'Good. You look a lot sharper. Who prescribed the painkillers?'

'Jane. Her own special cocktail. Isabel Duval had them analysed for me. Mostly a strong tranquillizer.'

'She's keeping you sedated, so you won't ask too many questions. I like Jane, but… think about it, Paul.'

'I have.' I turned to face Frances. She had relaxed a little, no longer unsettled by my presence, and I guessed that she was ready to speak frankly to me. 'All right, Frances. Why are we here? It's an odd place to meet.'

'I wanted to see you. I even missed you. La Garoupe is far away from Eden-Olympia and all those big Mercs and gangster drivers. Besides, I was taking the widows here.'

'But why La Garoupe? Their husbands were shot dead in my garden, along with Jacques Bourget – not one of them, I'm ready to bet, by David Greenwood.'

'The widows know that. They wanted to see the shrine to Bourget's friend, a junior manager at Eden-Olympia.'

'The man who died in a hit-and-run accident? David was passing by and looked after him. It was quite a coincidence.'

'It wasn't an accident. Or a coincidence. David wouldn't talk about it but he felt very guilty. It was the early days of the ratissages and he hadn't realized what was happening. The chauffeurs were assigned to drive the cars and they didn't like what they saw. That's why they joined David, along with Jacques Bourget. They'd all seen men run down for fun, and wanted to expose what was going on.'

'By taking over a private TV station?'

'A lot of important conferences are held at Eden-Olympia. There's a direct link to TF1 and CNN. They were going to broadcast a complete exposé and force the Interior Minister to act.'

'So you knew about the killings in advance?'

'No.' Frances took my hand and pressed it to her throat, as if to prevent herself from gagging. I could feel her larynx trembling, a sub-vocal rosary. 'I didn't know, believe me. But I guessed something was going to happen when David said he'd stored his rifle and ammunition with Philippe Bourget. I told him not to hurt anyone, but he wanted revenge.'

'For what they'd done to Bourget's friend?'

'No. He wanted revenge for what Eden-Olympia had done to him.'

Frances rapped the steering wheel with her fist, rousing herself to action. Chin raised, she stared through the windscreen at the Riviera coastline, a battle commander about to launch a beachhead but unsure of the underwater defences.

'Frances… what did Eden-Olympia do to David? He was happy here, running the refuge, lending his Alice library to the teenagers.'

'Alice? That's ironic.' Frances pushed up the brim of her hat. 'David wasn't happy. He hated himself, so much that it spilled over and he started to hate me.'

'Why did he kill all those people – Dr Serrou, Bachelet, Olga Carlotti? Frances, you know why.'

'Yes, I do.' She sounded almost offhand. 'I'm the only one who does. No one else is sure. Not even Wilder Penrose. That's why they used you.'

'They used me?'

'Yes, you. Paul Sinclair, the bored ex-pilot who'd lost his flying licence and was looking for a new way up into the clouds. Married to an oddball young doctor. The ultimate marital hot mix.'

'They knew nothing about me when they recruited Jane. I published aviation books.'

'But the headhunters passed on your background details, and Eden-Olympia seized its chance. Penrose and Professor Kalman and Zander decided to conduct an experiment. They ran a special trial designed to explain what went wrong with David. You were their laboratory rat.'

'All I did was lie around the pool and smoke a little pot with Jane.'

'Just what they wanted. You had time on your hands, and they knew you'd soon be bored. Bored enough to take part in their weekend games. Why did they put you in David's house? Didn't that strike you as odd?'

'It did. Remarkably callous, in fact. So the house was part of the experiment?'

'Penrose wanted you to think about David. Where better to start than lying in David's bed? They knew you'd hear the gunshots as you made love to your child bride. Those murders sent a corporate shudder around the world. Everyone was aware something sinister had happened, and might happen again. Your job was to relive the whole nightmare. They cleaned the place up, but there were traces of David everywhere – the same bathroom, the same kitchen, the sun-loungers marked with his barrier cream. Penrose wanted you to take on David's role, and start to think like him. In case your mind wandered, they picked Señora Morales to be the housekeeper. One very garrulous Spanish lady. She'd seen Bachelet and Dr Serrou lying dead in Guy's bedroom, all the blood and drugs and Dominique in her erotic underwear. She was just bursting to fill you in with the background material.'

'So they opened the door to the maze and pushed me in. But how did Penrose know where I'd go?'

'He didn't. You started by nosing the air, and you didn't like the smell. You talked about going back to London. You were bored with Cannes and a wife who never stopped working. But then you found the bullets in the garden. Zander's men had missed them, but it was a blessing in disguise.'

'From then on I was hooked?'

'You were playing detective. But Penrose guessed that wasn't the only reason. You were starting to identify with David. You knew he'd changed since coming to Eden-Olympia. So you, too, wanted to change.'

'Did David take part in the actions? The attacks on blacks and Arabs in La Bocca?'

'No.' Frances grimaced into her cupped hands. 'He didn't like those at all. Penrose and Bachelet kept him in the dark. Anyway, he was developing a recreational side of his own.'

'What exactly? You were with him, Frances. What appealed to him – the rapes, the attacks on prostitutes?'

'He hated those.'

'Wilder must have talked to him. He can be very persuasive, setting out his Sadeian world, his do-it-yourself psychopathy kit.'

'We've all had the pep talk. Don't worry, David could see the benefits. Eden-Olympia was booming. But David didn't like the human cost.'

'Nor did I.'

'At first, Paul.' Frances stared bleakly at me. 'Then you changed.

Now you don't take part but you go along for the ride. You're like all men – violence is your real turn-on, not sex. Penrose teased you, feeding you hints of a secret Eden-Olympia, letting you watch a little tasty truncheon work. Like that beating they gave the trinket salesman in the clinic car park. The whole thing was staged for you. They knew you'd go back to the Jaguar parked on the roof. Halder signalled when you'd left Jane and were on the way. They put the African and the Russian up against the wall and made sure you heard the screams.'

'I can still hear them. Nasty, but…'

'Effective? The raid on the Cardin Foundation really got you going – without all those wailing geishas we'd never have made it into bed.'

'Not true, Frances.'

'You practically came over the kitchen floor. All the while, Penrose was drip-feeding his "explore your own pathology" message to you. And you wanted to hear it. Jane was too tired to have sex with you, but after a little pethidine she'd relax with Simone Delage. That was interesting, and you didn't mind too much.'

'Easy to say.'

'It intrigued you, for the first time you could stand back from yourself and enjoy a strange new feeling. And you were getting closer to David. Every time you stalled they laid down more scent. The appointments diary in David's computer. It didn't take you long to work out it was actually a target list.'

'Penrose supplied that?'

'Of course. Once you saw it, there was no stopping you. Then there was the Riviera News transcript of the special radio report.'

'By the rogue journalist who suddenly moved to Portugal?'

'He didn't exist. The report was never broadcast.'