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keep your side of the bargain. Of course, if you don’t . . .’ He returned the phone to his pocket and gave the dumbstruck Hakim a bland smile. ‘If you don’t , Skinner can be unpleasant.’
    Hakim gave Hector a look of helpless hatred, which he ignored. He checked his watch. ‘Eight minutes,’ he said. ‘Is that your stomach rumbling? You should have eaten. It settles things down. At least, it always does for me.’
    Hector checked his watch again. 06.55 hrs. He noticed Hakim was sweating even more now.
    Then Hector looked up at a window on the third floor of the apartment building on the other side of the street, immediately opposite their position. Somebody inside opened the curtains. Bang on schedule. Hector looked up and down the street. The cleaning truck was twenty metres away. He could hear its engine turning over and the whirr and hiss of its brushes. The two street cleaners were alongside it. They were concentrating on their job, and not on the two men loitering outside the Café des Amis.
    Coming from the opposite end of rue Berger, an elegantly dressed woman walked briskly in their direction. She was about thirty metres away and talking on her mobile phone. Seconds later, as she passed, Hector caught the scent of her perfume. He felt himself frowning as the smell drifted away, to be replaced by Hakim’s stinking breath. ‘Any minute now,’ he murmured. He took the rucksack from his shoulder and removed the coloured waterproof covering. ‘This is yours.’
    Trembling, Hakim slung the rucksack awkwardly over his own shoulder. ‘It’s heavy,’ he said.
    ‘Lot of money, my friend. Lot of money.’ From inside his jacket Hector pulled out a Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol. Hakim stared at it. Hidden by the tree from the gaze of the truck driver and the street cleaners, Hector cocked the weapon, before carefully handing it over. ‘Thirteen rounds,’ he said over the noise of the brushes. ‘You should only need one if you fire it close enough.’
    Hakim accepted the weapon like an amateur, holding it lightly in his fingertips. Hector had to move the Algerian’s arm out of the way so that the weapon was not pointing in his direction. He could feel the kid trembling.
    ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Skinner’s with your family. Nobody wants them to get hurt.’
    Hakim swallowed hard and a trickle of sweat slid down his face.
    06.59 hrs. The door of the apartment block opened. For a tense few seconds, nobody appeared. And then, very slowly, an old man, clearly Middle Eastern, stepped out into the street, accompanied by a much younger woman. The man’s shoulders were stooped, and he walked with the aid of a stick. He had a short grey beard and his head was wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh. The young woman was also Middle Eastern, but she was dressed in Western clothes – jeans and a scarlet jumper – and was strikingly beautiful. She gently held the old man’s free arm and helped him as he tottered along.
    Distance between Hakim and the target: twenty-five metres.
    ‘That’s him,’ Hector said. ‘Do it now.’
    Hakim hesitated and Hector felt a moment of anxiety as the couple disappeared behind a parked Transit van. Surely they weren’t going to get into the vehicle and disappear? He took out his phone again and waved Skinner’s photograph in front of Hakim’s face. That was enough. As the old man and his companion reappeared from behind the Transit, at Hakim’s eleven o’clock, the Algerian moved nervously forwards, the rucksack firmly on his back, the Browning hanging by his side. He stepped into the stream of water gushing from the outlet, soaking his shoes. As he crossed the street he left wet footprints.
    Hakim approached the target. Hector walked along the pavement in the opposite direction, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. He could see the cleaning truck getting nearer. He was not concentrating specifically on the Algerian or the old man, but on the distance between the