The conditional mood can also be used to express an action due to happen in the future, but seen from a perspective set in the past. It is the "future of the past".
Ex:
Il pense qu’il y aura beaucoup de monde.
If set in the past, the sentence becomes:
Il pensait qu’il y aurait beaucoup de monde.
This is how the verb aurait is used in Modiano’s sentence: the narrator made a prediction for something due to happen in the future.
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