The Cardin Foundation

Across La Napoule bay the evening mist veiled the Croisette, and the black breasts of La Belle Otero seemed to float above the Carlton Hotel, like gifts from one pasha to another borne on a cushion of vaporizing silk. The sea was smooth enough to xerox, a vast marbled endpaper. But three hundred yards below me the waves were channelled into the cove that separated Port-la-Galère from the Miramar headland, and spears of foam leapt through the dark air like berserk acrobats.

The vacant house we were visiting was virtually a small chateau, built into the rocks of the Pointe de l'Esquillon, with its round-the- compass views of the sea. The presence of the orienteering platform helped to straighten my own perspectives, after days of unsettling truths and evasions. Now Frances Baring had dealt herself back into the game, playing with her marked cards and her rigged shoe. Already I suspected that I would do anything to lose to her.

Unsure why she had taken me on her house-call, I suggested that we stop at a café in Théoule. She sat over her citron pressé, watching as I poured a cognac into my espresso coffee, and then ordered another for me before I could ask for the bill. Her moods flared and darkened in a few seconds, a shift of internal weather almost tropical in its sudden turns. She reminded me of the women pilots at the flying club, with their wind-blown glamour and vulnerable promiscuities. She still played with the blood-stained tissue, and I took for granted that she had been Greenwood 's lover.

'Paul, what do you think? Is it worth renting?'

Her heels clicked across the parquet of the high-ceilinged drawing room. As she stepped onto the terrace the wind rushed to greet her, filling out her skirt and jacket. Frogs honked at her from the half-filled fountain, but nothing else had disturbed the garden for months. The flowerbeds had run to seed, and globes of unpicked fruit rotted around the lemon and grapefruit trees.

I pointed to the swimming pool, filled with an opaque white fluid. 'I hope that's mare's milk. Ninety thousand francs a month? Are you planning to move here?'

'No fear. Some snobby little yachting resort? I rent villas for corporate visitors and high-powered academics.' She leaned on the balcony and slipped her arm through mine. 'Feeling better?'

'By the second. I'm glad I came.' I held her wrist when she tried to move away. ' Frances, I take it we didn't meet by chance at the Palais des Festivals?'

'Not exactly. I saw you looking a little lost, as usual, and thought you might be interesting.'

'Was I?'

'More than you realize.' She turned her back to the sea. 'You're a political prisoner. You wander round all day, searching for the escape tunnel, while getting more and more involved with the guards.'

'I could drive back to London tonight.'

'Rubbish. And it isn't just Jane who keeps you here. Why do you think you're so obsessed with David? You're in a trance.'

She smoothed my lapel, as if suddenly concerned for me. Her hands were forever brushing away imaginary flecks in a kind of submissive grooming. At the same time she eyed me in an openly calculated way.

'A trance? More than likely. I was the joyrider who stole your car.'

'_You_ took it?'

' Frances… don't be so arch. You invited me to steal it.'

'Did I? I think I was slightly drunk.'

'You left the keys on the passenger seat. Why?'

'I was curious about you. It was a sort of test.'

'To see if I had what it takes to steal? I might have killed myself.'

'Never. You're too cautious.'

'So I failed the test?'

'Six out of ten. I want you to understand Eden-Olympia. Then you might be able to help me.'

'But first I have to change?'

'A little. Admit it, you enjoyed stealing the car. I watched you drive down the Croisette. You had wings again.'

'You're right.' The lights had come on at Port-la-Galère, and I thought of the chauffeurs' widows sitting in their honeycomb apartments. 'Flying, yes… the first take-off after having sex. What's the next test?'

'You decide that. Tell me about the ratissage. The Rue Valentin may be more your street than you realize…'

She took a lighter and cigarette case from her purse. Cupping one hand, she lit the cigarette, but the wind blew a shred of burning tobacco over her shoulder. It landed on the parquet floor of the drawing room and glowed brightly in the air, a fire-creature breathing the wind. Intrigued by it, and tiring of me for the moment, Frances left the terrace. Her feet scattered the embers, which danced around her heels as she crossed the floor.

She began a circuit of the dining room, peering at the baronial fireplace with its andirons the size of torture racks, and heavy oak carvers like gnarled thrones. She jotted a comment in her notebook, but I knew she was covering up her embarrassment.

I had been too slow to respond to her, and she faulted herself for not playing the femme fatale more skilfully. I was attracted to her sexually, but she needed my complete submission if I was to join the secret game she controlled.

A brochure she had left on the terrace table began to flutter in the evening air. I turned it face down, and then read the printed name on the addressee label. 'Mme Frances Delmas, Marina Baie des Anges, Villeneuve-Loubet.'

I remembered the cryptic initials on Greenwood 's target list.

'F. D.'

Carrying the brochure, I followed Frances into the kitchen, where she stood on the small balcony overlooking the hillside. A hundred yards away was a large building that easily eclipsed the oddities of Port-la-Galère. Like a segmented flying saucer, it resembled a spacecraft that had landed by error in the steep hills of the Esterel and then reconfigured itself among the pine trees. A series of interlocking domes were pierced by porthole windows a dozen feet in diameter. Together they sprawled towards a terrace wide enough to stage a football tournament.

Lights flared through the portholes, as if a computer in the control room was waking from its slumbers and testing its own sentience. Teams of athletic young men and women stepped onto the terrace, setting up film lights, cameras and reflector screens. They wore jeans and trainers, money pouches slung from their waists, baseball caps over their Asian faces. To one side, waited on by a retinue of attendants, stood a favoured group of fashion models, dressed for the night in lustrous fur coats, stoles and bolero jackets. The platinum and auburn pelts seemed to drain the last light from the evening air, distilling the lees of the sun in their exquisite filaments. But the models stared expressionlessly at the film cameras, like the chorus in an avant-garde version of Madam Butterfly.

'They're Japanese,' I said to Frances. 'Where exactly are we?'

'The Pierre Cardin Foundation. One day all his paintings and sculpture will be on show here. It's rented out for big functions – a Tokyo advertising agency is making a fur commercial.'

'Bizarre. The whole place looks like a film set.'

'It is – it just happens to be real. David loved it. Last year we went to an Eden-Olympia reception there and got wonderfully drunk with two Nobel Prize winners. They were great sports.'

Smiling to herself, she stared through the fading light at the terrace. Teams of technicians steered their reflectors into position, like players pushing their pieces in a monster game of illuminated chess.

'You knew Greenwood well,' I said. 'He must have been a lot of fun.'

'He was. He worked hard, but he knew how to relax.'

'How long did your affair go on?'

'Affair? Sordid word.' She grimaced at an unpleasant after-taste.

'It sounds like some dodgy business with the petty cash. We were happy, and then… we weren't happy. Let's say I didn't like the way he was changing. Some of the things he got involved with were…'

'Too sophisticated for him?'

'Just a little.' She raised a resigned hand to the darkness, as if waving the night away. 'Idealists can be quite a problem when they get disgusted with themselves. He didn't like what Eden-Olympia had done to him.'

'And the murder plan? He told you -?'

'Absolutely nothing. Believe me, Paul.'

'I do. You were one of his targets.'

'Why do you say that?'

'"Mme Frances Delmas."' I showed her the property brochure.

'You, I take it?'

She stared at the label, then let her arms fall to her sides as the last cigarette smoke left her lungs. 'That was my married name. My husband was an accountant with Elf-Maritime. We separated two years ago, but it takes the computers a long time to catch up.'

'So you're "F. D."? The woman Greenwood called from the car-park roof? He was going to kill you.'

'No!' Her fist drummed on the balcony rail. 'For God's sake, he was standing in front of me with a rifle in his hands. If he wanted to kill me he'd have done it there and then.'

'He hesitated. The guards say he was trying to reload, but I think he wavered when he saw you. For a few seconds, long enough for Halder and Kellerman to reach the roof. He loved you, Frances.'

'I know.' She crushed her cigarette on the rail. 'I helped to get him killed. At least I didn't see what happened – the guards bundled me away. If I'd let him in…'

'He'd have shot you. Why? It could be the clue to everything.'

'It is.' She spoke calmly, her face only a few inches from mine, and I could smell the sweet Turkish tobacco on her breath. 'Why did he want to kill me? Because I was too much like him.'

'In what way?'

'How we relaxed, the games we played. Sooner or later, though, all games become serious.'

'And serious games are more serious than anything else. What did these games involve?'

Before she could answer, the lights on the terrace of the Cardin Foundation flooded the hillside. An intense electrical whiteness sent huge beams through the porthole windows. The technicians and assistants froze in their places, like figures in a clay burial army.

The make-up specialists applied their last touches to the fur-clad models and then shrank back into the watching throng.

Without thinking, I held my breath, but the filming ended after four or five seconds. The lights dimmed, and everyone began to move around, waiting as the models changed into a new set of furs. Armed security men stood beside a wheeled pantechnicon, checking each garment on their clipboards before returning the silky pelts to their air-conditioned racks.

'Television commercials and mink coats rented by the hour…'

Frances sighed audibly. 'That's glamour for you on the new Côte d'Azur. Garbo and Crawford would be amazed.'

'Why stay?' I sat on the balcony rail, catching the waxy stench of insects burned to a crisp by the film lights. I watched Frances tapping the rail, but she seemed in no hurry to return to her car.

'And why come to Eden-Olympia in the first place?'

'Why? In those days my head was filled with… passionate dreams.'

'I like that.' I took her hands, surprised by how cold they were. 'What exactly?'

'The usual deluded rubbish. Interesting work, a few close friends, a warm relationship with someone who needs me. My foster parents are sure I'll meet him.'

'Good for them. You're an orphan?'

'My mother's still alive. She had a small stroke when my father died and couldn't cope with me. My foster parents are schoolteachers in Cambridge. They pushed me in a really loving way. After the LSE I worked at Lloyd's, and then got headhunted out here.'

'I bet you had a very good time?'

'I loved it. All that alienation. Those huge men shaving after lunch in their private bathrooms. It didn't take long before I felt utterly depraved. A very handsome Elf accountant was on loan to us one day a week, and I let him use my bathroom. I loved the smell of male urine and the reek of his groin on my bath towels after he'd had a shower. He was very sexy. We had a great honeymoon at Aspen, and he taught me to ski. That was about the last I saw of him.'

'Hard to believe.' I massaged her unsettled hands, thinking of all the bedrooms in the darkened house. 'He walked out on you?'

'No. We moved into an apartment at Marina Baie des Anges. But he worked till nine every night. He was always flying to Oman and Dubai. One day I found this mysterious wardrobe full of men's suits and shirts. There were drawers of socks and underpants that didn't seem familiar. I remember thinking: there must be a man attached to these.'

'They were your husband's? So you got divorced?'

'In a friendly way. I kept the apartment, and he moved to Paris…' She stared at her shoes, as if wondering where they would next lead her, and turned to follow my raised hand. 'Paul, what is it?'

'I'm not sure.' Shielding my eyes from the glare, I scanned the Cardin terrace. 'There's some sort of brawl. The Japanese are fighting each other.'

'Makes sense. TV commercials are life-or-death affairs.'

'Wait…'

A huge mélée had engulfed the terrace. Groups of technicians and make-up assistants cowered against the balustrade, watching as vicious fist-fights erupted among the camera crew and the guards near the pantechnicon. A second group of security men had appeared from within the museum, and lashed out with their clubs like warriors in a battle scene from a Kurasawa epic.

A spotlight teetered on its stand, sweeping the terrace with its harsh light before falling on its face. I recognized the leather jackets that I had seen in the Rue Valentin. Three of the assailants were unloading furs from the pantechnicon, while others in the gang stood over the guards they had beaten to the floor. A helmeted man with a raised shotgun threatened the cowed technicians, who crouched on the tiled floor among the light meters and make-up cases. On the steps into the museum a man with a face I almost remembered was filming the assault with a camcorder.

The squealing falsettos of the Japanese women rose across the hillside, and lights flared from the balconies of villas above the coast road.

' Frances…' Without thinking, I drew her from the balcony. 'It's the bowling club…'

'Who?'

'It's another ratissage. A special action.'

'I can't see anything.' She pulled at my arm. 'There's a telescope in the library.'

'Forget it.' I tried to calm her. 'They've gone.'

The snatch squad had left with their booty. Behind them, the terrace resembled the scene after a terrorist bomb attack. Technicians sat on the floor, clutching at each other among the overturned lights and cameras. Many of the women assistants were still shrieking, as the stunned director and his crew shouted into their mobile phones.

From the road above the museum came the sound of accelerating engines. A black Range Rover swept down the hill, its lights off and almost invisible in the darkness. It swerved across the car park of the Tour de l'Esquillon Hotel, and headed at speed towards Théoule.

'God, they're like commandos…' Frances pushed herself from the balcony, as if the slipstream of violence might suck her over the edge. 'Paul, who were they? You recognized them.'

'I can't really say. It might have been…'

Two more Range Rovers swept below us, nose-to-tail as they moved at speed. Their tyres struck the loose gravel in the car park like breakers hitting a shingle beach. Headlamps flared, and they pulled into a sharp right turn, taking the coast road towards St-Raphaël.

At the Cardin Foundation the film crew and their assistants had fled indoors. A confused technician turned on the sound system, and a burst of amplified music drummed into the night, huge fragments of sound that rolled down the hillside like boulders.

Frances stepped into the kitchen and seized the telephone beside the refrigerator. She raised the receiver and pumped the cradle, hunting for a dialling tone. 'I'll call the police. Come on, god dammit… vite, vite!'

' Frances, wait. I need to think.'

'Why? There's nothing to think about…'

'There's everything.'

I took the receiver from her, opened a drawer of the kitchen table and placed the phone next to an old Gault-Millau guide.

When Frances reached into the drawer I closed it with my knee, catching her hand.

' Frances, take it easy. They've gone.'

'Paul…?' Frances rubbed her bruised wrist. 'What are you playing at? You recognized some of them.'

'I might have done.'

'Who were they? Did they come from Eden-Olympia?'

'It's possible.'

'Then let's stop them. Either way, they're trapped on the coast road.'

'Not now. This isn't the time.'

'You're in a trance again.'

She stood in front of me, small fists raised pugnaciously. She had been frightened by the attack, and perspiration soaked her white blouse, exposing the dark roses of her breasts. But my mind was with the leather-clad men racing through the darkness in the Range Rovers. The speed and aggression of the robbers, their brutal efficiency, had almost winded me. I forced myself to breathe, gasping the night air with its reek of burnt insects, fear and Japanese scent. I felt the hair prickling on the nape of my neck, and a stream of sweat cooling between my shoulder blades. A potent odour lifted from my crutch, a deep hormonal call to violence. My penis thickened, and my scrotum gripped my testicles like a fist. I remembered my erection after my first solo landing at the RAF flying school, as all the tension of the unaccompanied take-off released itself.

'Paul… we ought to leave.'

Frances stood close to me, the beam from an upended film light shining on the damp silk of her breasts. With her wary eyes and half-open mouth she resembled a conspirator who had snatched too quickly at a new cover story, and was giving everything away in a flood of anxious sweat. Even now I held only part of her attention. She was waiting for the police sirens, her eyes searching the headlights on the coast road. Had she known of the ratissage in advance? Already I had enfolded her into a fantasy of my own, a dream of speed and violence that had hovered against the ceiling of my mind since I followed little Natasha to the Rue Valentin.

She leaned against me, listening to the cries of the Japanese women.

'Paul, the police will be here.'

'Forget them. We'll lock the doors and they'll think the house is empty.'

'My car's in the drive. The engine's still warm. Come back to Marina Baie des Anges. There are one or two things you ought to see…'

Дата добавления: 2015-09-07