“No, no, come up,” he said, interrupting her apology. “I’m working. Gini’s here with me, working. She just got in from Amsterdam. Room 810.”

Lindsay was surprised to hear this, but not that surprised. Presumably Gini had not been unavailable, as Max had thought: Rowland must have tracked her down; and Gini, of course, was more than capable of working through the night on a story once she had locked into it. For Gini, when at work, two A.M. was early, she thought, and smiled as she entered Room 810, to find Rowland at the fax machine and Gini talking fast on the telephone in French.

Both of them seemed energetic, hyped up, Lindsay thought. Rowland began explaining that there had been a provisional sighting of Mina Landis earlier that day. News of this had taken time to be relayed back, via the British police, and the Correspondent news desk: Gini was just trying to check the details now.

He led Lindsay to a sofa at the far end of the room; Lindsay sat down, but he did not. Lindsay began explaining what Markov had told her, and Rowland listened with close attention. Once or twice he looked back at Gini, then interjected a question. Lindsay continued her story, and it was only as she reached its end that she sensed something wrong.

The room had a careful feel. On the far side of it was a door that presumably led into a bedroom. It was shut. There was a tension beneath the surface here. She looked at Rowland in puzzlement: his demeanor seemed much as it always was. She glanced across at Gini, who was twisting the telephone cord as she spoke. She had been about to ask which floor Gini was on, whether Pixie had found her a room in this hotel, or somewhere else—and then she realized: this was a question better not asked, a topic it would be unwise to discuss.

Gini had come to the end of her conversation. She put the telephone down. She glanced at Rowland, then away, and began to explain. There had been a sighting of Mina Landis. It was still unconfirmed, but a girl answering her description, and a man resembling Star, had been seen by a plainclothes policeman in the sixth arrondissement. She reached for a map of Paris and laid it out on the desk.

“Here,” she said. “They were seen in this street here, in the Faubourg St. Germain area…” She frowned. “I know that neighborhood. It’s only a few streets away from the place where Maria Cazarès died. How odd.”

Rowland was already moving toward the desk.

“Do they now know where she died?” Lindsay said.

“What?” Rowland glanced back at her in a distracted way. “Oh—yes, apparently so. It was on the late TV news bulletins. She’d been visiting some elderly maid of hers—now retired. They were having tea together and she suddenly collapsed. According to the first reports, she was dying by the time the ambulance got there.”