'Come in, Paul… I was hoping you'd find me here.'

Wilder Penrose greeted me affably, lifting his huge body from the chair. As always, I was struck by how pleased he was to see me. He stood up and embraced me, hands patting the pockets of my dinner jacket as if searching for a concealed weapon. He tapped my cheek with his open palm, forgiving me for the mild subterfuge that had given me access to the villa. Once again I realized that my role was to play the naive and impressionable younger brother.

'Do join me, Paul.' He pointed with the remote control to a nearby chair. 'How's the party?'

'Hard work. I should have borrowed a wheelchair. Did the footman tell you that I was on the way up?'

'Security, Paul – we're obsessed by it. You walk in wearing an assassin's suit and ask for the chairman. You're lucky you weren't shot dead.'

'I'm looking for Jane. She's here somewhere.'

'She's resting in one of the bedrooms. I'll explain where to find her.' Penrose turned back to the television screen. 'Have a look at this footage before you go. Handheld cameras are so jerky, but you get a sense of what's happening.'

'Recent… therapy classes?'

'Of course. The teams are doing well.'

He pressed the remote control. Propelled by the fast-forward button, a sequence of violent images rushed past, a confused medley of accelerating cars, running feet, doors being hurled from their hinges, startled Arabs in alcoves and shocked women staring across dishevelled beds. The sound was turned down, but I could almost hear the screams and truncheon thuds. Headlights veered across an underground car park, where a trio of olive-skinned men lay on the concrete floor, pools of blood around their heads.

'Brutal stuff…' Penrose grimaced with distaste and switched off the video, relieved to see the blank screen. 'It's getting more difficult to steer the therapy classes. We've seen enough.'

'Don't stop on my account.'

'Well… I don't think you should watch too much. It's bad for your morale.'

'I'm touched. This must be the only censored film showing in Cannes. All the same, you're looking at some really nasty clips.'

'Context, Paul. You have to see it within its therapeutic frame. Routine heart surgery can easily resemble something out of a nightmare. Camcorder film is misleading – it's hungry for the colour red, so it turns everything into a bloodbath.' Aware that he was trying too hard to convince me, he said: 'It's in a good cause – Eden-Olympia and the future. Richer, saner, more fulfilled. And vastly more creative. A few sacrifices are worth it if we produce another Bill Gates or Akio Morita.'

'The victims will be glad to hear it.'

'Do you know, they might. Petty criminals, clochards, Aids-riddled whores – they expect to be abused. We're doing them a good turn by satisfying their unconscious expectations.'

'So it's also therapy for them?'

'Well put. I knew you'd understand. I wish everyone did.' For once, Penrose seemed distracted, openly gnawing at a thumb.

'Keeping a close eye on things can be tricky. I sense a change of direction. Too many of the teams are starting to treat the therapy classes as sporting events. I try to explain that I'm not interested in running a football league. It's their imaginations I want them to use, not their boots and fists.'

'Zander would agree with you. He thinks you're infantilizing them.'

'Zander, yes… his idea of crime comes with a secret Swiss account number. He can't understand why we're developing all this expertise and not putting it to good use. In some ways he's rather dangerous.'

'Doesn't he have a point? All games infantilize, especially when you're playing with your own psychopathy. You begin by dreaming of the übermensch and end up smearing your shit on the bedroom wall.'

'You're right, Paul.' Solemnly, Penrose gripped my hand, nodding at the blank television screen. 'The teams have to work harder, and learn to fight their way into the darkest heart of themselves. I hate to do it, but I need to turn up the ratchet, until the nerve strings sing with anger…'

He turned to the window as a firework rocket whistled through the night air and exploded in a puffball of crimson light. A flush of animation touched his face and faded as the rocket spent itself and fell to earth. He seemed more driven than I first remembered him, frustrated by the sluggish reflexes of his senior executives and their flagging will to madness. Seated in this formal empire room, he was hemmed in by the caution of the executive mind. Though I hated everything he had done, and hated myself for failing to report him to the French authorities, I felt almost sorry for him. Mired in its mediocrity, the human race would never be insane enough for Wilder Penrose.

'Now, Paul…' He noticed me sitting beside him in Greenwood 's dinner jacket. 'You're looking for Jane?'

'Halder saw her earlier. He said she's rather tired.'

'The film was a bit of an ordeal. Swiss bankers don't have the popular touch – the only people they meet are billionaires and war criminals. Jane still works too hard. She should join one of our new therapy groups for women.'

'Are there any?'

'Paul, I'm joking… or at least I hope I am.' He walked me to the door, an avuncular clubman with a favourite guest. 'In the case of women the system of imposed psychopathy is already in place. It's called men.'

I paused by the map table and its vision of a greater Eden-Olympia. 'This ratchet, Wilder – are the murders we saw part of it?'

'Murders?'

'The video you were playing. The three Arabs in the garage looked awfully dead.'

'No, Paul.' Penrose lowered his head, his eyes drifting away from me. 'I assure you, everyone recovered. As usual, large bundles of francs were handed over. Think of these people as film extras, paid for a few minutes' discomfort.'

'I'll try to. No murders?'

'None. Who put the idea into your head? Be careful with Zander. He's an unhappy man, driven by powerful resentments. Some of his personal habits are disgusting. He may well be the only natural psychopath in Eden-Olympia.'

'And our very own police chief?'

'Sadly, there's a long tradition of the two roles coinciding. Senior policemen are either philosophers or madmen…'

The suites on the fourth floor were dark and unoccupied. Following Penrose's directions, I walked the long corridor, past the gilt-framed mirrors whose surfaces had been dulled by time. In the entrance to the west wing I noticed that a pair of carved oak doors stood ajar. I stepped through them, switched on a table lamp and found myself in a well-stocked gunroom. The barred cabinets were filled with shotguns and sporting weapons. Six Nato-issue automatic rifles occupied one cabinet, chained together through their trigger guards.

A notice-board leaned against an easel, listing the fixtures of the Eden-Olympia gun club. The names of the members, all senior executives at the business park, formed a set of rival leagues that I assumed were run independently of Wilder Penrose. Pinned to the board were photographs of well-set men in their fifties, clipped from the financial pages of a local Arab-language newspaper.

In a corner, behind one of the double doors, was a large department-store dumpbin, filled with what I first thought were gunnery-range targets in the form of animal cutouts. I held several of them to the light, and then recognized stuffed-toy versions of the dormouse, the Hatter and little Alice herself.

I laid the Alice back in the bin, and watched the eyelids swivel and close over the glassy stare, almost the first untroubled sleep I had seen in Eden-Olympia.

To the rear of the west wing, far from the terrace party and the fireworks, a waiter was moving a drinks trolley into the corridor. I stopped beside him, and scanned the debris of glasses and crushed napkins. Sharing a tumbler with a champagne cork was an empty syrette.