Ben said nothing. They shot across the mouth of a narrow lane off to the left, and were almost past it before he caught a fleeting glimpse of the figure sprinting away from them down the pavement, trying to stay in the shadows of the buildings. ‘There!’ Ben braked to a screeching halt, slammed into reverse and backed up a few metres. Forward drive, foot to the floor. The tyres bit hard and the Alpina rocketed through the bend and down the narrow lane after him.

Now the chase was almost over, and the running man knew he had zero chance of escape. He threw a startled look back over his shoulder, blinking in the glare of the oncoming headlights. Ben saw his face clearly for the first time. It was Hasan Jafari, the Sudanese guy in Roth’s picture and the prime target of the GIGN operation.

Jafari was twenty metres ahead when he gave up trying to outrun the speeding car and spun around with a pistol in both hands. He fired twice, missing with the first shot. The second yowled off the corner of the Alpina’s roof. The third was liable to do worse. But Ben didn’t give Jafari time to fire it. Without slowing down he mounted the kerb, smashed a litter bin out of the way and aimed the wing of the car at Jafari in a glancing impact that caught him in the side and spun him violently off his feet. He tumbled hard to the ground, still clutching his pistol.

Ben lurched to a halt and he and Roth were instantly piling out of their doors. Jafari was struggling unsteadily to his feet, staggering as he raised the gun to shoot at the two men striding purposefully towards him. Ben got there first, trapped his wrist, sent the weapon spinning to the pavement and put him on his face with the muzzle of his own gun pressed hard into the back of Jafari’s neck.

‘Nice takedown,’ Roth said.

‘I’ll show you how it’s done sometime,’ Ben replied.

Roth looked down at Jafari with a shark smile. ‘This is your lucky day, motherfucker.’

Three blocks away the mayhem from the aftermath of the explosion sounded like a ground assault. The burning house and red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles were lighting up the sky over the rooftops and the night air was acrid with smoke. Ben thought about the GIGN men who wouldn’t be going home tonight, thanks to Jafari and his friends’ little home cooking exploits. In another few minutes the police would have the whole area cordoned off. They needed to get out of here fast.

Roth turned to Ben and said, ‘Crunch time, amigo. We either hand pretty boy over to GIGN and the cops, who’ll tear him limb from limb, or we snatch’m for ourselves and dive into a pile of shit a mile deep.’