Sam nodded, irritated by the offer for some reason. ‘Sure. Thanks.’

Norton checked his watch. ‘Must get back. I’m working on a juicy piece right now. Paris papers will definitely want it, mark my words.’

The heat and colour and brightness of the streets was a relief after the drab hotel dining room. Sam said goodbye to Norton and wandered towards the old town. Here, he could lose himself; he could be just another tourist, another nameless drifter with a few dirhams in his pocket. In the old town, he didn’t have to think about his past. He didn’t have to have a future beyond tomorrow.

He found himself at the edge of the Grand Socco, where he’d lost the mystery letter carrier. Norton was right, he shouldn’t have run after the person, whoever it was. It seemed absurd, thinking of it now, made his guts squirm a little in their bath of lunchtime wine. He didn’t even know for sure that they had collected the letter. But there was something in the way they had looked back, as if they knew him, and had considered speaking to him, just for a moment.

A truck sped past, its tyres flinging up grit. He stepped out of the way. Behind him was a flower stall, where blooms were beginning to wilt in their plastic buckets. The woman who sold them was tiny and old and wrinkled beneath a wide straw hat of the country farmers. How long had she been coming to Tangier, to sell her flowers by the road? Twenty years? Thirty? Had she been here as a girl, when A strode through the streets? Had he once stopped to buy a bloom for his lapel? Before Sam was fully aware of what he was doing, he was pulling some coins from his pocket and pointing to a bucket of wild-looking pink roses and to another of tiny star-white flowers. The woman told him a price in Darija. He wasn’t entirely sure how much it was, but he didn’t bother to haggle, just gave her a handful of small coins. She nodded, picked out a few, and handed the rest back.

He set off, taking the road that led towards the beach. In the writing case beneath his arm was an address for Lillian Simcox, the woman Roger said had been in Tangier in the old days, and who might talk.

The address was for a private hospital, located in one of the tall modern buildings that overlooked the bay. Tangier had begun to stretch itself along the coast, and everywhere Sam looked there was steel and scaffolding, concrete and tinted glass. By the time he reached the building, the wine was wearing off; his reflection in the glass doors of the hospital looked scrubby and tired.