A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

THE pretty schoolgirl known as Yalda wore tight white trousers and thigh-high boots to the rendezvous. Her target, a young Jewish telephone salesman, quickly fell under her spell. He meekly followed her when she suggested a nightcap at her place.

It would be his last date.

The testimony of this 17-year-old femme fatale who happily offered herself as "bait" in the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi, whose tortured body was found on wasteland, has shocked a country which is haunted by a painful history of anti-semitism.

Yalda's only moment of doubt came when she heard Halimi's shrieks as he was carried away by thugs in balaclava helmets. "He screamed for two minutes, with a high-pitched voice like a girl," she told investigators.

She soon forgot, however. On Halimi's first night in captivity, she and her boyfriend celebrated in a hotel room paid for by the kidnappers.

Forget the French idyll portrayed in such books as A Year in Provence. France is being forced to confront her dark side as details emerge of horrific crimes in the suburbs.

Testimony from this grim underbelly, the immigrant banlieues -- literally "places of banishment" -- has fortified the elite's view of young immigrants on the wrong side of the Paris ring road as "barbarians at the gate".

For years the Parisian establishment has quaked at the prospect of angry hordes invading their affluent heartland and last week that nightmare came true as gangs of hooded youths robbed and bludgeoned white students attending anti-government demonstrations.

Disquiet about the spread of barbarism across the boulevard périphérique has been fuelled by the chilling story of Yalda.

The gang she worked for was known as "les Barbares", the Barbarians, and included blacks, Arabs and whites from Portugal and France.

Barbarians seemed an appropriate name. The shocking cruelty inflicted on Halimi seemed to have little to do with efforts to extract money from his anguished family. It evoked the sadistic moral universe of A Clockwork Orange, the novel by Anthony Burgess, with a dose of anti-semitism thrown in.

Thanks to Yalda's charms, Halimi was imprisoned and tortured with acid and cigarette burns for more than three weeks in the heart of a council estate.

More than 30 neighbours in the building knew what was happening but said nothing about the crime, part of a worrying wave of attacks against Jews all over the country.

Besides Yalda, several women have been arrested in an investigation into their role in botched efforts to lure other Jewish men into "honey traps".

"He wanted a Jew," a girl called Audrey told police, referring to Youssouf Fofana, the charismatic leader of the Barbarians, who was listed by the girls in their telephone directories as "Youssouf the barbarian".

I suppose that we will get a powerful indication of just how widespread anti-Semitism is in France when it comes time to decide between Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency of the country. A rejection of Sarkozy would not be an endorsement of anti-Semitism per se, but the attendant rhetoric could be.

In the meantime, this story is disturbing enough. To say the least.