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evenings for nine months of the year, and since the judge had never looked at another woman, his wife in their well-appointed flat in La Muette, was not suspicious. He developed a routine. Once away from the office he exchanged his astrakhan for the scruffy flasher’s mac and cloth cap that lived in the Citroën. Thus transformed, he felt safe from recognition in the Bois and titillated by the touch of the bizarre, the forbidden, that enhanced the whole procedure.
    He ceased to be bothered by middle-age feelings of rusting away. Life was no longer a mundane groove. Should he be discovered in pursuit of his perversion, his career and his marriage would not survive the shock. He savored, indeed nurtured, the risk in much the same way as a climber relishes a dizzy void.
    Fearing the darker, less accessible parts of the Bois, the judge habitually cruised the main thoroughfares, especially the northern end of the Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi. He invariably chose tall, fair transvestites, a hangover perhaps from Zita, who had killed herself in a public lavatory not long after introducing him to the dubious pleasures of the Bois. He grew to love the alien smell of the earth and the sounds of the forest as he pounded away in the scrub. To the judge, sex without the Bois soon became like strawberries without cream.
    Three weeks passed before the judge spotted Pia. He parked the Citroën and listened to her argue with a pock-faced Moroccan.
    “You are not busy,” he whined. “Three times I comeby here and always you are free. Maybe you don’t like Arabs. Huh? Come on, I pay you double.” Pia’s response was negative.
    “Va te faire sauter ailleurs, conasse,”
shouted the frustrated Arab, moving on to a buxom brunette.
    The judge edged the car forward as soon as Pia was alone on the verge.
    He spoke gently. “A hundred and fifty for an hour?”
    She responded at once. She was not absolutely sure about him because the cap shadowed his features. But the car was enough.
    “I’m all yours, darling … let’s go.”
    She led him by the hand to a tiny clearing in a thicket.
    “How do you like it, m’sieu?”
    He explained and was quoted an extra fifty francs. This was normal and he agreed. When both were naked but for the judge’s black socks, Pia lay on her back on a prepositioned tartan rug. She spread her legs and smiled up at her client.
    Davies rehoused the CB radio. “De Villiers says the judge has taken the bait.” He closed the trunk quietly and handed Meier one of two iron bars. These he had purchased together with other farm implements from a hardware store in Dieppe a week previously.
    Both men, clad in baggy, gray cotton track suits over slacks and shirts, entered the forest. Davies led without a flashlight: he knew the path well. Only that afternoon he had walked along its winding length and removed twigs for the last hundred yards and right up to the thicket. Twice he hissed at his companion. He never liked this sort of work with Meier.
    De Villiers himself was quiet as a cat and quick as an adder, but Meier, short-sighted and unfit, verged on being a liability. He was, however, undeniably brilliant with technical matters: no electronic or mechanical challenge was too great. Davies had often wondered whyMeier had left the Mercedes factory in Wolfsburg where he had worked as a senior research scientist for nine years. Meier had, over the years, refined various electronic and mechanical methods of untraceable murder. He was an invaluable asset to the team and could be forgiven his nocturnal clumsiness.
    After five minutes Davies stopped by a solitary birch tree and raised his hand in the gloom of the forest. Both men could hear clearly the low grunts of pleasure and the ritual endearments of the
travelo
. Meier followed Davies closely. As always they had rehearsed the kill.
    The first blow of Davies’s iron bar split open the judge’s skull. Pia’s legs were clasped together around the judge’s back and the