‘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 hap
py 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, crêpe 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 frances were handed over. Think of these people as film extras, paid for a few minutes’ discomfort.’
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