Along this street one window was lit below a neon BAR sign. A hefty middle-aged woman in a short, low-cut dress from which she bulged at all points sat in the window looking bored and smoking a cigarette. She raised a semi-hopeful eyebrow when the figure of Kale passed, but it fell again into its set boredom when he did not stop. At the end of the street the lights from a café spilled out across the pavement. Kale pushed open the door and stepped into the smoky warmth.

Working men in grey jackets and cloth caps looked up from their beers and eyed him suspiciously. He was not a regular and nobody but regulars drank here. Kale drew up a chair at an empty table and dropped his bag on the floor. The crude wooden table rocked unsteadily, one leg shorter than the others. The barman came out reluctantly from behind the counter. ‘Monsieur?’

Bloody foreigners, Kale thought. Why can’t they speak English? ‘Bière,’ he growled and lit a cigarette. The barman poured a half-litre of draught Stella and sloshed it down on Kale’s table. Kale looked at the beer that had spilled across the wood and then turned his gaze on the barman. The Belgian hesitated a moment. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered. But there was something compelling and slightly sinister in the stranger’s dark eyes. He took a cloth off the counter and lifted the beer to wipe the table and the bottom of the glass before replacing it on a cardboard beer mat.

‘Trente-cinq francs.’

Kale remained impassive and made no move to pay, and the barman shifted uncomfortably. Finally he took out a pad and scribbled 35F and tore it off the sheaf, laying it down in front of the stranger. Kale looked at it, nodded, and peeled a one-hundred-franc note from a wad in his wallet. The barman took it and counted the change from his pocket. The half-dozen other clients in the café watched in silence, a silence that grew increasingly obvious. A younger man turned his gaze away from Kale and began playing the pinball machine. Subdued conversations were struck up, but the atmosphere was laden and frequent glances turned toward the stranger.

Kale was oblivious. The beer tasted cool and good after the long eight-hour journey from London. It was impossible for him now to fly anywhere on a job. International airports were all equipped with sophisticated anti-terrorist equipment through which it would be impossible to carry his hardware undetected. Fuck the hijackers, he thought. He could not understand men who would risk their lives for political ends. And they had only made life more difficult for him.