Take a quarter glass of fresh blood orange juice and the same of good Scotch whisky. Add into this a quarter glass of Cherry Heering and half a glass of sweet Italian vermouth. Shake violently enough to break a sweat and strain into a coupe glass.

Blood and Sand. He’d never heard of it before. It was probably the kind of thing people had drunk long ago, when spirits were plentiful and a pocketful of dollars could take a person across a continent in luxury. Not like now. He traced the title. Was this A. L.’s favourite drink? Or del Potro’s? Fifty years ago, would he have ordered one at a party, among a crowd of ex-pats and wanderers, all searching, drinking, writing music and painting and pouring out work that was considered new and vital …?

Sam dropped the book, and stared into the case once again. What had happened to A. L., to make him leave a suitcase behind, to make him lose a writing case? And who the hell was Alejandro del Potro? Sam’s hands began to twitch. He wished he still had the Hermes. Ideas were jostling at the ends of his fingertips. A. L. could have been a rich British gentleman or a poor young man from America. Alejandro del Potro could have been a friend, a colleague, a lover, a criminal.

I’ll write them, Sam thought, looking at the passport, the book, the clothes. If I can’t find out who they were, I’ll write them into life. A. L. and Alejandro del Potro, they can be characters in my story, one that starts in the casbah, with the sale of a typewriter …

Affinity

Take a pony of French vermouth, a pony of Italian vermouth and a pony of good Scotch. Stir into this two dashes of Angostura Aromatic Bitters. Strain into a chilled glass with some lemon peel. A drink of brine and smoke.

I ran until I reached the darkness of the beach, the stolen clothes clasped in my arms. They were grimy and badly needed washing, but I didn’t care. My whole body was fizzing with a cocktail of fear and elation about what I’d done. Another crime, to add to the one I didn’t commit. A murderess, now a thief.

No use thinking about it, I told myself, as I crouched in the shadows to search the pockets of the jacket. Three battered cigarettes, a box of matches, a length of string and nothing else. I spat out the saliva that clogged my throat. So that was why the man had been roaming the alleyways; no doubt the other whores, who could tell a good mark from a bad, had already rejected him. He wouldn’t have been able to pay me at all.