'Then why did Penrose say he was ending the programmes?'

'He wanted you here. Then they could deal with you and Frances at the same time. A classic crime passionnel. Or even a sex game that went wrong. You know how the English are…'

'And Jane?'

'They don't see her as a problem. She's already one of them, though she doesn't know it.'

'I need to find her.'

'Right. And then?'

'We'll head for the airport, drive into Italy, anything to get her away from here. She and the Delages are going to a street party somewhere. Ask the night staff at the clinic to page her.'

'Too risky. Anyway, we know where she'll be. The street party is in the Rue Valentin.'

'So…' I thought of Jane's lurid costume. 'The whore's garb – like Antoinette and her milkmaids.'

'Mr Sinclair? You aren't making sense.'

'You didn't see what she was wearing. How do you know all this?'

'Delage wanted me to go along. I like Dr Jane, but too much for what he had in mind. Anyway, Penrose earmarked a different job for me.'

'Be careful – they used you to kill Greenwood. Sooner or later they'll give you another target.'

Halder turned the ignition key and listened to the sound of the engine. 'They already have, Mr Sinclair.'

'Me?' I pressed my head against the window, almost hoping that I could break the glass. 'That's why you were in Frances's apartment. You were waiting there, ready to kill me. Why didn't you?'

'Because I like you.' Halder stared at his instruments. 'And I like Dr Jane. Besides, you're more useful to me alive. You're the one person they never predicted, the kind they can't really handle.'

'Too dull, too normal?'

'Something like that. There are things Eden-Olympia can't cope with – the key that breaks in the lock, the toilet that backs up, the druggy woman you fall in love with. The everyday world where the human race still lives. It never arrived at Eden-Olympia.'

'And you're going to bring it there?'

'Exactly. Trashed cars, a few house fires and office break-ins. Eden-Olympia can fight off a billion-dollar takeover bid, but a little dog shit on the shoe leaves it helpless.'

'So the graffiti, the Green slogans – you're behind them?'

'Along with a few friends. I'm climbing to the top, Mr Sinclair, in my own way…'

We drove past the parked cars to the exit ramp. When we reached the slip road I pointed to a small crowd dispersing on the steps below the main lobby. I recognized the woman with the child who had shouted at me. Still agitated, she watched resentfully as two traffic policemen remounted their motorcycles. Clearly they had been unimpressed by the story of a blood-stained man in the lift.

'So they haven't found Frances?'

'Not yet. They're still waiting for you, Mr Sinclair.'

As we turned onto the slip road I gripped the steering wheel, forcing Halder to brake. The traffic policemen sat astride their cycles, talking to a sharp-faced man in a camel-hair jacket and patent-leather shoes.

'Alexei… what's he doing here?'

'Who?' Halder squinted into the rear-view mirror. 'The man with the cycle cops?'

'Alexei – a small-time Russian crook. He came to the house after we arrived. I saw him in the Rue Valentin, renting out an eleven-year-old girl.'

'He works for Eden-Olympia now. His name is Golyadkin, Dmitri Golyadkin.'

'He said Alexei.'

'Alice, Mr Sinclair. He thought you'd taken over the library…'

I watched the Russian talking to the policeman, apparently discussing his illegally parked car. But his eyes never left the balcony far above him. Despite the smart clothes, he looked cheap and unsavoury, like the smell of his body as we wrestled on the grass.

Then I remembered the coarse odour of a man's sweat in Frances 's kitchen.

'Golyadkin? Did he kill Frances?'

'I hate to say it, but maybe he did. Alain Delage finds him useful. He has a bunk in the guardroom at the security building. I'll deal with him later for you…'

41 The Streetwalker

The promenade of the night had begun in the Rue Valentin. I turned the Peugeot into a side street, the Avenue des Fleurs, and waited for Halder to park his Range Rover behind me. Groups of Arab and eastern European men smoked their cigarettes, while the young French whores clicked their heels and stared for inspiration into the night air. The older women in their sixties gazed at each other from their street corner, shifting from one tired ankle to the other like stoical commuters.

I left the car and walked back to the Range Rover.

'Frank, can you see her?'

'Not yet, Mr Sinclair. She'll be here soon.'

Halder seemed unsettled, his eyes avoiding the exposed thighs of the transvestites who ambled past like Olympic oarsmen in drag. He pulled a blue trenchcoat from the rear seat and buttoned it over his jacket. Together we walked down the Rue Valentin. Nothing appeared to happen, but a busy invisible commerce was taking place.

One of the bored French whores leaned forward on her stilettos and began to walk at a brisk pace. Ten steps behind her a young Arab followedwith quick strides, like amessenger with an urgent telegram.

Cars cruised the kerb, drivers staring ahead but communicating by some sixth sense with the pimps who stood with their backs to the road. Everyone trafficked in time, sex displaced into blocks of darkness, thirty-minute cages of the night where pleasure flared and was gone like a shooting star. Somewhere in this third-rate hell were Jane and her street party.

'At least there are no children,' I said. 'What is it?'

'Careful, Mr Sinclair…' Halder stepped around me and nodded to a cobbled side alley. A black Mercedes was parked against a wall, the aerial of a radio telephone rising from the rear deck.

'Frank? The car in the alley? What's special about it?'

'It's the Delages'.' Halder surveyed a film poster above a shuttered tabac. 'They're standing in the doorway next to the car.'

'There's nothing there…'

'Right by the Merc.' Halder lowered his head and let his eyes drift along the street. Away from Eden-Olympia he was a black man in a trenchcoat, with no secure place in the corridors of the night. At any moment the dark air could open like a trap and release a spasm of hate and violence.

Over Halder's shoulder I saw the Delages. They were leaning against each other in a doorway, her head against his chin, like clandestine lovers.

'They're watching the damned Mercedes. No one's going to steal it. Where's Jane?'

'It's all right, Mr Sinclair.' Concerned for my safety, Halder steered me from the path of an aggressive transvestite who shouldered past, looking down at us with an expression of contempt. 'I'll take over… she's here.'

A rear door of the Mercedes opened, and a young prostitute in high-heels and a sequinned shift dress stepped onto the cobbles.

She swayed against the open door, and closed it clumsily with her elbow. Tired by the effort, she leaned on the window, staring into her own fatigue. She seemed drugged by more than narcotics, but turned towards the Delages and made a brief, parodic curtsy. As she straightened her skirt I saw the sequins glitter in the streetlights.

'Jane…?' I spoke loudly enough for her to hear me, but she was smiling in an unfocused way at the men who passed the alley.

'Frank, I can see her. What's she playing at? It looks like a stage act.'

'I don't think it is…'

'No?' I stepped on a discarded cigarette that glowed near my feet. As its embers flared and died, the air around me seemed to lighten. My anger had passed, and I felt responsible for myself for the first time in months. 'Wait here while I bring the Peugeot. I want to get her away before the action starts.'

'Move fast, Mr Sinclair.'

The Delages stood in the doorway beside the Mercedes, arms around each other, watching Jane like concerned foster parents at an amateur-dramatic performance where their much-loved ward was making her début. Simone followed Jane with her familiar devoted gaze, showing the same shy affection that I had noticed at their first meeting. Alain nodded to her, unsure of Jane but still confident in her, the senior bureaucrat glad to put aside his distractions to encourage a family friend, willing her to succeed. Looking across the night air at this dangerous couple, I imagined their Roman predecessors, administrators of colonial Provence, sitting in the arena at Nimes and watching a favourite slave bravely meet her end. Wilder Penrose's feat was not to have driven the Delages mad but to have made them appear sane.