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 the 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.