Zander, according to Jane, was the acting head of security, and was still waiting for his appointment to be confirmed. During the interregnum, as he fretted at his desk in his camel-hair coat, he might become a useful ally. I remembered the Alice images I had found in the children's room. Not for the first time it occurred to me that David Greenwood might never have committed the murders on May 28, and that the surveillance footage that showed him entering and leaving his victims' offices had been faked.

A blonde woman in her thirties, dressed in a dark business suit, sat down at a nearby table. She ordered a cappuccino and exchanged a few words of banter with the waitress, but her eyes were fixed on the top floor of the security building, where Pascal Zander had his office. She opened a laptop computer and tapped the keys, throwing up a sequence of property ads for expensive villas on the heights of Super-Cannes and Californie, all furnished with electric-blue lawns and emerald skies. She stared morosely at the overlit photographs and began a typed dialogue with herself, apparently setting out her day's schedule and answering her queries aloud in an ironic English voice. I imagined her stepping from her shower, towel twirled around her head, keying in the emotions she would feel that day, the memories to be cued, the daydreams to be assigned a few minutes of too-precious time, the whole programme laced with sardonic asides.

During a creative pause she gazed over the tables at me, revealing an attractive but moody face. I marked her down as a professional rebel, who resented the trappings of managerial success, club-class upgrades and company credit cards, the fool's gold that could buy an entire life and offer no discount for idealism or integrity, and I liked the sombre eye that she levelled at the business park. Her glance took in my open-necked shirt, tweed sports jacket and thong sandals, a garb never worn by anyone in Eden-Olympia at either work or play, but the off-duty dress at my Cyprus RAF base, circa 1978, and the guarantee, I was deluded enough to think, of a certain kind of honesty.

She watched me brush a leaf from my lapel, and a smile moved like a slow tic across her mouth. She sipped her coffee, then pressed a tissue to her lips, leaving the imprint of a crushed kiss on the table.

She returned to the laptop, perhaps outlining a cost-benefit analysis of her next affair, the contingency funds to be assigned to minor cosmetic surgery, precautionary visits to the HIV clinic…

As if to encourage the fantasies of the stranger sitting nearby, she kicked off her high-heeled shoes and hitched up her skirt to scratch her stockinged insteps, exposing a satisfying glimpse of white thigh. Despite the smart suit, her blonde hair was a little too blown, giving her the look of a nervy and intellectual tart. Was she a call-girl, computerized like everyone else at Eden-Olympia?

Her sceptical stare at the Elf building made it hard to believe that she worked as a contented member of anyone's team.

A security helicopter patrolled the lake, its soft engine barely audible across the impassive surface. For a few seconds I imagined that it was keeping watch on me after my collision with Wilder Penrose's car.

I had deliberately damaged the door, paying Penrose back for urging Jane to stay on at Eden-Olympia, but also for the sheer perversity of watching the fibreglass craze and splinter. It reminded me of an outburst of vandalism I had given way to as a boy of seven. My parents were on holiday in France, trying to jury-rig their becalmed marriage and aware that they were always happiest in a foreign country. I was staying with my mother's sister, a retired character actress with a churchy streak. She was devoted to me, but fiercely proscriptive about the television I was allowed to watch. Almost every programme that I liked seemed to remind her of her lapsed career. One afternoon, when she vetoed a science fiction series in which she appeared as a Martian psychiatrist, I managed to sneak out into the street with a can of spray-paint. In a few thrilling minutes I vandalized her car, aerosolling bizarre hieroglyphs over the doors and windscreen in what I imagined was an interplanetary language.

A traffic warden reported me to my aunt, but she managed to hush up the incident. We both knew that I was trying to punish my parents, but from then on she regarded me as a fallen angel. It no longer mattered what television I watched, a state of disgrace that heartened me for years. Damaging Penrose's car had been almost as satisfying. For a few seconds, despite myself, I felt like a boy again, with all the covert powers that a disturbed child wielded over the adult world.

The helicopter soared away, reflected in the mirror curtainwalling of the Crédit-Suisse building. The blonde woman with the laptop had gone. Her crushed tissue, still bearing the imprint of her lips, drifted across the floor to my feet. I held the waxy smear to my nostrils, inhaling the faint but potent scent.

A hand gripped my shoulder, almost forcing me to my knees.

'Paul, so this is where you hide… God, I envy you.'

Wilder Penrose beamed at me, unaware that he had knocked over my wine glass. He took the tissue from my fingers and dabbed at the stained cloth, leaving a vermilion smear. He wore another of his linen suits, a black silk tie fluttering like a miniature noose from his heavy throat. His eyes watched me in their unblinking way, detached from the rest of his face and from the broad smile that seemed to signal his genuine pleasure at finding me.

'Paul, I'm sorry – away from the clinic I'm unbelievably clumsy. Let's get you another drink.' Penrose signalled to the waitress, and gazed around him with unfeigned delight. 'It's lovely here. Luckily, I have a quiet day.'

'No patients? Isn't that a mark of success?'

'Sadly, there isn't a doctor in the world who would agree with you.'

When the waitress served his coffee Penrose broke open a sachet of sugar. His fingers were as awkward as a child's, and the loose grains clung to his knuckles when he sank his broad upper lip through the chocolate-speckled foam. Behind him, the waitress was clearing the blonde woman's table. She had left a mess of debris, tissues stained with coffee, cream spilt onto the paper cloth. Were bad table manners a quirk of Eden-Olympia's executive class, a safety valve for corporate tensions?

The Japanese sports saloon was parked near the lake, the dent in its door clearly visible. Penrose followed my gaze.

'Do you want a spin? It's an interesting car. Rather like your Harvard, I imagine.'

'Another time.' Calmly, I said: 'You've had a bump. Cutting corners too fast?'

'Only in my professional life. Those clochards in Cannes, mostly old soixante-huitards. They see a tribute to modern industrial genius and can't resist giving it a swift kick.'

Penrose watched me while he spoke, head lowered over his coffee as he licked up the foam, well aware that I had damaged the car. Surprisingly, I felt no guilt, almost as if I had acted with his approval.

'Now, what's the verdict on Eden-Olympia? You've settled in?'

'That took ten minutes. The villa is very comfortable – for a haunted house.'

'Good. And Señora Morales?'

'The body and soul of discretion. She wouldn't be shocked if I sneaked a fourteen-year-old up to the bedroom.'

'You should try it…' Penrose used his forefinger to clean the last drops from his cup. 'Of course, in her eyes you already have.'

'Jane? She's more mature than she looks.'

'I work with her, Paul. She's wiser than I'll ever be. As it happens, prepubertal betrothals are still common in rural Spain. It helps to advance the menarche and accelerate the supply of young farmhands. What about your neighbours?'

'We've met the Delages. Very new Europe, and extremely helpful. Mrs Yasuda bows to me, but I haven't got closer than thirty feet.'