It was a dead end. In that moment, exhausted and half-feral with fear, I don’t believe I had much notion of what I was about to do. I could hear the man behind me breathing harder. We reached the wall and he stepped close, his hands going to his belt again. My own hands went to my waist, to where my guts were coming to life, trying to protect me, to give me strength.

‘All right,’ the man said, his trousers loose, ‘you—’

I turned, and drove my knee into his groin. The air went out of him, and he made a strangled noise of pain as he fell, choking and retching. Before I could think twice, I began to wrestle the trousers from his legs.

When he felt that, he kicked and flailed. I took the knife from my belt and held it against his thigh.

‘Stop,’ I hissed. ‘Take the jacket off.’ When he hesitated, I pressed the blade closer. He yelped as blood began to well. After that, he did as I said. In a matter of seconds, I grabbed up the jacket, and the trousers and his cloth cap for good measure. Before he could utter another word, I fled into the night.

Tangier

July 1978

The suitcase banged against his leg as he hurried through the dark streets of the casbah, the writing case tucked under his arm. He felt like a fugitive, fleeing with his possessions, convinced that a figure would step out of the shadows into his path, that footsteps would echo after him, that a voice would shout and torchlight dazzle him into blindness. He took the most twisting way he knew back to Madame Sarah’s – a sharp left, a sudden right – as if trying to shake off a pursuer who didn’t exist.

Mohamed had helped him pull out the case from under a stack of six others. It had come free in a cloud of grit and decaying leather, and for one second, they had both held the handle. Then, Sam was swinging it away.

‘My uncle’s luggage!’ he’d exclaimed. ‘And look, it matches the writing case he left me. Who’d have believed it? How lucky, thank you …’

He’d talked his way out of the storeroom, gabbling about his uncle and the possessions. Mohamed had tried to interrupt, said he should go and fetch the manager, but Sam had just clapped him on the shoulder and hurried out of the hotel, breaking into a half-run as he fled down the steps and into the shadows of the casbah.

What was he doing? This is theft, he told himself, heart beating faster than his footsteps, this is stealing. All the same, he was reeling with excitement. This was the feeling he’d come halfway across the world for. This, he thought, is brilliant.