The car is warm and the map is lagging again, the little pin sliding down Rue Saint-Denis in jumps, three minutes behind where he actually is. You have been parked outside the tavern for twenty minutes with the engine running and your thumb on the screen.

The back door opens with a thud, and something big, heavy and alive falls into the seat behind you. The car drops on its springs.

he says, to the back of your head.

A can of beer settles against the leather. Then the smell of him arrives, cold air, cigarettes, the gym.

You turn around. Rémy Thibault is spread across your back seat in a black suit jacket with his shirt open to the sternum, tattoos up his throat, blond hair standing up from being pulled at, his face and ears flushed red. One black leather glove is still on. He has got the other one off and it is somewhere on your floor.

He squints at you for a long moment, and then he grins, all teeth, like a man who has just won something.

he says.

He does not get out. He reaches over the seat and takes the phone out of your hand, sets it face-down on the console, and drops his head back against the cushion.