Tangier July 1978
Tangier
Sam fell silent, staring down at the letter.
‘He betrayed Ale.’ Zahrah’s voice was soft, calling them both back to the present. ‘After everything they had been through, he did that, knowing the danger.’
‘Maybe that’s not what happened.’ Sam swallowed. ‘Maybe there was some kind of mix-up, or Langham was double-crossed himself before he could get there, or—’
Abruptly, his mind went back to the strange, brief letter he’d found in the writing case. He squeezed his eyes closed.
‘Why are you defending him?’ Zahrah demanded. ‘Can’t you see he planned it? Ale was a decoy not an alibi—’
Silently, Sam stood up and went to his own pile of papers. There, sitting on top was the pencil scrawled note.
A,
I am sorry.
One day, I hope you’ll understand.
‘He must have left this in the writing case for Ale to find,’ he said, handing it over to Zahrah.
‘He must have dumped the suitcase at the Continental, and hidden the note and the key in the writing case just in case Ale got away. But Ale never saw it. And I never mentioned it either …’ He trailed off.
‘Langham died that night,’ he forced himself to say.
‘His body washed up two days later, on one of the beaches.’
Zahrah shook her head. ‘Maybe whatever happened with Cabrera went bad. Maybe there was a fight. Or—’
‘Maybe he ended it himself.’ Sam looked down at the letter.
Silence stretched between them.
‘What about Ale?’ he asked suddenly. ‘What happened after the arrest, back in nineteen twenty-eight? Do you know?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Zahrah leafed through the pages that had been addressed to Sam, detailing what had happened, the night of the party. ‘Wait, it carries on, look.’
‘Thank god.’ He leaned in to see, close enough that Zahrah’s shoulder brushed against his. She smelled of the kitchen, warm oil and faint spices.
But before he read a word, there were footsteps in the corridor, raised voices and the door was shoved open, without so much as a knock. Madame Sarah’s sister stood there.
‘You see!’ she said, pointing to Zahrah.
Sam jumped up from the bed. ‘It’s not like—’ he started, holding up his hands.
‘This is no good.’ The woman was incensed. ‘My sister will not stand for this in her house.’
‘We were just reading.’ Zahrah sounded indignant.
The woman made a derisive sound, eyeing Zahrah’s cropped hair, her bare legs and sandalled feet beneath the djellaba, before rounding on Sam. ‘You want to stay? Then she leaves. And you pay what you owe. Now.’
Madame Sarah came hurrying on to the landing, her face bright red. ‘I am sorry, Mr Hackett,’ she said, ‘but …’
He looked away. This was her house after all; she shouldn’t be the one apologizing. Zahrah stood up from the bed, staring at Madame Sarah’s sister with obvious dislike.
‘It’s fine,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. None of this was Zahrah’s fault.
Or Madame Sarah’s. He met his landlady’s eyes.
‘It’s OK. I know I’ve been a terrible lodger.
You deserve better.’ He gathered up the few remaining coins on the bedside table.
‘I can’t pay in advance for another week anyway.
Here, this is all I have.’ He straightened up, looking around at his few scattered possessions.
‘I’ll be gone as soon as I’ve packed and tidied up. I don’t think it’ll take me very long.’
Zahrah stood behind him, holding the papers.
‘Can my friend wait with me?’ he asked. ‘Then we’ll go.’
‘Yes,’ Madame Sarah said, interrupting her sister’s refusal. She hesitated, before holding something out to him. It was the writing case. ‘This is yours.’
He smiled as he took it, and she gave him a small smile in return. Then she was taking her sister’s arm and steering her towards the stairs, ignoring her furious whispers.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Sam muttered, once they were gone. ‘Do you mind waiting? I’ll be as quick as I can.’
He began to stride around the room, grabbing odds and ends. A creased paperback, a useless sock, his other shirt, left on the floor. He dragged his duffel bag out and began to shove things in haphazardly.
‘Was that the truth?’ Zahrah asked, watching him. ‘About the money?’
He nodded, face burning to the tips of his ears. ‘I gave everything I had to the police as a bribe. Didn’t work.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’
‘Honestly?’ He stuffed a t-shirt into the bag. ‘I have no idea. My parents said they would pay for a one-way ticket home. I guess it’s time for me to telephone them.’
‘But you said you had no money, so how can you telephone?’
Was that a hint of mockery in her voice? He carried on packing, not looking at her.
‘I’ll ask my friend Abdelhamid,’ he said quickly.
‘I sold him my typewriter. He might be able to get me a phone call. Or maybe I could sell back …’ He stopped, looking down at the writing case.
The police must have seized it when Ale was arrested, he realized.
They must have filed it away as evidence, left it forgotten on a shelf for thirty years, until the building was emptied, until Mouad bought it and took it back to the shop, where it had sat, waiting for him.
He held it out. ‘You should have this,’ he told Zahrah. ‘It was never really mine.’
She took it, and slowly opened the lid. The smell of the past was released into the room once more, drowning them, taking them back.
She lifted the thick envelope that Alejandro had addressed to her – the one Sam presumed contained the will – and placed it gently inside.
He wanted to ask what else Ale had written on all those pages, but they were Zahrah’s after all, and she didn’t seem inclined to tell him. She closed the case with a snap.
‘Come on,’ she said, standing up decisively. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Go where? I told you—’
She cut him off with an impatient noise. ‘Sam Hackett, there is an entire house standing empty, just a few minutes away. You can stay with me.’
‘What about the police?’ The threat had been enough to drive Ale away. ‘What if they come to raid the place?’
Zahrah raised her head. ‘Let them. They won’t find Ale. And since Dar Portuna now belongs to me, they’ll have to leave well enough alone, eventually.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘So are you coming? Or do you want to sleep on the streets? I have to tell you, I don’t think you’d last a minute.’
He didn’t know what to say. Despite his guilt and shame and uncertainty, a kind of thrill rose in his chest at being allowed to stay at Dar Portuna; even if it was for what might be his final few nights in Tangier.
‘Thank you,’ he said, hoping she knew how much he meant it.
She just nodded and stepped towards the door.
‘Wait.’
Hurriedly, he shuffled together the scrappy, mismatched papers on the bedside table.
‘Is that …?’
‘My book. Yeah.’ He shook his head. ‘If I hadn’t been so obsessed with my own damn writing, none of this would have happened.’ His fingers tightened on the old paper, on the new sheets. ‘I should burn these,’ he said. ‘It’s not my story. I’ve already caused enough trouble—’
Zahrah took hold of one side of the manuscript. ‘Don’t you dare. Ale told you this story for a reason. And anyway –’ she gave him a half-smile ‘– I might want to read it.’
With the duffel bag over his shoulder, the manuscript carefully wedged within, he made a penitent farewell to Madame Sarah and received a ferocious, thoroughly undeserved hug about the knees from Aziz. Then, they were out on the street, bustling hot at noon.
They didn’t speak, just walked rapidly uphill, towards Dar Portuna, towards the rest of the story.
After checking to see if anyone might be lurking, spying on the place, they brushed the jasmine aside, and slipped in through the old gate.
In bright sunlight, the house seemed more unreal than ever, as though at any minute it might flicker and disappear from the surface of the world.
They stepped through the front doors, into the faded, echoing hallway.
‘It feels so strange without Ale,’ Zahrah whispered. When her fingers brushed his, he took her hand, squeezing it tight.
Together, they walked slowly through the entrance hall, towards the quiet, dust-filled rooms. Sam peered up the stairs as they passed, his skin prickling all over.
He almost expected to hear footsteps, to see a young Alejandro come running down, hear the warble of a gramophone and Hilde calling out from the veranda, to see Langham look up from the desk as they stepped into the study.
‘This is where I found the envelopes,’ Zahrah said.
There was a strange smell in the room. Something sharp, at odds with the old leather and worm-eaten wood.
Smoke, Sam realized; smoke and burned paper.
In the grate, a huge pile of ash had been pushed to one side.
Dropping his bag, he knelt and picked out a fragment of dull green cardboard that might have belonged to a file.
‘Ale spent all night in here.’ Zahrah was standing over him. ‘All the drawers and ledgers are empty. Everything was burned, I think, except for what she left me. And what she left you.’
Reaching into his bag, he pulled out the envelope with his name on, and shook out the pages. The rest of Ale’s story, unfinished. He sank into the creaking armchair, déjà vu shimmering across his mind.
‘Go on,’ Zahrah said. ‘Read it.’
Blinking hard, he turned the pages until he found where they’d left off.
‘“Old—”’ he began and stopped.
‘What is it?’
‘“Old Pal”,’ he said, disbelieving. ‘“Take a pony of Canadian whisky, a pony of Campari and a pony of French vermouth” … for god’s sake.’
Zahrah laughed, though her eyes were bright with tears. ‘That’s so like Ale,’ she said. ‘What does the rest say?’
He had to clear his throat before continuing. ‘“Stir into a cocktail glass and drink to friends, absent, old and new.”’
Zahrah wiped at her face. ‘I think we had better do as we’re told.’
Together, they hunted through the dozens of bottles on the bar, some of which looked decades old, perhaps even from Langham’s day, their labels torn, containing nothing but sticky residue.
Sam found himself glancing over at Zahrah. What was he doing here? A few hours before he’d been slammed in a cell, and now here he was, in a decaying villa, making drinks with a woman who … He looked down rapidly at the bottles.
Don’t go there. You have to go home.
Finally, they had two glasses of liquor before them, glowing in the afternoon sun.
‘To friends,’ Zahrah said. ‘Absent, old and new.’
They touched glasses, and drank. It was incredibly strong.
‘Ready?’ Zahrah asked, glancing at the pages.
He swallowed down the taste of the past, of what might be his last drink in Tangier.
‘Ready.’