Ahead, Boulevard Raspail split into a fork, with one-way warning signs flanking the entrance to the street to the right. The gunman could probably hardly see a thing through the opaque spider’s web of his shattered windscreen. He sped through the signs and the wrong way up the street, and Ben had to follow. The street was narrow and shady, lined with parked cars and motorcycles, fine apartment buildings with fancy balcony railings looming high on both sides, like a canyon against whose walls the roaring engines of the two cars echoed as they sped up the middle. At the end of the street was a T-junction with a big office building directly opposite. The Mercedes was halfway there when a colourful sports bike turned into the junction at an acute angle of lean and accelerated briskly, the rider obviously too focused on his racing skills to notice the two cars speeding straight towards him the wrong way up the street.

By the time the motorcyclist saw the Mercedes coming it was already too late to swerve out of the way. The parked vehicles on both sides made it too narrow to pass. He was hard on the brakes and his suspension was compressed deep into its fork tubes. No way to stop in time, let alone get out of there. The Mercedes wasn’t slowing down. The gunman clearly thought he could run straight over the top of the oncoming bike. Instants before the inevitable collision the rider threw himself off his machine and went tumbling. The riderless motorcycle stayed upright on its wheels for the last couple of yards before it collided smack into the middle of the front end of the Mercedes.

The impact lifted the car’s rear into the air. The bike somersaulted violently over the bonnet and came slamming down on the road behind the car. Ben braked hard to avoid running over the wreckage. Now totally out of control, the Mercedes veered straight into a row of parked cars along the kerbside, ploughing a trail of carnage before it came to a crunching halt against a solid iron bollard.

That was the end of the road for the gunman.

Ben threw open his driver’s door and stepped out of the Alpina. The road was covered in spilled fuel and oil from the smashed sportsbike. Nearby, its rider, still stunned, was getting to his feet and pulling off his helmet. He was a young guy, maybe twenty. Ben called out to him, ‘You okay?’, to which the young guy gave a dazed kind of nod, and Ben replied, ‘Good. Now beat it,’ flashing the police ID. The rider nodded again and stumbled off, with just a glance at the twisted ruin that was all that was left of his bike.