'So who wrote the text?'

'I did. Zander and Penrose gave me a rough outline. They told Meldrum to hand it to you and hint at sinister goings-on.' Frances spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining to a confused tourist how he had lost himself in a strange city. The release of this long-repressed material seemed to calm her, rage diffused into the cooling waters of truth. Before I could interrupt, she pressed on: 'I added a few interesting contact numbers – Isabel Duval and the chauffeurs' widows. The first thing you did was drive out to see them. Once you'd actually met them you knew there was something wrong with the official story.'

'There was. The brainstorm explanation never made sense.'

'You started exploring the death route, feeling yourself into David's mind when he set off with his rifle. You were always talking about Lee Harvey Oswald, Hungerford and Columbine. So Zander told Halder to take you on a guided tour.'

'My very own Dealey Plaza. It was quite a day. The crime photos showed the nasty little hobbies that people have at Eden-Olympia.'

'They were hobbies – assigned by Penrose as part of the therapy programme. That's why some of it looks so amateurish. Berthoud with his old-fashioned scales and smuggler's suitcase: he was acting out a fantasy of a drug-dealer and not doing it very well. Guy Bachelet with the stolen jewellery he couldn't be bothered to get rid of. The photos drew you in even deeper. You could see that Halder knew more than he let on.'

'He killed David. Did he shoot the hostages?'

'No. Zander led the execution squad. They arrested them outside the TV centre and took them back to the house. Then Kellerman shot them in the garden with David's rifle. Someone told me that Cordier and Bourget made a run for it and everything was botched. That's how you came to find the bullets.'

'So Halder was still on the garage roof?'

'They couldn't get him away from David's body. He was weeping all over him.' Frances pressed a fist to her mouth, forcing the blood from her blanched lips. 'Now he's using you to take his revenge. Be careful, Paul – you're a very small piece on Halder's board.'

'I know that.' I took her hand and kissed her wrist. 'Aren't you playing the same game, Frances? Did Zander and Penrose set up our meeting at the Palais des Festivals?'

'No. That was me. I'd had time to think about David. We'd split up very painfully. He more or less threw me out.'

'But why? I thought you were close.'

'Too close. That was the reason. I was frightened I'd lose him. So I showed him things about himself he didn't know.'

'Such as?'

'It doesn't matter now.' Frances stared fiercely at the hills beyond Cannes. 'Eden-Olympia corrupted David and destroyed him. He was the real victim on May 28. I watched him die in the gutter like an animal, crying in pain. After that I wanted to expose Wilder Penrose and Zander and Professor Kalman, but I needed hard evidence.'

'The photographs, the truth about the hostages…?'

'Not hard enough. I'd been David's lover for months, my flat was full of his things. Zander wanted to frame me there and then. If Penrose hadn't stepped in I would have been charged as a co-conspirator. They'd have found me guilty.'

'Twenty years in a French prison. Or worse. Good for Wilder Penrose.'

'He knew I'd be useful. So I had to go along with them. I work in the property office, I know about all the lettings on the Côte d'Azur – which Omani millionaire is moving into a particular villa in Californie, which Turkish banker is buying a jewellery store in Villeneuve-Loubet or leasing warehouse space somewhere. I laid on the Cardin Foundation raid, and the marina hijacking at Golfe-Juan. Like it or not, I've been deeply implicated from the start. I wanted revenge for David, but there was nothing I could do.'

'Until Jane and I arrived?'

She opened my hand and studied my palm line, then closed it like a book she had decided not to read. 'Sorry, Paul, but that's true. They were using you, so I thought I'd do the same. I decided to build a maze of my own. Their maze was Eden-Olympia. Mine was the inside of your head.'

'And I was happy to play there?'

'You were a small boy again. Then I started to like you, which I hadn't bargained on. But that didn't affect my real goal.'

'Which was?'

'The same as Penrose's. I wanted to provoke you, to test you to destruction. I wanted to find your dirtiest little secret, and then work on it until you became disgusted with yourself and needed to explode. You'd go to the British Consul, talk to your MEP, take the story to Fleet Street.'

'It almost worked.'

'At first you were really coming along. You found those orthopaedic harnesses very perverse.'

'What man doesn't?'

'So true. There's nothing too weird to switch a man on sexually. You'd worn a surgical harness when Jane first got you excited. But then you threw everyone. You followed a child whore to the Rue Valentin. Penrose and Zander couldn't believe their luck. You looked like you wanted to fuck her.'

'No. Not in the sense you mean.'

'Don't worry, I understand.' Frances patted my head, as if I were an elderly spaniel who had given dumb but loyal service. 'You were starting to miss Jane, and little Natasha reminded you of your first love, the doctor's daughter in Maida Vale. Penrose thought you were a full-blown paedophile, just waiting to climb into the toy cupboard.'

'I let him down. How sad.'

'Never mind. You like girlish young women, that's all. The paedo line didn't lead anywhere. I had a last go at the film festival, hoping those Thai mammasans would stir you up with some juicy kiddy-porn. But I could see it in their eyes – they knew you weren't interested.'

'Sorry, Frances. I was looking for Jane.'

'You missed her, and being a voyeur was the next best thing. You're curious to see Jane with other lovers – it liberates you from all that old-fashioned jealousy you felt when your mother was fondled by her men-friends. I'm only surprised you drew the line at Zander.'

'A police chief? One has to have a few principles. He wanted to fuck my wife so that Alain and Simone could watch.'

'I'm shocked. That is going too far.'

'Don't laugh. It was a close thing. Still, I didn't want him dead. Frances…?' She had turned away, covering her face as a tourist coach turned into the car park. 'Has someone seen us? Meldrum…?'

'No. I was thinking of Zander and that terrible road… the water burning around the car.' Her voice fell away, and she turned almost searchingly towards me, as if I could reassemble her memories. 'Those nightmare headlights before the accident…'

' Frances, it wasn't an accident. They killed him.'

'Yes…' Blood flushed her cheeks, and she stared at herself in the driving mirror. Embarrassed, she opened the door and stepped out, then bent down and said to me: 'Yes, they killed him. But I helped them, Paul. I set it up for them…'