I levelled the Makarov and drew a bead on the middle of the lone drinker’s back. A have-a-go-hero diner went for me. Hard kick to my arm. The Makarov spun out of my hand. I lay prone and he went at my head. I dodged. His foot hit the wood of the bar with enough force to break his toes. He buckled. I swept his legs from under him and he crashed down on to a bar stool face first, hitting his head with a crack. He didn’t get up.

I crouched. The cop and the lone drinker couldn’t get a clear shot at each other. One of the Spaniards broke cover from under the table where he’d been hiding. The cop brought his Glock round and dropped him with a bullet to the thigh. He fell, screaming.

Glock.

Glock.

That wasn’t right. French motorcycle cops use SIGs. And they don’t wear combat boots. Fuck. The lone drinker fired behind himself, blind, trying to hit me. A rack of absinthe bottles above the bar exploded into a shower of emerald fragments. The air filled with the reek of wormwood.

More shots. Rifle rounds, coming from outside. The plaster, paintings, shelves began to disintegrate. I got back behind the bar and threw myself headlong through the doorway into the kitchen and looked up in time to see a silver flash of steel. Right arm up. Block. My forearm swept aside the deep flat blade of a meat cleaver thrown from across the room.

The chef stood there, switching a long-bladed Sabatier from his left hand to his right. I scrambled to my feet and he sized me up, left foot forward, knife drawn up behind his head.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

He wasn’t. It was a good throw. But not good enough.

The blade embedded in a bag of flour on a shelf to my left, close enough to my ear to hear it slice through the paper. The chef froze. His timing was split-second perfect. I reached around, grabbed the handle and tugged the blade free, keeping it moving in a semi-circle across myself as I spun the blade around. I brought the point to bear behind me into the stomach of the lone drinker who’d followed me through the door into the kitchen. He buckled, a foot of steel in his guts.