Outside the cathedral the market square looked more like a souk than a European street market, filled with colour and bustle, and as Ben filtered through the crowded neighbourhood he could easily have believed he was in Marrakesh or Istanbul. A little further on stood social housing projects that might have appeared fresh and modern and optimistic back when they were first thrown up to accommodate the waves of immigrants coming in, but now they came over as sad and stained. He wondered if Michel Yassa lived in one of them.

The Geronimo bar where Yassa hung out was just a couple more blocks away, on the corner of a cobbled street opposite a halal butcher’s shop. Around the side of the bar was a narrow alleyway choked with empty crates and wheelie bins. Ben parked the Alpina near the entrance to the alleyway and walked inside the bar.

The bar’s interior was long and narrow, and not busy. The tall buildings opposite blocked out most of the light, so that what little of it filtered through the dirty windows made for a dim, murky ambiance. It had looked pretty basic in the photos on Romy’s phone, and wasn’t any better in real life. Not quite spit’n’sawdust, but not far off it.

Ben’s plan was to scout the place, ask around, get talking to people and pretend to be someone who owed Michel Yassa money and had come to pay, in the hope that he’d be pointed in the right direction. The best place to start in such cases was generally the bar itself, where the lone barman was busy washing up glasses. Ben would buy a drink, pull up a bar stool and start the conversation by asking casually whether Michel was working today.

But he never got that far, because luck was already with him. Glancing around the dim room Ben noticed a young dark-haired guy sitting by himself at a table near the back, near a doorway with a sign pointing towards the bathrooms. He was wearing faded jeans, white trainers and a G-Unit hoodie, and bore a striking resemblance to the fellow in Romy’s photos.

Evidently, the police hadn’t caught up with him yet. Michel Yassa didn’t appear to be expecting them to. He showed no appearance of being a man on the run. In fact he was going nowhere at all, and clearly hadn’t moved for some time. He was slouching low on a red vinyl bench seat, apparently lost in a world of his own as he gazed at the bottle of beer in front of him with a vacant look that Ben guessed might have something to do with the five more empties on his table. It looked as if he’d bought them all at once and been working his way steadily through them.