‘You gamble well,’ she opened.

‘Luckily,’ Jordan qualified. ‘How did you know I was English?’ Such attention to detail was always important.

‘You talked more in English than French to the croupier.’ Her own minimal accent wasn’t French.

‘And you don’t gamble. You didn’t last night. Or tonight.’ He wanted to establish his own awareness.

‘Not at the tables.’ She slightly moved the chair at which she was standing. ‘May I join you?’

Jordan nodded, politely rising as she sat. ‘You’d like champagne?’

‘That would be very pleasant. My name is Ghilane.’

‘John,’ responded Jordan, gesturing for a waiter. It was the christian name of his most recent victim and that to which he was therefore most accustomed. It would have been unthinkable – amatuerish – to have given her his real name even though this was going to be the most fleeting of encounters.

‘You are here on vacation, John?’

Jordan hesitated, while her wine was served. ‘I enjoy the South of France.’

‘So you know it well?’

‘Well enough.’ He wondered by how much the fulness of her breasts was helped by the uplift of her bra, but decided against paying to find out.

She grimaced extravagantly, pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘Which means I can’t offer to show you places you haven’t seen before?’

She was very good and very enticing, acknowledged Jordan. Refusing the heavily intended double entendre, he said, ‘It’s quite late.’

‘Not too late to be too tired,’ she misunderstood.

‘I was thinking of you.’

‘As I was, of you.’