He pressed the button. Elton wouldn’t be up yet, there was little chance of that, the bastard worked about eight minutes a week; but on the other hand, he might not even have gone to bed yet. He pressed red to stop the call. The pistons of his heart were pumping like he’d done fifty bench presses, except nobody was ever allowed to know he did that. God, so many lies, so many cover-ups. Again, he thought: it caught up with you in the end. If you dodged and shape-shifted for long enough. And yes, he’d had excuses, he had to protect Mum, he had to protect himself. But excuses didn’t mean anything in the end. What actually happened in the end what was mattered. If James was dead, it wasn’t going to matter if he could go to a fucking psychotherapist and express in interpretative dance why he’d betrayed him, was it?

He pressed the button again. This time it began to ring. Karl felt his stalled breath collecting in his throat. Even if it was answered, how was he meant to start? Hi there, Hamish. Karl, here: I run the firm that drives you. That’s how you think of me, if you think of me at all. A pair of eyes somewhere on the other end of an app, entirely remote from everything. But what if I told you, Hamish, that those eyes had seen more information through that app than you could ever imagine. That the fella whose name you barely even bother to remember – Carl? Chris? – actually spent years coding, and has built an AI so advanced that it knows pretty much everything about pretty much everyone who uses the app. Like you. Your movements, including the ones you shouldn’t be making. The racist jokes you are OK making because it’s ‘between friends’, because it’s all ‘irony’. And among those ‘friends’, the ones you really shouldn’t be messaging, Hamish, because they’re someone else’s girlfriend, or wife. Imagine if someone knew every single thing about you, Hamish Elton. And the driving service that man now ran, lucrative as it was starting to be, was really just the skin of a delicious peach, one he would sell in the not too distant future.

It rang to voicemail. The person you are calling. Karl had had enough of that voice and phrase tonight. There was a momentary relief that the arsehole wasn’t answering, but it was no relief at all, really. Karl was still going to have to do this. He’d ring once more. Then he would leave a message, the message that put things right, ruined Karl himself, and probably in vain.