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late, but lawyers and bankers are never late; nor, he presumed, are blackmailers.
    On the other side of the swing doors a mistral was gusting down the street. The top-hatted doorman’s cloak flapped like useless wings as he scurried from one limousine to another. A dramatic rainstorm broke as cars and people vanished in a milky mist. Out of it, like the sole survivor of an avalanche, stepped a small, stocky figure in shapeless clothes and a scarf wound round her head and neck. For an appalled moment Brue fancied she had slung a child across her shoulders, until he realized it was a man-sized rucksack.
    She mounted the steps, let the swing doors take her, stepped into the lobby and stopped. She was holding up the passage of people behind her but if she knew, she didn’t care. She removed her rain-spotted spectacles, pulled an end of the scarf from the depths of her anorak, polished the spectacles and replaced them on her nose. Herr Schwarz addressed her, she gave him a curt nod. Both peered in Brue’s direction. Herr Schwarz made to escort her, but she shook her head. Shifting her rucksack to one shoulder, she advanced on him between the tables, eyes fixed straight ahead of her, ignoring the other guests on her way.
    No makeup, not a square inch of flesh from the throat down, Brue recorded as he rose to greet her. Firm, fluid movement of a small, capable body inside the frumpish gear. A bit martial, but women these days were. Round spectacles, frameless, catching the chandeliers. No blink rate. Child’s skin. About thirty years younger than me and a foot shorter, but blackmailers come in all sizes and get a little younger every day. A choirboy face to go with the choirboy voice. No visible accomplice. Navy blue jeans, army boots. A pocket beauty in disguise. Tough but vulnerable; hellbent on concealing her female warmth and not succeeding. Georgie.
    “Frau Richter? Marvelous. I’m Tommy Brue. What can I get for you?”
    The hand so small that he instinctively relaxed his grasp.
    “Do they have water here?” she asked, glowering up at him through her spectacles.
    “Of course.” He beckoned a waiter. “Did you walk?”
    “Cycled. Still, please. No lemon. Room temperature.”
     
    She sat opposite him, upright at the center of her leather throne, hands braced against its arms, knees tight together and her rucksack at her feet while she studied him: first his hands, then his gold watch and his shoes, then his eyes, but only briefly. She seemed to see nothing that surprised her. And Brue in return subjecting her to an equally searching inspection, if a more furtive one: the tutored way she sipped her water, elbow in, forearm across the upper body; her self-confidence in the rich surroundings that she appeared determined to disapprove of; her covert air of breeding; the hidden stylist who can’t quite hide.
    She had removed her headscarf to reveal a woolen beret. An errant hank of gold-brown hair hung across her brow. She returned it to captivity before taking a pull of water and resuming her inspection of him. Her eyes, enlarged by the spectacles, were gray-green and unflinching. Honey-flecked, he remembered: Where had he read that? In one of the dozen novels always at Mitzi’s bedside. A small, high bosom, deliberately illegible.
    Brue extracted a calling card from a pocket in the blue silk lining of his Randall’s jacket and, with his courteous smile, handed it to her across the table.
    “Why Frères ?” she demanded. No rings, fingernails childishly short.
    “It was my great-grandfather’s idea.”
    “Was he French?”
    “I’m afraid not. He just wanted to be,” Brue replied, trotting out his stock answer. “He was Scottish. A lot of Scots feel closer to France than England.”
    “Did he have brothers?”
    “No. Neither do I, I’m afraid.”
    She ducked to her rucksack, unzipped a compartment and then another. Over her shoulder, Brue noted in fast order: paper tissues, a bottle of contact lens lotion, a