Super-Cannes Read online

  ‘Mad. Utterly bonkers.’

  ‘You’re right. But the basic idea is sound. We’ll be able to see anything suspicious well in advance.’

  ‘So no one will ever get ill?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She turned and stared at the lake. ‘It’s a pity about the paediatrics. At times I feel all the children in the world have grown up and left me behind.’

  ‘Only at Eden-Olympia.’ I reached out and held her waist. ‘Jane, that’s sad.’

  ‘I know.’ Jane looked down at the bullets in her palm, seeing them clearly for the first time. She pressed them against her heart, as if calculating the effect on her anatomy, and with a grimace dropped them into the ashtray. ‘Nasty. Are you going to hand them in?’

  ‘To the security people? Later, when I’ve had time to think. Say nothing to Penrose.’

  ‘Why not? He ought to know.’ Jane held my wrist as I reached for the bullets. ‘Paul, stand back for a moment. You’d expect to find a few bullets in the garden. Seven people were killed. The guards must have been in a total panic, shooting at anything that moved. Stop putting yourself in David’s shoes.’

  ‘I’m trying not to. It’s difficult, I don’t know why. By the way, I’m sure David didn’t shoot the hostages in the garage. I had a careful look inside.’

  ‘But Penrose told us the garage had been rebuilt.’

  ‘It wasn’t. I’ll show you around.’

  ‘No thanks. I’ll stay with Professor Kalman at the colorectal end of things. So where did David shoot the hostages?’

  ‘In the garden. One probably died against the pumphouse doors. A second was shot in the pool.’

  ‘Bizarre. What was the poor man doing – swimming for help?’ Tired of talking to me, Jane rested her face in her hands. She tapped a computer keyboard, and a stream of numerals glimmered against her pale skin.

  ‘Jane …’ I held her shoulders, watching the screen as it threw up a list of anaesthetics. ‘I’m badgering you. Let’s forget about David.’

  Jane smiled at this. ‘Dear Paul, you’re so wired up. You’re like a gun dog waiting for the beaters.’

  ‘There’s nothing else to think about. Lying by a swimming pool all day is a new kind of social deprivation. Let’s drive down to Cannes and have an evening on the town. Champagne cocktails at the Blue Bar, then an aïoli at Mère Besson. Afterwards we’ll go to the Casino and watch the rich Arabs pick out their girls.’

  ‘I like rich Arabs. They’re extremely placid. All right – but I have to go back and change.’

  ‘No. Come as you are. White coat and stethoscope. They’ll think I’m a patient having an affair with his glamorous young doctor.’

  ‘You are.’ Jane held my hands to her shoulders and rocked against me. ‘I need time to freshen up.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll get some air on the roof and bring the car round to the entrance in twenty minutes.’ I leaned across her and pointed to the computer screen. ‘What’s all this? I saw David’s initials.’

  ‘Eerie, isn’t it? You’re not the only one finding traces of the dead.’

  ‘“May 22” …’ I touched the screen. ‘That was a week before the murders. “Dr Pearlman, Professor Louit, Mr Richard Lancaster … 2.30, 3, 4 o’clock.” Who are these people?’

  ‘Patients David was seeing. Pearlman is chief executive of Ciba- Geigy. Lancaster is president of Motorola’s local subsidiary. Don’t think about shooting them – they’re watched over like royalty.’

  ‘They are royalty. There’s a second list here. But no times are given. When was it typed in?’

  ‘May 26. It’s a list of appointments waiting to be scheduled.’

  ‘But David was a paediatrician. Do all these people have children?’

  ‘I doubt if any of them do. David spent most of his time on general duties. Paul, let’s go. You’ve seen enough.’

  ‘Hold on.’ I worked the mouse, pushing the list up the page. ‘“Robert Fontaine … Guy Bachelet.” They were two of the victims.’

  ‘Poor bastards. I think Fontaine died in the main administration building. Alain Delage took over from him. Does it matter?’

  ‘It slightly changes things. Only two days beforehand David was reminding himself to arrange their appointments. A strange thing to do if he planned to kill them. Jane …?’

  ‘Sorry, Paul.’ Jane switched off the screen. ‘So much for the conspiracy theory.’

  I turned away and stared across the lake, expecting another seismic shudder. ‘He was still booking them in for their check-ups. All that cholesterol to be tested, all those urinalyses. Instead, he gets up early in the morning, and decides to shoot them dead …’

  Jane patted my cheek. ‘Too bad, Paul. So the brainstorm theory is right after all. You’ll have to go back to the sun-lounger, and all that deprivation …’

  Waving to the night staff, I walked through the foyer of the clinic to the car-park entrance. As the lift carried me to the top floor I stared at my dishevelled reflection in the mirror, part amateur detective with scarred forehead and swollen ear – the price of too much keyhole work – and part eccentric rider of hobby-horses. As always, Jane was right. I had read too much into the three bullets and the intact garage. A nervy gendarme searching the garden might have fired into the pumphouse when the engine switched to detergent mode, startling him with its subterranean grumblings. The rifle round in the pool could have richocheted off the rose pergola and been kicked into the water by a passing combat boot. The hostages had probably died in the avenue, shot down by Greenwood as they made a run for it. Wilder Penrose’s description of events, the official story released to the world by the press office at Eden-Olympia, was not to be taken literally.

  The lift doors opened onto the roof, empty except for the Jaguar. The medical staff and visiting senior executives left their cars on the lower floors, but I always enjoyed the clear view over La Napoule Bay, and the gentle, lazy sea that lay like a docile lover against the curved arm of the Esterel.

  I leaned on the parapet, inhaling the scent of pines and the medley of pharmaceutical odours that emerged from a ventilation shaft. I was thinking of Jane and her new office when I heard a shout from the floors below, a muffled cry of protest followed by the sound of a blow struck against human bone. A second voice bellowed abuse in a pidgin of Russian and Arabic.

  I stepped to the inner balustrade and peered into the central well, ready to shout for help. Two Eden-Olympia limousines were making their way down the circular ramp. The chauffeurs stopped their vehicles on the third level, slipped from their driving seats and opened the rear doors, giving their passengers a ringside view of the ugly tableau being staged in an empty parking space.

  A Senegalese trinket salesman knelt on the concrete floor in his flowered robes, beads and bangles scattered around him. Despite the dim light, I could see the streaming bruises on his face, and the blood dripping onto a plastic wallet filled with cheap watches and fountain pens. A dignified man with a small beard, he tried to gather together his modest wares, as if knowing that he would have little to show for the day’s work. Patiently he retrieved a tasselled mask that lay between the booted heels of the security guards who were beating a thickset European in a cheap cream suit. The victim was still on his feet, protesting in Russian-accented French as he warded off the truncheon blows with his bloodied hands. Their blue shirts black with sweat, the three guards manoeuvred him into the corner and then released a flurry of blows that sank him to his knees.

  I turned away, dazed by the violence, and then shouted to the executives watching from their cars. But they were too engrossed to notice me. Sitting by the open doors of the limousines, they were almost Roman in their steely-eyed calm, as if watching the punishment of a slacking gladiator. I recognized Alain Delage, the bespectacled accountant who gave Jane a lift to the clinic. He and the other executives were dressed in leather jackets zipped to the neck, like members of an Eden-Olympia bowling club.

  The beatings ended. I listened to t
he Russian coughing as he leaned against the wall, trying to wipe the blood from his suit. Satisfied, the security men holstered their truncheons and stepped back into the darkness. Starter-motors churned and the limousines swung towards the exit, carrying away the audience from this impromptu piece of garage theatre.

  I gripped the balustrade and limped down the ramp, searching the lift alcoves for a telephone that would put me through to the emergency medical team. The African was now on his feet, straightening his torn robes, but the Russian sat in his corner, head swaying as he gasped for air.

  I circled the ramp above them, trying to attract their attention, but a uniformed figure stepped from behind a pillar and barred my way.

  ‘Mr Sinclair … be careful. The floors are hard. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘Halder?’ I recognized his slate-pale face. ‘Did you see all that …?’

  Halder’s strong hand gripped my elbow and steadied me when I slipped on the oily deck. His aloof eyes took in my lumbering gait, assessing whether I was drunk or on drugs, but his face was without expression, any hint of judgement erased from its refined features.

  ‘Halder – your men were there. What exactly is going on?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Sinclair.’ Halder spoke soothingly. ‘A small security matter.’

  ‘Small? They were beating the balls off those men. They need medical help. Call Dr Jane on your radio.’

  ‘Mr Sinclair …’ Halder gave up his attempt to calm me. ‘It was a disciplinary incident, nothing to concern you. I’ll help you to your car.’

  ‘Hold on …’ I pushed him away from me. ‘I know how to walk. You made a mistake – that wasn’t the Russian I saw this morning.’

  Halder nodded sagely, humouring me as he tapped the elevator button. ‘One Russian, another Russian … examples have to be made. We can’t be everywhere. This is the dark side of Eden-Olympia. We work hard so you and Dr Jane can enjoy the sun.’

  ‘The dark side?’ I propped the door open with my foot and waited for Halder to meet my eyes. ‘Away from the tennis courts and the swimming pools you hate so much? I wouldn’t want to spend too much time there.’

  ‘You don’t need to, Mr Sinclair. We do that for you.’

  ‘Halder …’ I lowered my voice, which I could hear echoing around the dark galleries. ‘That was a hell of a beating your men handed out.’

  ‘The Cannes police would be a lot harder on them. We were doing them a favour.’

  ‘And the parked limousines? Alain Delage and the other bigwigs were watching the whole thing. Wasn’t that just a little over the top? It looked as if it was staged for them.’

  Halder nodded in his over-polite way, waiting patiently to send me and the lift towards the roof. ‘Maybe it was. Some of your neighbours at Eden-Olympia have … advanced tastes.’

  ‘So … it was arranged? Carefully set up so you could have your fun?’

  ‘Not us, Mr Sinclair. And definitely not me.’ He stepped away from the lift, saluted and strode down the ramp, heels ringing on the concrete.

  I settled myself in the Jaguar and inhaled the evening air. The scent of disinfectant and air-conditioning suddenly seemed more real than the sweet tang of pine trees. I felt angry but curiously elated, as if I had stepped unharmed from an aircraft accident that had injured my fellow-passengers. The sweat and stench of violence quickened the air and refocused the world.

  Without starting the engine, I released the hand-brake and freewheeled the Jaguar along the ramp. I was tempted to run Halder down, but by the time I passed him the Russian and the Senegalese had gone, and the scattered beads lay blinking among the pools of blood.

  8

  The Alice Library

  AS STOICAL AS the wife of a kamikaze pilot protecting the wreckage of his plane, Mrs Yasuda stood on the pavement outside the house and waited as her husband’s damaged Porsche was hoisted onto the removal truck. The winch moaned and sighed, sharing all the pain inflicted on the car. An oblique front-end collision had torn the right fender from its frame, crushed the headlight and frosted the windscreen, through which Mr Yasuda had punched an observation space.

  Staring at this hole, Mrs Yasuda’s face was without emotion, her cheeks drained of colour, as if the accident to her husband’s sports car had stopped the clocks of human response. When the removal driver asked for her signature she wrote her name in a large cursive script and closed the door before he could doff his cap.

  Fortunately, Mr Yasuda had not been injured in the accident, as I had seen a few hours earlier. Still awake at three that morning, I left Jane asleep, face down like a teenager with a pillow over her head. Wandering naked from one room to the next, I was still trying to come to terms with the ugly incident in the clinic car park.

  The display of brutality had unsettled me. I said nothing to Jane as we drove into Cannes for dinner, but a dormant part of my mind had been aroused – not by the cruelty, which I detested, but by the discovery that Eden-Olympia offered more to its residents than what met the visitor’s gaze. Over the swimming pools and manicured lawns seemed to hover a dream of violence.

  Slipping on my bathrobe, I kissed Jane’s small hand, still faintly scented with some hospital reagent, and watched her fingers jump in a childlike reflex. I went downstairs, opened the sun-lounge door and strolled across the lawn, past the pool with its sealed surface like a black dance floor. I opened the wire gate into the tennis court and paced the marker lines that ran through the moonlight, thinking of the resigned eyes of the old Senegalese.

  A car approached the Yasudas’ house, its engine labouring. It limped along in low gear, metal scraping a tyre as it turned into the drive. A table lamp lit up Mrs Yasuda’s first-floor study, where she had been sitting in the darkness, perhaps watching her English neighbour prowl the baselines of his mind. She moved to the window, and waved to her husband when he stepped from the damaged car.

  A few minutes later I saw them through the slatted blinds of their bedroom. Still wearing his leather jacket, the stocky businessman strode around the room, gesticulating as his wife watched him from the bed. He seemed to be enacting scenes from a violent martial-arts film, perhaps shown that evening to the Japanese community in Cannes. He at last undressed, and sat at the foot of the bed, a portly would-be samurai. His wife stood between his knees, her hands on his shoulders, waiting until he slipped the straps of her nightdress.

  They began to make love, and I left the tennis court and walked back to the house. Lying beside Jane, I listened to her breathy murmur as she dreamed her young wife’s dreams. Somewhere a horn sounded in the residential enclave, followed by another in reply, as cars returned from the outposts of the night.

  Señora Morales was giving the morning’s instructions to the Italian maids. For an hour they would work downstairs, leaving me with ample time to shave, shower and muse over the possibilities of the day. The flow of faxes and e-mails from London had begun to fall away, and with my agreement Charles had taken over the editorship of the two aviation journals.

  Faced with the imposed boredom of Eden-Olympia, I lay back on the bed, feeling the warm imprint of Jane’s body beside me. We, too, had made love on returning from Cannes, a rare event after her long working days. Sex, at the business park, was something one watched on the adult film channels. But Jane had been excited by the illicit pleasure of leaving for Cannes on the spur of the moment. An impulsive decision ran counter to the entire ethos of Eden-Olympia. When she stepped from the car onto the Croisette she seemed almost light-headed. In a tabac near the Majestic she picked a Paris-Match from the racks and calmly walked out without paying. It lay on our table at Mère Besson beside the aïoli of cod and carrots, and Jane was well aware that she had stolen the magazine. But she shrugged and smiled cheerfully, accepting that a benign lightning strike had illuminated our excessively ordered world. The mental climate that presided over Eden-Olympia never varied, its moral thermostat set somewhere between duty and caution. The emotion had been draining from our lives, lea
ving a numbness that paled the sun. The stolen magazine quickened our lovemaking …

  As the floor-polishers drummed away, I strolled through the empty bedrooms, searching for further traces of David Greenwood. I sat on the draped mattress in the children’s room, surrounded by a frieze of cartoon figures – Donald Duck, Babar and Tintin – and thinking of the child that I hoped Jane would bear one day, and how it would sleep and play in a room as sunny as this one.

  Next to the bathroom was a fitted cupboard, decorated with Tenniel’s illustrations for the Alice books. I opened the doors, and found myself gazing at a modest library, the first real trace of Greenwood’s tenancy. Some thirty copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass sat on the shelves, translations into French, Spanish and even Serbo-Croat. Over drinks the previous weekend, Wilder Penrose had told me of David’s enthusiasm for the Alice books, and the Lewis Carroll society he had formed at Eden-Olympia. The Paris surrealists embraced Carroll as one of their great precursors, but Eden-Olympia seemed an unlikely recruiting ground. Perhaps the multinational executives possessed a more whimsical sense of humour than I realized, and saw affinities between the business park and Alice’s hyper-logical mind.

  The copies were well thumbed, loaned to the youthful readership at the La Bocca children’s refuge. The flyleaves were marked with names, in what I guessed was David’s scrawl.

  ‘Fatima … Elisabeth … Véronique … Natasha …’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser …’ Jane ran a hand over the books in the cupboard. ‘This Russian who mugged you turns out to be a devoted father, trying to borrow a library book for his daughter Natasha.’

  ‘It does look like it.’

  ‘Come on, Paul. You jumped into the deep end and went straight to the bottom. Not every Russian on the Côte d’Azur is a mafioso. The poor man was introducing Natasha to an English classic. You make fun of his teeth, steal one of his shoes, and launch a full-scale manhunt.’