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be back here around six. Will you call me if you discover anything? I’d be very grateful.’
    The courier promised he would do so; he said that his name was George, and he would call her at home, without fail, after six. He then left, for his next delivery, and Genevieve stood for a while on the pavement, watching his van disappear. It was cold, and beginning to rain. She turned up the collar of her coat, and gave a small shiver. Handcuffs. Did that mean that she had an unknown enemy? Or was this anonymous package meant to convey something else?
    She walked across to her car, and drove off. The rush-hour traffic was heavy, and delayed her further still, but she drove the whole
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    way to her newspaper’s docklands offices unaware of the passing time, considering her anonymous present. Halfway there, she finally made the obvious deduction: the sender of these handcuffs was likely to be male - and at that her residual sense of sick unease increased.

PART TWO
AN INVESTIGATION
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    IT WAS typical of his ex-wife, Pascal thought, turning into the smart estate where she lived, to elect to live here, in Paris and yet not in Paris, in surroundings which could scarcely be less French. His former wife, born with a gift for languages, fluent in French, German and Italian, remained English to the core. She retained a thin-lipped disdain for foreigners, an unshakeable belief in their inferiority. ‘ParisT Helen had said, at the time of the divorce. ‘Live in Paris? Are you insane? I only stay in France on sufferance, for Marianne’s sake. I’ve already found the perfect house. It’s on the outskirts. It costs five million francs. We can build it in to the settlement. I hope you’re not going to quibble, Pascal. It’s cheap at the price.’
    The five-million-franc house lay ahead of him now, just up the street. It was what Helen called an ‘executive’ house. It had seven bedrooms, all expensively furnished and five of them unused. It had seven bathrooms, a kitchen like an operating theatre, a four-car garage, and a view of desolate immaculate turf. It was a house which could have been built in any expensive suburb in the world. Pascal had seen others just like it, equally vulgar, in Brussels, London, Bonn, Detroit. Its bricks were an aggressive scarlet. He had loathed it on sight.
    This morning, there was a change in the routine. Normally,
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    by tacit agreement, Pascal and Helen never met. At the end of an access weekend, Pascal would pull up outside the house. Helen, watching from the picture windows, would rush to the doorway, and hold out her arms. Marianne would run inside, the door would close, and Pascal would drive off.
    This morning was to be different, it seemed. Helen was waiting in the driveway, looking thin, elegant and irritable. She kissed Marianne in a perfunctory way, and the child ran inside. Pascal wound down the window of his car.
    In English, Helen said: ‘You’re late.’
    ‘I know. I’m sorry. The traffic was bad.’
    She raised her eyebrows in a small arc of reproachful disbelief. ‘Really? Well, it hardly matters. I have nothing else to do except wait around, as I’m sure you know. Could you come in for a moment? I’d like us to talk.’
    ‘I can’t. I have an appointment in Paris in twenty minutes and I have to catch the flight to London at noon.’
    ‘When don’t you have a flight to catch?’ She turned away, faint colour rising in her cheeks. ‘Nothing changes, it seems. Well, if you can’t spare me ten minutes of your time, I’ll do it through the lawyers. Slower, and more expensive, of course - but it’s your choice.’
    At the word ‘lawyers’, Pascal switched off the engine. He climbed out, slammed the car door, and strode ahead of her into the house. In the kitchen, he picked up the telephone and started dialling. He observed the cafeti&e filled with fresh coffee, the plate of biscuits on the white marble kitchen worktop, the two white cups and saucers, the two