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was the old, amiable character he’d always been.
    â€œNot you, Chris. Obviously not. Just—­well, anybody, really. One , you know? Not you. Just one .”

 
    Chapter 15
    A Body on the Floor
    I t was a small hotel, a narrow structure jammed between two taller, broader buildings. It looked like “Mac” in the old Charles Atlas ads, squeezed by a ­couple of hunky bullies. Personally, I’d have told it to gamble a stamp.
    I spotted the Registry man hiding in the shadows, gave him a little salute, and went in.
    A large, sleepy dog lay in the entranceway. I stepped across it and it glanced up, twitched an ear, and settled back to sleep. Welcome, then. My French is strictly schoolboy, but Justine had already commandeered the tiny lobby and seemed to be giving the desk clerk a particularly painful third degree. Her rapid-­fire French was much too fast for me, and possibly for him, as well. He was hunched down like a cyclist in a rainstorm, head turned away, one hand half raised like a shield. Justine Dignet had something of a way with words.
    In appearance, she could have been a minor academic. She was small and thin, and tonight she had her hair tied back, emphasizing her long, slender face and pointed chin. She wore rimless glasses, a faded maroon jacket and designer jeans. There was a silk scarf at her throat, the one concession to ornament, but she meant business, nonetheless.
    She nodded to me, as if we’d last spoken a minute or two back. In fact, I hadn’t seen her for a year.
    â€œHe’s here,” she said.
    To the clerk, she snapped, “ Le clef, monsieur, s’plaît .” When he didn’t jump to it she said something hard and fast, and flashed an ID that had him muttering unhappily and reaching for the passkey. She took it with a contemptuous little glare. She looked like she was about to lecture him on post-­structuralist theory, or at least on how to conjugate his verbs.
    To me, she said, “Stairs or elevator?”
    â€œLift. I’m tired.”
    The lift was an old-­fashioned thing with a cage you had to pull across and a handle you held down to make it move. It wasn’t fast.
    I asked her, “What’d you say to him?”
    Justine just smiled, reached into her pocket, and showed me the ID. “Public health. Not current, not my name. It doesn’t matter. Even if their place is clean, they know public health will tie them up for months in red tape. This is better than a cop’s badge.”
    She told me, “We have two more ops downstairs. One at the front, one at the back. Your man is here, he can’t leave. But your Mr. Seddon insisted we wait for you.” There was a slight rise in tone at this, a certain criticism. She said, “I hope that we will not be long at this. I have a supper date I wish to keep.”
    â€œWell. That gives us a time frame, anyway.”
    At the fourth floor, we stopped. I slid the cage back softly as I could. It still scraped. Dayling’s room was in the rear. We lingered at the door a moment, listening. There was a sound from inside—­perhaps a voice. I tried the door. Locked. Justine used the key.
    It was not a big room. There were two single beds, a bureau and an upright chair. A window gave onto a view between the nearby buildings, framing a small mosaic of Paris rooftops. The onion dome of Sacré Coeur blazed white in the distance. A little closer, down between the beds, someone was lying on the floor.
    He wasn’t dead, although he looked as if he ought to be. His clothes and a part of the floor-­rug were already dark with blood. There was blood on his face. His hair stuck up in bloody tufts, making it hard to see how bad his injuries might be. He wasn’t very old. His hands were tied with packing tape; ankles, too. He wore a cheap black leather jacket, pulled halfway down his arms, and his T-­shirt and the skin beneath had been slashed by something