Mike Cramer looked at his watch, pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and put his hand on the bottle of Famous Grouse he kept there. He took it out and weighed it in his hand. It was a powerful hand, the fingers strong and the nails neatly clipped. There was scar tissue over the first two knuckles and the skin looked as if it had been out in all weathers. It was the hand of a sailor, a hand used to doing manual work. It was shaking as it held the bottle and the whisky slopped against the glass. Cramer tightened his grip but that just intensified the trembling. He stood the bottle on the desk and looked at the label as he used his foot to close the drawer.

He looked at his watch again. Nine-fifteen. He’d only bought the bottle the previous evening in the off-licence down the road but already it was half empty. Cramer smiled to himself. There had been a time when he might have taken a more positive view and thought that the bottle was half full, but those days were long gone. He unscrewed the cap and lifted the neck of the bottle to his nose. He sniffed gently, the way a dog might test the night air, then he took a mouthful, swallowing almost immediately. Cramer wasn’t drinking for the flavour, he was drinking to stop the shakes. He took another mouthful, then another, and then recapped the bottle and put it back into his desk drawer. He had an open pack of Wrigley’s gum on his desk and he unwrapped a piece and popped it in his mouth.

The office was small and windowless. It took up a corner of a large warehouse and was little more than a plywood box with space for two desks, a photocopier, a filing cabinet, a small fridge and five steel lockers. On the wall above the filing cabinet was a chart and Cramer went over to look at it. Two groups were due to start at nine-thirty so he went to check the battle arena.