"Paul," Berger said directly. "McVey. He's not questioning you for the hell of it. I need a straight answer. What's going on?"

"I don't know," Osborn said. There was no hesitation in his voice. For a moment Berger was silent, then he warned Osborn not to talk to anyone else, and if McVey came back to have him call Berger in Los Angeles. In the meantime he'd try to get someone in Paris to find a way to get his passport back so that he could get the hell out of there.

"No," Osborn said abruptly. "Don't do anything. I just wanted to know about McVey, that's all. Thanks for your time."

Succinylcholine-Osborn studied the bottle under the bathroom light, then, abruptly putting it into his shaving kit alongside the sealed packet of syringes, closed the kit and tucked it away under several dress shirts in the suitcase he'd never unpacked.

Brushing his teeth, he swallowed two sleeping pills, doublelocked the door, then went to the bed and pulled back the covers. Sitting down, he realized how weary he was. Every muscle in his body ached from the tension.

There was no doubt McVey had unnerved him, and his call to Berger had been a cry for help. But then, as he spilled everything out in a rush, he'd suddenly realized his call had been made to the wrong person, the wrong professional, to someone eminently qualified to counsel law but not the soul. The truth of it was he'd been pleading for Berger to get him out of Paris and off the hook, just as earlier he'd tried to solicit Jean Packard to kill Kanarack. Instead of Berger, he should have called his psychologist in Santa Monica and asked for guidance in handling his own emotional crisis. But he couldn't do that without confessing homicidal intent, and if he did that, by law, the psychologist would have to inform the police. After that, the only person left he could talk to was Vera, but he couldn't without incriminating her.

In reality it made no difference whom he confided in because the ultimate decision was and only would be his. Either walk away from Kanarack or kill him.

McVey's showing up had tightened the screw. Crafty and experienced, he'd never once mentioned Kanarack, but how could Osborn be certain he didn't know? How could he be sure that if he followed his plan, the police wouldn't be watching?

Reaching over, Osborn clicked off the bedside lamp and lay back in the darkness. Outside, the rain drummed lightly on his window. The lights from avenue Kleber below illuminated the droplets running down the glass and magnified them on the ceiling overhead. Closing his eyes, he let his thoughts drift to Vera and their lovemaking that afternoon. He could see her naked above him, her head thrown back and her back arched so that her long hair touched his ankles. The only movement at all was the slow, sensuous, back-and-forth thrust of her pelvis as she rode the length of him. She seemed like a sculpture. The marrow of everything female. Girl, woman, mother. At once solid and liquid, infinitely strong, and yet fragile to the point of vanishing.

The truth was he loved her and cared for her in a way he'd never experienced. It made sense only if you came at it from far inside, filled with the want and hunger and sense of wonder that the ultimate love between two people can really be. And he knew beyond doubt that were they both to die that moment, that in the same instant they would be reunited in the vastness of space, and taking on whatever form or shape required, they would continue on intertwined, forever.

If that vision was romantic or childlike or even spiritual, it made no difference, because it was what Paul Osborn believed was true. And he knew that in her own way Vera felt the same. She had proved it earlier that day when she had taken him to her apartment. And that in itself had clarified the next. And that was that if he and Vera were to go on, he could not allow the demon inside him to do what it had done to every other caring relationship he'd had since he was a boy. Destroy it. This time it i was the demon that must be destroyed. Inexorably and forever. No matter how difficult, how dangerous or at what risk.

Finally, as the pills at last played their game and sleep began to overtake him, Paul Osborn's demon materialized before him. It was hunched over and menacing and wore a dusty coat. Though it was dark, he saw it raise its head. Its eyes were deep-set and staring, and its ears stuck out at sharp angles. The head was turned and he could not see the face clearly, yet he knew instinctively that the jaw was square and that a scar ran across the cheekbone and down toward the upper lip.

And there was no doubt. None at all.

The thing he saw was Henri Kanarack.

28.

Click.

McVey knew it was 3:17 A.M. A.M. without looking because the last time he'd looked at the clock it was 3:11. Digital clocks were not supposed to make noise, but they did if you were listening. And McVey had been listening, and counting the clicks, while he thought. without looking because the last time he'd looked at the clock it was 3:11. Digital clocks were not supposed to make noise, but they did if you were listening. And McVey had been listening, and counting the clicks, while he thought.

He'd come back to his hotel, following his visit with Osborn and his frolic in the rain in front of the Eiffel Tower, at ten minutes to eleven. The hotel's tiny restaurant was closed and room service wasn't available because there wasn't any. It was the kind of all-expense trip Interpol funded. A barely livable hotel, with faded carpets, a lumpy bed and food, if you could make it between six and nine in the morning and six and nine at night.

What was left was either to go back out in the rain to find a restaurant that was open, or to use the "honor bar," the tiny little refrigerated cabinet tucked between what served as a closet and the bathroom that flooded every time you used the shower.

McVey wasn't going back out in the rain, so it was the honor bar or nothing. Opening it with a tiny key attached to the ring on his room key, he found some cheese and crackers and a triangle of Swiss chocolate. Poking around, he also found a half bottle of a white wine that turned out to be a very nice Sancerre. Afterward, when he casually opened the desk drawer to check the honor bar price list, he found out why the Sancerre had been so agreeable. The half bottle cost 150 French francs, somewhere around thirty dollars U.S. A pittance to a connoisseur, a fortune to a cop.

By eleven thirty he'd stopped fuming and taken his clothes off and was about to step into the shower when the phone rang. Commander Noble of Scotland Yard was calling from his home in Chelsea.

"Hold on, McVey, will you?" Noble had said. "I've got Michaels, the Home Office pathologist, on the other line and I've got to figure out how to make this into a conference call without disconnecting everyone."

Wrapping a towel around him, McVey sat down at the Formica-topped desk opposite his bed.

"McVey? you still there?"

"yes."

"Doctor Michaels?"

McVey heard the young medical examiner's voice join in. "Here," he said.

"All right, then, tell our friend McVey what you've just told me."

"It's about the severed head."

"You've identified who it is?" McVey brightened.

"Not yet. Perhaps what Doctor Michaels has to say will help explain why the identification is being so trouble some," Noble said. "Go on, Doctor Michaels, please."

"Yes, of course." Michaels cleared his throat. "As you recall, Detective McVey, there was very little blood left in the severed head when found. In fact almost none. So it was very difficult to assess the clotting time in attempting to determine time of death. However, I thought that with a little more information I should be able to give you a reasonable time frame for when the chap was murdered. Well, it turns out, I couldn't."

"I don't understand," McVey said.

"After you left, I took the temperature of the head and selected some tissue samples, which I sent to the laboratory for analysis."

"And-?" McVey yawned. It was getting late and he was beginning to think more of sleep than murder.

"The head had been frozen. Frozen and then thawed out before it was left in the alley."

"You sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"I can't say I haven't seen it before," McVey said. "But usually you can tell right away because the inner brain tissues take a long time to thaw out. The inside of the head is colder than the layers you find as you work outward toward the skull."

"That wasn't the case. It was thawed completely."

"Finish what you have to say, Doctor Michaels," Noble pressed.

"When laboratory tissue samples revealed the head had been frozen, I was still bothered by the fact that the facial skin moved under pressure from my fingers as it would under normal conditions had not the head been frozen."

"What are you getting at?"

"I sent the entire head to a Doctor Stephen Richman, an expert in micropathology at the Royal College of Pathology, to see what he could make of the freezing. He called me as soon as he realized what had happened."

"What did did happen?" McVey was getting impatient. happen?" McVey was getting impatient.

"Our friend has a metal plate in his skull. Undoubtedly the result of some sort of brain surgery done years ago. The brain tissue would have revealed nothing, but the metal did. The head had been frozen, not just solid, but to a degree approaching absolute zero."

"I'm a little slow this time of night, Doctor. You're over my head."

"Absolute zero is a degree of cold unreachable in the science of freezing. In essence, it's a hypothetical temperature characterized by the complete absence of heat. To even approach it requires' extremely sophisticated laboratory techniques that employ either liquefied helium or magnetic cooling."

"How cold is this absolute zero?" McVey had never heard of it.

"In technical terms?"

"In whatever terms."

"Minus two hundred seventy-three point one five degrees Celsius or minus four hundred fifty-nine point six seven degrees Fahrenheit."

"Jesus Christ, that's almost five hundred degrees below zero!"

"Yes, quite."

"What happens then, assuming you did reach absolute zero?'

"I just looked it up, McVey," Noble interjected. "It means it's a point at which mutual linear motions of all the molecules of a substance would cease."

"Every atom of its structure would be absolutely motionless," Michaels added.

Click.

This time McVey did look at the clock. It was 3:18 A.M. A.M. Friday, October 7. Friday, October 7.

Neither Commander Noble nor Dr. Michaels had had any idea why someone would freeze a head to that degree and then discard it. Nor had McVey, either. There was a possibility it had come from one of those cryonic freezing organizations that accept the bodies of the recently departed and deep-freeze them in the hope that at some future time, when there is a cure for whatever ailment killed them, the bodies could be unfrozen, worked on, then brought back to life. To every scientist in the world it was a pipe dream, but people bought into it and legitimate companies provided the service.

There were two such companies in Great Britain. One in London, the other in Edinburgh, and Scotland Yard would follow up on them first thing in the morning. Maybe their John Doe hadn't been murdered, maybe his head had been severed after death and legitimately put away for some future time. Maybe it was his own investment. Maybe he'd put his life savings into the deep-freezing of his own head. People had done nuttier things.

McVey had gotten off the phone saying he was coming back to London tomorrow and requesting that the seven headless corpses be X-rayed to see if any of them had had surgery where metal might have been implanted into the skeleton. Replacement hip joints, screws that held broken bones in place-metal that could be analyzed, as the steel plate in John Doe's head had been. And if any of them did have metal, the cadavers were to be immediately forwarded to Dr. Richman at the Royal College to determine if they too had been deep-frozen.

Maybe this was the break they were looking for, the kind of left-field "incidental," usually right in front of an investigator's nose but that at first, second, third or even tenth look still remained wholly unseen; the kind that almost always turned the tide in difficult homicide cases; that is, if the cop doing the investigating persevered long enough to go over it that one last time.

Click.

3:19 A.M. A.M.

Getting out of his chair, McVey pulled back the covers and plopped down on the bed. It already was was tomorrow. He could barely remember Thursday. They didn't pay him enough for these kind of hours. But then, they never paid any cop enough. tomorrow. He could barely remember Thursday. They didn't pay him enough for these kind of hours. But then, they never paid any cop enough.

Maybe the frozen head would lead somewhere, probably it wouldn't, any more than the business with Osborn had led anywhere. Osborn was a nice guy, troubled and in love. What a thing, come on a business trip and fall for the prime minister's girlfriend.

McVey was about to turn out the light and get under the covers when he saw his muddy shoes drying under the table where he'd left them. With a sigh, he got out of bed, picked them up and carefully walked to the bathroom, where he put them on the floor.

Click.

3:24.

McVey slid under the sheets, rolled over and turned out the light, and then lay back against the pillow.

If Judy were still alive, she would have come on this trip. The only place they'd ever traveled together, besides the fishing trips to Big Bear, had been Hawaii. Two weeks in 1975. A European vacation they could never afford. Well, they would have afforded it this time. It wouldn't have been First Class, but who cared; Interpol would have paid for it.

Click.

3:26.

"Mud!" McVey suddenly said out loud and sat up. Turning on the light, he tossed back the sheets and went into the bathroom. Bending down, he picked up one of his shoes and looked at it. Then picked up the other and did the same. The mud that caked them was gray, almost black. The mud on Osborn's running shoes had been red.

29.

MICHELE K KANARACK looked up at the clock as the train pulled out of the Gare de Lyon for Marseilles. It was 6:54 in the morning. She'd brought no luggage, only a handbag. She'd taken a cab from their apartment fifteen minutes after she'd first seen Agnes Demblon's Citroen waiting outside. At the station she bought a second-class ticket to Marseilles, then found a bench and sat down. The wait would be almost nine hours, but she didn't care. looked up at the clock as the train pulled out of the Gare de Lyon for Marseilles. It was 6:54 in the morning. She'd brought no luggage, only a handbag. She'd taken a cab from their apartment fifteen minutes after she'd first seen Agnes Demblon's Citroen waiting outside. At the station she bought a second-class ticket to Marseilles, then found a bench and sat down. The wait would be almost nine hours, but she didn't care.

She wanted nothing from Henri, not even their child who'd been conceived in love less than eight weeks earlier. The suddenness of what had happened was overwhelming. All the more so since it seemed to have sprung from nowhere.

Once outside the station, the train picked up speed and Paris became a blur. Twenty-four hours earlier her world had been warm and alive. Each day her pregnancy filled pier with more joy than the day before, and that had been no different, and then Henri called to say he was going to Rouen with Monsieur Lebec to see about opening a new bakery there, perhaps, she even thought, with the promise of a managerial job. Then, with the wave of a hand, it was gone. All Of it. She'd been deceived and lied to. Not only that, but she was a fool. She should have known the power that bitch Agnes Demblon carried over her husband. Maybe she had known it all along and refused to accept it. For that she had only herself to blame. What wife would let her husband be picked up and driven to work day after day by an unmarried woman, no matter how unattractive she might be? But how many times had ; Henri reassured her-"Agnes is just an old friend, my love, a spinster. What interest could I possibly have in her?"

"My love." She could still hear him say it, and it made her ill. The way she felt now she could kill them both without the slightest thought. Out the window the city faded to countryside. Another train roared past going to ward Paris. Michele Kanarack would never go to Paris again. Henri and everything about him was done. Finished, f Her sister would have to understand that and not try to talk her into going back.

What had he said? "Take back your family name."

That she would do. Just as soon as she could get a job and afford a lawyer. Sitting back, she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the train as it quickened down the track toward the south of France. Today was October 7. In exactly one month and two days she and Henri would ; have been married for eight years.

In Paris, Henri Kanarack was curled up fetally, asleep in an overstuffed chair in Agnes Demblon's living room. At 4:45 he had driven Agnes to work and then returned to her apartment with the Citroen. His apartment at 175 avenue Verdier was empty. Anyone going there would find no one home, nor would they find any clue to where they had gone. The green plastic garbage bag containing his work clothes, underwear, shoes and socks had been tossed' into the basement furnace and was vaporized in seconds Every last thing he'd been wearing during the murder of Jean Packard had, by now, filtered down through the night air and lay scattered microscopically across the landscape of Montrouge.

Ten miles away, across the Seine, Agnes Demblon sat at her desk on the second floor of the bakery billing the accounts receivable that always went out on the seventh of the month. Already she had alerted Monsieur Lebec and his employees that Henri Kanarack had been called out of town on a family matter and probably would not return to work for at least a week. By 6:30 she had posted handwritten notes over the telephone at the small switchboard and at the front counter directing any inquiries about M. Kanarack promptly to her.

At almost the same time, McVey was carefully walking the Pare Champ de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower. A drizzly morning light revealed the same overturned rectangular garden he'd left the night before. Farther down, he could see more pathways turned over for landscaping. Beyond them were more pathways, not yet; turned over, that ran parallel to each other and crossed other pathways at about fifty-yard intervals. Walking the full length of the park on one side, he crossed over and came back down the other, studying the ground as he went. Nowhere did he see anything but the gray-black earth that again caked his shoes.

Stopping, he turned back to see if maybe he'd missed something. In doing so, he saw a groundskeeper coming toward him. The man spoke no English and McVey's French was unpardonable. Still, he tried.

"Red dirt. You understand? Red dirt. Any around here?" McVey said, pointing at the ground.

"Reddert?" the man replied.

"No. Red! The color red. R-E-D." McVey spelled it out.

"R-E-D," the man repeated, then looked at him as if he were crazy.

It was too early in the morning for this. He'd get Lebrun, bring him here to ask the questions. "Pardon," "Pardon," he said with the best accent he could and was about to leave when he saw a red handkerchief sticking out of the man's back pocket. Pointing to it, he said, "Red." he said with the best accent he could and was about to leave when he saw a red handkerchief sticking out of the man's back pocket. Pointing to it, he said, "Red."