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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'How long did your affair go on?'

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

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

'Too sophisticated for him?'

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

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

'Absolutely nothing. Believe me, Paul.'

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

'Why do you say that?'

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

'You, I take it?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'In what way?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I bet you had a very good time?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Wait…'

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

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

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

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

'Who?'

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

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

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

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