Just after four o’clock he stepped on to the terrace. A dozen people lounged against the rail, while another twenty or thirty sat at the wooden tables. The interior of the cafe was almost empty. He stood for a minute in the middle of the terrace, then, feeling awkward, foolishly conspicuous, he found a space at the rail and took the view. Notre Dame, the ‘Genie de la Bastille’, and in the distance, shimmering in a smoke of exhaust fumes, Sacré Coeur, looking oddly like the space shuttle, its creamy dome targeted at the sky. On one side of him, an oriental girl recorded the scene on a digital camera; on the other, a pair of lovers gazed out as if from the deck of a liner towards the coast of a country they had once been happy in.

He waited fifteen minutes. The lovers drowsily departed. On the far bank of the river, some curious effect of sunlight and water made it appear that a torrent of molten fire coursed behind the first-floor windows of the houses on the quai de Béthune. He told himself he was relieved that it had turned out to be nothing, that this was for the best, and after a last look around, he took the lift again, crossed the courtyard, and waited at the corner of rue de Fosses for the lights to change. Next to him, a young man in a sports jacket also waited, pulling on a cigarette and staring ahead. They crossed together, and as they reached the other side the young man touched László’s arm with a gesture so slight it might almost have been accidental. It reminded László – awkward reminiscence at such a moment – of his few casual encounters in Paris in the years after he first arrived, days when blinded by an inassuageable loneliness he had gone with strangers, using lust like a hammer to smash at the tenderness in himself.

‘Yes?’

The young man flicked the end of his cigarette into the gutter, where it span in the water among the fruit peel and the Métro tickets. ‘There is a car, monsieur. Please hurry.’

He walked ahead, and after a hesitation that lasted no more than three or four seconds, László followed him on to the quai de la Tournelle, where a grey Volkswagen was parked at the rear of the taxi rank. A second man, older than the other, more heavily built, leaned over to open the passenger door. László was ushered into the back seat and the young man sat by his companion. Two policemen in shirtsleeves strolled past, glanced at the driver, glanced at László, at the vehicle itself (which had a dent on the offside door), but kept moving, as if on such a warm afternoon it was much more pleasant to continue their conversation than stop yet another car with someone vaguely foreign at the wheel.