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

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

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

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

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

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

' Frances, wait. I need to think.'

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

'There's everything.'

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

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

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

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

'I might have done.'

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

'It's possible.'

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

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

'You're in a trance again.'

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

'Paul… we ought to leave.'

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

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

'Paul, the police will be here.'

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

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

26 Flying Again

' Frances, I'm flying again…'

I stood on the terrace of her apartment, and let the wind play on the silk dressing gown, searching through its frayed seams like an affable pickpocket. As the sleeves filled with the night air I felt myself soar between the apartment towers of Marina Baie des Anges. The curving facades with their step-pyramid profiles seemed detached from the ground, floating above the swimming pools and marinas that lay between the causeways like sections of a stolen sea.

Three miles to the south-west was the Garoupe lighthouse on Cap d'Antibes, its beam tirelessly sweeping the shore. On the beach nearby, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had drunk their whisky sours at the Château of La Garoupe, but that had been another Riviera, as remote from this futuristic apartment complex as the casino at Monte Carlo was from the temple of Karnak.

Frances joined me on the terrace, setting the drinks tray on a table. 'Paul, view good enough for you?'

'All this curved space? We're coming in to land at Babylon airport. One day the whole Côte d'Azur will be like this.'

'On the drawing board it already is. Everything five minutes old is waiting for the clearance sale.'

'Everything? That's sad.' I slipped my arm around her waist and held her against the night. 'Memories, dreams…?'

'Yesterday's software. Lots of heavy discounts and knock-down prices. Sorry, Paul.'

She held the white-wine spritzer to her face, letting the wind carry the cool effervescence into her eyes. Tiny points of moisture glittered on the tips of her lashes. On the drive from Théoule she had been too distracted to talk, watching the rear-view mirror like a car thief. But when we left Antibes and reached the apartment complex at Villeneuve-Loubet she recovered herself and returned to the real business on her mind.

As we rode the lift to the fifteenth floor she leaned against my shoulder and pressed a hand to my diaphragm. Without turning on the lights, she stepped into the hall and led me straight to her bedroom. Still excited by the violence at the Cardin Foundation and the plaintive cries of the Japanese make-up girls, I quickly undressed her. But I was a poor lover, aware of Jane watching me from the back of my mind, and barely able to maintain the erection that had sprung to life so eagerly during the robbery.

When I came at last, an orgasm as faked as a bored housewife's, Frances had smiled the microsecond smile of an escort agency whore. She smoothed the damp hair from my forehead, already working out the next move in the game she was playing with me, like an older sister with a docile small brother who would end up trussed and gagged in the toy cupboard.

But the playrooms of the new Riviera were as large as the Cardin Foundation. The speed and thuggish efficiency of the fur thieves had impressed me. Standing at the rail as I sipped my drink, I thought of the swinging clubs, and felt again the blow across my shoulders in the Rue Valentin. In a reflex of anger I raised my right fist, ready to hit back.

'Paul…' Alarmed, Frances held my wrist. 'Calm down. You're safe here.'

' Frances… I was miles away.'

'You were going to hit me. Go on, if you need to…'

'It's the last thing I want to do. Frances, I like you… strange baggage and all. That robbery pulled a set of triggers I'd forgotten about.' I sat next to her on the wicker settee. 'I remember the hazings we used to dish out to new recruits at my RAF flying school.'

'Horseplay?'

'Hardly. They were brutal beatings. It took me years to admit I thoroughly enjoyed them.'

'So that's your special scene? I'll buy a riding crop.'

'Please… there's nothing special and it's not my scene. Memories jump the rails and speed off down the wrong track. All the same, why didn't I let you call the police?'

'I'd like to know.' She pointed to the extension phone on the table, sitting next to the manila envelope of Halder's photographs. 'I could call them now.'

She waited, cool as night. I liked her for the way she was still pushing her amateur conspiracy along, the big sister with baby brother in the pram, searching for a secret entrance to the park.