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them in the van roared with laughter. Now it was Josh’s turn. ‘Hey, Michael, we’re going to this fantastic club, they have the most beautiful women, butt naked, sliding their bodies up and down poles. You’re going to be really pissed you’re missing out on this!’
    Michael’s voice slurred back, just a tad plaintive. ‘Can we stop this now, please? I’m really not enjoying this.’
    Through the windscreen Robbo could see roadworks ahead, with a green light. He accelerated.
    Luke shouted over Josh’s shoulder, ‘Hey, Michael, just relax, we’ll be back in a couple of hours!’
    ‘What do you mean,
a couple of hours
?’
    The light turned red. Not enough time to stop. Robbo accelerated even harder and shot through. ‘Gimme the thing,’ he said, grabbing the radio and steering one-handed around a long curve. He peered down in the ambient glow of the dash and hit the
talk
button.
    ‘Hey, Michael—’
    ‘ROBBO!’ Luke’s voice, screaming.
    Headlights above them, coming straight at them.
    Blinding them.
    Then the blare of a horn, deep, heavy duty, ferocious.
    ‘ROBBBBBBBBOOOOOOO!’ screamed Luke.
    Robbo stamped in panic on the brake pedal and dropped the walkie-talkie. The wheel yawed in his hands as he looked, desperately, for somewhere to go. Trees to his right, a JCB to his left, headlights burning through the windscreen, searing his eyes, coming at him out of the teeming rain, like a train.
     
     
2
     
    Michael, his head swimming, heard shouting, then a sharp
thud
, as if someone had dropped the walkie-talkie.
    Then silence.
    He pressed the
talk
button. ‘Hello?’
    Just empty static came back at him.
    ‘Hello? Hey guys!’
    Still nothing. He focused his eyes on the two-way radio. It was a stubby-looking thing, a hard, black plastic casing, with one short aerial and one longer one, the name ‘
Motorola’
embossed over the speaker grille. There was also an on—off switch, a volume control, a channel selector, and a tiny pinhead of a green light that was glowing brightly. Then he stared at the white satin that was inches from his eyes, fighting panic, starting to breathe faster and faster. He needed to pee, badly, going on desperately.
    Where the hell was he? Where were Josh, Luke, Pete, Robbo? Standing around, giggling? Had the bastards really gone off to a club?
    Then his panic subsided as the alcohol kicked back in again. His thoughts became leaden, muddled. His eyes closed and he was almost suckered into sleep.
    Opening his eyes, the satin blurred into soft focus, as a roller wave of nausea suddenly swelled up inside him, threw him up in the air then dropped him down. Up again. Down again. He swallowed, closed his eye again, giddily, feeling the coffin drifting, swaying from side to side, floating. The need to pee was receding. Suddenly the nausea wasn’t so bad any more. It was snug in here. Floating. Like being in a big bed!
    His eyes closed and he sank like a stone into sleep.
     
     
3
     
    Roy Grace sat in the dark, in his ageing Alfa Romeo in the line of stationary traffic, rain drumming the roof, his fingers drumming the wheel, barely listening to the Dido CD that was playing. He felt tense. Impatient. Gloomy.
    He felt like shit.
    Tomorrow he was due to appear in court, and he knew he was in trouble.
    He took a swig of bottled Evian water, replaced the cap and jammed the bottle back in the door pocket. ‘Come on, come on!’ he said, fingers tapping again, harder now. He was already forty minutes late for his date. He hated being late, always felt it was a sign of rudeness, as if you were making the statement,
my time’s more important than yours, so I can keep you waiting
…
    If he had left the office just one minute sooner he wouldn’t have been late: someone else would have taken the call and the ram-raid on a jewellery shop in Brighton, by two punks who were high on God-knows-what, would have been a colleague’s problem, not his. That was one of the occupational hazards of