The phone jarred his mind away from introspection. He ignored it. Push. Relax. Perhaps the caller would give up. Push, slop of water overhead. Relax. His belly was like steel now, flat and hard; legs solid, arms powerful. He'd never been fitter, not even as a squaddie. It made him feel good, confident, capable of tackling anything.

The phone kept on shrilling. There was a dump facility in the terminal for messages, but the caller wasn't using it. Push. Relax. Someone must want him urgently.

He let the bar fall and walked over to the new Event Horizon terminal. The chalet was all kitted out with Event Horizon gear now. And he'd left a whole lot more in the delivery van, there simply hadn't been room for all the stuff that Julia had sent. Eleanor had had a ball picking out what they could use.

The fee money had been good as well. He'd paid off the outstanding instalments on the Duo, then went to town refurbishing the chalet—new carpets, curtains, restoring the furniture; stripped the roof down and replaced the tiles; tacked on a second solar panel to power the new air-conditioner. There hadn't quite been enough cash to replace the shaky walls, but the money ordinary cases brought in should see to that before the end of the year. He'd already worked on a couple since the memox skim, both corporate, sniffing out dodgy personnel.

The phonescreen swirled and Philip Evans's face appeared. "Hello, Greg. I need your help again, boy. Someone is trying to kill me."

Greg suppressed a smile. Ten years in the business, and nobody had ever phoned in a cliché before. "Bodyguard services aren't really my field, sir, wouldn't your own security…" He trailed off and stared at the screen, stared and stared. Small muscles at the back of his knees began to twitch, threatening to topple him.

When he looked back on it, he blamed his exercise-induced lethargy for putting his mind on a ten-second delay to reality, that and intuition. It wasn't just the voice and image which convinced him, any animation synthesiser could mimic Philip to perfection. But this was Philip Evans, grinning away at the other end of the connection. Both the natural and neurohormone-boosted faculties squatting in his brain forced him to accept it at a fundamental level.

The black-clad funeral procession wending its way through Peterborough's rain-slicked streets occluded his vision.

"You're dead," he told the image.

"Gone but not forgotten."

That malicious chuckle. Perfect. Him.

"Sorry to give you a shock, m'boy, but I'd never have called unless it was absolutely vital. Can you come out to Wilholm? I really can't discuss too much over the phone. I'm sure you appreciate that."

The tone mocked.

Greg's skittish nerves began to flutter down towards some kind of equilibrium. Shock numbness, probably. "I… I think I can manage that. When?"

"Soon as possible, Greg, please."