As in a near-death experience, all the clues I might have left in my wake flashed before me. I had caught sight of myself walking past windows a thousand times and I knew I was unrecognizable from the CCTV images when dressed as the Godmother. My business partners would never be able to identify me, except perhaps from my voice, but the authoritative tone I used when speaking Arabic would render even this difficult. And anyway, it was hardly France’s finest intellects we were talking about! I had only ever taken taxis, and never from outside my place. And as for my exchanges in the supermarkets, there was nothing to identify me, apart from this business with the cakes. There was only one day, the day of the fiasco in the wedding dress department at Tati, which could put me in the frame, because somewhere on a street CCTV camera from four months ago, there would be me and DNA on his leash. There was also one false translation of an intercept, but I had handled it in such a way that you could think it was a misunderstanding and not a deliberate falsification. When I heard that Scotch and his gang had been arrested, I’d thrown out all my disguises and my money counter. I’d only ever handled the hash with gloves on — hash that couldn’t be found, stashed away in a Chinese hidey-hole in the basement of the building. My money-laundering had been impeccable and the primary beneficiary of my largesse — a certain Detective Léger — would certainly not say anything to the contrary. As regards my comings and goings to Switzerland, I had always bought my ticket in cash at the counter at Gare de Lyon, using a fake name. And good luck to anyone trying to find my pink diamonds; they had all been inserted into lipsticks and hidden in my makeup bag. No, there was nothing except for those hideously sweet cakes with which Philippe was busy stuffing himself.

“What’s the matter? Have they gone stale?”

He stared at me as if he thought he might be able to see right through to my brain.

“What?” I said, laughing.

DNA chose just that moment to come and rest his head on his thigh and beg for a pat; and right there, in the blink of an eye, he pretty much understood how I had managed to find the product to sell, accepted that he would never be able to prove it and decided he wouldn’t take any action.

I’m so sorry, my poor Philippe, for this little death I’ve inflicted upon you . . . but if you’d been just a bit less honest . . .

“I’m going home, I don’t feel too good . . .” he said.

And the man I saw leaving the apartment of my former life was a man who, in a fraction of a second, had aged 1,000 years.

He never called me again. Nor I him.