Sam stopped on the steps that led up to the terrace, beer thudding in his head, the writing case stuck to his hand. If this place was anything like the El Minzah he couldn’t just fling himself in to the reception, crumpled and breathless, and present them with a fifty-year-old cloakroom tag. They’d look at him as if he was mad.

I am mad, he thought. Whatever item the tag belonged to was probably long gone. A shiver ran across his skin as he pulled the scrap of leather from his pocket and stared at it in the green and red light of the hotel’s illuminated sign. What did he expect to find here, except disappointment? He turned it in his fingers. Perhaps finding wasn’t the point …

Swallowing some moisture back into his throat, he tucked the writing case beneath his arm, and walked up the steps, trying to look dignified.

But the Hotel Continental was not like the El Minzah. Instead of dark wood and stern marble, he found himself among a riot of coloured tiles, kaleidoscopic from floor to ceiling. For a moment, it was dazzling. Then he blinked and saw that many of the tiles were cracked or missing, the velvet drapes threadbare and sun-stained, the brocade sofas worn bald with use.

The empty reception smelled of ancient rose petals and hot dust. There was no one at the desk. He rang a bell and the noise wandered away into the hotel’s interior, in search of a reply that never came.

Hesitantly, he walked into a hallway hung with portraits, darkness creeping from their corners. There were grand stairs, the gilded banisters chipped and flaking. He followed them up, towards a clinking sound, and found himself at the entrance of a long gallery, with huge arched windows that overlooked the bay. For a moment, he thought the clinking would be nothing but a curtain tie, stirring in the breeze, but then he heard voices, and a figure materialized from the gloom: a young man in an old-fashioned green uniform.

‘Bonsoir, monsieur,’ he said softly. ‘A table?’

He looked so hopeful that Sam almost considered saying yes, taking a strange, quiet meal alone there in the glittering carcass of the hotel.

‘No,’ he forced himself to say, ‘no, I’m sorry. I was looking for someone at reception. I wanted to ask about … I wanted to ask a question.’

The young man’s eyes were wide. ‘Please, wait, I will fetch the manager.’

‘No, don’t disturb—’