripped the steering wheel, listening to the throaty quaver of the sports car's engine. 'I've thought about it ever since. He wanted me to face what I'd done. For a few moments he was completely sane…'

39 A New Folklore

Kurt Weill's ' Surabaya johnny' boomed from the CD player propped against the pillows. Jane swayed around the bedroom, a lurid figure in a spangled crimson minidress and stiletto heels.

A frizz of lacquered black hair rose in a retro-punk blaze from her forehead, above kohled eyes and a lipsticked mouth like a wound.

I sat among the debris of discarded underwear, admiring Jane's stamina and panache. Overwork and pethidine had coarsened her face, and she seemed a decade older than the young woman who had driven me down to Cannes.

'Jane, I love the costume. You look wonderfully… I'd say decadent, if that wasn't so passé.'

'Tarty.' She cocked a hip and pointed a carmined fingernail at my eyes. 'Miss Weimar, 1927.'

'The Delages will love it. You're going out with them?'

'On the town.' She began to bump and grind, and tripped over a pair of thigh-length boots. 'Hell, too many feet in this room. Where's my gin?'

'By the phone.' A full tumbler stood on the bedside table. 'Save it for later.'

'I'm the doctor here.' She swayed and smiled, as if recognizing me across a noisy room. 'Stop worrying, Paul. The human body's capacity for painkillers is almost unlimited.'

'How much pain are you in?'

'None. Wonderful, isn't it? Dr Jane is in control.'

'I hope Dr Jane isn't driving. Where are the Delages taking you?'

'Dinner at… somewhere terribly smart. They'll pretend I'm a poule they picked up in the street. Then an open-air costume party.'

'And you're going as…?'

'Can't you guess?'

She vamped around me, sitting on my lap and moving away before I could embrace her, a dizzying slide of silk and flesh. 'How was the ground-breaking ceremony?'

'Impressive. All the top brass were there. A plane pulling a Green banner dropped a small bomb on us.'

'How funny. And how sad. Nothing can stop Eden-Olympia. Wilder must have been thrilled.'

'A bit subdued. The Wild West phase is over. Life will be a lot quieter here. Any chance of you taking a long break?'

'Paul…' Jane glanced at me through the mirror, sympathetic but distant, like a mother watching a handicapped child. 'Go back to London? For what? Some health centre in Clapham?'

'Why put it like that? We'd be together again.'

'They need me here. The project is expanding.'

'Good. But they need you for other things.'

'Such as?' Jane switched off the CD player. 'Selling stolen pharmaceuticals? Doing female circumcisions for rich Sudanese?'

'It doesn't work like that. They're more subtle.'

'Paul… where drugs and sex are concerned, no one is that subtle.' She walked over to me and placed her hands on my cheeks. 'You've spent too long here. Take Frances to London with you. Now it's my turn to fly…'

I watched her hunt through a drawer and pick out her most garish handbag. She embraced me fiercely before she left. When I winced, uneasy with this bogus affection, she looked at me with sudden concern. 'Paul? Is your knee acting up? Start taking your shots again. You were happier then.'

'That was the problem.'

'Are you seeing Frances tonight?'

'We're having dinner at Tétou. There's some good news to celebrate.'

'Give her my love. And use my car. Sorry about the Jag. All this graffiti everywhere. Alain thinks the wrong people are getting into Eden-Olympia.'

Later, as I drove the Peugeot along the RN7 to Villeneuve-Loubet, I listened to the echoes of Lotte Lenya inside my head and remembered Jane's advice. With or without Frances Baring, I would soon be back in London. As Eden II spread its parks and artificial lakes across the Var plain a more workaday future would arrive. The winding-down of Penrose's therapeutic programme marked a defeat for him and the triumph of the contingent world, the inescapable reality of corridor rivalries and executive washrooms, the relativities of status and success. After a long day at Eden II, the notion of psychopathy would seem almost folkloric in its quaintness.

40 The Bedroom Camera

' Frances, there's good news…'

Using the spare key, I let myself into her apartment at Marina Baie des Anges. The standard lamp in the hall shone onto a clutch of financial journals, but the other rooms were in darkness. Her car keys lay in the silver tray on the hall stand. I opened the door into the kitchen, and caught an odd odour in the air, a medley of cheap aftershaves that were almost familiar.

' Frances…? I've booked Tétou.'

Was she in bed with another man, perhaps the pilot of the Green protest plane? An image formed in my mind of her lying naked beside her lover, both frozen with embarrassment, the man reaching for his shoes beneath the bed and coming up with one of my lost sandals…

I eased open the bedroom door. Frances lay asleep across the pillows, an arm stretched out like a child's. In the light of the nearby balconies I could see her white teeth, lips drawn in a sleeping smile. The shower ran in the bathroom, a soft patter like distant rain.

Careful not to wake her, I stepped across the darkened room. I sat on the bed beside her, trying to stop the mattress from sighing under my weight. My hand touched the linen sheet, then flinched from a patch of wetness. The sodden fabric of the under-blanket was still warm, as if soaked with a sticky soup.

' Frances…?'

Her eyes were open, but the pupils were unfocused. The beam of the La Garoupe lighthouse swept the marina, and I stared down at Frances 's bruised face, at her open mouth with its broken teeth and the blood on her forehead. The beam touched her eyes, animating them for the last time, like a passing headlight shone through the windows of an empty building.

'Jesus… God…' I fumbled with the switch of the bedside lamp and flicked it on, only to find that the bulb was missing. I left the bed and stepped to the door, searching the shadows for the wall switch.

A hand gripped my wrist, forcing my fingers against the wall. A slim but athletic man in an Eden-Olympia uniform stepped from the hall and pinned me against the fitted wardrobe. I wrenched myself from him, and raised a fist to strike his face, but he clamped his hand over my mouth, trying to calm me.

'Mr Sinclair… take it easy. I'm with you.'

'Halder?' As the lighthouse beam crossed the room I recognized the security guard. I reached again for the switch but Halder knocked away my arm. 'Leave it, Mr Sinclair. They're watching the apartment – once the lights go on they'll be up here in seconds.'

'Who? Halder…?'

'The people waiting for you. They knew you were coming.'

'Frances…' I stepped towards the bed and stared down at her disjointed arms. Blood covered her breasts in a bodice of black lace. I held her wrist, feeling the loose tendons almost torn from the bones in her struggle, and searched for a pulse.

'Frances, please… Halder, she's still breathing. Call an ambulance. There's a chance…'

Halder steadied me in his strong hands. 'She's dead, Mr Sinclair. She died half an hour ago.'

'Wait. How did she die?' I let her hand fall onto the bloodstained pillow, pulled back the sheet and stared at her broken body. Around her waist was the zebra-striped dress. A man's crumpled dinner jacket lay between her legs, silk facings torn from its lapels by a pair of frantic hands. 'It's Greenwood's. Halder, someone wore it while they killed her…'

I stepped back, and almost knocked over a metal tripod standing by the bedside table. My foot crushed a piece of brittle plastic.

'A video? Good God, what were they doing here?'

'Making a film.' Halder took a lightbulb from his pocket and placed it on the table. 'A film of a very ugly kind.'

'The dress from La Bocca?'

'A costume. I don't think she wanted to wear it. She put up a real fight. Now, let's go. If they find you here they'll kill you as well. Then say you murdered her.'

'Hold on. Were you here when they…?'

'No. I arrived ten minutes ago. The front door was off the latch. They didn't know you had a spare set of keys. I'm sorry, Mr Sinclair. She was dead when I found her.'

'How did she die?'

'The… lover… used a knife. It's in the shower, having the prints washed away. They'll say you made your snuff movie and were washing the knife when they broke in.'

'They?'

'People working for Eden Olympia – under Alain Delage's orders.'

'And if we leave now?'

'They'll call it a burglary that went wrong. They can deal with you another time.'

I picked up the dinner jacket and laid it across the dead woman's shoulders, David Greenwood's final embrace. Halder waited as I stared at Frances for the last time, brushing away the clumps of blonde hair from her scalp that covered the pillow. When the La Garoupe beam turned between the apartment buildings her bruised face seemed to switch itself on and off. The quirky lips had flattened themselves against her teeth, and her features were those of a child of ten. As she grew cold she became younger, slipping away from herself and withdrawing into a greater darkness, carrying in her broken hands the only memories she would take with her into the night.

The doors of the elevator closed, and Halder turned towards me, staring at the blood on my hands as if trying to convince himself that I had taken no part in Frances's death. His slim face was as narrow as an axehead, and his eyes were aroused, roving above his flared nostrils. I was still dazed by the spectacle of the dead woman and the camera tripod beside the bed, and pushed Halder away when he tried to wipe the blood from my chin.

The doors opened at the ground floor, where a dozen residents waited to board the lift. They moved forward, then stopped when they saw me surrounded by a gallery of blood-stained figures multiplied by the mirrors. A woman with a small child shrieked at me, a reflex of panic, and a security man in the lobby strode towards us.

Halder pumped the buttons, and held the doors together when the guard drummed on the echoing metal. 'Mr Sinclair… we have to clean you up. You'll never get out of here.'

He pressed the emergency button, waited for the doors to open and seized my arm. We emerged onto the floor above the mezzanine. We crossed the landing to a service door, closed it behind us and made our way down a metal staircase used by the maintenance staff. Beyond a freight lift were the swing doors at the rear of a restaurant.

We stepped into the clatter of the kitchen, momentarily blinded by the haze of fat and steam. Everyone was shouting at once as scullions hauled racks of plates and cutlery. In the butchery a sous-chef bent over a work table, picking his fillet steaks as the carver in a bloodied apron sliced at the leaking red muscle.

A side of lamb hung from the wall, and Halder seized my hands and pressed them to the marbled flesh.

'Halder…?'

'Move it around, feel the flesh… there's a security man nosing about.'

Halder walked away from me, sidestepping a line of metal trolleys.

Exhausted, I rested against the waxy meat when the security guard emerged from the pantry doors and scanned the crowded work space. His gaze touched me briefly as I pretended to wrestle with the carcass, my bloodied hands gripping the foreknuckles. He spoke to Halder, who pointed to the rear staircase and the freight lift.

A few minutes later, in the staff washroom behind the cold store, Halder watched from the door while I cleaned the blood from my arms and face. Reluctantly I washed away the last traces of Frances that clung to my skin. The swirling water in the deep stone sink carried the dark grains of her blood into the rushing vortex.

Halder turned off the taps and stuffed paper towels into my hands. He was tense but poised, like a gymnast powdering his palms as he prepared to seize the parallel bars. 'That's enough.' He pushed me from the sink as the last blood rilled away. 'Where's your car?'

'On the slip road near the garage exit. Jane's small Peugeot – someone trashed the Jag.'

'I did. It was too easy to follow.' He kicked back the door and propelled me towards the freight lift. 'They would have used it as part of the frame. I'm parked in the basement – we'll go down and wait there. The guard who saw you in the lobby must have called the police.'

'Halder, I need to find Jane.'

'I know.' Halder stared at me while the huge lift, almost as large as an aircraft carrier's, sank towards the basement. 'It's taken you a long time, Mr Sinclair…'

We sat in the front seat of the Range Rover, watching the cars leave and enter the garage. I could smell the detergent on my hands, and tried to remember the scent of the young woman who lay dead in her bedroom, far above me in the curving night.

'Mr Sinclair?' Halder steadied me when I swayed against the door. 'Hold on for a few minutes. We'll get you out of here.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'That's not true.'

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

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

'Armed attacks?'

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

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

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

'Then why did Penrose say he was ending the programmes?'

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

'And Jane?'

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

'I need to find her.'

'Right. And then?'

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

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

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

'Mr Sinclair? You aren't making sense.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Too dull, too normal?'

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

'And you're going to bring it there?'

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

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

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

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

'So they haven't found Frances?'

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

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

'Alexei… what's he doing here?'

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

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

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

'He said Alexei.'

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

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

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

'Golyadkin? Did he kill Frances?'

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

41 The Streetwalker

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

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

'Frank, can you see her?'

'Not yet, Mr Sinclair. She'll be here soon.'

Halder seemed unsettled, his eyes avoiding the exposed thighs of the transvestites who ambled past like Olympic oarsmen in drag. He pulled a blue trenchcoat from the rear seat and buttoned it over his jacket. Together we walked down the Rue Valentin. Nothing appeared to happen, but a busy invisible commerce was taking place.

One of the bored French whores leaned forward on her stilettos and began to walk at a brisk pace. Ten steps behind her a young Arab followedwith quick strides, like amessenger with an urgent telegram.

Cars cruised the kerb, drivers staring ahead but communicating by some sixth sense with the pimps who stood with their backs to the road. Everyone trafficked in time, sex displaced into blocks of darkness, thirty-minute cages of the night where pleasure flared and was gone like a shooting star. Somewhere in this third-rate hell were Jane and her street party.

'At least there are no children,' I said. 'What is it?'

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

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

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

'There's nothing there…'

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

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

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

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

A rear door of the Mercedes opened, and a young prostitute in high-heels and a sequinned shift dress stepped onto the cobbles.

She swayed against the open door, and closed it clumsily with her elbow. Tired by the effort, she leaned on the window, staring into her own fatigue. She seemed drugged by more than narcotics, but turned towards the Delages and made a brief, parodic curtsy. As she straightened her skirt I saw the sequins glitter in the streetlights.

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

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

'I don't think it is…'

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

'Move fast, Mr Sinclair.'

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

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

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

I stopped the Peugeot outside the entrance to the alley. Jane was still leaning against the Mercedes, handbag swinging like a signalman's lamp. Her eyes stared at nothing, but every few seconds she seemed to wake as she forced herself to breathe.

She failed to recognize me, or her car, and gestured towards the interior of the limousine, inviting me to her boudoir. The Delages nodded from the doorway, not realizing who I was, faces hidden inside the collars of their coats.

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

Assuming that the Delages were her pimps, he strolled towards Jane, nodding with approval at her waif-like body.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Mercedes the Frenchman had his wallet between his teeth. He gripped Jane's wrists, trying to restrain her as she struggled against him, small fists striking the roof of the car.

When I opened the door he swore and released Jane. He stuffed his wallet into a hip pocket and sprang from the rear seat with a shout of anger. He tried to strike me, but I caught his arm and threw him heavily across the bonnet. He swayed to his feet, thought better of attacking me and strode off, gesticulating at a streetlamp.

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

Jane embraced me as we stood by the Peugeot, a shocked child waking from a bad dream. She touched the bruise on her cheek and tried to wipe the lipstick from her mouth. Under the make-up her face was toneless, and I sensed that she still failed to grasp what had happened to her. 'Paul, you came…' Her hands gripped my shoulders. 'Something went wrong. It didn't feel like a game any more.'

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

She was asleep when I parked behind Halder's Range Rover.

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

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

'She's all right, Mr Sinclair. You can take her home to London.'

He looked down at the Peugeot's keys that I had placed in his hand. 'You'd like me to drive?'

'Yes. But not back to Eden-Olympia.'

'That's very wise. You're in danger there.'

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

'Marseilles? That's an all-night drive.'

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

'And you, Mr Sinclair?'

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

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

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

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

'Mr Sinclair, you're taking a big risk.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

42 Last Assignment

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

Parked beyond the perimeter wire, the aircraft had kept me company during the night. Unable to sleep, I listened to the traffic along the autoroute, Paris-bound tourist buses and lorries from Italy loaded with courgettes and vacuum cleaners and mobile phones. Meanwhile, my damaged Harvard sat in the storage hangar at Elstree, the caked soil embedded in its engine. Flight was an element missing from Eden-Olympia, the certainties of wind-speed, gravity and lift. Absent, too, was the need to explore any interior space, to pioneer the mail routes inside our heads.

Only Wilder Penrose had furnished us with an atlas of destinations, a black geography sketched on his prescription pads, populated by menageries of perverse creatures like Simone and Alain Delage.

The scent of Jane's dress clung to my hands, and reminded me of our embrace in the Rue Valentin. She would have arrived in Marseilles, and be sitting with Halder in a café near the Old Port, embarrassed by her whore's frock as she listened to him unfold the secret history of Eden-Olympia. By nine o'clock she would be rousing the British Consul, and soon after be on her way to the airport. While she flew back to London, high above the Rhône valley, Frances Baring would still lie on her bed at Marina Baie des Anges, the zebra dress around her waist and Greenwood 's dinner jacket across her legs. And no doubt the film of her death was being hawked by Dmitri Golyadkin around the villas of Super-Cannes…

A Mobylette passed me, engine clacking, its slim-shouldered rider in a large safety helmet. Fishing tackle was tied to the pillion seat in a green canvas bag. Searching for the sea, he circled the next roundabout and drove back towards me, then cut the engine and stopped outside the showroom of Nostalgic Aviation. After dismounting, he pushed up his visor, and I recognized Philippe Bourget, brother of the murdered hostage.

When I stepped from the Range Rover he stared in surprise at the blue uniform jacket I was wearing, as if expecting to be arrested.

'Paul Sinclair? That's a relief. For a moment, I thought…'

'I'm glad you came.' I held his hands, surprised by how cold they were. 'When I phoned last night you weren't sure.'

'Well… at the last moment there are always doubts. I've thought about it for many months.' He watched me warily, not wholly convinced that I was the man he had met at Port-la-Galère.

He pointed to the Range Rover. 'You're alone?'

'Yes. No one will know I called you.'

He took off his helmet and held it under his arm. His schoolmaster's face was paler than I remembered, and I guessed that he had not slept since my call. Reassured that I was in command of myself, he placed the helmet on the seat of the Mobylette and untied his fishing tackle. He paused to blow on his fingers, taking a little too long to warm them.

'Monsieur Bourget?'

'I need a minute. It's a large decision, I can't visualize all the consequences.' He spoke in a low voice, as if clearing his conscience. 'Last night I listened carefully to what you said.'

'It's all true – the murder of my friend, the stockpiling of weapons…'

'I decided it was time to act. We've heard many stories – violent attacks in La Bocca, rapes of immigrant women. And everyone is bought off. It's a kind of weekend fascism, where the stormtroopers clean up afterwards.'

'But the blood-stains remain. You've spoken to the chauffeurs' widows?'

'No. It would upset them. They will testify for you if it's necessary. The investigation into their husbands' deaths is now closed. The magistrate said they were hostages and they're content to believe that. But it's not right, Mr Sinclair.'

'That's why I'm going to act.'

'By yourself? Is that wise? I can come with you.'

'No. Three dead hostages is enough.'

'You're going to Eden-Olympia? How will you get in? There's good security.'

'It's Sunday morning. I have the Range Rover and a special pass.' Trying to reassure this worried schoolmaster, I said: 'I'll arrest a few key people and take them to the TV centre. There's a link to TF1 in Paris.'

'A public confession? Good. That's the best justice available today.' He unpacked the long canvas shroud containing his fishing rod. 'I don't like afternoon television, but I'll be watching. Good luck, Mr Sinclair.'

He shook my hand and managed a smile of encouragement, and then left me before he could reveal his doubts.

I watched him putter away, his face hidden inside his helmet.

Without looking back, he waved for a last time. The Cherokee's engines were warming up, too loud to let me think, and I stepped into the rear seat of the Range Rover. I unclipped the canvas shroud and looked down at the pump-action shotgun. A pack of large-bore shells, the heavy duck-load with which Hemingway had blown out his brains, was taped to the stock. Jacques Bourget's weapon would take his revenge.

Twenty yards away was the showroom of Nostalgic Aviation, with its collection of memorabilia, ejection seats and radial engines, an Aladdin's Cave of possibilities far more potent and enduring than anything Wilder Penrose could offer. Looking at the forties flying helmets, I thought of the blonde-haired passenger sitting behind the Green pilot who had strafed the Eden II ceremony. She had worn a pair of antique goggles, bought or borrowed from Nostalgic Aviation, a tribute to her beauty and quirky tongue from one of her pilot-admirers. I only wished that I could have flown Frances Baring towards the sun…

It was 6.45. Even the most sympathetic British Consul would take his time, and it would be noon before Jane could board a scheduled flight to London. The news of what was about to happen at Eden-Olympia would not break until the evening, when whoever was left to run the business park finally decided to call in the police.

With luck, or without it, I would make my case on the international news, the bodies of the guilty laid out behind me like hunting trophies. Within a few days, if Jane flew back to the south of France, she would see me in custody and later be the first witness for the defence. A host of others would follow: Isabel Duval and the chauffeurs' widows, Señora Morales and Philippe Bourget, the wives and brothers of Arab labourers who met their deaths in the dark streets of La Bocca, Japanese film technicians flown in from Tokyo, jewellery store managers in Nice, retired prostitutes and waiters from the Villa Grimaldi. To save the embarrassment of the local police and judiciary, and to preserve the dream of Eden II, a deal would be done with my defending counsel, and if necessary a Presidential pardon would be arranged.

I loaded the shotgun, and then stowed it under the rear seat. By the time I reached Eden-Olympia my targets would still be asleep.

I would start with Alain and Simone Delage, drowsy after their late night in the Rue Valentin. Jane had told me that Simone kept a small chromium pistol in her bedside table, so she would be the first. I would kill her while she slept, using Halder's handgun, and avoid having to stare back into her accusing eyes. Then I would shoot Alain as he sat up, drenched in his wife's blood, moustache bristling while he reached for his glasses, unable to comprehend the administrative blunder that had led to his own death.

The Delages slept with their air-conditioning on, and no one would hear the shots through the sealed windows. Wilder Penrose would be next, ordered from his bed at gunpoint and brought down to the bare white room where he had set out his manifesto. He would be amiable, devious and concerned for me to the end, trying to win me with his brotherly charm while unsettling my eyes with the sight of his raw fingernails. I admired him for his hold over me, but I would shoot him down in front of the shattered mirror, one more door to the Alice world now closed for ever. Destivelle and Kalman would follow, and the last would be Dmitri Golyadkin, asleep in his bunk in the security building. I would reach the TV centre in time for a newsflash on the early-afternoon news, but whatever happened I knew that Eden-Olympia would lead the bulletins. This time there would be questions as well as answers.

I listened to the Cherokee taxi towards the runway, then stop and begin its take-off checks. Its propellers threw the morning light back into the sun, and the high drone of its engines seemed a warning call to the people of the Riviera, rousing them from their torpor.

I started the Range Rover, reversed outside the showroom of Nostalgic Aviation and set off through the airport access roads to the coastal highway. The Cherokee moved down the runway, rose confidently into the air and made a wide turn over the sea towards the heights of Super-Cannes. I watched it disappear beyond Eden-Olympia and Sophia-Antipolis, its passengers briefing themselves for their board meetings at Sandoz and Ciba, Roche and Rhône-Poulenc, the pharmaceutical companies who blessed the deepest sleep of the townsfolk and tourists lying behind their shuttered balconies. The beaches beside the coastal road were littered with forgotten film magazines and empty bottles of suntan cream, the debris of a dream washed ashore among the driftwood. I drove on, thinking of Jane and Frances Baring and Wilder Penrose, ready to finish the task that David Greenwood had begun.