Nick and Andy left soon after the match ended and I walked through to the lounge bar and sat in the booth where I had failed to entice Satsuma. Sitting there made me relive snippets of our conversation once again. What had I done wrong? I was a bit rude about her bike, but she had seemed to take it in good spirit. Every other part of our conversation seemed to flow with a good momentum. Why had it not worked?

I needed to stop thinking about her. I looked over to the bar where I had last seen Brendan and decided to think about him for a while as a Satsuma diversion. I scrolled through the contacts in my phone to find his details and glanced through the five or six messages we had exchanged. They were all just work-related and dull apart from one where he had attached a photograph of his latest sock purchase. A beige pair with a revolver gracing the length of each leg section. The message read ‘Foot Soldier LOL’. I smiled while remembering that I hadn’t smiled when I received the message. Our last transaction had been when he placed the note with his ‘friends list’ telephone number in my pocket. I pulled the note out and dialled it. I don’t know why; it just seemed the respectful thing to do before deleting the contact from my phone. On connecting it went straight to voicemail: ‘You have reached the voicemail of Fuzzbox Novelty Socks. Please leave your message after the tone.’ I ended the call and laughed to myself. Brendan’s final joke was a good one.

I decided to try Brendan’s usual work number one last time, the one I had always used, and dialled it from my list of contacts. After five or six rings it was picked up.

‘Hello?’ I said.

There was no reply, but I could sense that there was someone on the other end.

‘Hello?… Hello?… Hello? Is this Brendan’s phone?’ I asked into the silence.

Again, there was no reply. I felt a little squirt of adrenalin in my stomach.

‘Hello?… Is that the police?’