Leaving the convenience store, he crossed the road to the Polish barber and took a seat while Igor finished with a customer. He read the football and boxing magazines, and shifted along the bench seat when two more customers entered. After eleven minutes, Igor took the money from the previous customer and gave de Payns the nod.

‘Ah, it is my friend the Cecil B. DeMille of Paris,’ said the Pole, who seemed to see the humour in everything.

The Naugahyde squeaked as de Payns dropped into the chair. ‘Just the usual, thanks, Igor.’

‘Steve McQueen in The Getaway?’

‘Let’s do that,’ said de Payns, smiling at himself in the mirror as the white bib was clipped around his throat. ‘That’s my favourite McQueen.’

Fifteen minutes later, sporting his new haircut, de Payns dropped into a Ukrainian-owned travel agency down the block from the barber shop. It advertised Kiev–Odessa river cruises on faded posters. Nadja, the elderly heavy smoker who owned the agency, was happy to see her filmmaking neighbour.

‘What can I do for the Frankish Ford Coppola?’ she asked, making her usual joke as she motioned for de Payns to sit. She had a hairdo like the mother in The Simpsons, but black rather than blue.

‘Four tickets to Islamabad,’ said de Payns, lighting up. ‘Cash okay?’

‘Of course,’ said Nadja, waving him away and tapping on her keyboard. ‘You have hotel?’

‘We don’t have a big budget. We need six nights, two rooms, arriving next Sunday. You know of any nice three-stars, in the city?’

She tapped a few keys. ‘I have the Pearl Continental. Is clean, is cheap and has the bar.’

‘Sounds okay,’ said de Payns, having already researched it and decided he wanted the Pearl Continental. ‘Safe?’

‘Oh, yes. Secret police make sure of that,’ she said, chuckling so hard that her hair shook like a building in an earthquake. No one did secret police jokes like the comrades of the former Soviet Union.

He caught a bus north, alighted at a Metro station and descended to the platforms, where he caught connecting trains that took him west, into the Muette Sud area. He walked the leafy boulevards till he reached a superette, where he bought a litre of milk, two pastries and a loaf of bread, and made small talk with the owner, who knew him as Clement.