Super-Cannes

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘Alexei – we’ve met before. At Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘I know. You have my shoe.’ He raised the ampoule to the streetlight. ‘Dr Greenwood? You take over?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Seizing my chance, I said: ‘The free clinic – I have access to the old stock. Methadone, diamorphine, pethidine … as much as you want. I’ll get my car and go with Natasha.’

  ‘Good …’ He watched the girl playing with the radio. Then, with a flick of his cigarette, he signalled to the Pole, who seized my shoulders in his heavy hands. ‘First, we take your shoes, Mr Sinclair …’

  He was staring, unbelievingly, at my thonged sandals when lights flooded the narrow street, as if a master switch had illuminated a darkened stage. Three Range Rovers swerved into the Rue Valentin and swept past us, tyres thudding across the cobbles, headlamps flashing along the doorways and side alleys. The streetwalkers and matronly whores, the pimps and Volvo dealers were frozen among the veering shadows.

  Then the headlamps dimmed and everyone was running towards the Avenue St-Nicolas. Burly men in black helmets, like the members of a police parachute brigade, leapt from the Range Rovers. All wore the tight-waisted bowling jackets I had first seen in the clinic car park. Clubs in hand, they set upon the fleeing crowd. Two of them chopped a Volvo dealer to the ground, raining blows on his head and back. The streetwalkers I had followed from the Rialto Bar emerged from the scrum, tight skirts rucked around their waists. As they fell to the ground, huge limbs uncoupling from their torsos, legs spread under the whipping truncheons, I saw that both of them were men.

  I knelt on the cobbled road, my hands cut by shards of glass from the broken ampoule. The posse moved past, and a flurry of truncheons shattered the windscreen of the van. The schoolgirl had taken shelter behind the steering wheel. Ignoring the violence around her, she fumbled with the radio and picked fragments of windscreen glass from her blouse. She had chewed away part of her silver lipcoat, and the raw flesh showed through the shiny lacquer, as if a too eager lover had taken a bite from her mouth.

  ‘Natasha …!’ Trying to reassure her, I tapped the passenger window. Then a hand gripped my shoulder.

  ‘Mr Sinclair … it’s time to leave.’

  ‘Halder?’ I turned to face the dark-skinned security guard. He had appeared suddenly from the shadows, stepping from the alley behind me, but I sensed from his nervous feet and fixed eyes that he had been only a few steps from me since my arrival in the Rue Valentin. He was dressed in black trousers, sneakers and sweater, as if he had spent the day among the yachting fraternity at Port-la-Galère. He was unarmed, and ducked when a confused Arab searching for his glasses ten feet from us was clubbed to the ground.

  ‘Halder!’ I pulled at his sweater. ‘Are you with the police? What’s happening here?’

  ‘Let’s go, Mr Sinclair … we can talk later.’ Halder seized my elbow and steered me into the alley behind the builder’s warehouse. He grimaced at my cut hands, but pointed to the helmeted men at the end of the Rue Valentin. Having cleared the street, they were striding back to the Range Rovers. One of the drivers sat at his open door, filming the scene with a small camcorder. I assumed they were all members of an auxiliary police unit, a group of volunteer constables recruited to the vice squad.

  ‘They’re coming back. It’s best if we wait here.’ Halder pressed me against a shuttered doorway. He silenced me with a hard hand over my mouth. ‘Not now, Mr Sinclair …’

  Headlamps flared from the Range Rovers, again illuminating the cobbled street, littered with stiletto heels, sequinned purses, pieces of underwear and cigarette lighters. Alexei had held on to his expensive brogues, but the white nodes of broken teeth lay among the fragments of the pethidine ampoule.

  The leader of the posse led his squad back to the cars. When he pulled off his helmet I recognized Pascal Zander, panting hard as he stuffed his truncheon into his belt. His fleshy face seemed even coarser in the heat and sweat of violence, his engorged tongue too large for his mouth. He shouted at the camcorder operator, then spat onto the bloody cobbles at his feet.

  Around him were three others I knew by sight: Dr Neumunster, chief executive of a German investment bank, who lived on the same avenue in the enclave; Professor Walter, head of cardiology at the clinic; and an American architect named Richard Maxted, a bridge partner of Wilder Penrose. They lounged against the Range Rovers, joking with each other like hunters returning from a boar shoot, happily charged by adrenalin and the camaraderie of the chase.

  Within seconds they had gone, the heavy vehicles reversing in a flurry of slamming doors, headlamps hunting for the Avenue St-Nicolas, heading towards Super-Cannes and the presiding powers of the night.

  ‘Mr Sinclair? We can move now.’

  I felt Halder’s trapped breath leave his lungs, a coarse reek of garlic, spice and fear. He calmed himself, trying to steady his pulse, relieved that I had made no attempt to provoke the posse.

  ‘What about the girl?’ I pointed to the damaged van. ‘We can’t leave her here.’

  Natasha sat behind the steering wheel, bobbing to herself in the silence. Flecks of glass gleamed like jewels on her blouse. She seemed unaware of the violence that had erupted around her, as if nothing in her life could ever be a surprise.

  ‘Halder, we need to get her to the police.’

  Wearily, Halder held my arm. ‘She’s best here. Her friends will be back for her.’

  ‘Friends? Halder, she’s a child …’

  ‘It’s been a long day, Mr Sinclair. I’ll take you to the garage.’

  As we left, the police sirens wailed down the Rue Jaurès, and the first of the barefooted streetwalkers were making their way towards their shoes.

  ‘Are you all right to drive? You look shaky, Mr Sinclair.’ Halder helped me into the Jaguar. ‘I’ll call a taxi. You can collect the car tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I felt a painful weal across my right shoulder, realizing for the first time that one of the posse had struck me with his truncheon. ‘Those clubs are hard.’

  ‘They were having fun.’ Halder pointed to the blood dripping onto the passenger seat. ‘You cut your hands. When you get back, see a doctor.’

  ‘I’m married to one.’ I took an engine rag from the glove compartment. ‘Thanks for helping me. It’s a good thing you were there. They wanted heads to crack.’

  ‘Someone needs to keep an eye on you, Mr Sinclair.’ Halder nodded at this sage advice, his eyes scanning the cars in the garage. His nostrils flickered at the scent of exhaust fumes, but he still breathed through his mouth. I knew from his huge pupils how frightened he had been, and the special danger in which his darker skin had placed him.

  ‘This Russian, Alexei, and the young Pole – they’ll go back for the girl?’

  ‘Of course. She’s valuable to them.’

  Trying to explain myself, I said: ‘I saw them take her to the Rue Valentin. I tried to buy her … you know, for an hour. I wanted to get her into the refuge at La Bocca.’

  ‘I understand.’ Halder’s expression was deliberately neutral, the gaze of a security man who had glanced into too many bedrooms ever to be shocked. ‘You were worried for her.’

  ‘They asked for seven thousand francs. Who carries that kind of cash around? What does the girl have to do to earn it?’

  ‘Nothing much. Being eleven is enough.’

  ‘She was lucky the Range Rovers arrived on time. Who were they? Zander was leading the whole thing.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a special action group.’

  ‘Volunteer police? Very public-spirited.’

  ‘Not exactly. Think of it as … therapeutic.’

  ‘And the Rue Valentin is the disease? That makes sense. Were you with them?’

  ‘No. Let’s say I was passing by.’ Halder took the car keys from my bloody hand and slid them into the ignition. He wrenched the gear lever into neutral and turned on the engine, using the manual choke to set a fast idl
ing speed. Above the clatter of unaligned carburettors he shouted: ‘Go back to Eden-Olympia. See Dr Jane about those hands.’

  ‘Frank …’ I wanted to thank him, but he had already withdrawn from me, annoyed with himself for having shown his fear. ‘I’m glad you were there. I don’t know how you managed it.’

  ‘Easy, Mr Sinclair. I followed you all day.’ Halder stared at me in his distant way, then relented and slapped the roof above my head as I reversed out of the parking space. ‘Tomorrow I’ll come round and collect you. We’ll go on a special tour.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘Eden-Olympia. You’ve never really been there …’

  19

  Elopement

  PAIN AU CHOCOLAT IN hand, I watched from the breakfast terrace as Jane climbed from the pool and walked dripping to the diving board. She blew her nose into her fingers, and strutted down the board with the clipped steps of a dressage horse. She sprang into the air and jack-knifed into a clumsy pike before following her hands into the water.

  She surfaced with a scowl, and swam to the poolside. Unable to lift herself onto the verge, she waded through the seething foam to the ladder.

  ‘Paul, towel … did I make a splash?’

  ‘Dear, you always make a splash.’

  ‘Here. In the pool.’

  ‘A small one. You can dive through a keyhole.’

  ‘Not any longer.’ She frowned at the unsettled water. ‘That was a lousy dive. I’m out of practice.’

  ‘You work too hard.’

  She let me swathe her in the towel. Her hair was flattened to her scalp, exposing a scratch-mark from her broken nails, her eyebrows sleeked back and blanched lips set in a chalky face. She panted as I embraced her shoulders, her skin as cold as a shark’s.

  ‘Jane, you’re freezing. The pool heater must be on the blink.’

  ‘I switched it off last night. Need to be awake today. Very awake.’

  ‘More committees? Try seeing a patient or two. It might relax you.’

  ‘I’m off to Sophia-Antipolis. We may share medical databanks.’

  ‘So their computers will snuggle up with ours?’

  ‘That’s the way the future’s going.’

  She kissed me with her cold lips, tongue teasing a flake of chocolate from my mouth. She stepped back when I winced at the pressure of her hands on my back.

  ‘Paul? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I caught myself on the car door.’

  ‘Poor man. That’s fifties design for you. Time to forget about the Harvard, Paul …’

  I sat on the terrace, sharing the last of the pastry with a sparrow that had followed me across the garden. Señora Morales was moving around the lounge, discreetly clearing the ash from the settee cushions before the maids arrived.

  I had reached home at midnight to find the front door ajar. In the lounge the cannabis and cigarette smoke hung in layers, a microclimate like a volcano’s crater. Ash lay on the carpet and coffee tables, marked with curious doodles. Through the blanket of pot I could smell Simone Delage’s pallid scent, a pheromone emitted by an ice queen.

  Jane was asleep, a Sabena face-mask over her forehead. Careful not to wake her, I soaked my hands in the bathroom, hunting with her eyebrow pincers for any shards of glass. Through the mirror I noticed her lying on her side, staring at my bruised back. She was barely awake, drifting in a dull, narcotic stupor, eyes focusing with an effort as I bandaged my right hand.

  ‘Paul …? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Going to bed. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Can’t sleep. Too tired …’

  ‘I’ll get something for you.’

  ‘Already did. Helps me relax. Your back …?’

  She drifted away, sinking her face into the airline mask. I sat beside her, waiting until she breathed steadily, unsure whether to call the night staff at the clinic. As I tried to take her pulse I saw the fresh puncture mark in the crook of her left arm.

  By morning she had recovered, refreshed by the deep diamorphine night. Making coffee for her before Señora Morales arrived, I listened to Riviera News for a bulletin on the incident in the Rue Valentin. As I expected, no one had reported the vigilante raid to the Cannes police.

  Feeling the bruise on my back, I remembered the truncheons fracturing the windscreen of the van. The violence had been deeply satisfying for Pascal Zander and his senior executives. Entombed all day in their glass palaces, they relished the chance to break the heads of a few pimps and transvestites and impose the rule of the new corporate puritanism.

  Yet no one had been concerned about the child-whore sitting alone in the ransacked van. For that matter, I was still unsure about my own motives, and why I had followed little Natasha from the car park. I thought of her stepping confidently into the lurid night, but still childish enough to be pleased by the sound of tumbling coins. Sitting at the kitchen table, I looked through the change in my pocket, the nickel and brass that had bought her smile. Eden-Olympia was an engine of self-deception.

  ‘Paul, is Penrose here?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It’s 9.30. He’s supposed to be driving me to Sophia-Antipolis. God, I’ve been stood up by a psychiatrist.’

  ‘That’s professional disgrace. I’ll report him to the GMC for ungallantry.’

  ‘Wilder would love that. He’s dying to be struck off.’

  Jane strode around in her crispest underwear, gazing at the suits and skirts laid out on the bed. Her gestures seemed coarser, but she had recovered her pep and bounce, as if lit by a powerful stimulant. Admiring her, I found it easy to forget the drugged young woman slumped across the pillows. Physicians, Jane assured me, often prescribed themselves a sedative or booster, no more threatening to health than a double gin or a pan of Turkish coffee.

  When she stumbled on the carpet I caught her arm. ‘Jane, are you well enough to go?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘I was late last night – problems with the car. Who was here?’

  ‘Alain Delage and Simone. We had fun, watching some screwy sex film. I couldn’t sleep, so I gave myself a toot.’

  ‘Bad for you? Your diving is really off.’

  ‘Fuck the diving. I’m the doctor here.’ Jane gripped my hands, her numbed fingers missing the bandage on my right palm. ‘How did yesterday go?’

  ‘More detective work. I went over to Port-la-Galère and met the widows of the hostages.’

  ‘That must have been awkward. Were they very hostile?’

  ‘Not at all. They knew David and liked him a lot. They still do.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little odd? He’s supposed to have killed their husbands.’ Jane shuddered, and then reached up to smooth my eyebrows, still flaring after the evening’s violence. ‘It’s time you gave up this whole David business.’

  ‘Why? I’ve found almost nothing.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. You’re much too involved. All these theories. You’re setting up some kind of strange crime rather than trying to solve one. Still, it sounds like quite a day. Then what?’

  ‘I ran into Halder on the Croisette. We had a few drinks together.’

  ‘Halder?’ Jane sniffed the crutch of her trouser suit. ‘He’s rather sweet. He helps me park my car, and hangs around the clinic with those calm eyes. He’s waiting for something to happen.’

  ‘He probably fancies you.’

  ‘All men fancy me. It means zilch. The real question is …?’

  ‘Do you fancy him?’

  ‘A little. He’s so heroically above it all. He offered me his copy of Tender is the Night. Don’t sneer, Paul – how many men have tried to improve my mind?’ She broke off when a horn sounded from the avenue. ‘Wilder … Tell him to let me drive. I refuse to die in a car crash with a psychiatrist …’

  The Japanese sports saloon was parked across the drive, again blocking the Jaguar, its damaged door provocatively close to the chromium bumper whose contours it so closely matched. But Wilder Penro
se seemed delighted to see me. He beamed at me as he rolled his large body from the driver’s seat. The grimace of pleasure seemed to migrate around his face, colonizing new areas of amiability. With his silk suit and heavy shoulders he resembled a retired boxer who, to his own surprise, had transformed his reserves of aggression into universal goodwill. He kept his fists near his waist, but his upper arms feinted at me as he approached.

  ‘Paul, you’re still in one piece? I’m told you were caught up in a bit of unpleasantness last night. Some kind of police action in the Rue Valentin.’

  ‘Vigilantes. Zander and his bully boys from Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘They do help out the local gendarmerie.’ Penrose showed me his teeth, as if advertising a dentifrice. ‘I’m sorry you were involved. It sounded rather nasty.’

  ‘It was. Zander and his pals had a thoroughly good time.’

  ‘Pascal can be a little heavy-handed. There’s a streak of cruelty there, but at least it’s channelled into something socially useful. You’ve come out of it looking well. There’s nothing like a little violence to tone up the system.’ He glanced at the upstairs window as Jane shouted to Señora Morales. ‘Is Jane calling for help? We ought to be off.’

  ‘Give her five minutes. I kept her awake last night.’ I added: ‘She finds it hard to sleep – it’s a little worrying.’

  ‘Too many sleeping pills?’

  ‘Stronger than that.’

  Penrose’s face arranged itself into a reflective cast. He put an arm around my shoulders. ‘You’re concerned, Paul, like any husband. But Jane’s too intelligent, she won’t come to any harm. Besides, she’s exploring herself. If you’re worried, come to me.’

  ‘I will. By the way, say nothing about the Rue Valentin.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Still gripping my shoulders in his bear-like paw, Penrose gazed contentedly at the Jaguar. ‘Halder tells me he’s taking you on a tour of Eden-Olympia.’

  ‘Later this afternoon. I assume he’ll follow the murder route. I want to stage a reconstruction.’

  ‘Not with live ammunition?’ Laughing at his own joke, Penrose slapped my back. I guessed that Halder had told him of my bruised skin. ‘Forget that, Paul. You deserve to be encouraged. You’re our village historian. Eden-Olympia has its corporate past, stored away in all those disks and annual reports, but it has no vernacular history. May 28 was our Dealey Plaza. Like it or not, it’s all the history we have.’