He looked towards the drinks trolley. The stewardess – a pert little blonde who introduced herself as Chloë while serving Porter his microwaved breakfast – had already been through the cabin offering people a drink but it was still only mid-morning and there weren’t many takers. Layla had told her sharply that they didn’t need anything, and Porter had had to settle for finishing her breakfast instead. There was a row of tiny, airline bottles: whisky, vodka, gin, rum, several different types of beer, quarter-bottles of red and white wine. Porter could hardly remember the last time he’d seen so much booze in one place. And all of it free as well. He grabbed two vodkas, one gin, and a double-sized serving of Johnnie Walker, and slipped them inside his jacket.

There’s only one place they manufacture the kind of courage a man needs to face what I am about to put myself through, he told himself.

A brewery.

He grabbed another vodka bottle, and twisted its cap. It came loose in his hand, and he put it to his lips. He could feel the warm glass against his skin, and then the steady, strong liquid started to trickle down into his throat. Porter had never found a drink he didn’t like the taste of. He’d drink paint-stripper if that was all he could find. But vodka was his favourite. A real drinker’s drink: maybe that was why the Russians loved it so much. Vodka didn’t mess around with flavours or aromas. There was no nonsense about grains or vintages. It was the closest you could get to pure alcohol without visiting a hospital. And it got you fired up with the minimum fuss and the maximum efficiency.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ snapped Layla.

Porter spun round. She was standing right next to him, her dark eyes alive with anger. Already her right hand had grabbed for the vodka bottle. She was trying to take it from him but had only succeeded in spilling half its contents down his shirt.

‘What the fuck do you think I’m doing?’ growled Porter. ‘Admiring the pretty cloud formations out of the window? I’m having a bloody drink.’

‘Put it down,’ said Layla, her tone rising sharply.

Porter held on to the bottle. There were only a few drops left in it, but he wasn’t about to let them go.

‘Put it down,’ said Layla again, even more loudly this time.

Porter could hear the roaring of the plane’s engines in his ears. It had just hit a patch of turbulence, and the A320 bounced sharply, then plunged downwards. Porter steadied himself against the plane wall with his left hand. Ahead of him he could see that the pilot had switched on the seat-belts sign.

‘I know you’re practically an alcoholic,’ said Layla, trying to keep her grip as the plane rolled and swerved through the sky, ‘but you’ve had a couple of days without a drink, and you’re starting to clean up.’