Le Truc Vert is the café setting for Blake’s breakfast meeting with Ingrid Denner, a scene that turns an ordinary public rendezvous into a calculated attempt to get at the contents of Ingrid’s briefcase. Its welcoming, informal atmosphere contrasts with the suspicion and physical disruption that unfold at the table.

Setting and Arrival

The café is described as a popular, cheerful-feeling place on the corner of a side street. Blake waits there after ordering green tea and French toast with bananas and maple syrup; seeing the dish on the menu has made her hungry, and she assumes Ingrid will pay. The meal gives the meeting a casual surface, but Blake is waiting for information and watching for her contact.

Ingrid arrives just after the waiter brings Blake’s tea, later than the agreed time. She is smaller than Blake expected, impeccably dressed in a pale grey trouser suit, with carefully styled blonde-tinted hair and very dark sunglasses. Her dazzling smile does not soften her clipped voice. She sits opposite Blake and introduces herself, while placing an expensive tooled-leather briefcase on a neighboring chair. Blake suspects that it contains a laptop and other materials.

The Briefcase and the Staged Fall

Le Truc Vert is also the setting for Don Challenor’s deception. Before the encounter, Don plans to approach along the opposite side of North Audley Street and arrive at a quarter past nine. His shabby suit, frayed shirt, unshaven face and uncombed hair are meant to make him look like a man who has fallen out of the rat race. He carries whisky in a plastic bottle labelled as sparkling water and lets its smell announce itself, reinforcing the appearance of a breakfast-time drinker.

When Don begins to lose his balance, he topples sideways into the spare chair and knocks Ingrid’s open briefcase to the floor. The laptop slides out with files and other paperwork. Blake moves around the table after the laptop while Don grasps Ingrid’s arm and mumbles that he means no harm; Ingrid jumps up, tries to push him away, and shouts at him to take his hands off her. The café’s table, spare chair and briefcase become part of the maneuver: the staged disorder creates an opportunity to reach the material Ingrid brought, but also makes the intrusion unmistakable.

Narrative Role

The meeting’s modest breakfast setting sharpens the contrast between appearance and intention. Blake’s tea and French toast, Ingrid’s polished arrival and the briefcase placed within reach establish a conventional café encounter; Don’s whisky ruse and sudden fall turn it into an improvised operation. Le Truc Vert therefore matters not through a change to the venue itself, but as the public, everyday space in which a guarded meeting is disrupted and the contents of Ingrid’s case are briefly exposed.