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connected to the charger, he dialled his voicemail box. The first message was from Pete, at 7 p.m., asking where he was. The second was from Robbo at 7.45, helpfully telling him they were moving on to another pub, the Lamb at Ripe. The third was at 8.30 from a very drunken-sounding Luke and Josh, with Robbo in the background. They were moving on from the Lamb to a pub called the Dragon, on the Uckfield Road.
    The next two messages were from the estate agent concerning the deal in Leeds, and from their corporate lawyer.
    The sixth was at 11.05 from a very distressed-sounding Ashley. Her tone startled him. Ashley was normally calm, unflappable.
    ‘Mark, please, please,
please
call me as soon as you get this,’ she urged in her soft, distinctive North American accent.
    He hesitated, then listened to the next message. It was from Ashley again. Panicky now. And the next, and the next one after that, each at ten-minute intervals. The tenth message was from Michael’s mother. She also sounded distraught.
    ‘Mark, I left a message on your home phone, too. Please call me as soon as you get this, doesn’t matter what time.’
    Mark paused the machine.
What the hell had happened?
    The next call had been Ashley again. She sounded close to hysterics. ‘Mark, there’s been a terrible accident. Pete, Robbo and Luke are dead. Josh is on life support in Intensive Care. No one knows where Michael is. Oh God, Mark, please call me just as soon as you get this.’
    Mark replayed the message, scarcely able to believe what he had heard. As he listened to it again he sat down, heavily, on the arm of the sofa. ‘Jesus.’
    Then he played the rest of the messages. More of the same from Ashley and from Michael’s mother.
Call. Call. Please call.
    He drained his whisky, then poured out another slug, three full fingers, and walked over to the window. Through the ghost of his reflection he stared down again at the promenade, watching the passing traffic, then out at the sea. Way out towards the horizon he could see two tiny specks of light, from a freighter or tanker making its way up the Channel.
    He was thinking.
    I would have been in that accident, too, if the flight had been on time.
    But he was thinking beyond that.
    He sipped the whisky, then sat down on the sofa. After a few moments, the phone rang again. He walked over and stared at the caller display. Ashley’s number. Four rings, then it stopped. Moments later, his mobile rang. Ashley again. He hesitated, then hit the
end-call
button sending it straight to voicemail. Then he switched the phone off, and sat down, leaned back, pulling up the footrest, and cradled the glass in his hands.
    Ice cubes rattled in his glass; his hands were shaking, he realized; his whole insides were shaking. He went over to the Bang and Olufsen and put on a Mozart compilation CD. Mozart always helped him to think. Suddenly, he had a lot of thinking to do.
    He sat back down, stared into the whisky, focusing intently on the ice cubes as if they were runes that had been cast. It was over an hour before he picked up the phone and dialled.
     
     
7
     
    The spasms were getting more frequent now. By clenching his thighs together, holding his breath and squeezing his eyes shut, Michael was still just able to ward off urinating in his trousers. He couldn’t do this, could not bear the thought of their laughter when the bastards came back and found he had wet himself.
    But the claustrophobia was really getting to him now. The white satin seemed to be shrinking in around him, pressing down closer and closer to his face.
    In the beam of the torch, Michael’s watch read 2.47.
    Shit.
    What the hell were they playing at? Two forty-seven. Where the hell were they? Pissed out of their brains in some nightclub?
    He stared at the white satin, his head pounding, his mouth parched, his legs knocking together, trying to suppress the pains shooting up through him from his bladder. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold