He pulled into a short-stay space. He swung open the door, wrenched his phone out of its cradle. It was ringing again, the third call. The DJ in the back groaned and wriggled, and Karl’s muscles tensed. His back and shoulders and even knees were aching. But, as usual, the passenger seemed to resettle, his breaths settling back into that serene rhythm, his face wearing the look of someone who was not worrying about his friend, thought Karl. He’ll be dreaming about all the money he got working for an hour tonight. Or about his beautiful gaff he’s probably got back in town. I bet he’s got one of them bathrooms with a double sink for no reason. He thought of Hamish Elton, the jumped-up, bigoted little piece of shit, with his penthouse which a cleaner visited more often than Elton himself did. Elton, that bleached-teeth, well-born cocksucker, who’d coked his way to a university expulsion and somehow enhanced his job prospects in the process, the way only a rich white guy could. Elton, the cause of all this trouble.

Karl went ten paces away from the car. The phone was just ringing nonstop, now; it was like a press conference with one hand going up and then another. He pressed green. It was a woman’s voice.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Have you found him, is he, what is he …?’

‘We still have not found him,’ said Steffi. ‘I’m his flatmate.’ Her voice was … Danish? Swedish? One of those countries. ‘I have put a lot of messages on Facebook. You’re his friend? His boss?’

‘Yeah. Was. Am.’ Karl wasn’t sure which part of the proposition he was responding to.

‘And you fired him?’

‘Yeah. Look. I’m driving, I—’

‘I have found out some things about it,’ said the woman. ‘You thought he had given newspapers a story about a guy called Hamish. But he says very much he didn’t do it. He said that to me. And since he lost the job, he’s been really upset.’