I sometimes worry it could still get me into trouble, this talk about the inn. But it seems so small now, so distant, after everything else. I’ll never go back to Córdoba, and anyway, you already know that I didn’t kill the man.

It’s the rest of it that could be dangerous for me; what came after. The only other person who knew it all is dead and gone. Perhaps – at last – I have kept his secret for long enough. I drowned it at the bottom of cocktail glasses and buried it beneath the scrapings left on silver platters. I tied it with white silk and hid it in plain sight. I held my tongue, kept fifty years of silence. Even he could not have asked me for more.

Of course, if he had, I might have given it. But he is not here, is he?

Perhaps silence is no longer the answer. Perhaps this is a story that should finally be told.

And after all, I have already begun.

Tangier

July 1978

‘Are you sure there’s nothing else? There’s rien? Pour Hackett. H – A – C –’

Metronome steady, the man shook his head.

‘Non.’

‘You’re certain? Vous êtes sur?’

‘Oui, monsieur.’

Sam dropped his chin, staring at the scuffed wooden countertop. The room was dim and sweltering, a fug of cigarettes and the more pungent smoke from joints of kif. It made it hard to concentrate, hard to do the mental arithmetic required. He couldn’t afford a bribe, and anyway, shouldn’t need to give one. He never had before, not for a letter. He stared at his hands. They were not exactly clean, veins standing out from the heat. One of the cuffs was stained with tar from some boat or beach or railing.

‘S’il vous plaît,’ he said again to the man at the counter, ‘could you double-check? Hackett, Samuel? There should be something.’

The man gave him a look, between irritated and perplexed. He called over his shoulder into the main postal office, beyond the honeycomb of wooden pigeonholes. Sam waited. The official turned to the next customer, and was soon arguing over a handful of papers. The post office was full, as always. There never seemed to be enough time during opening hours for the workers to be anything other than harassed. He leaned on the counter, feeling sweat trickle down his neck. An electric fan whirred above, doing nothing to cool the air. On the other side of him, a man wearing a long striped djellaba began to roll a cigarette.

‘Aquete?’

The word was repeated several times until he realized it was his name, the consonants strange and full of angles. A postal worker was holding something small and pale blue.

‘Yes.’ He moved so quickly the man in the djellaba flinched. ‘Yes, Hackett, over here.’