'These robberies, the amateur drug-dealing, all this playground violence – the people running Eden-Olympia are pretending to be mad. Frank Halder was right…'

28 Strains of Violence

'Paul…? This is very hush-hush. Slip in before anyone sees you.'

A smiling conspirator, Wilder Penrose opened his front door and drew me into the hall. He pretended to glance up and down the quiet avenue, taking in the plane trees freighted with Sunday morning light.

'Safe to breathe?' Penrose closed the door and leaned against it. 'It looks as if only you and the sun are up.'

I let Penrose enjoy his joke and followed him into the living room. 'Sorry for the short notice – we could meet at the clinic, but it's too exposed.'

'It's a hive of gossip.' Penrose beckoned me to a chrome and black leather chair. 'I'm happy to see you here at any time. And Jane. It's not a medical emergency?'

'In a way, it is…'

'Really? Yes, I can see you're under some strain.'

Penrose's heavy mouth parted in a grimace of concern, revealing his strong, unbrushed teeth. He was barefoot, and wore a collarless white shirt that exposed the thuggish build of his shoulders. He was glad to see me, though I had woken him when I telephoned at seven o'clock. He hovered around my chair, so close that I could smell the sleep odours on his unshowered body.

'Paul, rest here while I make coffee.' He snatched at a beam of sunlight, as if swatting a fly. 'There's a dream I can't get rid of…'

When he had gone I strolled around the room, empty except for the two chairs and a glass table, and so cool and white that I imagined it suffused by a residual glow long after nightfall.

Looking around this minimalist space, with its implicit evasions, I thought of Freud's study in his Hampstead house, which I had visited with Jane soon after our wedding. The entire room was filled with figurines and statuettes of pagan deities, like a hoard of fossilized taboos. I often wondered why Jane had taken me to the great analyst's house, and whether she suspected that my leg injuries, which had lasted so many months, were not entirely physical.

By contrast, Penrose's living room was devoid of bric-à-brac, a white cube whose most real surface was the large Victorian mirror in a crumbling frame that leaned against one wall. Its faded silver-screen resembled a secret pool clouded by time.

'Mysterious, isn't it…?' Penrose steered a coffee tray through the double doors. 'I bought it from an antique shop in Oxford. It's just possible the young Alice Liddell stared into it.'

'Perhaps one day she'll step out…?'

'I hope so.'

I moved along the mantelpiece, dominated by a silver portrait frame enclosing a photograph of a strongly built man in his fifties. He wore khaki fatigues and smiled at the camera like a tourist, but in the background was the burnt-out hulk of a battle-tank.

'My father…' Penrose took the frame from me and repositioned it. 'He was killed by a stray mortar shell in 1980, working for Médecins Sans Frontières in Beirut. One of those pointless deaths that make the rest of life seem a complete mystery. I read medicine out of a need to be like him, and then became a psychiatrist to understand why.'

Next to the father's portrait was a photograph of a young man with the same heavy brows and aggressive build, standing in a boxing ring with his seconds. He wore gloves, high-waisted shorts and a sweaty singlet, and was being presented with a championship shield. He smiled attractively through his bruises, and I assumed he was the younger Wilder Penrose, taken years earlier after a testing bout.

'So you boxed, Wilder? You look almost professional.'

'That's my father again, back in the fifties.' Wilder nodded to the photograph, springing lightly on his bare feet. 'He was a keen amateur, a heavyweight with really fast hands. He boxed for his college, then for the army during his national service. He loved it – he was still climbing into the ring twenty years later.'

'When he was a doctor? Isn't that a strange sport to take up? Head injuries…'

'No one worried about brain damage then.' Penrose's fists clenched and unclenched. Across his face moved emotions of envy and admiration he had long come to terms with, but had no wish to share. 'Boxing released something in him – he was a gentle man out of the ring, a very good husband and father, but vicious inside the ropes. One of those genuinely violent people who never realize it.'

'And you?'

'Am I genuinely violent?' Grinning, Penrose lightly punched my left kidney. 'Paul, what a suggestion!'

'I meant, did you take up boxing?'

'I did, for a while, but…'

'The ring triggered the wrong emotions?'

'A good guess, Paul. That's perceptive of you. Still, it gave me an important idea – my father's boxing career, in particular…'

Penrose sat down in the chair facing mine and poured the coffee. His lips parted in a generous smile that exposed a small scar on his lip. 'Never mind about me. We'll talk about your problems. This medical emergency – it's not venereal, by any chance?'

'Not as far as I know.'

'Good. People are coy about sexual ailments, for sound Darwinian reasons. In your case, sharing the marriage bed with a physician…'

'Wilder, the emergency doesn't concern me. Not yet.'

'That's a relief. So it concerns -?'

'Eden-Olympia. More exactly, the senior management.'

'Go on.' Penrose set down his cup and lay comfortably in the chair. His arms hung loosely from his shoulders, knuckles touching the floor, making him as unthreatening as possible. 'Have you spoken to Jane?'

'She's too busy with her work.' Collecting myself, I said: 'I want to go to the French authorities – serious matters have to be brought to their attention. Powerful people at Eden-Olympia and the Cannes police are involved, and I need someone to back me up, a person with a certain amount of clout. Otherwise I'll get nowhere.'

Penrose examined his deeply bitten fingernails. 'You mean me?'

'You're the chief psychiatrist here. It might be a mental health problem. You're one of the few senior people who isn't involved.'

'I'm glad to hear it. Is this anything to do with David Greenwood?'

'It's possible. He knew what was going on, and might have been killed because he planned to take action. But it goes far beyond Greenwood.'

'Right… Now, what exactly do you want to report? A crime of some kind?'

'Of all kinds.' I lowered my voice, suddenly aware of the mirror behind me. 'Everything you can think of – armed robberies, murders, drive-by killings, drug-dealing, racist attacks, paedophile sex. There's a well-financed criminal syndicate, probably involved with the Cannes police.'

Penrose raised his hands to silence me. 'Whoa… these are huge charges. Who actually is involved in these crimes?'

'Senior management at Eden-Olympia. Pascal Zander, Alain Delage, Agassi and any number of company chairmen and managing directors. Plus most of those killed by Greenwood – Charbonneau, Robert Fontaine, Olga Carlotti. I realize it's a serious accusation to make.'

'It is.' Penrose sank lower into his chair, shoulders straining through his cotton shirt. 'Tell me, Paul – why are you the only one aware of this crime wave?'

'I'm not. People know more than they let on – most of the security guards, Greenwood 's secretary, the widows of the dead chauffeurs. Talk to them.'

'I will. The armed robberies and racist attacks – you're sure they're taking place?'

'I've seen them.'

'Where? On film? The surveillance cameras are hopelessly unreliable. Someone tries to unlock his car with the wrong key and you're convinced you've seen the Great Train Robbery. Who showed you the tapes? Halder?'

'I haven't watched any tapes. The crimes I've seen I witnessed myself.'