'Hey, hey, listen, you know - hey - I'm claustrophobic - this is not funny! Hey!' His voice came back at him, strangely muffled.
Pete opened the door, leaned into the cab, and switched on the headlights. A couple of metres in front of them was the grave they had dug yesterday, the earth piled to one side, tapes already in place. A large sheet of corrugated iron and two of the spades they had used lay close by.
The four friends walked to the edge and peered down. All of them were suddenly aware that nothing in life is ever quite as it seems when you are planning it. This hole right now looked deeper, darker, more like - well - a grave, actually.
The beam of the flashlight shimmered at the bottom.
'There's water,' Josh said.
'Just a bit of rainwater/ Robbo said.
Josh frowned. 'There's too much, that's not rainwater. We must have hit the water table.'
'Shit,' Pete said. A BMW salesman, he always looked the part, on
duty or off. Spiky haircut, sharp suit, always confident. But not quite so confident now.
'It's nothing,' Robbo said. 'Just a couple of inches.'
'Did we really dig it this deep?' said Luke, a freshly qualified solicitor, recently married, not quite ready to shrug off his youth, but starting to accept life's responsibilities.
'It's a grave, isn't it?' said Robbo. 'We decided on a grave.'
Josh squinted up at the worsening rain. 'What if the water rises?
'Shit, man,' Robbo said. 'We dug it yesterday, it's taken twentyfour hours for just a couple of inches. Nothing to worry about.'
Josh nodded, thoughtfully. 'But what if we can't get him back out?'
'Course we can get him out/ Robbo said. 'We just unscrew the lid.'
'Let's just get on with it,' Luke said. 'OK?'
'He bloody deserves it,' Pete reassured his mates. 'Remember what he did on your stag night, Luke?'
Luke would never forget. Waking from an alcoholic stupor to find himself on a bunk on the overnight sleeper to Edinburgh. Arriving forty minutes late at the altar the next afternoon as a result.
Pete would never forget, either. The weekend before his wedding, he'd found himself in frilly lace underwear, a dildo strapped to his waist, manacled to the Clifton Gorge suspension bridge, before being rescued by the fire brigade. Both pranks had been Michael's idea.
'Typical of Mark,' Pete said. 'Jammy bastard. He's the one who organized this and now he isn't bloody here ...'
'He's coming. He'll be at the next pub, he knows the itinerary'
'Oh yes?'
'He rang, he's on his way.'
'Fogbound in Leeds. Great!' Robbo said.
'He'll be at the Royal Oak by the time we get there.'
'Jammy bastard/ Luke said. 'He's missing out on all the hard work.'
'And thefunl' Pete reminded him.
'This is fun?' Luke said. 'Standing in the middle of a sodding forest in the pissing rain? Fun? God, you're sad! He'd fucking better turn up to help us get Michael back out.'
They hefted the coffin up in the air, staggered forward with it to the edge of the grave and dumped it down, hard, over the tapes. Then giggled at the muffled 'Ouch!' from within it.
There was a loud thump.
Michael banged his fist against the lid. 'Hey! Enough!'
Pete, who had the walkie-talkie in his coat pocket, pulled it out and switched it on. 'Testing!' he said. 'Testing!'
Inside the coffin, Pete's voice boomed out. 'Testing! Testing!'
'Joke over!'
'Relax, Michael!' Pete said. 'Enjoy!'
'You bastards! Let me out! I need a piss!'
Pete switched the walkie-talkie off and jammed it into the pocket | Of his Barbour jacket. 'So how does this work, exactly?'
'We lift the tapes,' Robbo said. 'One each end.'
Pete dug the walkie-talkie out and switched it on. 'We're getting this taped, Michael!' Then he switched it off again.
The four of them laughed. Then each picked up an end of tape and took up the slack.
