Cocaine Nights

by J. G. Ballard

  'In a sense I was involved in her… death.' Gambling on the truth, I said: 'My brother is Frank Prentice, the manager of the Club Nautico.'

  I expected him to turn on me and show some of the anger he had vented at the funeral, but he took out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette with his large fingers. I guessed that he was already aware of my relationship to Frank.

  'Frank? I worked on the engine of his thirty-footer. If I'm right, he hasn't paid me yet.'

  'He's in jail in Malaga, as you know. Give me the bill and I'll settle it.'

  'Don't worry-I can wait.'

  'That could be a long time. He's pleaded guilty.'

  Andersson drew on the loose-packed cigarette. Shreds of burning tobacco flew from the glowing tip and sparked briefly against his beard. His eyes roved around the boatyard, avoiding my face. 'Guilty? Frank has a special sense of humour.'

  'It's not a joke. This is Spain, and he could serve twenty or thirty years. You don't believe he started the fire?'

  Andersson raised his cigarette and scrawled a cryptic symbol on the night air. 'Who can say? So, you're in Estrella de Mar to find out what happened?'

  'I'm trying to.'

  'But not getting very far?'

  'To tell the truth, I've made no headway at all. I've been up to the Hollinger house, talked to people who were there. No one believes Frank started the fire, not even the police. I may have to fly in a couple of detectives.'

  'From London?' Andersson seemed more interested in me. 'I wouldn't do that.'

  'Why not? They might find something I've missed. I'm not a professional investigator.'

  'You'd be wasting your money, Mr Prentice. People in Estrella de Mar are very discreet.' He gestured with a long arm at the villas on the hillside, secure behind their surveillance cameras. 'I've lived here for two years and I'm still not sure if the place is real…'

  He left the boatyard and led me along the walkway between the moored yachts and cabin-cruisers. The white-hulled craft seemed almost spectral in the dusk, a fleet waiting to sail on a phantom wind. Andersson stopped at the end of the quay, where a small sloop rode at anchor. Beneath the Club Nautico pennant at the stern was its name: Halcyon. Police exclusion tapes looped along its rails, falling into the water where they drifted like streamers from a forgotten party.

  'The Halcyon?' I knelt down and peered through the miniature portholes. 'So this is Frank's boat?'

  'You'll find nothing on board to help you. Frank asked Mr Hennessy to sell it for him.'

  Andersson stared at the craft, raking his beard with his fingers, a gloomy Norseman exiled among the plastic hulls and radar scanners. As his eyes searched the sky over the town I noticed that he was looking everywhere but at the Hollinger house. His natural aloofness shaded into some unhappy emotion that I could only glimpse around the bony corners of his face.

  'Andersson, I need to ask – were you at the party?'

  'For the English Queen? Yes, I drank the toast.'

  'You saw Bibi Jansen on the upstairs veranda?'

  'She was there. Standing with the Hollingers.'

  'Did she seem well?'

  'Too well.' His face was crossed by flickers of light from the dark water lapping the yachts. 'She was very fine.'

  'After the toast she went to her room. Why didn't she come down to meet you and the other guests?'

  'The Hollingers… they didn't like her mixing with too many people.'

  'Too many of the wrong people? Especially the kind who might have given her acid and cocaine?'

  Andersson stared at me wearily. 'Bibi was on drugs, Mr Prentice – the drugs that society approves. Sanger and the Hollingers made her into quiet little Princess Prozac.'

  'Better than acid, though, for someone who's overdosed. Or the new amphetamines the chemists are cooking up with their molecular roulette.'

  Andersson put a hand on my shoulder, sympathizing with my lack of insight. 'Bibi was a free spirit – her best friends were acid and cocaine. When she took acid she made us part of her dreams. Sanger and the Hollingers reached inside her head and took out the small white bird. They broke its wings, closed the cage again and said to everyone: "Bibi is happy."'

  I waited as he sucked back the last of his cigarette smoke, scowling to himself as he overruled his emotions.

  'You must have hated the Hollingers. Enough to kill them?'

  'Mr Prentice, if I wanted to kill the Hollingers it wouldn't be because I hated them.'

  'Bibi was found in the jacuzzi with Hollinger.'

  'Impossible 'That they could have had sex together? You know she was pregnant? Were you the father?'

  'I was her father. We were good friends. I never had sex with her, even when she asked me.'

  'So who was the father? Sanger?'

  Andersson wiped his mouth, trying to rid himself of the taste of Sanger's name. 'Mr Prentice, do psychiatrists sleep with their patients?'

  'They do in Estrella de Mar.' We climbed the steps from the marina to the harbour road, where the evening crowds were already blocking the traffic. 'Andersson, something nightmarish happened up there, something no one counted on. You don't like looking at the Hollinger house, do you?'

  'I don't like looking at anything, Mr Prentice. I dream in Braille.' He hoisted his work-bag on to his shoulder. 'You're a decent man, go back to London. Go home, go on your travels. There might be another attack on you. No one in Estrella de Mar wants you to be frightened He walked away through the crowd, a gloomy gallows-tree swaying above the cheerful diners.

  I waited for Paula in the bar of the Restaurant du Cap, striking another name from my cast of suspects. As I listened to Anders-son there had been a hint of complicity, perhaps the same regret for having mocked the Hollingers that Paula had expressed, but I was sure that he could not have killed them. The Swede was too morose, too immersed in his grudge against the world, to be able to act decisively.

  By nine-thirty Paula had not arrived, and I assumed that an emergency had kept her at the Clinic. I ate alone at my table, stretching the bouillabaisse as long as I could without attracting the Keswick sisters' curiosity. It was eleven o'clock when I left the restaurant, and the nightclubs along the quay were opening, their music booming across the marina. I paused by the boatyard, and stared at the huge powerboat on which Andersson had been working. I could imagine it outrunning the Spanish police cutters, racing across the Strait of Gibraltar with its cargo of hashish and heroin for the dealers of Estrella de Mar.

  Feet rang against the metal steps that led down to the marina. A party of Arab visitors were returning to their craft in the short-term harbour beside the mole. I guessed that they were Middle Eastern tourists who had rented a summer palace at the Marbella Club. They wore full Puerto Banus fig, a dazzle in the dark of white drill, jewelled Rolexes and the plushest silks. One group of middle-aged men and young Frenchwomen boarded a cabin-cruiser tied up near the Halcyon. Expert with mooring lines and engine controls, they were about to set off when the younger men in the second group began to shout from the steps of the mole. They shook their fists and waved their yachting caps at a small, twin-engined speedboat that had slipped its moorings and was gliding silently through the undisturbed water.

  As if unaware that he had stolen the craft, the thief stood calmly in the cockpit, thighs pressed against the helm. The beam of the Marbella lighthouse swept the sea, touching his pale arms and hair.

  Within moments a chaotic sea-chase had begun. Jointly steered by two of its excited captains, the cabin-cruiser surged from its berth while the startled Frenchwomen clung to the leather banquettes. Unconcerned by the craft bearing down on him, the hijacker continued to motor towards the sea, barely leaving a wake behind him as he saluted the furious young men on the mole. At the last moment he rammed the throttle forward, expertly side-slipping into a lane of calm water between the moored yachts. Too clumsy to turn, the cabin-cruiser ploughed past and clipped the bowsprit of a venerable twelve-metre.

  The thief eased back
his throttle, seeing that his exit to the open sea was blocked by the cruiser. Changing course, he drove below the lattice footbridge to the central island, a maze of interlocking waterways and exits. Trying to cover every escape route, the cruiser reversed through a cloud of exhaust, then surged forward when the speedboat emerged from the darkness under its nose. Still standing at the helm, legs stylishly braced apart, the thief rolled the wheel and banked around the cruiser's bows. Free at last, the craft porpoised through the rough water towards the advancing waves.

  I leaned against the harbour wall, surrounded by people who had carried their drinks from the nearby bars. Together we waited for the speedboat to disappear into one of a hundred bays along the coast, before slipping under the cover of night into a marina at Fuengirola or Benalmadena.

  But the thief had still to satisfy his appetite for play. A game of tease and chase began in the open water three hundred yards from the mole. The cruiser swerved after the circling speedboat, which leapt nimbly past its pointed bows like a torero evading an overweight bull. Wallowing in the churned water, the cruiser's captains searched the criss-crossing wakes, their lights sweeping the confused waves. The speedboat's engines were silent, as if the thief had at last tired of his game and was about to slip into the shadows of the Estrella peninsula.

  I decided to turn away when a blaze of orange fire lit up the sea, exposing a thousand wave-crests and the passengers standing on the foredeck of the cruiser. The speedboat was burning, its engines still pushing it through the water. In the moments before it sank, bows following the heavy outboards into the deep, a last explosion tore apart its fuel tank and bathed the marina and the watching crowds in a copper halo.

  I looked down at my hands, which flared at me in the darkness. The harbour road was packed with cheering spectators who had stepped from the nightclubs and restaurants to enjoy the display, eyes gleaming like their summer jewellery. Arm-in-arm, a cheerful couple swayed past me into the path of a passing car. As it edged by them the man slapped its roof with his hand. Alarmed, the driver looked over her shoulder, and through the confused air I saw Paula Hamilton's anxious face.

  'Paula!' I shouted. 'Wait for me… park by the boatyard.'

  Had she come to look for me, or had I read her features into those of another driver? The car moved through the crowd, then left the harbour and joined the lower corniche road to Fuengirola. Half a mile away, below the ruins of a Moorish watch-tower, it stopped beside the breaking waves, its lights fading in the darkness.

  The cabin-cruiser circled the floating debris of the speedboat, its crew hunting the waves. I assumed that the thief would be swimming towards the rocks below the watch-tower, to a rendezvous previously arranged with the car's driver, who waited for him like a chauffeur outside a stage-door after the evening's performance.

  13 A View from the High Corniche

  Crime at Estrella de mar had become one of the performance arts. As I drove David Hennessy from the Club Nautico to the harbour, the curving hillside above the town resembled an amphitheatre warmed by the morning sun. Residents sat on their balconies, some with binoculars, watching the Guardia Civil salvage launch drag the remains of the stolen speedboat into the shallows below the corniche road.

  'Frogmen…?' Hennessy pointed to the goggled black heads moving among the waves. 'The police are taking it all very seriously.'

  'They're under the impression that a crime has been committed.'

  'Hasn't it? Charles…?'

  'It was a piece of night-theatre, a water-borne spectacular to perk up the restaurant trade. A party of Middle East tourists played the clowns, with a chorus line of French good-time girls. Brutal, but great fun.'

  'I'm glad to hear it.' Eyebrows raised, Hennessy tightened his seatbelt. 'And who played the villain? Or the hero, I should say?'

  'I'm not sure yet. It was quite a performance – we all admired his style. Now, where exactly is Sansom's cottage?'

  'In the old town above the harbour. Take the Calle Molina and I'll show you the turn-off. It's an unexpected side of Estrella de Mar.'

  'Unexpected? The place is a set of Chinese boxes. You can go on opening them to infinity…'

  Hennessy was closing Sansom's house, packing up his possessions before freighting them back to his cousins in Bristol. I was curious to see this weekend retreat, presumably the love-nest where Sansom had entertained Alice Hollinger. But I was still thinking of the speedboat thief playing his games with the cabin-cruiser. I remembered the eager eyes of the people emerging from the nightclubs along the quay, flushed by more than the copper sun of the exploding fuel tank.

  We drove around the Plaza Iglesias, packed with residents drinking their morning espressos over copies of the Herald Tribune and the Financial Times. Scanning the headlines, I commented: 'The rest of the world seems a long way off. The scene last night was bizarre, I wish I'd filmed it. The whole waterfront came to life. People were sexually charged, like spectators after a bloody bull-fight.'

  'Sexually charged? My dear chap, I'll take Betty down there tonight. She's obviously spent too much time with her water-colours and flower-arranging.'

  'It was a show, David. Whoever stole the speedboat was putting on a performance. Someone with a taste for fire…'

  'I dare say. But don't read too much into it. Boats are stolen all the time along the coast. Estrella de Mar is remarkably free from crime, compared to Marbella and Fuengirola.'

  'That's not strictly true. In fact, there's a great deal of crime in Estrella de Mar, but of a unique kind. It seems unconnected, but I'm trying to piece it all together.'

  'Well, let me know when you do. Cabrera will be glad of your help.' Hennessy guided me into the Calle Molina. 'How's the investigation going? You've heard from Frank?'

  'I talked to Danvila this morning. There's a chance Frank may agree to see me.'

  'Good. At last he's coming to his senses.' Hennessy was watching me obliquely, as if trying to read my thoughts through the sides of my eyes. 'Do you think he'll change his plea? If he's ready to see you…'

  'It's too early to say. He may feel lonely, or realize how many doors are about to shut on him.'

  I turned off the Calle Molina into a narrow roadway, one of the few nineteenth-century streets in Estrella de Mar, a terrace of renovated fishermen's cottages that ran behind the restaurants and bars of the Paseo Maritimo. The once modest dwellings in the cobbled street had been tastefully bijouized, the ancient walls pierced by air-conditioning vents and security alarms.

  Sansom's house, painted a dove-egg blue, stood on a corner where the terrace was divided by a side-street. Lace curtains veiled the kitchen windows, but I could see lacquered beams and horse brasses, a ceramic hob and an antique stone sink with oak draining board. Beyond the inner windows lay a miniature garden like a powder-puff. Already I could sense the freedom that this intimate world would have given to Alice Hollinger after the vastness of the mansion on the hill.

  'You'll come in?' Hennessy heaved himself from the car. 'There's some decent Scotch that needs to be finished.'

  'Well… a few drinks always make the car go better. Have you found any of Alice Hollinger's things?'

  'No. Why on earth should I? Have a look round. You'll find it interesting.'

  While Hennessy unlocked the front door I worked the wrought-iron bell-push, eliciting a few bars of Satie from the electronic annunciator. I followed Hennessy into the sitting room, a chintzy arbour of fluffy rugs and elegant lampshades. Packing chests stood on the floor, partly filled with shoes, walking-sticks and expensive leather shaving tackle. Half a dozen suits lay on the settee, next to a pile of monogrammed silk shirts.

  'I'm sending all this stuff to the cousins,' Hennessy told me. 'Not much to remember the fellow by, a few suits and ties. Decent chap-he was very formal up on the hill, but when he came here he changed into another personality, rather blithe and carefree.'

  Beyond the sitting room was a dining alcove with a small blackwood table and chairs. I imagine
d Sansom having two lives, a formal one with the Hollingers and a second down here in this doll's-house of a cottage, furnished as a second boudoir for Alice Hollinger. Her husband's discovery of the affair might have released an anger strong enough to consume the entire mansion. The notion of Hollinger committing suicide had never occurred to me, a Wagnerian immolation that might have appealed to a film producer, he and his unfaithful wife dying with their lovers in a gigantic conflagration.

  When Hennessy returned with a tray and glasses I commented: 'You say there's nothing of Alice Hollinger's here. Isn't that rather strange?'

  Hennessy poured the pale malt into our glasses. 'But why, dear chap?'

  'David…' I paced around the sitting room, trying to adjust my mind to this half-sized world. 'We have to assume that she and Sansom were having an affair. It may have been going on for years.'

  'Unlikely.' Hennessy savoured the whisky's bouquet. 'In fact, wholly impossible.'

  'They died in his bed together. He was gripping her shoes, obviously part of some weird fetishistic game they played. It's enough to make Krafft-Ebing sit up in his grave and whistle. If Hollinger learned of the affair he must have been devastated. Life would have had no meaning for the poor man. He toasts the Queen for the last time and then commits his version of hara-kiri. Five people die. Perhaps Frank, unwittingly, told Hollinger about the affair. He realizes he is responsible, and pleads guilty.' I looked hopefully at Hennessy. 'It might be true…'

  'But it isn't.' Hennessy smiled judiciously into his whisky. 'Come into the kitchen. It's hard to think clearly in here. I feel like a character in the Alice books.'

  He stepped into the kitchen and sat at the glass-topped table as I prowled around the dainty space with its burnished copper pans and earthenware dishes, niched tea-towels and tissue rolls. Above the stone sink was a notice-board covered with personal miscellanea: holiday postcards from Sylt and Mykonos, pasta recipes torn from a Swedish magazine, and photographs of handsome young men in minuscule swimming thongs lounging on a diving raft or lying side by side on a shingle beach, naked as seals.