Without turning my back, I moved over to the café and sat down at one of the pavement tables under a striped sun umbrella, the tyre iron discreetly across my lap.

‘Won’t you join me, Monsieur Piquet?’

He’d have joined me anyway. He was more alert now, as if his brain had ground through its gears, and he sat down heavily opposite me. I signalled the waiter.

‘Two brandies, s’il vous plaît.’

‘What the shit are you playing at, lady?’ Piquet demanded.

‘I’m not playing. I’m serious.’

‘I don’t like games, especially bitch games.’

I let it pass. Insults were harmless, knives were not. Ask Mickey. Piquet’s voice was deep, the kind that seems to rise up from somewhere underground, which was exactly where I wished he was right now. He lit a cigarette. I waited till I had his full attention.

‘Why have you and Bertin been trying to kill me?’

He looked surprised by the question; his bristly black eyebrows shot up, but he looked tired too, as if hadn’t had it easy either and I was just one more annoyance to his day. ‘Because you and that bastard crippled brother of yours are filthy traitors to France.’

That wasn’t the reply I was expecting. The waiter brought our drinks and I reached for mine a little too fast. I felt the warm liquid burn the roof of my mouth and I gripped my glass to keep my hand steady. At the table to one side of us a young couple gazed at each other like new lovers and I sat back stiffly in my chair. I didn’t want anyone, even someone I didn’t know, to think Piquet and I were lovers.

‘André and I are not traitors,’ I stated. ‘You and Bertin are the ones betraying France, you and your Communist comrades in Moscow.’

He laughed and there was something in it that made my skin crawl. ‘Listen, bitch, get your facts straight. You and your Commie brother André are the ones stirring up shit here. He’s been working for the MGB for years as a double agent, thinking that we haven’t pegged him, and now he has dragged his baby sister into it too. Don’t think we don’t know what you’re doing, because we do. You’re as bad as he is.’

This didn’t make sense. Who was this man?

He knocked back his brandy and his stone-grey eyes observed me with disgust. ‘First he comes down here, sucking information out of the Yank airmen every weekend, and then you join him and take over his job.’

My teeth clamped down on my tongue. My hands kept clear of the metal bar on my lap. I didn’t trust myself with either of them.