Cocaine Nights

Cocaine Nights J. G. Ballard James Lever ‘Snort up “Cocaine Nights”. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will SelfFive people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort’s civilized fa?ade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex.At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, ‘Cocaine Nights’ is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs. Cocaine Nights J. G. BALLARD Copyright (#ulink_806c9fbe-ce20-5ba7-a456-d798c9ad8958) This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/) First published in hardback in Great Britain by Flamingo 1996 Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1996 Introduction copyright © James Lever 2014 Interview copyright © Travis Elborough 2006 Cover by Stanley Donwood. Photography by Medemea J.G Ballard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this e-book has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780006550648 Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007378814 Version: 2016-10-10 Table of Contents Cover (#uef64d11b-8062-5c48-927b-f221995eaa67) Title Page (#ud05c0e19-679d-58ce-8d50-86f3bb863cdf) Copyright (#uffe5ce21-1080-5310-b5c6-39341917e6e1) Introduction by James Lever 1 Frontiers and Fatalities (#ub75d3fac-5e70-5cce-9663-bd623df8ce13) 2 The Fire at the Hollinger House (#uc4e369d6-2258-5503-bec2-31430cdc1c84) 3 The Tennis Machine (#u4defd9e5-fe9c-5dfd-8549-a23d9eeffbcc) 4 An Incident in the Car Park (#uf406d3e6-6b6a-57a5-9c44-37b8341d2f5a) 5 A Gathering of the Clan (#ud4411847-ed57-521e-93aa-c882e512cdcc) 6 Fraternal Refusals (#u975befc3-159b-535b-bd39-3dd191b3a375) 7 An Attack on the Balcony (#litres_trial_promo) 8 The Scent of Death (#litres_trial_promo) 9 The Inferno (#litres_trial_promo) 10 The Pornographic Film (#litres_trial_promo) 11 The Lady by the Pool (#litres_trial_promo) 12 A Game of Tease and Chase (#litres_trial_promo) 13 A View from the High Corniche (#litres_trial_promo) 14 A Pagan Rite (#litres_trial_promo) 15 The Cheerleader’s Cruise (#litres_trial_promo) 16 Criminals and Benefactors (#litres_trial_promo) 17 A Change of Heart (#litres_trial_promo) 18 Cocaine Nights (#litres_trial_promo) 19 The Costasol Complex (#litres_trial_promo) 20 A Quest for New Vices (#litres_trial_promo) 21 The Bureaucracy of Crime (#litres_trial_promo) 22 An End to Amnesia (#litres_trial_promo) 23 Come and See (#litres_trial_promo) 24 The Psychopath as Saint (#litres_trial_promo) 25 Carnival Day (#litres_trial_promo) 26 The Last Party (#litres_trial_promo) 27 An Invitation to the Underworld (#litres_trial_promo) 28 The Syndicates of Guilt (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) Interview with J. G. Ballard (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) INTRODUCTION BY JAMES LEVER (#u75d7a51b-a907-59a6-8475-e34f8586a927) ‘I COULD SUM UP the future in one word,’ J. G. Ballard said in 1994, during an interview collected in Extreme Metaphors, the indispensable anthology of Ballard’s conversation, ‘and that word is boring. The future is going to be boring.’ The gated communities of the Costa del Sol which form the backdrop of Cocaine Nights are the most extreme visualization in his whole body of work of what he elsewhere pictured as ‘the whole planet … turning into a vast Switzerland’. Here, in the ‘fortified enclaves’ where ‘all space has been internalized’, none of the holiday villas even look out to the sea, a hundred yards distant. ‘The residents of the Costa del Sol lived in an eventless world … a world beyond boredom, with no past, no future and a diminishing present … Nothing could ever happen in this affectless realm.’ They are ‘refugees from time … needing only that part of the external world that was distilled from the sky by their satellite dishes … already the ghosts of themselves.’ One of the great and disorienting pleasures of reading Ballard – and especially disorienting in an essentially realistic book like Cocaine Nights – is finding oneself at a loss to identify exactly where the surreal or fantastical begins, or if indeed it even has. Passages that read like wild satirical exaggeration solidify, on second glance, into clear-eyed reportage. Ballard might have dreamed up these deserted pueblos, ‘their architecture dedicated to the abolition of time’, using the de Chiricos and Hoppers his imagination was stocked with, but in fact he knew the resorts of the Costas well. By the time he wrote Cocaine Nights, he’d been making trips to the Mediterranean for over thirty years, taking annual family holidays in Marbella, and then, when the children had grown up, on the French Riviera with his partner Claire Walsh. ‘I’m always much happier in the south – Spain, Greece – than I am anywhere else,’ he remarked, Englishly. These holidays helped generate several precursors to Cocaine Nights, beginning with the abandoned Costa Brava of ‘Low-Flying Aircraft’ (1975) and the Hitchcockianly erotic ‘The 60 Minute Zoom’ (1976) – two little masterpieces – and then a pair of more closely related stories, ‘Having a Wonderful Time’ (1978) and ‘The Largest Theme Park in the World’ (1989). The former may well be inspired by the collapse in August 1974 of the Court Line group, pioneers of the cheap-and-cheerful package-tour, which left 50,000 Britons marooned on the beaches of the Med, far from the stagflation and three-day week of home. It describes, via a series of postcards sent by a British tourist ostensibly stranded in the Canaries, the clandestine relocation of the economically superfluous classes of Europe to the continent’s beach-resorts, where these unemployables, unaware of the huge experiment in which they’re participating, blossom into creative fulfilment. The later story inverts the idea: Europe’s holidaymakers refuse to return home, creating a militant totalitarian society based around the cult of physical perfection and occupying ‘the linear city of the Mediterranean coast, some 3,000 miles long and 300 metres wide’ – a typically catchy image Ballard had been chewing over and trying out for fifteen years. And throughout Cocaine Nights you can hear the authorial thrill at the sheer infinity-tending scale of this two-dimensional city – ‘a hundred miles of white cement’, ‘the surfaces of a thousand swimming pools’, ‘fifty thousand Brits, one huge liver perfused by vodka and tonic’, ‘a billion balconies facing the sun’. The coastal megalopolis is a zone of infinite repetition, the sort of non-space that barely possesses any geographical reality at all. But it is also therefore a space vulnerable to sudden and rapidly-spreading psychic contagions. This is the sort of place that excites Ballard – since the greater the homogeneity of an environment or the inner-space of its inhabitants, as with the African desert of The Day of Creation or the Shepperton of The Unlimited Dream Company, the greater the potential transformative energy of the eventual psychic dam-burst. That’s the excitement that powers Cocaine Nights, lined with a dismay which perhaps explains why this particular novel’s iteration of that stock Ballard character, the messianic or psychopathic anti-hero intent on waking a community from its slumber, is one of its author’s most sympathetic utopians. In fact, despite the multiple murders at its heart, this is one of Ballard’s most relaxed works, inaugurating what you might call his late period – that slight flattening of style and deceleration which mark his four last, and four longest, fictions. Artists’ late periods, so the clich? goes, are often signalled by a wintry brevity that denotes either an impatience with inessentials or a general loss of energy; on the other hand, writers (and especially those who flirt with genre-structures) can equally tend to a late-middle-aged spread, a comfortable couple of inches around the narrative waistline. This is Ballard’s beach read, designed to be picked up at an airport, consumed poolside and left, mottled with Ambre Solaire and disintegrating, its binding-glue long melted, on a shelf in the villa between the Dibdins and Rendells it is slyly constructed to resemble. For a novel about leisure – Ballard’s only full-length work explicitly about this lifelong preoccupation – the subtly parodic chunky-thriller rhythms and unhurried mystery-story plotting are a perfect fit: it’s a holiday book satirizing the ritual of the holiday book. Even Cocaine Nights’ title, which the reader will soon realize is barely relevant, functions as camouflage – an artfully slovenly mass-market formulation that ought to be embossed on the cover in gold foil, advertising cheap thrills it has no intention of delivering. (Ballard’s timing is as uncanny as ever: 1996, the date of publication, is pretty much exactly when cocaine-use in Britain could be said to have definitively shifted from a supposedly glamorous drug-of-the-elite to the everyday mainstream.) And the book, Ballard in a slightly mellower key, was a hit – its author’s biggest seller after Empire of the Sun and Crash. Unforgiving or even uncharitable as the vision of opiate-addicted expats ‘sleeping through the longest afternoon in the world’ may sound, the leavening kindness always audible in Ballard’s prose, that bass-note of decency, occasionally seems to modulate in Cocaine Nights into something approaching tenderness. In Super-Cannes, Ballard takes a moment to allow his two main characters to trade some astutely-chosen quotes from Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave – ‘“Peeling off the kilometres to the tune of ‘Blue Skies’, sizzling down the … Nationale Sept, the plane trees going …” “Sha-sha-sha …” I completed, “She with the Michelin beside me, a handkerchief binding her hair …”’ To a surprising number of British readers of the immediate post-war period, those very sentences were a touchstone expressing the atavistic national yearning to travel south that must at the time have seemed almost like a destiny. The speed with which that thrilling promise of renewal and self-transformation was superseded by a kind of reflex contempt for the Ballardian realities of mass tourism (can any word have been pronounced more sneeringly by the British mouth than ‘Torremolinos’?) has ever since seemed like an obscurely shaming wrinkle in the national unconscious – witness the way the BBC’s early-nineties soap Eldorado, confidently premised on the abiding glamour of the Costa del Sol, was silenced by a collective groan of disgust, and not just because it was so staggeringly boring. Ballard’s memory of the innocence and excitement of the British population’s first collision with the Mediterranean is what gives Cocaine Nights its most intriguing effect – which is that the novel seems to be set simultaneously in the 1990s and the mid-century. Of course, this effect is a signature of Ballard’s genius, never more richly and bewilderingly used than in the retro-futurism (a completely inadequate term for the intricate swirl of history Ballard blends together) of Vermilion Sands. But in the non-surreal setting of Cocaine Nights, it becomes central to the book’s peculiar and wrong-footing affect. ‘I have often thought,’ Ballard said, casually lapidary as usual, ‘that writers don’t necessarily write their books in their real order. Empire of the Sun may be my first novel, which I just happened to write when I was fifty-four. It may well be that Vermilion Sands is my last book.’ In which case, Cocaine Nights was written some time in the sixties by a young Ballard under the influence of Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. The slightly stilted, thrillery dialogue, with its old-fashioned overuse of the vocative, is peppered with Little Englander near-archaisms: ‘the sheer neck of it’, ‘their parties are rather good shows’, ‘Good God!’ and the cultural allusions of an earlier generation: ‘Chin up. This isn’t the House of Usher’, ‘You could become … the Savonarola of the Costa del Sol.’ Elsewhere, disorientating obsolescences abound: ‘cine-photography’, ‘porno-cassette’, ‘disco’, ‘a signed photograph of a punk rock group’. The anti-hero is dismissed with an incomparably 1970s sentence: ‘The tennis bum who’s taken an Open University course in Cultural Studies and thinks paperback sociology is the answer to everything.’ One could argue that this is simply the way Ballard writes, and that many of his anachronisms are merely ingrained, or oversights, but that would be to miss the lovely conceptual coup of Cocaine Nights. The community of Estrella de Mar, roused from the narcotized daze of the Costa del Sol by the interventions of the novel’s charming messiah/psychopath, doesn’t wake up to the present tense so much as a nostalgic dream of the twentieth century’s greatest hits. ‘In many ways Estrella de Mar was the halcyon county-town England of the mythical 1930s, brought back to life and moved south into the sun.’ Ballard’s quietly hilarious emblem of the community’s spiritual awakening and artistic efflorescence is amateur dramatics: everywhere you go in Estrella de Mar you will find a once cutting-edge play – Beckett, Orton, Eliot, Stoppard – being proudly revived as proof of cultural vigour. (‘“A month ago they were dozing in their bedrooms … waiting for death. Now they’re putting on the plays of Harold Pinter. Isn’t that an advance?” “I suppose so.”’) The open-air cinema shows Renoir and classics from the Golden Age. The disco isn’t a mislabelled nightclub, it’s a disco. It is a porno-cassette, not a porn-tape. The whole place is a fondly observed anachronism, and so is the novel in which you’re reading about it. The cliffhangers, red-herrings and misdirections of Cocaine Nights’ murder-mystery structure are so cursory and obvious, and the plot-recaps so obsessively frequent, that they amount to a wry subversion of the novel’s own pretensions to old-fashioned page-turning pleasure: if you aren’t a Ballard devotee, you’ll probably have worked out whodunnit after about a hundred pages. If you are, you’ll know by the end of the first chapter. It’s a book about boredom, or boredom as an outcome of capitalism’s natural tendency to isolate and encourage an obsession with security in its consumers, and about the stimuli required to counteract that. As such the book is happy to enact those stimuli itself. A glance down the list of chapter-titles (and one should always take time to read Ballard’s Contents pages, which constitute introductory poems to his novels) gives you a selection of tawdry but irresistible enticements – ‘The Scent of Death’, ‘The Pornographic Film’, ‘The Lady by the Pool’, ‘Cocaine Nights’ – each one the title of a cheap thriller, good for the beach. Meanwhile, the novel’s ostensible centre of interest, a Durkheimian interrogation of the importance of transgression and crime to social cohesion, plays out according to a classic Ballard schema: there’s a psychopathic Prospero figure, a protagonist who comes to act as his Ariel, an authorial ambivalence about the violence and uncontrollability of the transformative magic, a climactic blood-sacrifice demanded by the tribe. But this takes place in a more restrained register than usual: armies of robot American presidents do not assassinate the incumbent, birds of paradise don’t throng the Shepperton skies, Alsatians are not on the menu. In truth, this is not brick-through-your-mind Ballard. Instead, it offers the beautiful spectacle of an accurate prophet come face to face with a future he intuited and which is already receding into the past, growing dated. Ballard strolls around the leisureworld of Estrella de Mar (and what a gorgeous name, by the way: like one of those reclusive screen-goddesses who inhabit Vermilion Sands) as if delighted to find himself for the first time in a (pretty much) realistic landscape which contains so many of his imagination’s old obsessions: here are paranoid zones of surveillance, home-made pornography on an industrial scale, blood-spattered tennis courts, avenues of empty villas, universal recreational drug-use and so many swimming pools (both full and empty) he can put one on virtually every page. Even for Ballard, Cocaine Nights is a novel of endless, artful repetitions and reiterations, as if he simply can’t bear to stop taking holiday snap after holiday snap after holiday snap of this place so beautiful it’s like something he once made up. Paris, 2014 1 Frontiers and Fatalities (#ulink_e1109d8b-f90c-5669-987e-d96847ac1ba3) CROSSING FRONTIERS is my profession. Those strips of no-man’s land between the checkpoints always seem such zones of promise, rich with the possibilities of new lives, new scents and affections. At the same time they set off a reflex of unease that I have never been able to repress. As the customs officials rummage through my suitcases I sense them trying to unpack my mind and reveal a contraband of forbidden dreams and memories. And even then there are the special pleasures of being exposed, which may well have made me a professional tourist. I earn my living as a travel writer, but I accept that this is little more than a masquerade. My real luggage is rarely locked, its catches eager to be sprung. Gibraltar was no exception, though this time there was a real basis for my feelings of guilt. I had arrived on the morning flight from Heathrow, making my first landing on the military runway that served this last outpost of the British Empire. I had always avoided Gibraltar, with its vague air of a provincial England left out too long in the sun. But my reporter’s ears and eyes soon took over, and for an hour I explored the narrow streets with their quaint tea-rooms, camera shops and policemen disguised as London bobbies. Gilbratar, like the Costa del Sol, was off my beat. I prefer the long-haul flights to Jakarta and Papeete, those hours of club-class air-time that still give me the sense of having a real destination, the great undying illusion of air travel. In fact we sit in a small cinema, watching films as blurred as our hopes of discovering somewhere new. We arrive at an airport identical to the one we left, with the same car-rental agencies and hotel rooms with their adult movie channels and deodorized bathrooms, side-chapels of that lay religion, mass tourism. There are the same bored bar-girls waiting in the restaurant vestibules who later giggle as they play solitaire with our credit cards, tolerant eyes exploring those lines of fatigue in our faces that have nothing to do with age or tiredness. Gibraltar, though, soon surprised me. The sometime garrison post and naval base was a frontier town, a Macao or Juarez that had decided to make the most of the late twentieth century. At first sight it resembled a seaside resort transported from a stony bay in Cornwall and erected beside the gatepost of the Mediterranean, but its real business clearly had nothing to do with peace, order and the regulation of Her Majesty’s waves. Like any frontier town Gibraltar’s main activity, I suspected, was smuggling. As I counted the stores crammed with cut-price video-recorders, and scanned the nameplates of the fringe banks that gleamed in the darkened doorways, I guessed that the economy and civic pride of this geo-political relic were devoted to rooking the Spanish state, to money-laundering and the smuggling of untaxed perfumes and pharmaceuticals. The Rock was far larger than I expected, sticking up like a thumb, the local sign of the cuckold, in the face of Spain. The raunchy bars had a potent charm, like the speedboats in the harbour, their powerful engines cooling after the latest high-speed run from Morocco. As they rode at anchor I thought of my brother Frank and the family crisis that had brought me to Spain. If the magistrates in Marbella failed to acquit Frank, but released him on bail, one of these sea-skimming craft might rescue him from the medieval constraints of the Spanish legal system. Later that afternoon I would meet Frank and his lawyer in Marbella, a forty-minute drive up the coast. But when I collected my car from the rental office near the airport I found that an immense traffic jam had closed the border crossing. Hundreds of cars and buses waited in a gritty haze of engine exhaust, while teenaged girls grizzled and their grandmothers shouted at the Spanish soldiers. Ignoring the impatient horns, the Guardia Civil were checking every screw and rivet, officiously searching suitcases and supermarket cartons, peering under bonnets and spare wheels. ‘I need to be in Marbella by five,’ I told the rental office manager, who was gazing at the stalled vehicles with the serenity of a man about to lease his last car before collecting his pension. ‘This traffic jam has a permanent look about it.’ ‘Calm yourself, Mr Prentice. It can clear at any time, when the Guardia realize how bored they are.’ ‘All these regulations …’ I shook my head over the rental agreement. ‘Spare bulbs, first-aid kit, fire extinguisher? This Renault is better equipped than the plane that flew me here.’ ‘You should blame Cadiz. The new Civil Governor is obsessed with La Linea. His workfare schemes are unpopular with the people there.’ ‘Too bad. So there’s a lot of unemployment?’ ‘Not exactly. Rather too much employment, but of the wrong kind.’ ‘The smuggling kind? A few cigarettes and camcorders?’ ‘Not so few. Everyone at La Linea is very happy – they hope that Gibraltar will remain British for ever.’ I had begun to think about Frank, who remained British but in a Spanish cell. As I joined the line of waiting cars I remembered our childhood in Saudi Arabia twenty years earlier, and the arbitrary traffic checks carried out by the religious police in the weeks before Christmas. Not only was the smallest drop of festive alcohol the target of their silky hands, but even a single sheet of seasonal wrapping paper with its sinister emblems of Yule logs, holly and ivy. Frank and I would sit in the back of our father’s Chevrolet, clutching the train sets that would be wrapped only minutes before we opened them, while he argued with the police in his sarcastic professorial Arabic, unsettling our nervous mother. Smuggling was one activity we had practised from an early age. The older boys at the English school in Riyadh talked among themselves about an intriguing netherworld of bootleg videos, drugs and illicit sex. Later, when we returned to England after our mother’s death, I realized that these small conspiracies had kept the British expats together and given them their sense of community. Without the liaisons and contraband runs our mother would have lost her slipping hold on the world long before the tragic afternoon when she climbed to the roof of the British Institute and made her brief flight to the only safety she could find. At last the traffic had begun to move, lurching forward in a noisy rush. But the mud-stained van in front of me was still detained by the Guardia Civil. A soldier opened the rear doors and hunted through cardboard cartons filled with plastic dolls. His heavy hands fumbled among the pinkly naked bodies, watched by hundreds of rocking blue eyes. Irritated by the delay, I was tempted to drive around the van. Behind me a handsome Spanish woman sat at the wheel of an open-topped Mercedes, remaking her lipstick over a strong mouth designed for any activity other than eating. Intrigued by her lazy sexual confidence, I smiled as she fingered her mascara and lightly brushed the undersides of her eyelashes like an indolent lover. Who was she – a nightclub cashier, a property tycoon’s mistress, or a local prostitute returning to La Linea with a fresh stock of condoms and sex aids? She noticed me watching her in my rear-view mirror and snapped down her sun vizor, waking both of us from this dream of herself. She swung the steering wheel and pulled out to pass me, baring her strong teeth as she slipped below a no-entry sign. I started my engine and was about to follow her, but the soldier fumbling among the plastic dolls turned to bellow at me. ‘Acceso prohibido …!’ He leaned against my windshield, a greasy hand smearing the glass, and saluted the young woman, who was turning into the police car park beside the checkpoint. He glared down at me, nodding to himself and clearly convinced that he had caught a lecherous tourist in the act of visually molesting the wife of his commanding officer. He moodily flicked through the pages of my passport, unimpressed by the gallery of customs stamps and visas from the remotest corners of the globe. Each frontier crossing was a unique transaction that defused the magic of any other. I waited for him to order me from the car and carry out an aggressive body-search, before settling down to dismande the entire Renault until it lay beside the road like a manufacturer’s display kit. But he had lost interest in me, his spare eye noticing a coach filled with migrant Moroccan workers who had taken the ferry from Tangier. Abandoning his search of the van and its cargo of dolls, he advanced upon the stoical Arabs with all the menace and dignity of Rodrigo Diaz out-staring the MOOR at the Battle of Valencia. I followed the van as it sped towards La Linea, rear doors swinging and the dolls dancing together with their feet in the air. Even the briefest confrontation with police at a border crossing had the same disorienting effect on me. I imagined Frank in the interrogation cells in Marbella at that very moment, faced with the same accusing eyes and the same assumption of guilt. I was a virtually innocent traveller, carrying no contraband other than a daydream of smuggling my brother across the Spanish frontier, yet I felt as uneasy as a prisoner breaking his parole, and I knew how Frank would have responded to the trumped-up charges that had led to his arrest at the Club Nautico in Estrella de Mar. I was certain of his innocence and guessed that he had been framed on the orders of some corrupt police chief who had tried to extort a bribe. I left the eastern outskirts of La Linea and set off along the coast road towards Sotogrande, impatient to see Frank and reassure him that all would be well. The call from David Hennessy, the retired Lloyd’s underwriter who was now the treasurer of the Club Nautico, had reached me in my Barbican flat the previous evening. Hennessy had been disturbingly vague, as if rambling to himself after too much sun and sangria, the last person to inspire confidence. ‘It does look rather bad … Frank told me not to worry you, but I felt I had to call.’ ‘Thank God you did. Is he actually under arrest? Have you told the British Consul in Marbella?’ ‘Malaga, yes. The Consul’s closely involved. It’s an important case, I’m surprised you didn’t read about it.’ ‘I’ve been abroad. I haven’t seen an English paper for weeks. In Lhasa there’s not much demand for news about the Costa del Sol.’ ‘I dare say. The Fleet Street reporters were all over the club. We had to close the bar, you know.’ ‘Never mind the bar!’ I tried to get a grip on the conversation. ‘Is Frank all right? Where are they holding him?’ ‘He’s fine. On the whole he’s taking it well. He’s very quiet, though that’s understandable. He has a lot to think over.’ ‘But what are the charges? Mr Hennessy …?’ ‘Charges?’ There was a pause as ice-cubes rattled. ‘There seem to be a number. The Spanish prosecutor is drawing up the articles of accusation. We’ll have to wait for them to be translated. I’m afraid the police aren’t being very helpful.’ ‘Do you expect them to be? It sounds like a frame-up.’ ‘It’s not as simple as that … one has to see it in context. I think you should come down here as soon as you can.’ Hennessy had been professionally vague, presumably to protect the Club Nautico, one of the more exclusive sports complexes on the Costa del Sol, which no doubt depended for its security on regular cash disbursements to the local constabulary. I could well imagine Frank, in his quizzical way, forgetting to slip the padded manila envelope into the right hands, curious to see what might result, or omitting to offer his best suite to a visiting commandant of police. Parking fines, building-code infringements, an illegally-sited swimming pool, perhaps the innocent purchase from a dodgy dealer of a stolen Range Rover – any of these could have led to his arrest. I sped along the open road towards Sotogrande, as a sluggish sea lapped at the chocolate sand of the deserted beaches. The coastal strip was a nondescript plain of market gardens, tractor depots and villa projects. I passed a half-completed Aquapark, its excavated lakes like lunar craters, and a disused nightclub on an artificial hill, the domed roof resembling a small observatory. The mountains had withdrawn from the sea, keeping their distance a mile inland. Near Sotogrande the golf courses began to multiply like the symptoms of a hypertrophied grassland cancer. White-walled Andalucian pueblos presided over the greens and fairways, fortified villages guarding their pastures, but in fact these miniature townships were purpose-built villa complexes financed by Swiss and German property speculators, the winter homes not of local shepherds but of D?sseldorf ad-men and Z?rich television executives. Along most of the Mediterranean’s resort coasts the mountains came down to the sea, as at the C?te d’Azur or the Ligurian Riviera near Genoa, and the tourist towns nestled in sheltered bays. But the Costa del Sol lacked even the rudiments of scenic or architectural charm. Sotogrande, I discovered, was a town without either centre or suburbs, and seemed to be little more than a dispersal ground for golf courses and swimming pools. Three miles to its east I passed an elegant apartment building standing on a scrubby bend of the coastal road, the mock-Roman columns and white porticos apparently imported from Las Vegas after a hotel clearance sale, reversing the export to Florida and California in the 1920s of dismantled Spanish monasteries and Sardinian abbeys. The Estepona road skirted a private airstrip beside an imposing villa with gilded finials like a castellated fairy battlement. Their shadows curved around a white onion-bulb roof, an invasion of a new Arab architecture that owed nothing to the Maghreb across the Strait of Gibraltar. The brassy glimmer belonged to the desert kingdoms of the Persian Gulf, reflected through the garish mirrors of Hollywood design studios, and I thought of the oil company atrium in Dubai that I had walked through a month earlier, pursuing my courtship of an attractive French geologist I was profiling for L’Express. ‘The architecture of brothels?’ she commented when I told her of my longstanding plans for a book during our rooftop lunch. ‘It’s a good idea. Rather close to your heart, I should think.’ She pointed to the retina-stunning panorama around us. ‘It’s all here for you, Charles. Filling-stations disguised as cathedrals …’ Could Frank, with his scruples and finicky honesty, have chosen to break the law on the Costa del Sol, a zone as depthless as a property developer’s brochure? I approached the outskirts of Marbella, past King Saud’s larger-than-life replica of the White House and the Aladdin’s cave apartments of Puerto Banus. Unreality thrived on every side, a magnet to the unwary. But Frank was too fastidious, too amused by his own weaknesses, to commit himself to any serious misdemeanour. I remembered his compulsive stealing after we returned to England, slipping corkscrews and cans of anchovies into his pockets as we trailed after our aunt through the Brighton supermarkets. Our grieving father, taking up his professorial chair at Sussex University, was too distracted to think of Frank, and the petty thefts forced me to adopt him as my little son, the sole person concerned enough to care for this numbed nine-year-old, even if only to scold him. Luckily, Frank soon outgrew this childhood tic. At school he became a wristy and effective tennis player, and sidestepped the academic career his father wanted for him, taking a course in hotel management. After three years as assistant manager of a renovated art deco hotel in South Miami Beach he returned to Europe to run the Club Nautico at Estrella de Mar, a peninsular resort twenty miles to the east of Marbella. Whenever we met in London I liked to tease him about his exile to this curious world of Arab princes, retired gangsters and Eurotrash. ‘Frank, of all the places to pick you choose the Costa del Sol!’ I would exclaim. ‘Estrella de Mar? I can’t even imagine it …’ Amiably, Frank always replied: ‘Exactly, Charles. It doesn’t really exist. That’s why I like the coast. I’ve been looking for it all my life. Estrella de Mar isn’t anywhere.’ But now nowhere had at last caught up with him. When I reached the Los Monteros Hotel, a ten-minute drive down the coast from Marbella, there was a message waiting for me. Se?or Danvila, Frank’s lawyer, had called from the magistrates’ court with news of ‘unexpected developments’, and asked me to join him as soon as possible. The over-polite manners of the hotel manager and the averted eyes of the concierge and porters suggested that whatever these developments might be, they were fully expected. Even the players returning from the tennis courts and the couples in towelling robes on their way to the swimming pools paused to let me pass, as if sensing that I had come to share my brother’s fate. When I returned to the lobby after a shower and change of clothes the concierge had already called a taxi. ‘Mr Prentice, it will be simpler than taking your own car. Parking is difficult in Marbella. You have enough problems to consider.’ ‘You’ve heard about the case?’ I asked. ‘Did you speak to my brother’s lawyer?’ ‘Of course not, sir. There were some accounts in the local press … a few television reports.’ He seemed anxious to steer me to the waiting taxi. I scanned the headlines in the display of newspapers beside the desk. ‘What exactly happened? No one seems to know.’ ‘It’s not certain, Mr Prentice.’ The concierge straightened his magazines, trying to hide from me any edition that might reveal the full story of Frank’s involvement. ‘It’s best that you take your taxi. All will be clear to you in Marbella …’ Se?or Danvila was waiting for me in the entrance hall of the magistrates’ court. A tall, slightly stooped man in his late fifties, he carried two briefcases which he shuffled from hand to hand, and resembled a distracted schoolmaster who had lost control of his class. He greeted me with evident relief, holding on to my arm as if to reassure himself that I too was now part of the confused world into which Frank had drawn him. I liked his concerned manner, but his real attention seemed elsewhere, and already I wondered why David Hennessy had hired him. ‘Mr Prentice, I’m most grateful that you came. Unfortunately, events are now more … ambiguous. If I can explain –’ ‘Where is Frank? I’d like to see him. I want you to arrange bail – I can provide whatever guarantees the court requires. Se?or Danvila …?’ With an effort the lawyer uncoupled his eyes from some feature of my face that seemed to distract him, an echo perhaps of one of Frank’s more cryptic expressions. Seeing a group of Spanish photographers on the steps of the court, he beckoned me towards an alcove. ‘Your brother is here, until they return him to Zarzuella jail in Malaga this evening. The police investigation is proceeding. I am afraid that in the circumstances bail is out of the question.’ ‘What circumstances? I want to see Frank now. Surely the Spanish magistrates release people on bail?’ ‘Not in a case such as this.’ Se?or Danvila hummed to himself, switching his briefcases in an unending attempt to decide which was the heavier. ‘You will see your brother in an hour, perhaps less. I have spoken to Inspector Cabrera. Afterwards he will want to question you about certain details possibly known to you, but there is nothing to fear.’ ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, what will they charge Frank with?’ ‘He has already been charged.’ Se?or Danvila was staring fixedly at me. ‘It’s a tragic affair, Mr Prentice, the very worst.’ ‘But charged with what? Currency violations, tax problems …?’ ‘More serious than that. There were fatalities.’ Se?or Danvila’s face had come into sudden focus, his eyes swimming forwards through the thick pools of his lenses. I noticed that he had shaved carelessly that morning, too preoccupied to trim his straggling moustache. ‘Fatalities?’ It occurred to me that a cruel accident had taken place on the notorious coastal road, and perhaps had involved Frank in the deaths of Spanish children. ‘Was there a traffic accident? How many people were killed?’ ‘Five.’ Se?or Danvila’s lips moved as he counted the number, a total that exceeded all the possibilities of a humane mathematics. ‘It was not a traffic accident.’ ‘Then what? How did they die?’ ‘They were murdered, Mr Prentice.’ The lawyer spoke matter-of-factly, detaching himself from the significance of his own words. ‘Five people were deliberately killed. Your brother has been charged with their deaths.’ ‘I can’t believe it …’ I turned to stare at the photographers arguing with each other on the steps of the courthouse. Despite Se?or Danvila’s solemn expression, I felt a sudden rush of relief. I realized that a preposterous error had been made, an investigative and judicial bungle that involved this nervous lawyer, the heavy-footed local police and the incompetent magistrates of the Costa del Sol, their reflexes confused by years of coping with drunken British tourists. ‘Se?or Danvila, you say Frank murdered five people. How, for heaven’s sake?’ ‘He set fire to their house. Two weeks ago – it was clearly an act of premeditation. The magistrates and police have no doubt.’ ‘Well, they should have.’ I laughed to myself, confident now that this absurd error would soon be rectified. ‘Where did these murders take place?’ ‘At Estrella de Mar. In the villa of the Hollinger family.’ ‘And who were the victims?’ ‘Mr Hollinger, his wife, and their niece. As well, a young maid and the male secretary.’ ‘It’s madness.’ I held Danvila’s briefcases before he could weigh them again. ‘Why would Frank want to murder them? Let me see him. He’ll deny it.’ ‘No, Mr Prentice.’ Se?or Danvila stepped back from me, the verdict already clear in his mind. ‘Your brother has not denied the accusations. In fact, he has pleaded guilty to five charges of murder. I repeat, Mr Prentice – guilty.’ 2 The Fire at the Hollinger House (#ulink_7e5cdcb7-9950-56f7-b8bc-534c591b41be) ‘CHARLES? DANVILA TOLD ME you’d arrived. It’s good of you. I knew you’d come.’ Frank rose from his chair as I entered the interview room. He seemed slimmer and older than I remembered, and the strong fluorescent light gave his skin a pallid sheen. He peered over my shoulder, as if expecting to see someone else, and then lowered his eyes to avoid my gaze. ‘Frank – you’re all right?’ I leaned across the table, hoping to shake his hand, but the policeman standing between us raised his arm with the stiff motion of a turnstile bar. ‘Danvila’s explained the whole thing to me; it’s obviously some sort of crazy mistake. I’m sorry I wasn’t in court.’ ‘You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’ Frank rested his elbows on the table, trying to hide his fatigue. ‘How was the flight?’ ‘Late – airlines run on their own time, two hours behind everyone else’s. I rented a car in Gibraltar. Frank, you look ‘I’m fine.’ With an effort he composed himself, and managed a brief but troubled smile. ‘So, what did you think of Gib?’ ‘I was only there for a few minutes. Odd little place – not as strange as this coast.’ ‘You should have come here years ago. You’ll find a lot to write about.’ ‘I already have. Frank –’ ‘It’s interesting, Charles …’ Frank sat forward, talking too quickly to listen to himself, keen to sidetrack our conversation. ‘You’ve got to spend more time here. It’s Europe’s future. Everywhere will be like this soon.’ ‘I hope not. Listen, I’ve talked to Danvila. He’s trying to get the court hearing annulled. I didn’t grasp all the legal ins and outs, but there’s a chance of a new hearing when you change your plea. You’ll claim some sort of mitigating factor. You were distraught with grief, and didn’t catch what the translator was saying. At the least it puts down a marker.’ ‘Danvila, yes …’ Frank played with his cigarette packet. ‘Sweet man, I think I’ve rather shocked him. And you, too, I dare say.’ The friendly but knowing smile had reappeared, and he leaned back with his hands behind his head, confident now that he could cope with my visit. Already we were assuming our familiar roles first set out in childhood. He was the imaginative and wayward spirit, and I was the stolid older brother who had yet to get the joke. In Frank’s eyes I had always been the source of a certain fond amusement. He was dressed in a grey suit and white shirt open at the neck. Seeing that I had noticed his bare throat, he covered his chin with a hand. ‘They took my tie away from me – I’m only allowed to wear it in court. A bit noose-like, when you think about it – could put ideas into the judge’s mind. They fear I might try to kill myself.’ ‘But, Frank, isn’t that what you’re doing? Why on earth did you plead guilty?’ ‘Charles …’ He gestured a little wearily. ‘I had to, there wasn’t anything else I could say.’ ‘That’s absurd. You had nothing to do with those deaths.’ ‘But I did. Charles, I did.’ ‘You started the fire? Tell me, no one can hear this – you actually set the Hollinger house ablaze?’ ‘Yes … in effect.’ He took a cigarette from the packet and waited as the policeman stepped forward to light it. The flame flared under the worn hood of the brass lighter, and Frank stared at the burning vapour before drawing on the cigarette. In the brief glow his face seemed calm and resigned. ‘Frank, look at me.’ I waved the smoke aside, a swirling wraith released from his lungs. ‘I want to hear you say it – you, yourself, personally set fire to the Hollinger house?’ ‘I’ve said so.’ ‘Using a bomb filled with ether and petrol?’ ‘Yes. Don’t ever try it. The mixture’s surprisingly flammable.’ ‘I don’t believe it. Why, for God’s sake? Frank …!’ He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling, and then spoke in a quiet and almost flat voice. ‘You’d have to live for a while at Estrella de Mar even to begin to understand. Take it from me, if I explained what happened it would mean nothing to you. It’s a different world, Charles. This isn’t Bangkok or some atoll in the Maldives.’ ‘Try me. Are you covering up for someone?’ ‘Why should I?’ ‘And you knew the Hollingers?’ ‘I knew them well.’ ‘Danvila says he was some sort of film tycoon in the 1960s.’ ‘In a small way. Property dealing and office development in the City. His wife was one of the last of the Rank Charm School starlets. They retired here about twenty years ago.’ ‘They were regulars at the Club Nautico?’ ‘They weren’t regulars, strictly speaking. They dropped in now and then.’ ‘And you were there on the evening of the fire? You were in the house?’ ‘Yes! You’re starting to sound like Cabrera. The last thing an interrogator wants is the truth.’ Frank crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, briefly burning his fingers. ‘Look, I’m sorry they died. It was a tragic business.’ His closing words were spoken without emphasis, in the tone he had used one day as a ten-year-old when he had come in from the garden and told me that his pet turtle had died. I knew that he was now telling the truth. ‘They’re taking you back to Malaga tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll visit you there as soon as I can.’ ‘It’s always good to see you, Charles.’ He managed to clasp my hand before the policeman stepped forward. ‘You looked after me when Mother died and in a way you’re still looking after me. How long are you staying?’ ‘A week. I should be in Helsinki for some TV documentary. But I’ll be back.’ ‘Always roaming the world. All that endless travelling, all those departure lounges. Do you ever actually arrive anywhere?’ ‘It’s hard to tell – sometimes I think I’ve made jet-lag into a new philosophy. It’s the nearest we can get to penitence.’ ‘And what about your book on the great brothels of the world? Have you started it yet?’ ‘I’m still doing the research.’ ‘I remember you talking about that at school. You used to say your only interests in life were opium and brothels. Pure Graham Greene, but there was always something heroic there. Do you smoke a few pipes?’ ‘Now and then.’ ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell Father. How is the old chap?’ ‘We’ve moved him to a smaller nursing home. He doesn’t recognize me now. When you get out of here you must see him. I think he’d remember you.’ ‘I never liked him, you know.’ ‘He’s a child, Frank. He’s forgotten everything. All he does is dribble and doze.’ Frank leaned back, smiling at the ceiling as his memories played across the grey distemper. ‘We used to steal – do you remember? Strange that – it all started in Riyadh when Mother fell ill. I was snatching anything I could lay my hands on. You joined in to make me feel better.’ ‘Frank, it was a phase. Everyone understood.’ ‘Except Father. He couldn’t cope when Mother lost control. He started that weird affair with his middle-aged secretary.’ ‘The poor man was desperate.’ ‘He blamed you for my stealing. He’d find my pockets full of candy I’d pinched from the Riyadh Hilton and then accuse you.’ ‘I was older. He thought I could have stopped you. He knew I envied you.’ ‘Mother was drinking herself to death and no one was doing anything about it. Stealing was the only way I could make sense of how guilty I felt. Then she started those long walks in the middle of the night and you’d go with her. Where exactly? I always wondered.’ ‘Nowhere. We just walked around the tennis court. Rather like my life now.’ ‘Probably gave you a taste for it. That’s why you’re nervous of putting down roots. You know, Estrella de Mar is as close to Saudi as you can get. Maybe that’s why I came here He stared bleakly at the table, for the moment depressed by all these memories. Ignoring the policeman, I reached across the table and held his shoulders, trying to calm the trembling collarbones. He met my eyes, glad to see me, his smile stripped of irony. ‘Frank …?’ ‘It’s all right.’ He sat up, brightening himself. ‘How is Esther, by the way? I should have asked.’ ‘She’s fine. We split up three months ago.’ ‘I’m sorry. I always liked her. Rather high-minded in an unusual way. She once asked me a lot of strange questions about pornography. Nothing to do with you.’ ‘She took up gliding last summer, spent her weekends soaring over the South Downs. A sign, I guess, that she wanted to leave me. Now she and her women friends fly to competitions in Australia and New Mexico. I think of her up there, alone with all that silence.’ ‘You’ll meet someone else.’ ‘Maybe …’ The policeman opened the door and stood with his back to us, calling across the corridor to an officer sitting at a desk. I leaned over the table, speaking quickly. ‘Frank, listen. If Danvila can get you out on bail there’s a chance I can arrange something.’ ‘What exactly? Charles?’ ‘I’m thinking of Gibraltar …’ The policeman had resumed his watch over us. ‘You know the special skills there. This whole business is preposterous. It’s obvious you didn’t kill the Hollingers.’ ‘That’s not quite true.’ Frank drew away from me, the defensive smile on his lips again. ‘It’s hard to believe, but I am guilty.’ ‘Don’t talk like that!’ Impatient with him, I knocked his cigarettes to the floor, where they lay beside the policeman’s feet. ‘Say nothing to Danvila about the Gibraltar thing. Once we get you back to England you’ll be able to clear yourself.’ ‘Charles … I can only clear myself here.’ ‘But at least you’ll be out of jail and safe somewhere.’ ‘Somewhere with no extradition treaty for murder?’ Frank stood up and pushed his chair against the table. ‘You’ll have to take me with you on your trips. We’ll travel the world together. I’d like that …’ The policeman waited for me to leave, carrying my chair to the wall. Frank embraced me and stood back, still smiling his quirky smile. He picked up his cigarettes and nodded to me. ‘Believe me, Charles, I belong here.’ 3 The Tennis Machine (#ulink_f557f86b-129d-58f9-84be-826158628b3b) BUT FRANK DID NOT belong there. As I left the driveway of the Los Monteros Hotel, joining the coast road to Malaga, I drummed the steering wheel so fiercely that I drew blood from a thumbnail. Neon signs lined the verge, advertising the beach bars, fish restaurants and nightclubs under the pine trees, a barrage of signals that almost drowned the shrill tocsin sounding from the magistrates’ court in Marbella. Frank was innocent, as virtually everyone involved in the murder investigation accepted. His plea of guilty was a charade, part of some bizarre game he was playing against himself, in which even the police were reluctant to join. They had held Frank for a week before bringing their charges, a sure sign that they were suspicious of the confession, as Inspector Cabrera revealed after my meeting with Frank. If Se?or Danvila was the old Spain – measured, courtly and reflective – Cabrera was the new. A product of the Madrid police academy, he seemed more like a young college professor than a detective, a hundred seminars on the psychology of crime still fresh in his mind. At ease with himself in his business suit, he contrived to be tough and likeable, without ever lowering his guard. He welcomed me to his office and then came straight to the point. He asked me about Frank’s childhood, and whether he had shown an overlit imagination as a boy. ‘Perhaps a special talent for fantasy? Often a troubled childhood can lead to the creation of imaginary worlds. Was your brother a lonely child, Mr Prentice, left by himself while you played with the older boys?’ ‘No, he was never lonely. In fact, he had more friends than I did. He was always good at games, very practical and down-to-earth. I was the one with the imagination.’ ‘A useful gift for a travel writer,’ Cabrera commented as he flicked through my passport. ‘Perhaps as a boy your brother displayed a strain of would-be sainthood, taking the blame for you and his friends?’ ‘No, there was nothing saintly about him, not remotely. When he played tennis he was fast on his feet and always wanted to win.’ Sensing that Cabrera was more thoughtful than most of the policemen I had met, I decided to speak my mind. ‘Inspector, can we be open with each other? Frank is innocent, you and I both know that he never committed these murders. I’ve no idea why he confessed, but he must be under some secret pressure. Or be covering up for someone. If we don’t find the truth the Spanish courts will be responsible for a tragic miscarriage of justice.’ Cabrera watched me, waiting silently for my moral indignation to disperse with the rising smoke of his cigarette. He waved one hand, clearing the air between us. ‘Mr Prentice, the Spanish judges, like their English colleagues, are not concerned with truth – they leave that to a far higher court. They deal with the balance of probabilities on the basis of available evidence. The case will be investigated most carefully, and in due course your brother will be brought to trial. All you can do is wait for the verdict.’ ‘Inspector …’ I made an effort to restrain myself. ‘Frank may have pleaded guilty, but that doesn’t mean he actually committed these appalling crimes. This whole thing is a farce, of a very sinister kind.’ ‘Mr Prentice …’ Cabrera stood up and moved away from his desk, gesturing at the wall as if outlining a proposition on a blackboard before a slow-witted class. ‘Let me remind you that five people were burned to death, killed by the most cruel means. Your brother insists he is responsible. Some, like yourself and the English newspapers, think that he insists too loudly, and must therefore be innocent. In fact, his plea of guilty may be a clever device, an attempt to unfoot us all, like a …’ ‘Drop-shot at the net?’ ‘Exactly. A clever stratagem. At first, I also had certain doubts, but I have to tell you that I’m now inclined to think of your brother and guilt in the same context.’ Cabrera gazed wanly at my passport photograph, as if trying to read some guilt of my own into the garish photo-booth snapshot. ‘Meanwhile, the investigation proceeds. You have been more helpful than you know.’ After leaving the magistrates’ court Se?or Danvila and I walked down the hill towards the old town. This small enclave behind the beachfront hotels was a lavishly restored theme village with mock-Andalucian streets, antique shops and caf? tables set out under the orange trees. Surrounded by a stage set, we silently sipped our iced coffees and watched the proprietor scatter a kettle of boiling water over the feral cats that plagued his customers. This scalding douche, another stroke of cruel injustice, promptly set me off again. Se?or Danvila heard me out, nodding mournfully at the oranges above my head as I repeated my arguments. I sensed that he wanted to take my hand, concerned as much for me as he was for Frank, aware that my brother’s plea of guilty also involved me in some obscure way. He agreed, almost casually, that Frank was innocent, as the police’s delay in charging him tacitly admitted. ‘But now the momentum for conviction will increase,’ he warned me. ‘The courts and police have good reason not to challenge a guilty plea – it saves them work.’ ‘Even though they know they have the wrong man?’ Se?or Danvila raised his eyes to the sky. ‘They may know it now, but in three or four months, when your brother comes to trial? Self-admitted guilt is a concept they find very easy to live with. Files can be closed, men reassigned. I extend my sympathies to you, Mr Prentice.’ ‘But Frank may go to prison for the next twenty years. Surely the police will go on looking for the real culprit?’ ‘What could they find? Remember, the conviction of a British expatriate avoids the possibility of a Spaniard being accused. Tourism is vital for Andalucia – this is one of Spain’s poorest regions. Inward investors are less concerned by crimes among tourists.’ I pushed away my coffee glass. ‘Frank is still your client, Se?or Danvila. Who did kill those five people? We know Frank wasn’t responsible. Someone must have started the fire.’ But Danvila made no reply. With his gentle hands he broke his tapas and threw the pieces to the waiting cats. If not Frank, then who? Given that the police had ended their-investigation, it fell to me to recruit a more aggressive Spanish lawyer than the depressed and ineffective Danvila, and perhaps hire a firm of British private detectives to root out the truth. I drove along the coast road to Malaga, past the white-walled retirement complexes marooned like icebergs among the golf courses, and reminded myself that I knew almost nothing about Estrella de Mar, the resort where the deaths had occurred. Frank had sent me a series of postcards from the Club, which portrayed a familiar world of squash courts, jacuzzis and plunge-pools, but I had only the haziest notions of day-to-day life among the British who had settled the coast. Five people had died in the catastrophic fire that had gutted the Hollinger house. The fierce blaze had erupted without warning about seven o’clock in the evening of 15 June, by coincidence the Queen’s official birthday. Clutching at straws, I remembered the disagreeable Guardia Civil at Gibraltar and speculated that the fire had been started by a deranged Spanish policeman protesting at Britain’s occupation of the Rock. I imagined a burning taper hurled over the high walls on to the tinder-dry roof of the villa … But in fact the fire had been ignited by an arsonist who had entered the mansion and begun his murderous work on the staircase. Three empty bottles containing residues of ether and gasoline were found in the kitchen. A fourth, half-empty, was in my brother’s hands while he waited to surrender to the police. A fifth, filled to the brim and plugged with one of Frank’s tennis club ties, lay on the rear seat of his car in a side-street a hundred yards from the house. The Hollingers’ mansion, Cabrera told me, was one of the oldest properties at Estrella de Mar, its timbers and roof joists dried like biscuit by a hundred summers. I thought of the elderly couple who had retreated from London to the peace of this retirement coast. It was hard to imagine anyone finding the energy, let alone the necessary malice, to bring about their deaths. Steeped in sun and sundowners, wandering the golf greens by day and dozing in front of their satellite television in the evening, the residents of the Costa del Sol lived in an eventless world. As I neared Estrella de Mar the residential complexes stood shoulder to shoulder along the beach. The future had come ashore here, lying down to rest among the pines. The white-walled pueblos reminded me of my visit to Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s outpost of the day after tomorrow in the Arizona desert. The cubist apartments and terraced houses resembled Arcosanti’s, their architecture dedicated to the abolition of time, as befitted the ageing population of the retirement havens and an even wider world waiting to be old. Searching for the turn-off to Estrella de Mar, I left the Malaga highway and found myself in a maze of slip-roads that fed the pueblos. Trying to orientate myself, I pulled into the forecourt of a filling-station. While a young Frenchwoman topped up my tank I strolled past the supermarket that shared the forecourt, where elderly women in fluffy towelling suits drifted like clouds along the lines of ice-cold merchandise. I climbed a pathway of blue tiles to a grass knoll and looked down on an endless terrain of picture windows, patios and miniature pools. Together they had a curiously calming effect, as if these residential compounds – British, Dutch and German – were a series of psychological pens that soothed and domesticated these ?migr? populations. I sensed that the Costa del Sol, like the retirement coasts of Florida, the Caribbean and the Hawaiian islands, had nothing to do with travel or recreation, but formed a special kind of willed Umbo. Although seemingly deserted, the pueblos contained more residents than I first assumed. A middle-aged couple sat on a balcony thirty feet from me, the woman holding an unread book in her hands as her husband stared at the surface of the swimming pool, whose reflection dressed the walls of a nearby apartment house with bands of gold light. Almost invisible at first glance, people sat on their terraces and patios, gazing at an unseen horizon like figures in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Already thinking of a travel article, I noted the features of this silent world: the memory-erasing white architecture; the enforced leisure that fossilized the nervous system; the almost Africanized aspect, but a North Africa invented by someone who had never visited the Maghreb; the apparent absence of any social structure; the timelessness of a world beyond boredom, with no past, no future and a diminishing present. Perhaps this was what a leisure-dominated future would resemble? Nothing could ever happen in this affectless realm, where entropic drift calmed the surfaces of a thousand swimming pools. I returned to my car, reassured by the distant sounds of the coastal highway. Following the Frenchwoman’s instructions, I found my way back to the Malaga signpost and rejoined the motorway, which soon skirted an ochre beach and revealed a handsome peninsula of iron-rich rock. This was Estrella de Mar, as generously wooded and landscaped as Cap d’Antibes. There was a harbour lined with bars and restaurants, a crescent of imported white sand, and a marina filled with racing yachts and cruisers. Comfortable villas stood behind the palms and eucalyptus trees, and above them was the liner-like prow of the Club Nautico, topped by its white satellite dish. Then, as the motorway turned through the coastal pines, I saw the gutted eminence of the Hollinger mansion on its hill above the town, the charred roofing timbers like the remains of a funeral pyre on a Central American mesa. The smoke and intense heat had blackened the walls, as if this doomed house had tried to camouflage itself against the night to come. Traffic overtook me, speeding towards the hotel towers of Fuengirola. I turned off on to the Estrella de Mar slip-road and entered a narrow gorge cut through the porphyry rock of the headland. Within four hundred yards I reached the wooded neck of the peninsula, where the first villas stood behind their lacquered gates. Purpose-built in the 1970s by a consortium of Anglo-Dutch developers, Estrella de Mar was a residential retreat for the professional classes of northern Europe. The resort had turned its back on mass tourism, and there were none of the skyscraper blocks that rose from the water’s edge at Benalmadena and Torremolinos. The old town by the harbour had been pleasantly bijouized, the fishermen’s cottages converted to wine bars and antique shops Taking the road that led to the Club Nautico, I passed an elegant tea salon, a bureau de change decorated with Tudor half-timbering, and a boutique whose demure window displayed a solitary but exquisite designer gown. I waited as a van emblazoned with trompe-l’?il traffic scenes reversed into the courtyard of a sculpture studio. A strong-shouldered woman with Germanic features, blonde hair pinned behind her neck, supervised two teenaged boys as they began to unload butts of modelling clay. Within the open studio half a dozen artists worked at their sculpture tables, smocks protecting their beach clothes. A handsome Spanish youth, heavy genitals scarcely contained by his posing pouch, stood with sullen grace on a podium as the sculptors – every one an amateur, judging by their earnest manner – massaged their clay into a likeness of his thighs and torso. Their burly instructor, a ponytailed Vulcan at his forge, moved among them, tweaking a navel with a stubby forefinger or smoothing a furrowed brow. Estrella de Mar, I soon discovered, had a thriving arts community. In the narrow streets above the harbour a parade of commercial galleries showed the latest work of the resort’s painters and designers. A nearby arts and crafts centre displayed a selection of modernist costume jewellery, ceramic wares and textiles. The local artists – all, I assumed from their parked Mercedes and Range Rovers, residents of nearby villas – sat behind their trestle tables like Saturday vendors in the Portobello Road, their confident voices ringing with the accents of Holland Park and the Sixteenth Arrondissement. Everyone in the town seemed alert and confident. Customers crowded the bookshops and music stores, or scrutinized the racks of foreign newspapers outside the tabacs. An adolescent girl in a white bikini crossed the street at the traffic lights, a violin case in one hand, a hamburger in the other. Estrella de Mar, I decided, possessed far more attractions than I had guessed when Frank first arrived to manage the Club Nautico. The monoculture of sun and sangria that becalmed the pueblo residents had no place in this vibrant little enclave, which seemed to combine the best features of Bel Air and the Left Bank. Opposite the gates of the Club Nautico was an open-air cinema with an amphitheatre carved from the hillside. A placard by the ticket kiosk advertised a season of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy films, the very height of intellectual chic of a certain kind. The Club Nautico was quiet and cool, its afternoon trade yet to appear. Sprinklers rotated over the crisp lawns, and beside the deserted restaurant terrace the surface of the pool was smooth enough to walk upon. A single player was practising on one of the hard courts with a tennis machine, and the clunk-clunk of the bounding balls was the only sound to disturb the air. I crossed the terrace and entered the bar at the rear of the restaurant. A blond steward with a babyish face and a sail-rigger’s shoulders was folding paper napkins into miniature yachts, origami decorations for the peanut saucers. ‘Are you a guest, sir?’ He grinned cheerfully. ‘I’m afraid the club is closed to non-members.’ ‘I’m not a guest – or a non-member, whatever strange form of life that is.’ I sat down on a stool and helped myself to a few nuts. ‘I’m Frank Prentice’s brother. I think he was the manager here.’ ‘Of course … Mr Prentice.’ He hesitated, as if faced with an apparition, and then eagerly shook my hand. ‘Sonny Gardner – I crew on Frank’s thirty-footer. By the way, he still is the manager.’ ‘Good. He’ll be glad to hear that.’ ‘How is Frank? We’re all thinking about him.’ ‘He’s fine. I met him yesterday. We had a long and interesting talk together.’ ‘Everyone hopes you can help Frank. The Club Nautico needs him.’ ‘That’s fighting talk. Now, I’d like to see his apartment. There are personal things I want to collect for him. I take it someone has the keys?’ ‘You’ll have to speak to Mr Hennessy, the club treasurer. He’ll be back in half an hour. I know he wants to help Frank. We’re all doing everything we can.’ I watched him delicately fold the paper yachts with his calloused hands. His voice had sounded sincere but curiously distant, lines from a previous week’s play spoken by a distracted actor. Turning on my stool, I gazed across the swimming pool. In its glassy surface I could see the reflection of the Hollinger house, a sunken fire-ship that seemed to rest on the tiled floor. ‘You had a grandstand view,’ I commented. ‘It must have been quite a spectacle.’ ‘View, Mr Prentice?’ Lines creased Sonny Gardner’s baby-smooth forehead. ‘What of, sir?’ ‘The fire at the big house. Did you watch it from here?’ ‘No one did. The club was closed.’ ‘On the Queen’s birthday? I would have thought you’d be open all night.’ I reached out and took the paper yacht from his fingers, examining its intricate folds. ‘One thing puzzles me – I was at the magistrates’ court in Marbella yesterday. No one from Estrella de Mar turned up. None of Frank’s friends, no character witnesses, no one who worked for him. Just an elderly Spanish lawyer who’s given up hope.’ ‘Mr Prentice …’ Gardner tried to fold the paper triangle when I returned it to him, then crushed it between his hands. ‘Frank didn’t expect us there. In fact, he told Mr Hennessy that he wanted us to stay away. Besides, he pleaded guilty.’ ‘But you don’t believe that?’ ‘Nobody does. But … a guilty plea. It’s hard to argue with.’ ‘Too true. Then tell me – if Frank didn’t set fire to the Hollinger house, who did?’ ‘Who knows?’ Gardner glanced over my shoulder, eager for Hennessy to appear. ‘Maybe nobody did.’ ‘That’s hard to believe. It was a clear case of arson.’ I waited for Gardner to reply, but he merely smiled at me, the reassuring smile of professional sympathy reserved for the bereaved at funeral chapels. He seemed unaware that his fingers were no longer folding the paper napkins into his miniature flotilla, but had started to unwrap and smooth the triangular sails. As I walked away he leaned over his little fleet like an infant Cyclops, and called out to me in a hopeful voice: ‘Mr Prentice … perhaps it was spontaneous combustion?’ Rainbows rode the rotating sprinklers, slipping in and out of the spray like wraiths leaping a skipping-rope. I strolled around the pool, whose untidy water swilled below the diving board, disturbed by a long-legged young woman swimming a crisply efficient backstroke. I sat down at a pool-side table, admiring her graceful arms as they cleft the surface. Her wide hips rolled snugly in the water, and she might have been lying in the lap of a trusted lover. When she passed me I noticed a crescent-shaped bruise that ran from her left cheekbone to the bridge of her strong nose, and the apparently swollen gums of her upper jaw. Seeing me, she swiftly turned into a fast crawl, hands ransacking the waves, a pigtail of long black hair following her like a faithful water-snake. She hoisted herself up the ladder at the shallow end, snatched a towelling robe from a nearby chair and set off without a backward glance for the changing rooms. The clunk-clunk of the tennis machine had resumed, sounding across the empty courts. A fair-skinned man in a turquoise Club Nautico tracksuit was playing against the machine as it fired balls across the net, barrel set to swing at random. Despite the screens of wire netting I could see that an intense duel was taking place between player and machine. The man leapt across the court on his long legs, feet raking the clay as he raced to return every ball. Cross-court volley, lob and backhand flip followed one another at breakneck pace. A misfire brought him skidding to the net to cut a drop-shot into the tramlines, but he ran back to reach a baseline serve with his outstretched racket. Watching him, I realized that he was urging on the machine, willing it to beat him, beaming with pleasure when an ace knocked the racket from his hand. Yet I felt that the real duel taking place was not between man and machine, but between rival factions within his own head. He seemed to be provoking himself, testing his own temper, curious to know how he would respond. Even when exhausted, he drove himself on, as if encouraging a less skilful partner. Once, surprised by his own speed and strength, he waited for the next ball with a dazed schoolboy grin. Although in his late twenties, he had the pale hair and youthful looks of a subaltern barely out of his teens. Deciding to introduce myself, I made my way through the courts. A skied ball sailed over my head and bounced across the empty clay. I heard him slam heavily into the side netting and, a moment later, the sound of a racket slashed against a metal post. He was leaving when I reached the practice court, stepping through the wire door by the opposite baseline. Surrounded by dozens of balls, the machine stood on its rubber wheels, timer ticking, the last three balls in its hopper. I crossed the court and stood among the skidmarks, the choreography of a violent duel, of which the machine had been little more than a spectator. Tossed aside, the broken racket lay on a linesman’s chair, its shaft a mass of splinters. I held the racket in my hand, and heard the whipcrack of the tennis machine. A heavy top-spin serve swung across the net and bit the clay a few inches inside the baseline, swerving past my legs to rebound against the fencing. A second ball, faster than the first, clipped the top of the net and stung the ground at my feet. The last ball bounced high at my chest. I flailed at it with the damaged racket and sent it over the netting into the next court. Beyond the tennis machine the wire door opened briefly. A raised hand saluted me, and above the towel around the player’s neck I saw a wry but cheerful grin. Then he strode away, slapping the netting with the vizor of his cap. Nursing the torn skin on my hand, I left the court and strode back to the club, in time to see him disappear through the rainbows that swayed across the lawn. Perhaps the tennis machine had malfunctioned, but I guessed that he had reset the mechanism when he saw me approach, intrigued to know how I would react to the vicious serves. Already I was thinking of the testing games that this high-strung man would almost certainly have played with Frank, and of the luckless machine now summoned to take my brother’s place. 4 An Incident in the Car Park (#ulink_1fb5b91a-1d27-510a-97e1-18a5ffb5b179) ESTRELLA DE MAR was coming out to play. From the balcony of Frank’s apartment, three floors above the swimming pool, I watched the members of the Club Nautico take their places in the sun. Tennis players swung their rackets as they set off for the courts, warming up for three hard-fought sets. Sunbathers loosened the tops of their swimsuits and oiled themselves beside the pool, pressing their lip-gloss to the icy, salty rims of the day’s first margaritas. An open-cast gold mine of jewellery lay among the burnished breasts. The hubbub of gossip seemed to dent the surface of the pool, and indiscretion ruled as the members happily debriefed each other on the silky misdemeanours of the night. To David Hennessy, who hovered behind me among the clutter of Frank’s possessions, I commented: ‘What handsome women … the jeunesse dor?e of the Club Nautico. Here that means anyone under sixty.’ ‘Absolutely, dear chap. Come to Estrella de Mar and throw away the calendar.’ He joined me at the rail, sighing audibly. ‘Aren’t they a magnificent sight? Never fail to make the balls tingle.’ ‘Sad, though, in a way. While they’re showing their nipples to the waiters their host is sitting in a cell in Zarzuella jail.’ Hennessy laid a feather-light hand on my shoulder. ‘Dear boy, I know. But Frank would be happy to see them here. He created the Club Nautico – it owes everything to him. Believe me, we’ve all been hoisting our pi?a coladas to him.’ I waited for Hennessy to remove his hand, so soft against my shirt that it might have belonged to the gentlest of importuning panders. Bland and sleek, with an openly ingratiating smile, he had cultivated a pleasant but vague manner that concealed, I suspected, a sophisticated kind of shiftiness. His eyes were always elsewhere when I tried to catch them. If the names in his Lloyd’s syndicate had prospered, even that unlikely outcome would have had an ulterior motive. I was curious why this fastidious man had chosen the Costa del Sol, and found myself thinking of extradition treaties or, more exactly, their absence. ‘I’m glad Frank was happy here. Estrella de Mar is the prettiest spot that I’ve seen on the coast. Still, I would have thought Palm Beach or Nassau more your style.’ Hennessy waved to a woman sunbathing in a pool-side lounger. ‘Yes, friends at home used to say that to me. To be honest, I agreed with them when I first came here. But things have changed. This place isn’t like anywhere else, you know. There’s a very special atmosphere. Estrella de Mar is a real community. At times I think it’s almost too lively.’ ‘Unlike the retirement complexes along the coast – Calahonda and so on?’ ‘Absolutely. The people of the pueblos …’ Hennessy averted his gaze from the poisoned coast. ‘Brain-death disguised as a hundred miles of white cement. Estrella de Mar is more like Chelsea or Greenwich Village in the 1960s. There are theatre and film clubs, a choral society, cordon bleu classes. Sometimes I dream of pure idleness, but not a hope. Stand still for a moment and you find yourself roped into a revival of Waiting for Godot.’ ‘I’m impressed. But what’s the secret?’ ‘Let’s say …’ Hennessy checked himself, and let his smile drift across the air. ‘It’s something rather elusive. You have to find it for yourself. If you have time, do look around. I’m surprised you’ve never visited us before.’ ‘I should have done. But those tower blocks at Torremolinos throw long shadows. Without being snobbish, I assumed it was fish and chips, bingo and cheap sun-oil, all floating on a lake of lager. Not the sort of thing people want to read about in The New Yorker.’ ‘I dare say. Perhaps you’ll write a friendly article about us?’ Hennessy was watching me in his affable way, but I sensed that a warning signal had sounded inside his head. He strolled into Frank’s sitting room, shaking his head over the books pulled from the shelves during the police searches, as if enough rummaging had already taken place at Estrella de Mar. ‘A friendly article?’ I stepped over the scattered seat cushions. ‘Perhaps … when Frank comes out. I need time to get my bearings.’ ‘Very sensible. You can’t guess what you might find. Now, I’ll drive you to the Hollingers’. I know you want to see the house. Be warned, though, you’ll need to keep a strong grip on yourself.’ Hennessy waited as I made a last tour of the apartment. In Frank’s bedroom the mattress stood against the wall, its seams slit by the police investigators searching for the smallest evidence that might corroborate his confession. Suits, shirts and sportswear lay strewn across the floor, and a lace shawl that had belonged to our mother hung over the dressing-table mirror. In the bathroom the hand-basin was filled with shaving gear, aerosols and vitamin packs swept from the shelves of the medicine cabinet. The bathtub was littered with broken glass, through which leaked a stream of blue shower gel. On the sitting-room mantelpiece I recognized a childhood photograph of Frank and myself in Riyadh, standing with Mother outside our house in the residential compound. Frank’s sly smile, and my owlish seriousness as the older brother, contrasted with our mother’s troubled gaze as she strained to be cheerful for Father’s camera. Curiously, the background of white villas, palms and apartment houses reminded me of Estrella de Mar. Beside the row of tennis trophies was another framed photograph, taken by a professional cameraman in the dining room of the Club Nautico. Relaxed and pleasantly high, Frank was holding court in his white tuxedo among a group of his favourite members, the spirited blondes with deep d?colletages and tolerant husbands. Sitting beside Frank, hands clasped behind his head, was the fair-haired man I had seen on the tennis court. Frozen by the camera lens, he had the look of an intellectual athlete, his strong body offset by his fine-tuned features and sensitive gaze. He lounged back in his shirtsleeves, dinner jacket slung over a nearby chair, pleased with the happy scene around him but in some way above all this unthinking revelry. He struck me, as he must have done most people, as likeable but peculiarly driven. ‘Your brother in jollier times,’ Hennessy pointed to Frank. ‘One of the theatre club dinners. Though photographs can be misleading – that was taken a week before the Hollinger fire.’ ‘And who’s the brooding chap beside him? The club’s leading Hamlet?’ ‘Far from it. Bobby Crawford, our tennis professional, though he’s far more than that, I may say. You ought to meet him.’ ‘I did this afternoon.’ I showed Hennessy the sticking-plaster which the concierge had pressed against my bleeding palm. ‘I still have a piece of his tennis racket in my hand. I’m surprised he plays with a wooden one.’ ‘It slows down his game.’ Hennessy seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘How extraordinary. Were you on the courts with him? Bobby does play rather fiercely.’ ‘Not with me. Though he was up against someone he couldn’t quite beat.’ ‘Really? He’s awfully good. Remarkable fellow in all sorts of ways. He’s actually our entertainments officer, and the absolute life and soul of the Club Nautico. It was a brilliant coup of Frank’s to bring him here – young Crawford’s totally transformed the place. To be honest, before he came the club was pretty well dead. Like Estrella de Mar in many ways – we were turning into another dozy pueblo. Bobby threw himself into everything: fencing, drama, squash. He opened the disco downstairs, and he and Frank set up the Admiral Drake regatta. Forty years ago he’d have been running the Festival of Britain.’ ‘Perhaps he still is – he’s certainly preoccupied with something. Yet he looks so young.’ ‘Ex-army man. The best junior officers stay young for ever. Strange about that splinter of yours …’ I was still trying to prise the splinter from my hand as I stared at the charred timbers of the Hollinger house. While Hennessy spoke to the Spanish chauffeur on the intercom I sat in the passenger seat beside him, glad that the windshield and the wrought-iron gates lay between me and the gutted mansion. The heat of the conflagration still seemed to radiate from the bruised hulk, which sat atop its hill like an ark put to the torch by a latter-day Noah. The roof joists jutted from the upper walls, a death-ship’s exposed ribs topped by the masts of the chimneys. Scorched awnings hung from the windows like the shreds of sails, black flags flapping a sinister semaphore. ‘Right – Miguel will let us in. He looks after the place, or what’s left of it. The housekeeper and her husband have gone. They simply couldn’t cope.’ Hennessy waited for the gates to open. ‘It’s quite a spectacle, I must say …’ ‘What about the chauffeur – do I tell him that I’m Frank’s brother? He may …’ ‘No. He liked Frank, sometimes they went scuba-diving together. He was very upset when Frank pleaded guilty. As we all were, needless to say.’ We entered the gates and rolled on to the thick gravel. The drive rose past a series of terraced gardens filled with miniature cycads, bougainvillea and frangipani. Sprinkler hoses ran across the hillside like the vessels of a dead blood system. Every leaf and flower was covered with white ash that bathed the derelict property in an almost sepulchral light. Footprints marked the ashy surface of the tennis court, as if a solitary player had waited after a brief snowfall for an absent opponent. A marble terrace ran along the seaward frontage of the house, scattered with roof-tiles and charred sections of wooden gabling. Potted plants still bloomed among the overturned chairs and trestle tables. A large rectangular swimming pool sat like an ornamental reservoir beside the terrace, constructed in the 1920s, so Hennessy told me, to suit the tastes of the Andalucian tycoon who had bought the mansion. Marble pilasters supported the podium of the diving board, and each of the gargoyle spouts was a pair of carved stone hands that clasped an openmouthed fish. The filter system was silent, and the surface of the pool was covered with waterlogged timbers, floating wine bottles and paper cups, and a single empty ice-bucket. Hennessy parked the car under a canopy of eucalyptus trees whose upper branches had been burned to blackened brooms. A young Spaniard with a sombre face climbed the steps from the pool, gazing at the devastation around him as if seeing it for the first time. I expected him to approach us, but he remained thirty feet away, staring at me stonily. ‘Miguel, the Hollingers’ chauffeur,’ Hennessy murmured. ‘He lives in the flat below the pool. A little tact might be in order if you ask any questions. The police gave him a hell of a time.’ ‘Was he a suspect?’ ‘Who wasn’t? Poor chap, his whole world literally fell in on him.’ Hennessy took off his hat and fanned himself as he gazed at the house. He seemed impressed by the scale of the disaster but otherwise unmoved, like an insurance assessor surveying a burned-out factory. He pointed to the yellow police tapes that sealed the embossed oak doors. ‘Inspector Cabrera doesn’t want anyone sifting through the evidence, though God only knows what’s left. There’s a side door off the terrace we can look through. It’s too dangerous to go inside the place.’ I stepped over the shattered tiles and wine glasses at my feet. The intense heat had driven a jagged fissure through the stone walls, the scar of a lightning bolt that had condemned the property to the flames. Hennessy led the way towards a loose French door levered off its hinges by the firemen. Wind gusted across the terrace, and a cloud of white ash swirled around us like milled bone, restlessly hunting the air. Hennessy pushed back the door and beckoned me towards him, smiling in a thin way like a guide at a black museum. A high-ceilinged drawing room looked out over the sea on either side of the peninsula. In the dim light I found myself standing in a marine world, the silt-covered state-room of a sunken liner. The Empire furniture and brocaded curtains, the tapestries and Chinese carpets were the decor of a drowned realm, drenched by the water that had poured through the collapsed ceiling. The dining room lay beyond the interior doors, where an oak table carried a pile of laths and plaster and the crystal debris of a chandelier. I stepped from the parquet flooring on to the carpet, and found my shoes sinking as the water welled from the sodden fabric. Giving up, I returned to the terrace, where Hennessy was gazing at the sunlit peninsula. ‘It’s hard to believe one man started this fire,’ I told him. ‘Frank or anyone else. The place is completely gutted.’ ‘I agree.’ Hennessy glanced at his watch, already keen to leave. ‘Of course, this is a very old house. A single match would have set it going.’ The sounds of a tennis game echoed from a nearby court. A mile away I could make out the players at the Club Nautico, a glimmer of whites through the haze. ‘Where were the Hollingers found? I’m surprised they didn’t run on to the terrace when the fire started.’ ‘Sadly, they were upstairs at the time.’ Hennessy pointed to the blackened windows below the roof. ‘He was in the bathroom next to his study. She was in another of the bedrooms.’ ‘This was when? About seven o’clock in the evening? What were they doing there?’ ‘Who can say? He was probably working on his memoirs. She might have been dressing for dinner. I’m sure they tried to escape, but the intense blaze and the ether fumes must have driven them back.’ I sniffed at the damp air, trying to catch a scent of the hospital corridors of my childhood, when I had visited my mother in the American clinic at Riyadh. The air in the drawing room carried the mould-like odours of a herb garden after a rain shower. ‘Ether …? There’s something curious about that. Hospitals don’t use ether any more. Where was Frank supposed to have bought all this bottled ether?’ Hennessy had moved away, watching me from a distance as if he had realized for the first time that I was a murderer’s brother. Behind him Miguel stood among the overturned tables. Together they seemed like figures in a dream-play, trying to remind me of memories I could never recover. ‘Ether?’ Hennessy pondered this, moving aside a broken glass with one shoe. ‘Yes. I suppose it does have industrial uses. Isn’t it a good solvent? It must be available at specialist laboratories.’ ‘But why not use pure petrol? Or lighter fuel for that matter? No one would ever trace the stuff. I take it Cabrera tracked down the lab that’s supposed to have sold this ether to Frank?’ ‘Perhaps, but I somehow doubt it. After all, your brother pleaded guilty.’ Hennessy searched for his car keys. ‘Charles, I think we ought to leave. You must find this a dreadful strain.’ ‘I’m fine. I’m glad you brought me here.’ I pressed my hands against the stone balustrade, trying to feel the heat of the fire. ‘Tell me about the others – the maid and the niece. There was a male secretary?’ ‘Roger Sansom, yes. Decent fellow, he’d been with them for years – almost a son.’ ‘Where were they found?’ ‘On the first floor. They were all in their bedrooms.’ ‘Isn’t that a little odd? The fire started on the ground floor. You’d expect them to climb out through the windows. It’s not that long a jump.’ ‘The windows would have been closed. The entire house was air-conditioned.’ Hennessy tried to steer me across the terrace, a curator at closing time ushering a last visitor to the exit. ‘We’re all concerned for Frank, and absolutely mystified by the whole tragic business. But try to use a little imagination.’ ‘I’m probably using too much … I assume they were all identified?’ ‘With some difficulty. Dental records, I suppose, though I don’t think either of the Hollingers had any teeth. Perhaps there are clues in the jawbone.’ ‘What were the Hollingers like? They were both in their seventies?’ ‘He was seventy-five. She was quite a bit younger. Late sixties, I imagine.’ Hennessy smiled to himself, as if fondly remembering a choice wine. ‘Good-looking woman, in an actressy way, though a little too ladylike for me.’ ‘And they came here twenty years ago? Estrella de Mar must have been very different then.’ ‘There was nothing to see, just bare hillsides and a few old vines. A collection of fishermen’s shacks and a small bar. Hollinger bought the house from a Spanish property developer he worked with. Believe me, it was a beautiful place.’ ‘And I can imagine how the Hollingers felt as all this cement crawled up the hill towards them. Were they popular here? Hollinger was rich enough to put a spoke into a lot of wheels.’ ‘They were fairly popular. We didn’t see too much of them at the club, though Hollinger was a major investor. I suspect they assumed it was going to be for their exclusive use.’ ‘But then the gold medallions started to arrive?’ ‘I don’t think they worried about gold medallions. Gold was one of Hollinger’s favourite colours. Estrella de Mar had begun to change. He and Alice were more put off by the art galleries and the Tom Stoppard revivals. They kept to themselves. In fact, I believe he was trying to sell his interest in the club.’ Hennessy reluctantly followed me along the terrace. A narrow balcony circled the house and led to a stone staircase that climbed the hillside fifty feet away. A grove of lemon trees had once filled the bedroom windows with their oily scent, but the fire-storm had driven through them, and now only the charred stumps rose from the ground like a forest of black umbrellas. ‘Good God, there’s a fire escape …’ I pointed to the cast-iron steps that descended from a doorway on the first floor. The massive structure had been warped by the heat, but still clung to the stone walls. ‘Why didn’t they use this? They would have been safe in seconds.’ Hennessy removed his hat in a gesture of respect for the victims. He stood with his head bowed before speaking. ‘Charles, they never left their bedrooms. The fire was too intense. The whole house was a furnace.’ ‘I can see that. Your local fire brigade didn’t even begin to get it under control. Who alerted them, by the way?’ Hennessy seemed hardly to have heard me. He turned his back on the house, and gazed at the sea. I sensed that he was telling me only what he knew I would learn elsewhere. ‘As a matter of fact, the alarm was raised by a passing motorist. No one called the fire services from here.’ ‘And the police?’ ‘They didn’t arrive until an hour later. You have to understand that the Spanish police leave us very much to ourselves. Few crimes are ever reported in Estrella de Mar. We have our own security patrols and they keep an eye on things.’ ‘The police and fire services were called only later …’ I repeated this to myself, visualizing the arsonist making his escape across the deserted terrace and then climbing the outer wall as the flames roared through the great roof. ‘So, apart from the housekeeper and her husband there was no one here?’ ‘Not exactly.’ Hennessy replaced his hat, lowering the brim over his eyes. ‘As it happens, everyone was here.’ ‘Everyone? Do you mean the staff?’ ‘No, I mean …’ Hennessy gestured with his pale hands at the town below. ‘Le tout Estrella de Mar. It was the Queen’s birthday. The Hollingers always threw a party for the club members. It was their contribution to community life – a touch of noblesse oblige about it, I have to admit, but they were rather nice shows. Champagne and excellent canap?s …’ I cupped my hands and stared at the Club Nautico, visualizing the entire membership decamping to the Hollinger mansion for the loyal toast. ‘The fire took place on the night of the party … that was why the club had closed. How many people were actually here when it started?’ ‘Everyone. I think all the guests had arrived. I suppose there were about … two hundred of us.’ ‘Two hundred people?’ I walked back to the south face of the house, where the balcony overlooked the swimming pool and terrace. I imagined the trestle tables decked in white cloths, the ice-buckets gleaming in the evening lights, and the guests chattering beside the unruffled water. ‘There were all these people here, at least two hundred of them, and no one entered the house and tried to save the Hollingers?’ ‘Dear boy, the doors were locked.’ ‘At a party? I don’t get it. You could have broken in.’ ‘Security glass. The house was filled with paintings and objects d’art, not to mention Alice’s jewellery. In previous years there’d been pilfering and cigarette burns on the carpets.’ ‘Even so. Besides, what were the Hollingers doing indoors? Why weren’t they out here mingling with their guests?’ ‘The Hollingers weren’t the mingling type.’ Hennessy gestured patiently. ‘They’d greet a few old friends, but I don’t think they ever joined the other guests. It was all rather regal. They kept an eye on things from the first-floor veranda. Hollinger proposed the Queen’s toast from there, and Alice would wave and acknowledge the cheers.’ We had reached the swimming pool, where Miguel was raking the floating debris from the water at the shallow end. Piles of wet charcoal lay on the marble verge. The ice-bucket floated past us, an unravelled cigar inside it. ‘David, I can’t understand all this. The whole thing seems …’ I waited until Hennessy was forced to meet my eyes. ‘Two hundred people are standing by a swimming pool when a fire starts. There are ice-buckets, punchbowls, bottles of champagne and mineral water, enough to dowse a volcano. But no one seems to have moved a finger. That’s the eerie thing. No one called the police or fire brigade. What did you do – just stand here?’ Hennessy had begun to tire of me, his gaze fixed on his car. ‘What else was there to do? There was tremendous panic, people were falling into the pool and running off in all directions. No one had time to think of the police.’ ‘And what about Frank? Was he here?’ ‘Very much so. We stood together during the Queen’s toast. After that he started circulating, as he always does. I can’t be sure I saw him again.’ ‘But in the minutes before the fire started? Tell me, did anyone see Frank light the fire?’ ‘Of course not. It’s unthinkable.’ Hennessy turned to stare at me. ‘For heaven’s sake, old chap, Frank is your brother.’ ‘But he was found with a bottle of ether in his hands. Didn’t it strike you as a little odd?’ ‘That was three or four hours later, when the police arrived at the club. It may have been planted in his apartment, who knows?’ Hennessy patted my shoulders, as if reassuring a disappointed member of his Lloyd’s syndicate. ‘Look, Charles, give yourself time to take it all in. Talk to as many people as you want – they’ll all tell you the same story, appalling as it is. No one thinks Frank was responsible, but at the same time it’s not clear who else could have started the fire.’ I waited for him as he walked around the pool and spoke to Miguel. A few banknotes changed hands, which the Spaniard slipped into his pocket with a grimace of distaste. Rarely taking his eyes from me, he followed us on foot as we drove past the ash-covered tennis court. I sensed that he wanted to speak to me, but he operated the gate controls without a word, a faint tic jumping across his scarred cheek. ‘Unnerving fellow,’ I commented as we rolled away. ‘Tell me, was Bobby Crawford at the party? The tennis professional?’ For once Hennessy answered promptly. ‘No, he wasn’t. He stayed behind at the club, playing tennis with that machine of his. I don’t think he cared overmuch for the Hollingers. Nor they for him …’ Hennessy returned us to the Club Nautico, and left me with the keys to Frank’s apartment. When we parted at the door of his office he was clearly glad to be rid of me, and I guessed that I was already becoming a mild embarrassment to the club and its members. Yet he knew that Frank could not have suited the fire or taken even the smallest role in the conspiracy to kill the Hollingers. The confession, however preposterous, had stopped the clock, and no one seemed able to think beyond his guilty plea to the far larger question mark that presided over the gutted mansion. I spent the afternoon tidying Frank’s apartment. I replaced the books on the shelves, remade the bed and straightened the dented lampshades. The grooves in the sitting-room rugs indicated where the sofa, easy chairs and desk had stood before the police search. Pushing them back into place, I felt like a props man on a darkened stage, preparing the scene for the next day’s performance. The castors settled into their familiar ruts, but little else in Frank’s world fitted together. I hung his scattered shirts in the wardrobe, and carefully folded the antique lace shawl in which we had both been wrapped as babies. After our mother’s death Frank had retrieved the shawl from the bundle of clothes that Father had consigned to a Riyadh charity. The ancient fabric, inherited from his grandmother, was as grey and delicate as a folded cobweb. I sat at Frank’s desk, flicking through his cheque-book stubs and credit-card receipts, hoping for a pointer to his involvement with the Hollingers. The drawers were filled with a clutter of old wedding invitations, insurance renewal notices, holiday postcards from friends, French and English coins, and a health passport with its out-of-date tetanus and typhoid vaccinations, the trivia of everyday life that we shed like our skins. Surprisingly, Inspector Cabrera’s men had missed a small sachet of cocaine tucked into an envelope filled with foreign stamps that Frank had torn from his overseas mail and was evidently collecting for a colleague’s child. I fingered the plastic sachet, tempted to help myself to this forgotten cache, but I was too unsettled by the visit to the Hollinger house. In the centre drawer was an old photographic album that Mother had kept as a girl in Bognor Regis. Its chocolate-box coven and marbled pages with their art nouveau frames seemed as remote as the Charleston and the Hispano-Suiza. The black and white snaps showed an over-eager little girl trying hopelessly to build a pebble castle on a shingle beach, beaming shyly by her father’s side and pinning the tail on a donkey at a birthday party. The flat sunless world was an ominous start for a child so clearly straining to be happy, and scant preparation for her marriage to an ambitious young historian and Arabist. Prophetically, the collection came to a sudden end a year after her arrival at Riyadh, as if the blank pages said everything about her growing depression. After a quiet dinner in the deserted restaurant I fell asleep on the sofa, the album across my chest, and woke after midnight as a boisterous party spilled from the disco on to the terrace of the swimming pool. Two men in white dinner jackets were splashing across the pool, wine glasses raised to toast their wives, who were stripping to their underwear beside the diving board. A drunken young woman in a gold sheath dress tottered along the verge, snatched off her stiletto shoes and hurled them into the water. Frank’s absence had liberated his members, transforming the Club Nautico into an intriguing mix of casino and bordello. When I left the apartment to return to Los Monteros an amorous couple were testing the locked doors in the corridor. Almost all the staff had left for home, and the restaurant and bridge rooms were in darkness, but strobe lights from the disco veered across the entrance. Three young women stood on the steps, dressed like amateur whores in micro-skirts, fishnet tights and scarlet bustiers. I guessed that they were members of the club on the way to a costume party, and was tempted to offer them a lift, but they were busily checking a list of telephone numbers. The car park was unlit, and I blundered among the lines of vehicles, feeling for the door latch of the rented Renault. Sitting behind the wheel, I listened to the boom of the disco drumming at the night. In a Porsche parked nearby a large white dog was jumping across the seats, unsettled by the noise and eager to see its owner. I searched the shroud of the steering column for the ignition switch. When my eyes sharpened I realized that the dog was a man in a cream tuxedo, struggling with someone he had pinned against the passenger seat. In the brief pause between the disco numbers I heard a woman’s shout, little more than an exhausted gasp. Her hands reached to the roof above the man’s head and tore at the fabric. Twenty feet away from me a rape was taking place. I switched on the headlamps and sounded three long blasts on the horn. As I stepped on to the gravel the Porsche’s door sprang open, striking the vehicle beside it. The would-be rapist leapt from the car, the tuxedo almost stripped from his back by the frantic victim. He swerved away through the darkness, leaping between the Renault’s headlamps. I ran after him, but he raced across the knoll beside the gates, straightened the tuxedo with a careless shrug, and vanished into the night. The woman sat in the passenger seat of the Porsche, her bare feet protruding through the door, skirt around her waist. Her blonde hair gleamed with the attacker’s saliva, and her blurred lipstick gave her a child’s jamjar face. She pulled her torn underwear up her thighs and retched on to the gravel, then reached into the back seat and retrieved her shoes, brushing the torn roof liner from her face. A few steps away was the booth from which the parking attendant kept watch on his charges during the day and evening. I leaned across the counter and snapped down the master switch of the lighting system, flooding the car park with a harsh fluorescence. The woman frowned at the sudden glare, hid her eyes behind a silver purse and hobbled on a broken heel towards the entrance of the club, creased skirt over her ripped tights. ‘Wait!’ I shouted to her. ‘I’ll call the police for you …’ I was about to follow her when I noticed the row of parked cars that faced the Porsche across the access lane. Several of the front seats were occupied by the drivers and their passengers, all in evening dress, faces concealed by the lowered sun vizors. They had watched the rape attempt without intervening, like a gallery audience at an exclusive private view. ‘What are you people playing at?’ I shouted. ‘For God’s sake …’ I walked towards them, angry that they had failed to save the bruised woman, and drummed my bandaged fist on the windshields. But the drivers had started their engines. Following each other, they swerved past me towards the gates, the women shielding their eyes behind their hands. I returned to the club, trying to find the victim of the assault. The fancy-dress whores stood in the lobby, phone lists in hand, but turned towards me as I strode up the steps. ‘Where is she?’ I called to them. ‘She was damn nearly raped out there. Did you see her come in?’ The three gazed wide-eyed at each other, and then began to giggle together, minds slewing across some crazed amphetamine space. One of them touched my cheek, as if calming a child. I searched the women’s rest-room, kicking back the doors of the cubicles, and then blundered through the tables of the darkened restaurant, trying to catch the scent of heliotrope that the woman had left on the night air. At last I saw her beside the pool, dancing shoeless on the flooded grass, the backs of her hands smeared with lipstick, smiling at me in a knowing way when I walked towards her and tried to take her arm. 5 A Gathering of the Clan (#ulink_7cbe5759-5790-51a9-bd18-f6d0dffafafe) FUNERALS CELEBRATE ANOTHER frontier crossing, in many ways the most formal and protracted of all. As the mourners waited in the Protestant cemetery, dressed in their darkest clothes, it struck me that they resembled a party of well-to-do emigrants, standing patiently at a hostile customs post and aware that however long they waited only one of them would be admitted that day. In front of me were Blanche and Marion Keswick, two jaunty Englishwomen who ran the Restaurant du Cap, an elegant brasserie by the harbour. Their black silk suits shone in the fierce sun, a sheen of melting tar, but both were cool and self-composed, as if still keeping a proprietary eye on their Spanish cashiers. Despite the large tip I had left the previous evening, they had scarcely smiled when I complimented them on their cuisine. Yet for some reason they now seemed more friendly. When I stepped past them, hoping to photograph the ceremony, Marion held my arm with a gloved hand. ‘Mr Prentice? You’re not leaving so soon? Nothing has happened.’ ‘I think everything has happened,’ I rejoined. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay to the end.’ ‘You look so anxious.’ Blanche straightened my tie. ‘I know the grave yawns, but there’s no room for you there, even though she’s the merest slip of a thing. In fact, they could almost use a child’s casket. I wish your brother were here, Mr Prentice. He was very fond of Bibi.’ ‘I’m glad to hear it. Still, it’s a fine send-off.’ I gestured at the fifty or so mourners waiting by the open grave. ‘So many people have turned up.’ ‘Of course,’ Blanche affirmed. ‘Bibi Jansen was immensely popular, and not only with the younger set. In some ways it’s a pity she ever went to live with the Hollingers. I know they meant well but…’ ‘It was a terrible tragedy,’ I told her. ‘David Hennessy drove me to the house a few days ago.’ ‘So I heard.’ Marion glanced at my dusty shoes. ‘David’s setting himself up as some sort of tour guide, I fear. He can’t resist putting a finger in every pie. I think he has a taste for the macabre.’ ‘It was a tragedy.’ Blanche’s eyes were sealed within the dark wells of her sunglasses, a lightless world. ‘But let’s say the sort that brings people together. Estrella de Mar is far closer after all this.’ Other mourners were arriving, a remarkable turn-out for a junior domestic. The bodies of Hollinger, his wife and their niece Anne, together with the secretary, Roger Sansom, had been flown to England, and I assumed that those attending the burial of the Swedish maid were paying their respects to all five victims of the fire. Immediately beyond the high wall was the Catholic cemetery, a cheerful township of gilded statues and family vaults like holiday villas. I had walked around the graves for fifteen minutes, preparing myself for the bleak Protestant service. Flowers decked even the simplest headstones, and each bore a vitrified photograph of the deceased – smiling wives, cheerful teenage girls, elderly burghers and sturdy soldiers in uniform. By contrast the Cementerio Protestante was a boneyard of coarse soil bleached white by the sun, locked away from the world (as if a Protestant death were somehow illicit), entered by a small gate whose key could be rented at the lodge for a hundred pesetas. Forty graves, few with a headstone, lay under the rear wall, mostly those of British retirees whose relatives could not afford to repatriate them. If the cemetery was a gloomy place, there were few signs of gloom among the mourners. Only Gunnar Andersson, a young Swede who tuned speedboat engines at the marina, seemed grief-stricken. He stood alone by the waiting grave, thin and stooped in his borrowed suit and tie, a wisp of beard on his gaunt cheeks. He squatted down and touched the damp soil, clearly reluctant to consign the girl’s remains to its stony embrace. The remaining mourners waited comfortably in the sun, talking to each other like members of a recreational society. Together they formed a cross-section of the expatriate business community – hoteliers and restaurateurs, a taxi company proprietor, two satellite-dish agents, a cancer specialist from the Princess Margaret Clinic, property developers, bar-owners and investment counsellors. Looking at their sleek and suntanned faces, it struck me as curious that there was no one present of Bibi Jansen’s age, for all the talk of her popularity. Nodding my respects to the Keswick sisters, I left the main party of mourners and walked towards the graves below the rear wall. Here, as if deliberately holding herself apart from the others, stood a tall, strong-shouldered woman in her late fifties, platinum hair tightly crowned by a wide-brimmed black straw hat. No one seemed willing to approach her, and I sensed that a formal invitation was needed merely to bow. Behind her, serving as her baby-faced bodyguard, was the bar steward from the Club Nautico, Sonny Gardner, his yacht-rigger’s shoulders constrained by a smart grey jacket. I knew this was Elizabeth Shand, Estrella de Mar’s most successful businesswoman. A former partner of Hollinger’s, she now controlled a web of companies in the property and service sectors. Her eyes surveyed the mourners with the ever-watchful but tolerant gaze of a governor at a light-regime prison for executive criminals. As if keeping up a private commentary on her charges, her lips murmured to themselves in an almost louche way, and I saw her as part martinet, part bawdy-house keeper, the most intriguing of all combinations. I knew that she was a major shareholder in the Club Nautico and a close colleague of Frank’s, and was about to introduce myself when her eyes moved sharply from the grieving Swede and fixed themselves on a late arrival at the cemetery. Her mouth opened with a rictus of such distaste that I expected the mauve lipstick to peel from the irritated skin. ‘Sanger? Good God, the man’s got a nerve …’ Sonny Gardner stepped forward, buttoning his jacket. ‘Do you want me to see him off, Mrs Shand?’ ‘No, let him know what we think of him. The sheer neck of it …’ A slim, silver-haired man in a tailored tropical suit was making his way over the rough ground, his slender hands parting the air. He moved with light but deliberate steps, his eyes searching the diagram of stones around him. His handsome face was smooth and feminine, and he had the easy manner of a stage hypnotist, but he was clearly conscious of the hostile mourners stirring around him. His faint smile seemed almost wistful, and he now and then lowered his head, like a sensitive man aware that because of some minor quirk of character he had never been liked. Clasping his hands behind his back, he positioned himself at the graveside, the soil breaking under his patent-leather shoes. I assumed that he was the Swedish pastor of some obscure Lutheran sect to which Bibi Jansen had belonged, and that he was about to officiate at her interment. ‘Is this the pastor?’ I asked Gardner, whose flexing arms threatened to split the seams of his jacket. ‘He’s rather curiously dressed. Is he going to bury her?’ ‘Some say he already has.’ Gardner cleared his throat, looking for somewhere to spit. ‘Dr Irwin Sanger, Bibi’s “psychiatrist”, the one mad person in the whole of Estrella de Mar.’ I listened to the cicadas rasping while the mourners stared with varying degrees of hostility at the silver-haired newcomer, and reminded myself that there were far more tensions below the surface of this charming beach resort than first seemed apparent. Elizabeth Shand was still staring at the psychiatrist, clearly disputing his right to be present. Protected by her baleful presence, I raised my camera and began to photograph the mourners. No one spoke as the sounds of the motor-drive echoed off the walls. I knew they disapproved of the camera, as they did of my continued presence at Estrella de Mar. Watching the mourners through the viewfinder, it occurred to me that almost all of them would have attended the Hollingers’ party on the evening of the fire. Most were members of the Club Nautico and knew Frank well. None, I had been relieved to find, accepted that he was guilty. Every morning, since my first visit to Estrella de Mar, I had driven from the Los Monteros Hotel, carrying out my detective investigation. I cancelled my TV assignment in Helsinki and telephoned my agent in London, Rodney Lewis, asking him to put all other commitments on hold. ‘Does that mean you’ve found something?’ he asked. ‘Charles …?’ ‘No. I’ve found absolutely nothing.’ ‘But you think it’s worth staying out there? The trial won’t start for several months.’ ‘Even so. It’s an unusual place.’ ‘So is Torquay. You must have some idea what happened?’ ‘No … to tell the truth, I haven’t. I’ll stay here, though.’ Nothing I had found gave me the slightest hint of why my brother, at home and at ease for the first time in his life, should have turned into an arsonist and murderer. But if Frank had not set fire to the Hollinger mansion, who had? I asked David Hennessy for a list of his fellow-guests at the party, but he refused point-blank, claiming that Inspector Cabrera might charge other guests with the crime if Frank withdrew his confession, and perhaps incriminate the entire community. The Keswick sisters told me that they had attended the Queen’s birthday parties for years. They had been standing by the pool when the flames erupted through the bedroom windows, and left with the first stampede of guests to their cars. Anthony Bevis, owner of the Cabo D’Ora Gallery and a close friend of Roger Sansom, claimed that he had tried to force the French window but had been driven back by the exploding tiles that were leaping from the roof. Colin Dew-hurst, manager of a bookshop in the Plaza Iglesias, had helped the Hollingers’ chauffeur to carry a ladder from the garage, only to watch the upper rungs catch fire in the intense blaze. None of them had seen Frank slip into the house with his lethal flagons of ether and petrol, or could conceive of any reason why he might want to kill the Hollingers. I noticed, however, that of the thirty people I questioned not one suggested any other suspect. Something told me that if his friends really believed in Frank’s innocence they would have hinted at the identity of the true assassin. Estrella de Mar seemed a place without shadows, its charms worn as openly as the bare breasts of the women of all ages who sunbathed at the Club Nautico. Secure on their handsome peninsula, the people of the resort were an example of the liberation that follows when continuous sunlight is shone on the British. I could understand why the residents were less than keen for me to write about their private paradise, and already I was beginning to see the town through their eyes. Once I had freed Frank from prison I would buy an apartment of my own and make it my winter base. In many ways Estrella de Mar was the halcyon county-town England of the mythical 1930s, brought back to life and moved south into the sun. Here there were no gangs of bored teenagers, no deracinated suburbs where neighbours scarcely knew each other and their only civic loyalties were to the nearest hypermarket and DIY store. As everyone never tired of saying, Estrella de Mar was a true community, with schools for the French and British children, a thriving Anglican church and a local council of elected members which met at the Club Nautico. However modestly, a happier twentieth century had rediscovered itself in this corner of the Costa del Sol. The only shadow cast across its plazas and avenues was the fire at the Hollinger house. In the late afternoon, when the sun moved behind the peninsula and set off towards Gibraltar, the silhouette of the gutted mansion crept along the palm-lined streets, darkening the pavements and the walls of the villas below, silently wrapping the town in its sombre shroud. As I stood among the graves beside Elizabeth Shand, and waited for the casket of the young Swedish woman, it occurred to me that Frank might have pleaded guilty in order to save Estrella de Mar from being overrun by British and Spanish police, or by private detectives hired by relations of the Hollinger family. This innocence of crime might even explain the voyeuristic gaze of the people I had caught in the floodlights of the Club Nautico car park. Never having seen a rape, they had watched the assault as if it were some folkloric or pagan rite from a more primitive world. One of the couples, I suspected, was present among the mourning party, a retired Bournemouth accountant and his sharp-eyed wife who ran a video-rental store in the Avenida Ortega. Both tried to avoid my camera lens and only relaxed when a black Cadillac hearse drew up outside the cemetery. In Estrella de Mar death alone had been franchised to the Spanish. The pallbearers of the funeral firm in Benalmadena eased the polished casket from the hearse and transferred it to a cart manned by the cemetery staff. Preceded by the Reverend Davis, the pale and earnest vicar of the Anglican church, the cart rumbled towards the waiting grave. The clergyman’s eyes were fixed on the grating wheels, teeth gritted against the painful sounds. He seemed embarrassed and uneasy, as if in some way holding the mourners responsible for the Swedish girl’s death. Stiletto heels teetered on the stony ground as everyone stepped forward. Heads were lowered, eyes avoiding the coffin and the hungry vault that would soon embrace it. Only Gunnar Andersson watched as it sank jerkily from sight, fed into the ground by the gravediggers’ tapes. Tears gleamed through the faint beard on his sallow cheeks. His long legs straddled the heap of damp soil when the men reached for their spades, delaying the interment to the last moment. A few feet from him Dr Sanger was staring at the coffin. His slim chest inflated at ten-second intervals, as if he were unconsciously starving himself of air. He smiled in a tender but almost remote way, like the owner of a dead pet briefly remembering their happier days together. He picked a handful of soil from the ground and threw it on to the coffin, then ran his hand through his shock of blow-dried hair, leaving a few grains of sand in the silvery waves. The Reverend Davis was about to speak, but waited for a group of late arrivals who had entered the cemetery. David Hennessy led the way, nodding to the mourners as he carried out a quick head-count and confirmed that everyone he had notified was present, glad to lend his special skills to that even larger club than the Nautico, with its unlimited membership and no waiting list. Behind him, face hidden by a silk scarf, was Dr Paula Hamilton, the dark-haired swimmer I had seen soon after my arrival. A resident physician at the Princess Margaret Clinic, she was one of the few people who had declined to talk to me. She had failed to return my telephone calls, and refused to see me at her office in the Clinic. Now she seemed as reluctant to attend the burial service, standing behind Hennessy with her eyes fixed on his heels. Bobby Crawford, the Club Nautico’s tennis professional, followed her from the gate. Dressed in a black silk suit and tie, sunglasses over his eyes, he resembled a handsome and affable gangster. He greeted the mourners with a reassuring wave, his outstretched hands touching a shoulder here and patting an arm there. Everyone seemed to revive in his presence, and even Elizabeth Shand raised the brim of her new straw hat to beam at him maternally, lips fleshing as she murmured sleekly to herself. The Reverend Davis completed his perfunctory address, never once meeting the mourners’ eyes and clearly eager to be back with his parish. Stones rattled on the coffin lid as the gravediggers spaded the heavy soil into the grave, shoulders bent in the sunlight. Unable to control himself, Andersson seized the spade from the older of the men and flailed at the loose soil, shovelling sand and grit on to the casket as if determined to shield the dead girl from any sight of the world that had failed her. The mourners began to disperse, led by the uneasy clergyman. They stopped to look back when a spade rang against an old marker stone. There was a high and almost strangled shout, which Mrs Shand involuntarily echoed. ‘Dr Sanger …!’ Andersson stood astride the grave, spade held across his chest like a jousting pole, glaring in a deranged way at the psychiatrist. ‘Doctor, why did you come? Bibi didn’t invite you.’ Sanger raised his hands, as much to calm the watching mourners as to restrain the young Swede. His melancholy smile seemed to float free of his lips. Eyes lowered, he turned from the grave for the last time, but Andersson refused to let him pass. ‘Sanger! Doctor Professor … don’t go away …’ Andersson pointed mockingly to the grave. ‘Dear Doctor, Bibi’s here. Have you come to lie with her? I can make you comfortable A brief but ugly brawl followed. The two men grappled like clumsy schoolboys, panting and heaving until Bobby Crawford wrenched the spade from Andersson’s hands and sent him sprawling to the ground. He helped Sanger to his feet, steadied the shaken psychiatrist and dusted his lapels. Ashen-faced, his silver hair breaking around his ears, Sanger limped away, guarded by Crawford as he held the spade in a two-handed racket grip. ‘Let’s try to calm things …’ Crawford raised his arms to the mourners. ‘This isn’t a bull-ring. Think of Bibi now.’ When the Reverend Davis stepped quickly through the gate with an embarrassed flurry, Crawford shouted: ‘Goodbye, Vicar. Our thanks go to you.’ Handing the spade to the impassive gravediggers, he waited for the mourners to move away. He pulled off his black cr?pe tie and shrugged his crumpled jacket on to his shoulders, the same gesture that I had seen at the Club Nautico when the would-be rapist made his escape. The cemetery was almost empty. Paula Hamilton slipped away with Hennessy, denying me another chance of speaking to her. Mrs Shand was helped by Sonny Gardner into the rear seat of her white Mercedes, where she sat grim-mouthed. Andersson stared at the grave for a last time. He smiled gamely at Crawford, who waited amiably beside him, saluted the settling earth and walked stiffly to the gate. The gravediggers nodded without comment as they accepted Crawford’s tip, resigned to any behaviour by the foreigners in their midst. Crawford patted their shoulders and stood beside the grave, head lowered as he mused to himself. Almost alone now in the cemetery, he had switched off his ready grin, and a more thoughtful face settled itself over his fine bones. An emotion close to regret seemed to touch his eyes, but he gestured in a resigned way and set off for the gate. When I left a few minutes later he was staring over the wall at the gilded statues of the Catholic cemetery. ‘Cheerful, aren’t they?’ he commented as I walked past him. ‘One good reason for being a Catholic.’ ‘You’re right.’ I stopped to size him up. ‘Still, I imagine she’s happy where she is.’ ‘Let’s hope so. She was very sweet, and that’s cold ground in there. Can I give you a lift?’ He pointed to a Porsche parked under the cypresses. ‘It’s a long way back to town.’ ‘Thanks, but I have a car.’ ‘Charles Prentice? You’re Frank’s brother.’ He shook my hand with unfeigned warmth. ‘Bobby Crawford, tennis pro and dogsbody at the Club Nautico. It’s a pity we had to meet here. I’ve been away a few days, looking at property along the coast. Betty Shand’s itching to open a new sports club.’ While he spoke I was struck by his intense but refreshing manner, and by the guileless way he held my arm as we walked towards our cars. He was attentive and eager to please, and I found it hard to believe that he was the man who had carried out the attempted rape. I could only assume that he had lent the car to a friend with far rougher tastes. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said. ‘Hennessy tells me you’re an old colleague of Frank’s.’ ‘Absolutely. He brought me into the club – until then I was just a glorified tennis bum.’ He grinned, showing his expensively-capped teeth. ‘Frank never stops talking about you. In a way I think you’re his real father.’ ‘I’m his brother. The boring, older brother who always got him out of scrapes. This time I’ve lost my touch.’ Crawford stopped in the middle of the road, ignoring a car that swerved around him. He stared at the air with his arms raised to the sky, as if waiting for a sympathetic genie to materialize out of the spiralling dust. ‘Charles, I know. What’s going on? This is Kafka re-shot in the style of Psycho. You’ve talked to him?’ ‘Of course. He insists he’s guilty. Why?’ ‘No one knows. We’re all racking our brains. I think it’s Frank playing his strange games again, like those peculiar chess problems he’s always making up. King to move and mate in one, though this time there are no other pieces on the board and he has to mate himself.’ Crawford leaned against his Porsche, one hand playing with the tattered roof liner that hung over the passenger seat. Behind the reassuring smile his eyes were taking in every detail of my face and posture, my choice of shirt and shoes, as if searching for some clue to Frank’s predicament. I realized that he was more intelligent that his obsessive tennis playing and over-friendly manner suggested. ‘Did Frank have it in for the Hollingers?’ I asked him. ‘Was there any reason at all why he might have set fire to the house?’ ‘No – Hollinger was a harmless old buffer. I won’t say I cared for him myself. He and Alice were two of the reasons why Britain doesn’t have a film industry any longer. They were rich, likeable amateurs – no one would have wanted to hurt them.’ ‘Someone did. Why?’ ‘Charles … it may have been an accident. Perhaps they microwaved one too many of their god-awful canap?s, there was a sudden spark and the whole place went up like a hay-suck. Then Frank, for some weird reason of his own, begins to play Joseph K.’ Crawford lowered his voice, as if concerned that the dead in the cemetery might overhear him. ‘When I first knew Frank he talked about your mother a lot. He was afraid he’d helped to kill her.’ ‘No – we were far too young. We didn’t even begin to grasp why she wanted to kill herself.’ Crawford brushed the dust from his hands, glad to acquit us of any conceivable complicity. ‘I know, Charles. Still, there’s nothing more satisfying than confessing to a crime you haven’t committed …’ A car emerged from the Catholic cemetery and turned to cruise past us. Paula Hamilton was at the wheel, David Hennessy beside her. He waved to us, but Dr Hamilton stared ahead, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘She looks upset.’ I winced at a clumsy gear change. ‘Why the Catholic cemetery?’ ‘She’s seeing an old boyfriend. Another doctor at the Clinic.’ ‘Really? A strange rendezvous. Rather macabre, in a way.’ ‘Paula doesn’t have much choice – he’s lying under a headstone. He died a year ago from one of these new malarias he picked up in Java.’ ‘That’s hard … Was she close to the Hollingers?’ ‘Only to their niece and Bibi Jansen.’ Crawford stared through the gate into the Protestant cemetery, where the gravediggers were loading their spades on to the cart. ‘A pity about Bibi. Still … You’ll like Paula. Typical woman doctor – a calm and efficient front, but inside rather shaky.’ ‘What about the psychiatrist, Dr Sanger? No one wanted him here.’ ‘He’s something of a shady character … interesting in his way. He’s one of those psychiatrists with a knack of forming little m?nages around themselves.’ ‘M?nages of vulnerable young women?’ ‘Exactly. He enjoys playing Svengali to them. He has a house in Estrella de Mar, and owns some bungalows in the Costasol complex.’ Crawford pointed to a large settlement of villas and apartment houses a mile to the west of the peninsula. ‘No one’s sure what goes on there, but I hope they have fun.’ I waited as the gravediggers pushed their cart through the cemetery gate. A wheel lodged in a stony rut, and one of the spades fell to the ground. Crawford stepped forward, ready to help the men, then watched wistfully as the cart moved along the pavement, its wheel-rims grating. In his black suit and sunglasses he seemed a fretful figure, faced for once with a fast service he had no hope of returning. I guessed that he, Andersson and Dr Sanger were the only ones to mourn the dead girl. ‘I’m sorry about Bibi Jansen,’ I said when he returned to the car. ‘I can see you miss her.’ ‘A little. But these things are never fair.’ ‘Why did the others bother to attend? Mrs Shand, Hennessy, the Keswick sisters – for a Swedish housemaid?’ ‘Charles, you didn’t know her. Bibi was more than that.’ ‘Even so. Could the fire have been a suicide attempt?’ ‘By the Hollingers? On the Queen’s birthday?’ Crawford began to laugh, glad to free himself from his sombre mood. ‘They’d have been posthumously stripped of their CBEs.’ ‘What about Bibi? I take it she was once involved with Sanger. She might have been unhappy at the Hollingers.’ Crawford shook his head, admiring my ingenuity. ‘I don’t think so. She liked it up there. Paula had weaned her off all the drugs she was taking.’ ‘Who knows, though? Some sort of hysterical outburst?’ ‘Charles, come on.’ His spirits lightening, Crawford took my arm. ‘Be honest with yourself. Women are never that hysterical. In my experience, they’re intensely realistic. We men are far more emotional.’ ‘Then what can I do?’ I unlocked the driver’s door of the Renault and fiddled with the keys, reluctant to take my seat. ‘I need all the help I can get. We can’t just leave Frank to rot. The lawyer estimates he’ll get at least thirty years.’ ‘The lawyer? Se?or Danvila? He’s thinking of his fees. All those appeals …’ Crawford opened the door and beckoned me into the driver’s seat. He took off his sunglasses and stared at me with his friendly but distant eyes. ‘Charles, there’s nothing you can do. Frank will solve this one himself. He may be playing his end-game, but it’s only just begun, and there are sixty-three other squares on the board …’ 6 Fraternal Refusals (#ulink_f7e3d290-79d8-5825-aa8f-f1d5c98841c7) THE RETIREMENT PUEBLOS lay by the motorway, embalmed in a dream of the sun from which they would never awake. As always, when I drove along the coast to Marbella, I seemed to be moving through a zone that was fully accessible only to a neuroscientist, and scarcely at all to a travel writer. The white fa?ades of the villas and apartment houses were like blocks of time that had crystallized beside the road. Here on the Costa del Sol nothing would ever happen again, and the people of the pueblos were already the ghosts of themselves. This glacier-like slowness had affected my attempts to free Frank from Zarzuella jail. Three days after Bibi Jansen’s funeral I left the Los Monteros Hotel, carrying a suitcase filled with fresh clothes for Frank’s court appearance in Marbella that morning. I had packed the case in his apartment at the Club Nautico after a careful search through his wardrobe. There were striped shirts, dark shoes and a formal suit, but as they lay on the bed they resembled the elements of a costume that Frank had decided to discard. I hunted the drawers and tie-rack, unable to make up my mind. The real and far more elusive Frank seemed to have turned his back on the apartment and its dusty past. At the last moment I threw in some pens and a block of writing paper – the latter suggested by Se?or Danvila in the vain hope of persuading Frank to withdraw his confession. Frank would be brought from Malaga to attend the hearing in the magistrates’ court, a formal identification of the five victims by Inspector Cabrera and the autopsy pathologists. Afterwards, Se?or Danvila told me, I would be able to speak to Frank. As I parked in a narrow street behind the courthouse I weighed what I would say to him. More than a week of amateur sleuthing had yielded nothing. Naively, I had assumed that the unanimous belief in Frank’s innocence held by his friends and colleagues would somehow force out the truth, but in fact that unanimity had only wrapped another layer of mystery around the Hollinger murders. Far from springing the lock of Frank’s prison cell it had given the key another turn. Nevertheless, five people had been killed, by someone almost certainly still walking the streets of Estrella de Mar, still eating sushi and reading Le Monde, still singing in a church choir or modelling clay at a sculpture class. As if unaware of this, the hearing at the magistrates’ court unfolded in its interminable way, a M?bius strip of arcane procedures that unwound, inverted themselves and returned to their departure points. Lawyers and journalists each embrace a rival physics where motion and inertia reverse themselves. I sat behind Se?or Danvila, only a few yards from Frank and his translator, as the pathologists testified, stood down and testified again, body by body, death by death. Eager to talk to Frank, I was surprised by how little he had changed. I expected him to be thin and drained by the grey hours of sitting alone in his cell, forehead harrowed by the stress of maintaining his absurd bluff. He was paler, as the sunlight of Estrella de Mar faded from his face, but he seemed composed and at ease with himself, offering me a ready smile and a handshake quickly cut off by his police escort. He took no part in the proceedings, but listened intently to his translator, emphasizing for the magistrate’s benefit his central role in the events described. When he left the court he gave me a wave of encouragement as if I were about to follow him into the headmaster’s study. I waited on a hard seat in the public corridor, deciding to avoid a direct confrontation. Bobby Crawford had been right to say that the initiative lay with Frank, and by sticking to pleasantries I might force him to show his hand. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/j-g-ballard-4/cocaine-nights/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.