Jamie stood up. ‘I hope it is them. I really fucking hope it is.’ He dried his hands, marching off towards the door, his courage and fury deserting him the second he opened it. He didn’t know what he would do if it was Chris. He had a vision of himself pulling a gun out of his back pocket, blowing a hole in Chris’s chest, laughing as he slumped to the floor, pumping more bullets into his slack body, pieces of bone and brain splattering against the clean white paintwork…

Jesus Christ, what was going on?

He opened the door. It was Brian.

‘Hello, Jamie, I was – hey, are you alright?’

‘What?’

‘You look a bit…stressed.’

‘No. I’m fine. I’m fine.’ He blinked hard to clear the image of Chris’s gunned-down body. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Well, it’s my computer. The whole system seems to have gone kaput.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It keeps crashing, and I can’t open any of my files. I was wondering if you’d have a look at it for me.’

He really couldn’t concentrate on what Brian was saying. He watched his mouth move, heard something about a computer, things going wrong.

He nodded. ‘Sure. Wait there a second.’

He told Kirsty where he was going and followed his neighbour up the stairs. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Brian for ages. Their paths seldom crossed.

Brian opened the door of his study and Jamie was once again struck by how spooky the room was, with its horror paraphernalia and dark walls. He sat down at the desk and switched the computer on.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Brian said. ‘Do you want a coffee?’

Jamie waited for the computer to boot up. There was no doubt about it – something had gone wrong. The hard drive whirred and made awful crunching noises as the system started up. Several worrying error messages flashed up before the desktop finally appeared. Jamie set about checking the system, trying to open Brian’s Word files. As soon as he did this the system crashed and he had to reboot.

Brian came into the room with the coffee.

‘Any joy?’

Jamie shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good. What have you done to it?’

‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything different at all. I only use it for word-processing and the internet. I never fiddle around with it.’

‘You’d better give me half-an-hour. I find it difficult to work with someone looking over my shoulder.’

Brian hesitated. ‘I’m really worried. I’ve got my new book saved on there. It’s almost finished.’

‘You’ve got it all backed up though, of course?’

‘Well…’

‘Do you use Dropbox or anything?’

Brian looked blank. ‘No. It’s just saved on the hard drive.’

Jamie sighed. ‘OK. I’ll do what I can.’