Super-Cannes. Ali Smith

was staring over my shoulder, but held me in his visual field, the trick of a military policeman. His smile exposed a set of lavishly capped teeth that seemed eager to escape from his mouth. Despite his sallow skin, imprinted with years of poor nutrition, he wore gold cufflinks and handmade shoes. I assumed that he was a Russian emigré, one of the small-time hoodlums and ex-police agents who were already falling foul of the local French gangsters.

      He raised his hand as if to shake mine. ‘Dr Greenwood?’

      ‘He’s not here. Haven’t you heard?’

      ‘Heard nothing …’ He stared cannily at me. ‘Dr Greenwood live here? Alexei …’

      ‘Alexei? Listen, who are you? Get out of here …’

      ‘No …’ He moved around me, pointing to the scars on my injured legs, confident that I was too handicapped to challenge him. Burrs covered the sleeves of his jacket, suggesting that he had not entered Eden-Olympia through the main gates.

      ‘Look …’ I moved towards the terrace and the extension phone in the sun lounge. The Russian stepped out of my way, and then lunged forward and struck me with his fist on the side of my head. His face was cold and drained of all blood, lips clamped over his expensive teeth. I felt my ringing ear, steadied myself and seized him by the lapels. The three months I had spent in a wheelchair had given me a set of powerful arms and shoulders. My knees buckled, but as I fell to the grass I pulled him onto me, and punched him twice in the mouth.

      He wrestled himself away from me, clambered to his feet and tried to kick my face. I gripped his right foot, wrenched his leg and threw him to the ground again. I began to punch his knees, but with a curse he picked himself up and limped away towards the avenue.

      I lay winded on the grass, waiting for my head to clear. I fumbled for my walking stick, and found myself holding the Russian’s calf-leather shoe. Tucked under the liner was a child’s faded passport photograph.

      ‘Taking on intruders is a dangerous game, Mr Sinclair.’ Halder surveyed the diagram of scuff-marks on the lawn. ‘You should have called us.’

      ‘I didn’t have time.’ I sat in the wicker armchair, sipping the brandy that Halder had brought from the kitchen. ‘He knew I was on to him and lashed out.’

      ‘It would have been better to say nothing.’ Halder spoke in the prim tones of a traffic policeman addressing a feckless woman driver. He examined the leather shoe, fingering the designer label of an expensive store in the Rue d’Antibes. Voices crackled from the radio of his Range Rover, parked in the drive next to the Jaguar. Two security vehicles idled in the avenue, and the drivers strode around in a purposeful way, chests out and peaked caps down, hands over their high-belted holsters.

      But Halder seemed unhurried. Despite his intelligence, there was a strain of pedantry in the make-up of this black security guard that he seemed to enjoy. He switched on his mobile phone and listened sceptically to the message, like an astronomer hearing a meaningless burst of signals from outer space.

      ‘Have they caught him yet?’ I poured mineral water onto a towel and bathed my head, feeling the bubbles sparkle in my hair. Surprisingly, I seemed more alert than I had been since arriving at Eden-Olympia. ‘He called himself Alexei. He shouldn’t be too difficult to find. A man strolling around with one shoe on.’

      Halder nodded approvingly at my deductive powers. ‘He may have taken off the other shoe.’

      ‘Even so. A man in his socks? Besides, it’s an expensive shoe – welt-stitched. What about your surveillance cameras?’

      ‘There are four hundred cameras at Eden-Olympia. Scanning the tapes for a one-shoed man, or even a man in his socks, will take a great many hours of overtime.’

      ‘Then the system is useless.’

      ‘It may be, Mr Sinclair. The cameras are there to deter criminals, not catch them. Have you seen this Alexei before?’

      ‘Never. He’s like a pickpocket, hard to spot but impossible to forget.’

      ‘In Cannes? He may have followed you here.’

      ‘Why should he?’

      ‘Your Jaguar. Some people steal antique cars for a living.’

      ‘It’s not an antique. In a headwind it will outrun your Range Rover. Besides, he didn’t come on like a car buff. Not the kind we’re used to in England.’

      ‘This isn’t England. The Côte d’Azur is a tough place.’ Concerned for me, Halder reached out to pluck some damp grass from my hair, and then examined the blades in his delicate fingers. ‘Are you all right, Mr Sinclair? I can call an ambulance.’

      ‘I’m fine. And don’t worry Dr Jane. The man wasn’t as strong as I expected. He’s a small-time Russian hoodlum, some ex-informer or bookie’s runner.’

      ‘You put up a good fight. I’ll have to take you on my patrols. All the same, you’re still getting over your plane crash.’

      ‘Halder, relax. I’ve wrestled with some very tough physiotherapy ladies.’ I pointed to the faded passport-booth photo on the table. ‘This child – it looks like a girl of twelve. Is that any help? He mentioned the name “Natasha”.’

      ‘Probably his daughter back in Moscow. Forget about him, Mr Sinclair. We’ll find him.’

      ‘Who do you think he is?’

      Halder stroked his nostrils, smoothing down his refined features, ruffled by the effort of dealing with me. ‘Anyone. He might even be a resident. You’ve been wandering around a lot. It makes people curious.’

      ‘Wandering? Where?’

      ‘All over Eden-Olympia. We thought you were getting bored. Or looking for company.’

      ‘Wandering …?’ I gestured at the wooded parkland. ‘I go for walks. What’s the point of all this landscape if no one sets foot on it?’

      ‘It’s more for show. Like most things at Eden-Olympia.’

      Halder stood with his back to me, searching the upstairs windows, and I could see his reflection in the glass doors of the sun lounge. He was smiling to himself, a strain of deviousness that was almost likeable. Behind the brave and paranoid new world of surveillance cameras and bulletproof Range Rovers there probably existed an old-fashioned realm of pecking orders and racist abuse. Except for Halder, all the security personnel were white, and many would be members of the Front National, especially active among the pieds-noirs in the South of France. Yet Halder was always treated with respect by his fellow guards. I had seen them open the Range Rover’s door for him, an act of deference that he accepted as his due.

      Curious about his motives, I asked: ‘What made you come to Eden-Olympia?’

      ‘The pay. It’s better here than Nice Airport or the Palais des Festivals.’

      ‘That’s a good enough reason. But …’

      ‘I don’t look the type? Too many shadows under the eyes? The wrong kind of suntan?’ Halder stared at me almost insolently. ‘Or is it because I read Scott Fitzgerald?’

      ‘Halder, I didn’t say that.’ I waited for him to reply, watching while he twisted the Russian’s shoe in his hands, as if wringing the neck of a small mammal. When he nodded to me, accepting that he had tried to provoke me, I turned my bruised ear towards the intercom chatter. ‘I meant that it might be too quiet here. Your men have a job pretending to be busy. Apart from this man Alexei, there doesn’t seem to be any crime at Eden-Olympia.’

      ‘No crime?’ Halder savoured the notion, smirking at its naivety. ‘Some people would say that crime is what Eden-Olympia is about.’

      ‘The multinational companies? All they do is turn money into more money.’

      ‘Could be … so money is the ultimate adult toy?’ Halder pretended to muse over this.