Lukov was late. While I tried to work out where he was watching me from, a motorcycle cop pulled up. He killed the engine and dismounted, nodding at me as he flicked his visor up and moved past me into the bakery. Six-two, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. He wore the two-tone blue uniform of the gendarmerie, combat boots and a Glock pistol on his hip. I nodded back, waited a beat, and moved out across the road to the bar. The junction was ringed with six-storey buildings, mostly apartment blocks, all covered with dozens of windows. The crossroads could have been circled with snipers, but I was out of options. I breathed steadily as the grey pavement gave way to the white and green tiled floor of the bar. No shot rang out. The door creaked closed behind.

Safe.

I looked around and drew up a bar stool at the centre-sweep of the curved counter. At the far end the barmaid emerged from a narrow doorway that I guessed led to the kitchen. Lukov had been right about one thing: she was quite a creature – all teeth and tits and blonde tresses. I ordered a whisky.

‘Tu bois pas l’absinthe?’

I asked her if, frankly speaking, I looked like Ernest Hemingway.

‘Franchement?’ she laughed. ‘Non.’

She turned her back on me and I watched her pour the Johnnie Walker Black into a tumbler and then took in the scene properly. The whole place teetered between nineteenth-century chic and, judging by the clientele, tourist trap. But it was hard not to get caught up in the Parisian vibe: flower baskets hanging from the high white ceiling between fin-de-siècle lampshades, simple wooden tables and plenty of strong drink. It was the kind of place you might come to impress a certain sort of woman. Or to forget one.

It was busy, but not loud, as plates of food found their way to the brunch crowd. A solid murmur of conversation and the click-clack of cutlery on plates and no recorded music. Couples sat by the windows, looking on to Rue de la Roquette. A solitary drinker nursed a beer at the end of the bar near the door to the kitchen – out of which a teenager in cook’s whites – whom I took to be the plongeur – stuck his head out to see how many covers he might be washing up. He made a wisecrack as the barmaid bent over behind the bar and she caught him on the ear with a drying-up cloth as she straightened, sending him whooping back through the narrow doorway. A group of men in body warmers and maroon and mustard trousers – Italians or Spaniards by the look of them – rocked up outside the glazed main door, finishing their cigarettes before diving in for lunch.