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prick of remorse about raping and murdering a fourteen-year-old girl. He suspected not. The concept of guilt would have had no meaning for him. Not that remorse would change anything.
In the distance the iron gate creaked, the sound of another mourner headed for another grave. Philip struggled from his knees and brushed the grit from his trousers. With his camera he lined up a shot of the stone with his daughter’s name.
It was a hollow gesture, this picture of an empty tomb. Sophie’s body had never been recovered, and fifteen years ago this stone had been erected to screen that fact. Graves were always a presence pointing to an absence, but here that function was doubly true, the connection even more tenuous. He’d refused to take the picture before, wasn’t even sure he wanted it now. But there wouldn’t be another chance.
He turned, retracing his own footsteps in the other direction, heading back to the maintenance shed, back to the peeling statue, back to the military graves, back to the tipped stone crosses, back to the entrance, back to the giant oak, back to the car, back to the hotel, back to the message from Yvonne. Back to everything.

 
Four
 
As he slept that night, foreign words that had long slumbered now rustled in his mind, waking and taking wing. Along with language came images of Yvetot, dissolving into scenes from Paris: buildings, streets, places, people—all remnants from the past. In the theater of his mind an outdoor market buzzed with negotiations and the hawking cries of vendors. A bus roared down a broad boulevard. Then he found himself in a medieval knot of roads, the sidewalks narrow and empty, the scene oddly familiar. At the turn of an alleyway, he glimpsed a teenage girl, tall, dressed in jeans and T-shirt. Did he know her? She vanished around a building, and he struggled to follow, his legs numb and heavy. By the time he turned the corner, she was disappearing behind a line of trees. He forced himself on, pushing as if into a stiff wind.
The scene changed. He saw her pausing by a hedge where she flicked her darkening hair over her shoulder, glancing left and right before starting forward again, her small frame moving quickly, her thin arms swinging loosely in their joints. They were in a park now, or a garden. He had gained on her, was approaching from behind, was nearly within reach, and finally he stretched out his hand and touched her lightly on the back, making her wheel around.
It was black-haired Melanie, a scowl on her gaunt face.
He woke with a start, his legs entangled in the sheets. Where was he? Where was Edith? What was that moldy smell? From the middle of the spongy bed he surveyed the room—the writing desk, the wardrobe, the high window, the minibar—and his mind clicked: Yvetot. He flopped back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling, his mouth cottony, his head aching.
And what was he to make of that dream—the brackish waters of which had already begun to recede, leaving everything covered with a film of anxiety? Something about a park, a girl? He shook his head. Sleep amnesia they call it.
He showered and shaved, nicking himself as he curved the blade around the bottom of his beard. He coaxed his repaired shoelace into a bow. Then, as he pulled on his sport coat, the sleeve snagged on the wardrobe handle and a button broke off, rolling under the chest of drawers and leaving behind a tuft of threads on his cuff. So began the day.
In the end he hadn’t had the courage to call Yvonne last night, not after his visit to the cemetery. So this morning he would meet her at the law office. That seemed appropriate. After all, his last encounter with her had taken place in front of a lawyer thirteen years ago, where their divorce had been gutted of passion, reduced to a matter of red tape.
She had always been one for order. According to her mother, when she was little, Yvonne had kept her dolls in military rows and organized all her books by size. Her school notebooks had