After an hour my eyes ached and my head hurt from looking at the phone’s small screen. Enough for now. I stared out of the train window at the yellow lights of a town in the distance. I was disoriented from staring at the phone for so long and had no idea where we were. Somewhere in the Midlands presumably, it was hard to tell in the dark. My limbs were heavy and my head felt like it was full of cotton wool. I paced up and down the carriage a few times to get the blood circulating again, my eyes falling to the mobile on the table every time I passed my seat, the phone calling to me, tempting me, beckoning. I sat down again, tried to look out of the window some more, deliberately not looking at the phone, trying to clear my head so I could think about what to do next. But it was no use. My attention span had shrunk so much I could barely focus on anything unless it was on a screen in front of me.

I turned the phone face down and shut my eyes.

The Mirage Casino was dark and busy. A pair of bouncers turned their unsmiling faces on me as I walked in, but neither of them looked like Steven Beecham and they almost immediately shifted their attention to a loud group of lads coming in behind me. I hadn’t been in a casino since Adam’s stag trip to Las Vegas five years previously but they all had certain things in common: plenty of booze, no clocks, no windows, good-looking dealers and happy drunks who thought they were on a winning streak. The blackjack area was towards the back, past the roulette tables and slots and small-stakes poker. It looked like a poker tournament was on, a couple of dozen players hunched around four tables, colourful chips stacked up in front of them.

Aside from poker, blackjack was Ben’s other favourite casino game because it was the nearest you could get to being even odds with the house. A player with a sharp brain and a good memory could do well at it. Ben had both. Tonight my instincts told me that if he was here, he would be playing whichever game allowed him to stake the most. I couldn’t see him from the bar – it was too dark, too crowded – so I bought a beer and took a slow walk around the blackjack tables. Five players, £10 minimum bet. Much too small-time for Ben. The tables further back were £20 and £40 per deal, still too much like small change for a guy who thought nothing of spending three grand on a Savile Row suit.

I did a slow, careful check of the poker tables. Not there either.