Cocaine Nights. J. G. Ballard

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      The Reverend Davis completed his perfunctory address, never once meeting the mourners’ eyes and clearly eager to be back with his parish. Stones rattled on the coffin lid as the gravediggers spaded the heavy soil into the grave, shoulders bent in the sunlight. Unable to control himself, Andersson seized the spade from the older of the men and flailed at the loose soil, shovelling sand and grit on to the casket as if determined to shield the dead girl from any sight of the world that had failed her.

      The mourners began to disperse, led by the uneasy clergyman. They stopped to look back when a spade rang against an old marker stone. There was a high and almost strangled shout, which Mrs Shand involuntarily echoed.

      ‘Dr Sanger …!’ Andersson stood astride the grave, spade held across his chest like a jousting pole, glaring in a deranged way at the psychiatrist. ‘Doctor, why did you come? Bibi didn’t invite you.’

      Sanger raised his hands, as much to calm the watching mourners as to restrain the young Swede. His melancholy smile seemed to float free of his lips. Eyes lowered, he turned from the grave for the last time, but Andersson refused to let him pass.

      ‘Sanger! Doctor Professor … don’t go away …’ Andersson pointed mockingly to the grave. ‘Dear Doctor, Bibi’s here. Have you come to lie with her? I can make you comfortable

      A brief but ugly brawl followed. The two men grappled like clumsy schoolboys, panting and heaving until Bobby Crawford wrenched the spade from Andersson’s hands and sent him sprawling to the ground. He helped Sanger to his feet, steadied the shaken psychiatrist and dusted his lapels. Ashen-faced, his silver hair breaking around his ears, Sanger limped away, guarded by Crawford as he held the spade in a two-handed racket grip.

      ‘Let’s try to calm things …’ Crawford raised his arms to the mourners. ‘This isn’t a bull-ring. Think of Bibi now.’ When the Reverend Davis stepped quickly through the gate with an embarrassed flurry, Crawford shouted: ‘Goodbye, Vicar. Our thanks go to you.’

      Handing the spade to the impassive gravediggers, he waited for the mourners to move away. He pulled off his black crêpe tie and shrugged his crumpled jacket on to his shoulders, the same gesture that I had seen at the Club Nautico when the would-be rapist made his escape.

      The cemetery was almost empty. Paula Hamilton slipped away with Hennessy, denying me another chance of speaking to her. Mrs Shand was helped by Sonny Gardner into the rear seat of her white Mercedes, where she sat grim-mouthed. Andersson stared at the grave for a last time. He smiled gamely at Crawford, who waited amiably beside him, saluted the settling earth and walked stiffly to the gate.

      The gravediggers nodded without comment as they accepted Crawford’s tip, resigned to any behaviour by the foreigners in their midst. Crawford patted their shoulders and stood beside the grave, head lowered as he mused to himself. Almost alone now in the cemetery, he had switched off his ready grin, and a more thoughtful face settled itself over his fine bones. An emotion close to regret seemed to touch his eyes, but he gestured in a resigned way and set off for the gate.

      When I left a few minutes later he was staring over the wall at the gilded statues of the Catholic cemetery.

      ‘Cheerful, aren’t they?’ he commented as I walked past him. ‘One good reason for being a Catholic.’

      ‘You’re right.’ I stopped to size him up. ‘Still, I imagine she’s happy where she is.’

      ‘Let’s hope so. She was very sweet, and that’s cold ground in there. Can I give you a lift?’ He pointed to a Porsche parked under the cypresses. ‘It’s a long way back to town.’

      ‘Thanks, but I have a car.’

      ‘Charles Prentice? You’re Frank’s brother.’ He shook my hand with unfeigned warmth. ‘Bobby Crawford, tennis pro and dogsbody at the Club Nautico. It’s a pity we had to meet here. I’ve been away a few days, looking at property along the coast. Betty Shand’s itching to open a new sports club.’

      While he spoke I was struck by his intense but refreshing manner, and by the guileless way he held my arm as we walked towards our cars. He was attentive and eager to please, and I found it hard to believe that he was the man who had carried out the attempted rape. I could only assume that he had lent the car to a friend with far rougher tastes.

      ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said. ‘Hennessy tells me you’re an old colleague of Frank’s.’

      ‘Absolutely. He brought me into the club – until then I was just a glorified tennis bum.’ He grinned, showing his expensively-capped teeth. ‘Frank never stops talking about you. In a way I think you’re his real father.’

      ‘I’m his brother. The boring, older brother who always got him out of scrapes. This time I’ve lost my touch.’

      Crawford stopped in the middle of the road, ignoring a car that swerved around him. He stared at the air with his arms raised to the sky, as if waiting for a sympathetic genie to materialize out of the spiralling dust. ‘Charles, I know. What’s going on? This is Kafka re-shot in the style of Psycho. You’ve talked to him?’

      ‘Of course. He insists he’s guilty. Why?’

      ‘No one knows. We’re all racking our brains. I think it’s Frank playing his strange games again, like those peculiar chess problems he’s always making up. King to move and mate in one, though this time there are no other pieces on the board and he has to mate himself.’

      Crawford leaned against his Porsche, one hand playing with the tattered roof liner that hung over the passenger seat. Behind the reassuring smile his eyes were taking in every detail of my face and posture, my choice of shirt and shoes, as if searching for some clue to Frank’s predicament. I realized that he was more intelligent that his obsessive tennis playing and over-friendly manner suggested.

      ‘Did Frank have it in for the Hollingers?’ I asked him. ‘Was there any reason at all why he might have set fire to the house?’

      ‘No – Hollinger was a harmless old buffer. I won’t say I cared for him myself. He and Alice were two of the reasons why Britain doesn’t have a film industry any longer. They were rich, likeable amateurs – no one would have wanted to hurt them.’

      ‘Someone did. Why?’

      ‘Charles … it may have been an accident. Perhaps they microwaved one too many of their god-awful canapés, there was a sudden spark and the whole place went up like a hay-suck. Then Frank, for some weird reason of his own, begins to play Joseph K.’ Crawford lowered his voice, as if concerned that the dead in the cemetery might overhear him. ‘When I first knew Frank he talked about your mother a lot. He was afraid he’d helped to kill her.’

      ‘No – we were far too young. We didn’t even begin to grasp why she wanted to kill herself.’

      Crawford brushed the dust from his hands, glad to acquit us of any conceivable complicity. ‘I know, Charles. Still, there’s nothing more satisfying than confessing to a crime you haven’t committed …’

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