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film show at the Sorbonne. Ellis had given them coffee. It was a small room. Jane had sat on the floor by the window. . . . “Yes. The window faces the street. Why is it important?”
    “It means you can signal.”
    “Me? Why? To whom?”
    Leblond shot a dangerous look at him.
    “Sorry,” said Jean-Pierre.
    Leblond hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice was just a shade softer, although his expression remained blank. “You’re suffering a baptism of fire. I regret having to use you in an . . . action . . . such as this when you have never done anything for us before. But you know Ellis, and you are here, and right now we don’t have anybody else who knows him; and what we want to do will lose its impact if it is not done immediately. So. Listen carefully, for this is important. You are to go to his room. If he is there, you will go inside—think of some pretext. Go to the window, lean out and make sure you are seen by Raoul, who will be waiting in the street.”
    Raoul fidgeted like a dog that hears people mention its name in conversation.
    Jean-Pierre asked: “And if Ellis is not there?”
    “Speak to his neighbors. Try to find out where he has gone and when he will be back. If it seems he has left only for a few minutes, or even an hour or so, wait for him. When he returns, proceed as before: go inside, go to the window and make sure you are seen by Raoul. Your appearance at the window is the sign that Ellis is inside—so, whatever you do, don’t go to the window if he is not there. Have you understood?”
    “I know what you want me to do,” said Jean-Pierre. “I don’t understand the purpose of all this.”
    “To identify Ellis.”
    “And when I have identified him?”
    Leblond gave the answer Jean-Pierre had hardly dared to hope for, and it thrilled him to the core: “We are going to kill him, of course.”

CHAPTER THREE
    J ane spread a patched white cloth on Ellis’s tiny table and laid two places with an assortment of battered cutlery. She found a bottle of Fleurie in the cupboard under the sink, and opened it. She was tempted to taste it, then decided to wait for Ellis. She put out glasses, salt and pepper, mustard and paper napkins. She wondered whether to start cooking. No, it was better to leave it to him.
    She did not like Ellis’s room. It was bare, cramped and impersonal. She had been quite shocked when she first saw it. She had been dating this warm, relaxed, mature man, and she had expected him to live in a place that expressed his personality, an attractive, comfortable apartment containing mementos of a past rich in experience. But you would never guess that the man who lived here had been married, had fought in a war, had taken LSD, had captained his school football team. The cold white walls were decorated with a few hastily chosen posters. The china came from junk shops and the cooking pots were cheap tinware. There were no inscriptions in the paperback volumes of poetry on the bookshelf. He kept his jeans and sweaters in a plastic suitcase under the creaky bed. Where were his old school reports, the photographs of his nephews and nieces, his treasured copy of Heartbreak Hotel, his souvenir penknife from Boulogne or Niagara Falls, the teak salad bowl everybody gets from their parents sooner or later? The room contained nothing really important, none of those things one keeps not for what they are but for what they represent, no part of his soul.
    It was the room of a withdrawn man, a secretive man, a man who would never share his innermost thoughts with anyone. Gradually, and with terrible sadness, Jane had come to realize that Ellis was like that, like his room, cold and secretive.
    It was incredible. He was such a self-confident man. He walked with his head high, as if he had never been afraid of anyone in his life. In bed he was utterly uninhibited, totally at ease with his sexuality. He would do anything and say anything, without anxiety or hesitation or shame. Jane had never