Zeb’s eyes are half closed, there’s a bruise covering most of his face and blood drips from his fingertips. His crafty eyes are shrouded by bruised lids, and of his sharp hustler features there is no sign. He looks bad and probably feels worse, if he’s feeling anything at all.

I spin the chair to face me.

‘Zeb? Tell me, quick. What did you do?’

‘’Bout time,’ Zeb spits through blood bubbles. ‘Paramol, ibuprofen. Under the safe.’

I shake him and a cut under his eye weeps blood. ‘No. Tell me. What the hell is the disk?’

Zeb coughs and something whines in his chest. ‘No disk. All bullshit. Come on, Dan. Pills.’

This is how it gets. After such a beating, pain is the only thing in Zeb’s life. He doesn’t care about living or dying. Just pain.

‘Okay. Okay.’

I pick through the bottles under the safe. Most of them have handwritten labels. Cheap generic pills. Zeb making a buck any way he can.

‘Five minutes, Mike,’ I shout at the ceiling. ‘Five minutes to find this goddamn disk.’

No answer for a moment, just dragging footsteps and the clink of metal.

Then, ‘Five minutes, McEvoy. I hear any sirens and I burn this place to the ground.’

Great. I have three hundred seconds and nothing to bargain with.

Paramol. I find a bottle and run a finger along the instructions.

‘Fuck the dosage!’ howls Zeb. ‘Give them all to me.’

Not happening. In Zeb’s state he would chew those things until his heart went asleep.

I pop the bottle, shake out a double dose and Zeb eats them out of my hand like a pony chewing sugar lumps. By the time I’ve torn the tape from his wrists, my restored friend is enjoying a little chemical calm.

‘Where were you, man?’ he sobs, then finishes with a jagged giggle. ‘I’ve been broadcasting. Sending out signals. Holding complete conversations with you. Couldn’t you hear me call?’

I didn’t hear shit, says Ghost Zeb.

‘I heard you, brother,’ I say. ‘I’m here. Now you’ve got to tell me what you did.’

‘I stayed alive. That’s what I did. Not proud, but I did it.’

I shake him gently. ‘What did you do? Come on, Zeb, tell me.’

Zeb blinks like he’s about to nod off. ‘I did Mike Madden’s hair. Like I did you, Dan. Sweet set of transplants.’

Hair transplants! No way. Not all this.

‘Asshole’s paranoid, let me tell you. Brought in students from China to assist, so they wouldn’t know who he was. Little hands they had, did lovely work. In six months you’ll never know. Mike will have a head of hair that would make Pierce Brosnan crap himself.’

Time is a-wasting. ‘Lovely work. Great. So what’s the problem?’