As my finger squeezed the trigger, the rider pulled up on the handlebars, rearing into a roaring wheelie. Instead of shedding his sternum, the suppressed 5.56 round tore the front tyre apart. The handlebars jerked. The fork twisted. The bike was too heavy to hold. The BMW jackknifed and went over, the plainclothes rider with it, pitching him out of sight behind a delivery van. Meanwhile my bike had carried on to the next, wide junction, smashing into a row of parked cars, triggering a slew of alarms. The chopper buzzed above them, out of sight, zooming in on the crash site, not on me. I turned to get my bearings and ducked right, under the trees and scaffolding at the back of the ParisTech engineering college.

The street was deserted.

It had been nearly twenty-eight years since I’d stood in front of that white panelled door and old stone wall. It had been dark then – exactly three a.m. on a warm summer night. I didn’t know who lived there in 1990, and I didn’t now. It wasn’t what was in the house I needed. I dropped to my knees to the right of the door, kneeling in front of three adjacent manhole covers. I took the screwdriver from my coat pocket and quickly put the tip under the wide lip of the cover furthest to the left … and took the longest shot of my life.

15

Sparks of light erupted across the emptiness. Deep greens and reds brightened, swirled and died. Yellow flares twisted into nothingness. All I could see was a patchwork of fractals spinning away from me.

I closed my eyes.

Nothing changed.

I blinked hard and waited for my eyes to accustom to the dark. Eventually the crazy patterns dancing across my retinas spun themselves into oblivion. As they faded, my heartbeat steadied. And then there was nothing except darkness. No shapes, no depth, no shadows. No light at all. I was engulfed in perfect pitch blackness.

I stood at a half-crouch, stock-still, and cocked my head and listened – but there was nothing to hear. No sirens. No alarms. No helicopter. Silence so profound I could feel it on the edge of my teeth. The fast buzzing of the road had evaporated. All that was left was the high-pitched whine that the firefight in the café had scored into my eardrums.

But then, close, very close: the unmistakable sound of breathing.

I tensed, right hand on the pistol grip of the rifle. I held my own breath and strained into the void. The rasping stopped. I waited – and then exhaled in a rush of relief. It was my own lungs I could hear. There was no one nearby, no one in pursuit. I laughed out loud – just as I’d done when I first stood there.

But an entire lifetime had elapsed since then. This time I was alone.