I stared at the side of his face, his smooth skin, the fine lines about his eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ I murmured. ‘The British authorities? What do they want with you?’

Langham looked over at me then, with a soft, half-pitying smile.

‘Same as the Spanish want with you. They want to hang me, chico.’

‘Arthur!’ Hilde started up, glancing at me.

‘No,’ he stopped her. ‘If we are all to get out of this, Hilde, Alejandro needs to understand.’ He focused on me again. ‘Bautista and his crew are small fry, when it comes to contraband. The real business isn’t in booze or tobacco, but in information.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘The sort of thing you delivered to Cabrera.’

‘The suitcase full of papers?’ I asked slowly. ‘What were they?’

Langham smiled humourlessly. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea. You were lucky not to be caught, though. Cabrera’s obviously been double-crossing us.’ He looked a little thoughtful. ‘You didn’t catch any glimpse of what the papers were? Any stamps or letters?’

I shook my head.

‘Pity,’ he murmured.

‘But,’ I shifted to look at Bouzid, at Hilde, ‘smuggling isn’t a hanging offence, is it? They’d have to hang the whole of La Atunara, and half of Tangiers, if it was.’

Langham laughed a little, and drank his brandy. ‘No, smuggling isn’t a hanging offence. Treason is, though. And murder.’

I stared into his eyes, trying to see the man I thought I knew, but all I saw was my own reflection.

Later, as afternoon became evening, we sat at the kitchen table – all four of us – our elbows resting on the scrubbed wood, drinking tumblers of wine and picking at food. We had never sat and eaten like that before. We are in this together, that meal said. We had to work and act as equals, if we were to get out of it. At another time, Bouzid’s lack of formality would have made me glad. But in that moment, all I could think was that everything was changing.

‘What’s important is that they are not connecting you to anything,’ Langham said to Hilde. ‘They see you as a socialite, nothing more. That makes you a safe pair of hands.’

She nodded, and shifted in her chair. She had lied to me then, about her knowledge of Langham’s activities.

‘What about the party?’ I asked. ‘It can’t go ahead, now, surely?’

‘On the contrary, it must.’ Langham was twisting the ring around and around on his little finger. ‘If we call it off, Cabrera will know that you’ve told me everything. Then we lose the upper hand.’ He looked at me, eyes travelling over my hair, my collar. ‘Alejandro,’ he said softly. ‘The suit you ordered from the tailor, it was the one we talked about?’