'For God's sake, these people belong to a glorified debating society, not the Hellfire Club,' Louie told her. 'They're bored rich kids. Don't you think you're overreacting a little?'

'Probably. I don't know. Vince has been digging into their background a lot lately, and they know it. I'm worried that something might have happened to him. You know how he gets.'

'Then why don't you go around to his apartment, if you're so worried?'

'You're right, I should do that. Perhaps he's sick.'

'And he might have gone on a date,' said Louie with unnecessary cruelty. 'People have lives to lead, you know.'

'Come on,' Pam said, refusing to take offence, 'I spoke to him earlier tonight. Besides, this is Vince we're talking about. There's a reason why nearly all of his friends are men; he finds it very hard to talk to females. He would have let me know if he'd changed his plans.'

'Maybe the offer came up suddenly and was too good to refuse. You're going to have to work this one out for yourself, Pam. I'll see you there, okay? I'm really running late.'

She apologised for bothering Louie, rang off, paid her bill and left the restaurant. Outside, on Camden High Street, the temperature was still falling. There was even a smattering of wet snow in the air. In the entrance to a punkish shoe store near the bus stop, two young men were bedding down for the night in orange nylon sleeping bags. It always amazed her how customers were able to step over such people in order to window-shop for luxuries. She seemed to be forever surrendering her small change to sickly-looking kids. Surely that was the decent, the right thing to do, yet the very act of trying to help out got you into trouble half the time. She had no faith in public servants who acted as if they knew what was best for her. Highly organised groups unnerved her. They were like ambitious politicians who seemed so sure of themselves, so determined to prove their theories that they couldn't possibly have the welfare of the public at heart. Wait until she found herself in a position of power; she'd show them all a thing or two…

Pam no longer felt like going to the gig tonight. She wasn't a gig sort of person, anyway. That was much more in Louie's line. As she boarded the bus, she told herself that she would find Vince sitting quietly at home, having forgotten all about supper. Perhaps his phone had developed a fault.

She had never met this Sebastian but he sounded like a bit of a creep, and Vince was easily led. He was so… not trusting, exactly, but in awe of people who liked him, as if he found it hard to believe that anyone could. And of course, he was utterly blind to the people who really loved him. Or rather, the person.

She checked her eye make-up in the tiny silver compact Vince had given her last Christmas, and decided to wait five more minutes outside the café-bar before heading in the direction of his flat.

Vince had torn open the envelope and unfolded the page, but could not absorb the words. If he shut his eyes all he saw was Strangeways lying among the plastic palms with that gaping crimson gash in his throat. What would they do if he went to the police now? There was no point in trying to direct someone to the site of his death, foolish to think Sebastian and his pals hadn't already taken care of the body. He was sure they would get a kick from having him perform that great movie cliché, 'But he was right here, officer, I swear I saw him with my own eyes.'

If the League had wanted to remind him that this was not a game, surely they could have found some less destructive way of doing it. But Strangeways had proven the ideal victim. By his own admission he had no friends or relatives who would come looking for him. He had become just another Home Office statistic, convenient and invisible, beyond care or community.

The streets and alleyways leading away from the Embankment appeared far more menacing than they had an hour earlier. The last commuters were returning to their mainline stations. As they vacated the city a sharp chill deepened in the air, the offices, gyms, restaurants and bars shedding the heat of so many bodies. A laughing, arguing mass of humanity was in retreat, abandoning the city to a handful of night inhabitants.

After midnight, a new set of rules would apply. Already the landscape had a different look. The main thoroughfares shone a dead, unyielding yellow. The backstreets were just dark enough to cause anxious glances over the shoulder. But to know that there were others here, men hiding in the shadows, watching and waiting, was enough to break his stride into a run.

He darted into the road, back towards the hard white lights of the West End, running until his throat was filled with burning scraps of breath. Forced himself to stop, knowing that somehow, somewhere they could be studying his every move. Was it possible to be in the centre of a city of nine million people and yet be entirely alone?

Although the wind from the river was freezing against his face, rivulets of sweat trickled down his spine. He looked at his watch. 10:55 p.m. He'd miss the next deadline and that would be it; he would end up like Strangeways, lying in a gutter with his throat slit, bundled into garbage bags by a couple of rented thugs. It would be so easy to disappear. A wild malevolence swept through him as he snatched the letter containing the next challenge from his jacket and opened it.

The Challenge Of War And Disobedience

Three dead men, tried in court as if alive.

Slaughtered and tortured beyond the grave.

Buried once more.

Only to rise and continue their damnable conversation.

How can this be? They have no mouths but still must speak.

Obtusus obtusiorum ingenii monumentum. Quid me respicis, viator? Vade.

Time allowed: 120 Minutes

What? He stared at the page in horror, knowing that this time he had been stonewalled. The text was gibberish, obscure, impossible. He had nowhere even to begin, no one to help him, no time to solve the damned stupid puzzle or to reach the destination hidden within the text. How long did he have before the paper it was written on fractured into dust?

Vince sat down on the wet kerb, heedless of the icy slush seeping into his jeans, and rested his head in his hands. There was nothing more he could do but await the arrival of the League.

Pam pulled a piece of gum from the pink stiletto of her left shoe and stepped back in the road. She looked up at the first-floor windows. No lights showed. If Vince was in he must have gone to bed, but the curtains were undrawn. She rang the bell again and waited. He was her closest friend, someone who could be trusted with nearly all of her most important secrets, and she really wanted to be with him tonight. When she set her mind to a task, she rarely stopped until she had completed it. Where the hell had he gone?

It would have to be a process of elimination. She slipped into the doorway of the laundromat next door to shelter from the biting wind, dug into her bag for her mobile phone and began making calls.

'He's not going to crack this one, Bunter,' complained Sebastian. 'You've made it too difficult.'

'Well, there's no point in the clues being too easy, is there?' said Ross Caton-James, who allowed no one to call him Bunter but Sebastian. 'You said so yourself. And he's got about fifteen minutes to figure it out before the chemicals eat through the paper. Look, is it too much to ask for the port to be passed in the correct direction?'

He reached out to accept the decanter and poured himself a generous measure. The wind was sweeping across the river's reach to moan and bat at the mullioned windows like Marley's ghost. Caton-James had thinning sandy hair, a florid complexion, a corpulent girth and the torpid demeanour of a fifty-year-old who had made his pile and was now resting. The fact that he was only twenty-four made his profound sense of self-satisfaction all the more alarming. But then his father was one of the richest men in England, and the elderly knight's children had never been contradicted or disobeyed in their lives. It lent one's most frivolous remarks a certain gravitas.