The film itself is shot on a smartphone camera.

The filmmaker waves cheerfully to himself, his face giant, an angle that shoots up his nose as he proclaims in German, “This one’s for you.”

A series of floors and walls as he lays the phone down on an unseen stand, and then, resplendent beneath the lights of the Brandenburg Gate, he reaches into a large black bag and pulls from it a can of gasoline. Grinning, he throws it over himself, hair sticking to his face, suit dripping, and when the last drop has fallen he waves again at the camera, arms spread wide for the inspection of his audience.

A shout off screen and the filmmaker’s face glows with delight. “Come over, you’re just in time!” he calls, beckoning. From his pocket he removes a green cigarette lighter and as the security guard enters the frame, one hand on the pistol in his holster, another held out, calming, soothing, our filmmaker declares, “Smile! You’re going to be famous!”

The words of the security guard are the inevitable half-stumbled placations of the moment, the please sir, calm sir, let me help you sir. He dare not approach, flinches back as our filmmaker turns in the pool of spilt gasoline, revelling at the mess, until suddenly, sharp as the crack of a pane of glass, he stops, turns to the security guard, face vacant, hand outstretched and says, “Help me.”

The guard hesitates, as who would not?

“Help me,” he says again, fingers uncurled, imploring. “Help me. Please?”

The security guard is a good man.

His toe slipping on the edge of the pool of petrol, he reaches out, and his fingers brush the hand that implores.

The filmmaker staggers, and in that second the guard’s outstretched hand becomes a bunched fist and he slams it into the filmmaker’s jaw, pushing him up then dropping him down into the pool on the floor.

This moment occurs at 1.31 into the film.

Comments such as

OMG 1.31!!

or

Wow so thought that was gonna end different 1.31

fill the screen. One hundred and fifty-three viewers have even gone so far as to give what they’re seeing a little thumbs-up. I wonder briefly if they looked beyond this moment before rendering their judgement.

Then the guard, all his previous fear and empty sounds turned to the dead silence of the competently self-aware, reaches down and plucks the cigarette lighter from the fallen man’s hands. He steps back to the edge of the pool, and as the filmmaker shakes himself, blinks in bleary confusion, opens his eyes and looks up to see–as though for the very first time–his situation, the guard flicks back the cap from the lighter, looks direct to camera and breathes,

“Do you like what you see?”

Saturated in a pool of petrol, Johannes Schwarb, his face bewildered and mouth open, begins to get out a scream before the falling flame hits the ground.

The security guard waits for the body to stop burning before he reaches down, picks up the still-filming mobile phone and turns it off.

Janus watches in silence.

There is revulsion there, but not surprise.

When it is done, she says, “Who is it for?”

“What?”

“He said this one’s for you. Who is it for?”

“Oh,” I reply, briefly bewildered. “Me. Obviously. It’s for me.”

Chapter 68

The body of Sebastian Puis did not sleep that night.

I have surfed from host to host, night by night, never sleeping, and though my skin may be fresh as a spring flower, yet I remain tired. The only conclusion I can reach is that the mind–whatever loose concept of the same may be applied to myself–needs sleep as much as every muscle fibre, nerve and hormone-crunching cell.

Descending for breakfast out of the dumb sense that it was dawn and breakfast was what you did, I was only slightly surprised to find Janus not there. No one answered my knock on her bedroom door, and at the reception desk the clerk mumbled, “Yes, she went out this morning and left you this.”

A yellow piece of hotel paper, a hand–child-like in its scrawled hugeness–proclaiming on it, Popped out. Dinner, Saint-Guillaume, 53 rue de la Garde, 5 p.m.? xx

Dinner and a kiss.

“Where is Saint-Guillaume?” I asked wearily.

The receptionist looked it up on a map. “Do you have a car?”

“No,” I sighed. “But I’m sure I can find a lift.”

Abandoning a body is dangerous.

If you cannot find the moment of the switch itself, then look for the next best thing. Find the patient who walked into the hospital, amnesiac and frightened, and ask them–what was the last thing you remember? And who was the last person you touched?

In those circumstances where a body must be abandoned without triggering the usual panoply of symptoms that may arouse attention, I recommend massive doses of mind-altering drugs.

Say what you will for the French; they know how to stock a pharmacy.

I took a gentle walk around the city, stopping on the way to pick up a drug here, a painkiller there, until my bag was sagging with the weight of questionable medication. I visited the cathedral, read a little more of my book and managed to restrain myself from editing the contents of Sebastian’s iPod. I bought a map of the surrounding area and a bottle of water, tucked both into a brown paper bag and settled down on a bench opposite the emergency ward of the university hospital.

As it began to rain, sideways off the sea, I reached into my bag, pulled out a hefty handful of pills and downed them in a gulp of sugar-coated delirium. I waited ten minutes, stood up, leaving my map behind beneath the bench, and, surprised at how reluctant my own legs were to move and how tempting it was to laugh, swung my way towards the emergency room.

The receptionist at the entrance desk had a face designed to discourage sickness. Better a lingering disease, the furrows of her eye seemed to proclaim, than the customer care skills about to be revealed. I beamed, slouching across the desk, and let my packets of pills tumble from their bag. “Hi,” I said. “I’m really, really high. Can I shake you by the hand?”

Jumping from a sober body to a drunk one is unpleasant.

Jumping from a stoned body to a sober one is, arguably, an even harsher return.

Needs must.

Fifteen minutes later–ten spent in the ladies’ toilet reminding myself that my nausea was a psychological rather than physiological response–I was a male nurse with a straight back, short trousers and a set of car keys in my pocket. Five minutes walking round the car park with the electronic tag, looking for a flash of indicator lights, located my car. I paused long enough to turn my mobile phone off, and collect my map from beneath the bench, before settling into a car that smelt perfectly of me and heading north towards Saint-Guillaume.

Chapter 69

Once, in Milan, I was a woman with a handsome face and thick eyebrows that seemed always to rebuke the foolishness of what they beheld. I owned a little yellow Mini but, slipping into the driver’s seat for the first time, I was shocked to discover how high the headrest, how close the brakes, my knees bumping up against the wheel. The back of the seat was pushed forward, crunching me down like a rally driver, and not two minutes into the drive I was forced to stop, readjust every part, tweak every mirror. Comfort and security thus restored, I spent four glorious days attending the most fashionable gatherings of the town, until at last a beautiful man in a suit approached me and said hello, and only after I’d started hitting on him did it become apparent that this unknown gentleman was my brother and he was perturbed by my behaviour.