After an hour she gave up and ate her room service dinner. She had some coffee, and thought longingly of a hot bath, a mindless TV movie, an early night. Then, remembering Fricke and feeling guilty, she returned to the book. She had already flagged the pages that contained French addresses. Now, taking out her own notebook, she copied them out. There were eighteen of them, some typed, some handwritten. From those she extracted the seven with Paris addresses and stared at her list. All seven were the addresses of girls, presumably pen pals of Anneke’s: Lisette, Chantal, Suzanne, Marie, Christine, Mathilde, Lucile.

This was not helpful. It must be here, she thought, perhaps disguised, perhaps coded. Why else would Anneke have been so protective of this book? Why else ask Fricke to hide it? On the other hand, although Anneke might have met Star in Paris, there was no way of knowing whether she also wrote to him there. Fricke had said he moved around. Maybe Paris was misleading, she thought, yet Mitchell’s BMW had been abandoned there too. She stared at the seven girls’ names in her list, and suddenly her memory unlocked.

The French Connection, she thought. Maybe it was not a false trail: not only Anneke but also Cassandra had made school trips to Paris the preceding year—one of the friends Gini had talked to had mentioned it in passing. Supposing Cassandra, like Anneke, had met Star there? That would mean that all three girls associated with Star before Mina were linked to France. The first girl, the one whose face Star had cut with a razor—she had been French, according to Mitchell. And she and Rowland had neglected that girl, she realized: they had concentrated on the two who were dead. But this French girl had been Anneke’s immediate predecessor in Star’s affections—if affections they could be called. Could it be, was it possible, that when Anneke was writing to Star, Star, who constantly moved around, she wrote to him care of that girl at her Paris address?

But what was her name? Gini could not remember. I must have asked Mitchell, she thought, rising quickly and taking out Mitchell’s interview tape. Surely I asked him?

For a moment, rewinding then advancing the tape, she was afraid the question had not been asked. It had been a very difficult interview to keep on course: Mitchell had been spaced out, and kept sidetracking… She stopped. She had found it, just a brief exchange, before Mitchell had veered off on some other subject. And it was not she who had asked the vital question, but Rowland McGuire. The interjection was his, and the sound of his voice, here in this hotel room, startled Gini. She replayed the section twice:

—And the French girl, the one he cut up with a razor. What happened to her?

—Search me. God only knows. Went home? Took off somewhere? Look, I need another drink.

—You’re not getting one. Concentrate. Can you remember her name? Any details? For God’s sake—he cut her face open. What were you doing then? Standing around watching? You couldn’t have stopped him?