He might even be a resident. You’ve been wandering around a lot. It makes people curious.’
‘Wandering? Where?’
‘All over Eden-Olympia. We thought you were getting bored. Or looking for company.’
‘Wandering …?’ I gestured at the wooded parkland. ‘I go for walks. What’s the point of all this landscape if no one sets foot on it?’
‘It’s more for show. Like most things at Eden-Olympia.’
Halder stood with his back to me, searching the upstairs windows, and I could see his reflection in the glass doors of the sun lounge. He was smiling to himself, a strain of deviousness that was almost likeable. Behind the brave and paranoid new world of surveillance cameras and bulletproof Range Rovers there probably existed an old-fashioned realm of pecking orders and racist abuse. Except for Halder, all the security personnel were white, and many would be members of the Front National, especially active among the pieds-noirs in the South of France. Yet Halder was always treated with respect by his fellow guards. I had seen them open the Range Rover’s door for him, an act of deference that he accepted as his due.
Curious about his motives, I asked: ‘What made you come to Eden-Olympia?’
‘The pay. It’s better here than Nice Airport or the Palais des Festivals.’
‘That’s a good enough reason. But …’
‘I don’t look the type? Too many shadows under the eyes? The wrong kind of suntan?’ Halder stared at me almost insolently. ‘Or is it because I read Scott Fitzgerald?’
‘Halder, I didn’t say that.’ I waited for him to reply, watching while he twisted the Russian’s shoe in his hands, as if wringing the neck of a small mammal. When he nodded to me, accepting that he had tried to provoke me, I turned my bruised ear towards the intercom chatter. ‘I meant that it might be too quiet here. Your men have a job pretending to be busy. Apart from this man Alexei, there doesn’t seem to be any crime at Eden-Olympia.’
‘No crime?’ Halder savoured the notion, smirking at its naivety. ‘Some people would say that crime is what Eden-Olympia is about.’
‘The multinational companies? All they do is turn money into more money.’
‘Could be … so money is the ultimate adult toy?’ Halder pretended to muse over this. He was intrigued by the stout defence I had put up against the intruder, but my excited sleuthing irritated him, and he was clearly relieved when the guards in the avenue walked up to the wrought-iron gate and signalled the all-clear.
‘Right…’ Halder glanced around the garden and prepared to leave. ‘Mr Sinclair, we’ll be stepping up patrols. No need for Dr Jane to worry. The Russian must have gone.’
‘Why? He could be sitting by any one of a hundred pools here. He’s looking for David Greenwood – he didn’t even know the poor man was dead.’
‘So he went back to Moscow for a few months. Or he doesn’t watch television.’
‘Why would he want to see Greenwood?’
‘How can I say?’ Wearily, Halder tried to disengage himself from me. ‘Dr Greenwood worked at the methadone clinic in Mandelieu. Maybe he gave the Russian a shot of something he liked.’
‘Did Greenwood do that kind of thing?’
‘Don’t all doctors?’ Halder touched my shoulder in a show of sympathy. ‘Ask your wife, Mr Sinclair.’
‘I’ll have to. How well did you know Greenwood?’
‘I met him. A decent type.’
‘A little highly strung?’
‘I wouldn’t say so.’ Halder picked up the Russian’s shoe. He stared at the blurred photograph of the girl, rubbing her face with his thumb. ‘I liked him. He got me my job.’
‘He killed ten people. Why, Halder? You look as if you know.’
‘I don’t. Dr Greenwood was a fine man, but he stayed too long at Eden-Olympia.’
I stood by the pool’s edge, and searched the deep water. The strong sunlight had stirred up an atlas of currents that cast their shadows across the tiled floor, but I could see the wavering outline of the silver coin below the diving board. Behind me the sprinkler began to spray the lawn, soaking the pillows of the chairs that Halder had moved in his hunt for evidence. The grass still bore the marks of colliding heels, the diagram of a violent apache dance. The raw divots reminded me of the Russian’s frightened body, the reek of his sweat and the sharp burrs on his leather jacket.
I left the pool and retraced the Russian’s steps to the pumphouse. The wooden doors had jumped their latch, exposing the electric motor, heater and timing mechanism. The cramped space was filled with sacks of pool-cleaner, the chlorine-based detergent that Monsieur Anvers poured into the loading port. Twice each day the soft powder diffused across the water, forming milky billows that dissolved the faint residues of human fat along the water-line.
I ran my hand over the nearest wax-paper sack. Its industrial seals were unbroken, but a stream of powder poured onto the floor from a narrow tear. Sitting down, my legs stretched out in front of me, I gripped the sack and pulled it onto the cement apron. A second vent, large enough to take a child’s index finger, punctured the heavy wrapper, and the cool powder flowed across my knees.
I tore away the paper between the holes, and slid my hand into the sticky grains. They deliquesced as I exposed them to the sunlight, running between my fingers to reveal a bruised silver nugget like a twisted coin. I cleaned away the damp powder, and stared down at the deformed but unmistakable remains of a high-velocity rifle bullet.
I upended the sack and let the powder flow across the apron. A second bullet lay between my knees, apparently of the same calibre and rifling marks, crushed by its impact with a hard but uneven structure.
I laid the bullets on the ground and reached into the pumphouse, running my hands over the remaining sacks. Their waxed wrappers were unbroken, and the pumping machinery bore no signs of bullet damage. I assumed that the stock of detergent had remained here when the pool motor was switched off after David Greenwood’s death. Restarting the motor a few days before our arrival, Monsieur Anvers had decided to leave the punctured sack where it lay.
I turned to the wooden doors, feeling the smoothly painted panels, fresh from a builder’s warehouse. The chromium hinges were bright and unscratched, recently reset in the surrounding frame. With my hand I brushed away the loose grains of powder and felt the apron beside the doors. The smooth cement had been faintly scored by a rotating abrader, and the steel bristles had left small whorls in the hard surface, as if carefully erasing a set of stains or scorch-marks.
I felt the bullets between my fingers, guessing that they had not been deformed by their impact with the pine doors or the detergent sack. A larger object, with a bony interior, had absorbed the full force of the bullets. Someone, security guard or hostage, had collapsed against the pumphouse doors, and had then been shot at close range, either by himself or others.
I listened to the cicadas in the Yasudas’ garden, and watched the dragonflies flitting around the tennis court. According to Wilder Penrose, the three hostages had been killed inside the garage. I imagined the brief gun-battle that had taken place near the
