I chortled like a numbskull, and Bernhard and Roger joined in. Men. Using kitchen gloves. That’s a good one. Bernhard took up the story, leaning forward in his chair and speaking with sombre, respectable Germanicism.

‘Our scale of production,’ he said, ‘has now reached a point where we’d be very interested in considering a licence to export to the North American market. And I think what we would like from you, sir, is a little help through the many mechanisms we would need to have in place.’

Call-Me-Roger nodded, and jotted something down on a pad of paper. I could see that he had our letter in front of him on the desk, and it looked as if he’d drawn a ring round the word ‘rubber’. I would have liked to have asked him why, but this wasn’t the moment.

‘Roger,’ I said, getting to my feet, ‘before we get started in depth.’

Roger looked up from his pad.

‘Down the hall, second door on the right.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

The lavatory was empty, and smelled of pine. I locked the door, checked my watch, then climbed up on to the seat and eased open the window.

To the left, a sprinkler tossed graceful arcs of water across an expanse of well-tended lawn. A woman in a print-dress was standing by the wall, picking at her fingernails, while a few yards away, a small dog defecated intensely. In the far corner, a gardener in shorts and a yellow tee-shirt knelt and fiddled with some shrubs.

To the right, nothing.

More wall. More lawn. More flower beds. And a monkey-puzzle tree.

I jumped down from the lavatory, looked at my watch again, unlocked the door and stepped out into the corridor. It was empty.

I walked quickly to the staircase and bounced merrily down, two steps at a time, drumming my hand on the banister to no particular tune. I passed a man in shirt-sleeves carrying paper, but I said a loud ‘morning’ before he could say anything.

I reached the first floor and turned right, and saw that the corridor was busier.

Two women were standing half-way down, deep in conversation, and a man on my left was locking, or unlocking, an office door.

I glanced at my watch and started to ease up, feeling in my pockets for something that, maybe, I’d left somewhere, or if not there, somewhere else, but then again, maybe I never had it, but if I had, should I go back and look for it? I stood in the corridor, frowning, and the man on the left had opened the office door and was looking at me, about to ask me if I was lost.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and smiled at him, holding up a key ring.

‘Got it,’ I said, and he gave me a small, uncertain nod as I walked on.

A bell pinged at the end of the corridor and I speeded up a little, jangling the keys in my right hand. The lift doors slid open, and a low trolley started to nose its way out into the corridor.

Francisco and Hugo, in their neat blue overalls, carefully shepherded the trolley out of the lift; Francisco pushing, Hugo resting both his hands on the water barrels. Relax, I wanted to say to him, as I slowed down to let the trolley go ahead of me. It’s only water, for Christ’s sake. You’re following it as if it’s your wife on her way to the delivery room.

Francisco was moving slowly, checking the numbers on the office doors, looking very good indeed, while Hugo kept turning and licking his lips.

I stopped at a notice-board and examined it. I tore down three pieces of paper, two of them being the fire drill, and one, an open invitation to a barbecue at Bob and Tina’s, Sunday atnoon. I stood there, reading them as if they needed to be read, and then looked at my watch.

They were late. Forty-five seconds late.

I couldn’t believe it. After everything we’d agreed, and practised, and sworn about, and practised again, the little fuckers were late.

‘Yes?’ said a voice. Fifty-five seconds.

I looked down the corridor, and saw that Francisco and Hugo had reached the open reception area. A woman sat at a desk, peering at them over big glasses.

Sixty-five fucking seconds.

‘Salem alicoum,’ said Francisco, in a soft voice. ‘ Alicoum salem,’ said the woman.

Seventy.

Hugo banged his hand on the top of the water barrels, then turned and looked at me.

I started to walk forwards, took two steps, and then I heard it.

Heard it and felt it. It was like a bomb.

When you watch cars crashing on television, you’re fed a certain level of sound by the dubbing mixers, and you probably think to yourself that’s it, that’s what a car crash sounds like. You forget, or, with a bit of luck, you never know, how much energy is being released when half-a-ton of metal hits another half-a-ton of metal. Or the side of a building. Vast amounts of energy, capable of shaking your body from head to toe, even though you’re a hundred yards away.

The Land Rover’s horn, jammed down with Cyrus’s knife, cut through the silence like the wail of an animal. And then it quickly faded away, swamped by the sounds of doors opening, chairs being pushed back, bodies scuffling into doorways - looking at each other, looking back down the corridor.

Then they were all talking, and most of them were saying Jesus, and goddamn, and the fuck was that, and suddenly I was watching a dozen backs, scurrying away from us, tripping, skipping, tumbling over each other to get to the stairwell.

‘You think we should see?’ said Francisco to the woman behind the desk.

She looked at him, then squinted down the corridor.

‘I can’t… you know…’ she said, and her hand moved towards the telephone. I don’t know who she thought she was going to call.

Francisco and I looked at each other for about a hundredth of a second.

‘Was that…’ I began, staring nervously at the woman, ‘I mean, did that sound like a bomb?’

She put one hand on the phone and the other out in front, palm towards the window, asking the world to just stop and wait a moment while she got herself together.

There was a scream from somewhere.

Somebody had seen the blood on Benjamin’s shirt, or fallen over, or just felt like screaming, and it got the woman half on to her feet.

‘What could that be?’ said Francisco, as Hugo started to move round the edge of her desk.

This time she didn’t look at him.

‘They’ll tell us,’ she said, peering past me down the corridor. ‘We stay where we are, and they’ll tell us what to do.’