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what Omura had said.
    I’m sorry, Omura, he said eventually. I can’t go there. An unhappy coincidence. Is
there somewhere else?

    In the end, they went to Le Chapeau Tombé, a restaurant on the other side of town,
somewhere far from the tainted streets of Belleville, somewhere Jovert took his associates.
Used to take.
    Jovert recalled later that, immediately the waiter had left, Omura began asking him
questions: about his life, his past, what he had done, where he had been. There was
a peculiar urgency about it, a directness he had found unnerving.
    Were you ever married, Inspector? Omura asked.
    Once.
    May I ask what happened?
    We…we grew apart, he said.
    And children?
    Yes, one.
    A daughter?
    No, a son.
    Jovert shifted in his seat. He glanced across at a young woman who was sitting alone
by the window. She was wearing a red scarf. Her hair was freshly cut. Her skin lightly
tanned. She was twisting a ring distractedly on one of her fingers. He saw her look
at her watch. She leaned forward on her elbows, looked out the window, first one
way, then the other. The street outside was deserted. It had begun to rain again.
    And you see your son often? Omura asked. He lives in Paris?
    No.
    No?
    No, Jovert said evenly. He’s dead. He died as a child.
    Omura paused.
    I’m so sorry, Inspector. I did not know, he said.
    Now it was Omura’s turn to look away.
    You know, Inspector, he said after some minutes, when I was a child, my father loved
jigsaw puzzles. This may strike you as odd in a grown man. But jigsaws mean something
different for us. Ours is an ancient tradition, quite distinct from what you have
here in Europe. Each piece of a puzzle is considered individually. No shape is repeated,
unless for some special purpose. Some pieces are small, others large, but all are
calculated to deceive, to lead one astray, in order to make the solution of the puzzle
as difficult, as challenging, as possible. In our tradition, how a puzzle is made,
and how it is solved, reveals some greater truth about the world. Puzzles are not toys to us, but objects of contemplation. Do you understand what I mean?
    I think so, Jovert said.
    In any case, my father was fascinated by them. He was a connoisseur, an expert. He
had a huge collection. All of them from China or Japan. He had a number of extremely
rare, one-of-a-kind puzzles that were centuries old. They were beautiful things,
made from combinations of exotic woods, with inlays of ivory, or mother of pearl,
or gold and enamel. They were works of art in their own right, exquisite things.
    But the puzzles my father prized above all others were the ones he loved for the
ingenuity of their construction. Perhaps you have heard of them. They are the so-called himitsu-e puzzles, puzzles so cunningly made that they have either an infinite number
of solutions or solutions which are mutually contradictory.
    Then, one day—I must have been eleven or twelve at the time—my father came home waving
a magazine about above his head. He called for my mother and me to come and look
at what he had bought. I can still see us gathered around him, looking at an advertisement
in the magazine for European jigsaw puzzles.
    Five thousand pieces, he was saying. Five thousand! Can you imagine that?
    He sent away for one. While he was waiting, he even had a wooden box specially made
for it.
    In the intervening weeks our whole household became caught up in my father’s excitement.
I think we all began to pace to and fro with him as he waited. Finally he received
a message from the post office that a package had arrived, and he set off to fetch
it.
    An hour later, my father came home carrying a large carefully wrapped carton in
his outstretched arms, as though it was an offering.
    We all crowded round while my father placed it on the table. I can see him sitting
there contemplating it.
    Aren’t you going to open it? my mother asked.
    Shh, my father said, holding up his hand.
    You know, it makes me laugh now. I remember