The Devil's Feather

10

IT WAS FRIGHTENING how quickly panic re-entered my life. My mother had thought I was angry when she asked if Jess might be her silent listener, but it was fear that made me shout at her, and asphyxia that made me slam the phone down. I knew exactly who her nuisance caller was. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so certain if Dan hadn’t told me that MacKenzie had left Iraq, but I doubt it. I’d bolstered my courage through foolish mantras, and the hope that Bill Fraser would find MacKenzie before MacKenzie found me. But I’d been deluding myself.

Looking back, I’m shocked at how Pavlovian my responses had become. How could three days in a cellar override behaviour patterns that had taken thirty-six years to develop, or negate my careful planning of the last few weeks? Why bother to locate every light switch, oil the door locks, arm myself with torches and devise exit strategies if my conditioned response to terror was to curl into a ball in the corner with my eyes closed? Just as the mutilated victims had done in Freetown.

In the end, even petrified animals move when they find themselves still alive, so I did, too. But only as far as the kitchen, where I could lock the door to the corridor as well as the one to the scullery. For some reason, I decided that sitting in the dark would be safer, even though every other light in the house was ablaze. Perhaps the blindfold had habituated me to it-I’d come to like the fact that I couldn’t see who or what was in front of me-but it did at least jolt my brain into some sort of limited reasoning.

I adopted the same siege mentality that I’d used in my car when I first arrived. As long as I stayed where I was, I was fine. If I tried to leave, I’d be in danger. I had access to food and water. I could barricade the window by laying the kitchen table over the sink, and I could use carving knives to defend myself. At no point did I think of calling for help. Peter says I’d trained myself to believe there was none available, but that doesn’t explain why, when the dawn broke and I saw the phone on the kitchen wall, I remembered there was a world beyond me and my fear of MacKenzie.

Of course it was Jess I called. Like Lily, I’d come to rely on her. She was a trusted man Friday who didn’t expect, or want, to be wined, dined and rewarded with trivial conversation. It was curiously restful once I accepted her way of doing things. If she was in a talkative mood, we talked. If she wasn’t, we didn’t. I hadn’t appreciated how conventional I was until I learnt to sit through Jess’s silences. I was the type who rushed to speak for fear of seeming boorish, and changing that habit did not come easily.

I gave up trying to work out what made Jess tick after she resumed her visits. She turned up at inconvenient times of the day, as she’d done before, but I found it less irritating the second time around because she didn’t take offence if I said I was busy. As often as not, she’d go outside to mow the semi-circle of formal lawn at the back of the house then leave without saying goodbye, but when I pointed out that I didn’t expect her to shoulder my responsibilities, she merely shrugged and said she liked doing it. “Years ago, when Lily had a gardener, he cut the grass all the way to the boundaries and the wildlife vanished. Now they live in the long grass, and you can see their tracks where they come in and out of hiding. You’ve got a weasel here, if you’re interested. He goes to the fishpond to drink.”

“What else lives here?”

“Mice, voles, squirrels. A badger’s been through recently.”

I pulled a face. “Rats?”

“Hardly any, I should think…not unless you’re leaving rubbish out. Your weasel will have their babies if it can, and there’s a colony of tawny owls in the valley who prey on them.”

“Do you have rats at the farm?”

She nodded. “All farms do. They go for the grain stores and the livestock food.”

“What do you do about them?”

“Make life as difficult as possible, keep animal feed in bins and grain stores in good structural order. They only set up home and breed if they have access to food and water, and find cavities and holes to hide in. They’re like any other animal. They thrive in conditions they can exploit.”

Like MacKenzie, I thought. “You make it sound so simple.”

Jess shrugged. “It is in a way. You only get infestations if you’re lazy or careless. It’s an open invitation to a rat to leave food and rubbish lying around. They like easy pickings, the same way people do.” She paused. “Which isn’t to say I don’t use poison from time to time, or reach for my airgun when a fat one comes nosing around. They can pass Weil’s disease and leptospirosis to humans and animals, and prevention’s a damn sight better than cure.”

This matter-of-fact approach to pest management was appealing, but I couldn’t see her being so sanguine if a plague of locusts descended on her fields. It’s one thing to monitor your own premises for vermin, quite another to look death in the face as your crop is taken by a swarm that has bred and gathered a hundred miles away. In those circumstances, you weep and pray to God for deliverance because there’s nothing on earth that can help you except the charity of foreign governments and NGOs.

When I said this, she replied rather scathingly that BSE and foot-and-mouth were no different. “I lost Dad’s whole herd to BSE when cattle over thirty months had to be incinerated-whether they had the disease or not-and it’s taken me eight years to build another herd half the size. It’s wrecked the beef and dairy industry in this country but you don’t hear much sympathy for farmers.”

“Weren’t you compensated?”

“Nowhere near what each animal was actually worth. It took Dad years to build his herd-he was always winning prizes at the shows-and none of them had BSE. I got an extra sixty quid for every animal that was killed unnecessarily when the tests post-slaughter proved negative. It was a joke…and bloody upsetting. I was pretty fond of those cows.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “You get on with it. Did your dad lose crops to locusts?”

“Only the human variety. Mugabe took his farm.”

“How long had your family been there?”

“Not long enough,” I said ironically. “Three generations-four if you count me-about the same length of time as Madeleine’s has been in Barton House.”

“How does that make it not long enough?”

“Wrong colour,” I said harshly. “If you’re black, you’ve been there for centuries…never mind you were born in Mozambique or Tanzania. If you’re white your ancestors stole the land from the indigenous people.”

“Is that what your family did?”

“No. My great-grandparents bought ours fair and square, but deeds of title don’t count for much when Zanu-PF thugs turn up on your doorstep.” I shrugged. “There are rights and wrongs on both sides, but stealing the land back again hasn’t solved anything. It’s just made it worse…turned Africa’s breadbasket into a dust-bowl. Ten years ago, the white farmers were producing enough food”-I broke off.

“Go on.”

“No,” I said with an abrupt laugh. “It makes me too angry. Like you and your dad’s herd. I wouldn’t mind so much if the farm had gone to our workers, but it’s been appropriated by one of Mugabe’s cronies and hasn’t produced anything for three years. It’s a crazy situation.”

“Will you ever go back?”

“I can’t,” I said unwarily. “I’m excluded indefinitely because of what I’ve written about Mugabe.”

There was a beat of silence before Jess changed the subject. She’d done it before when I made rash comments about myself, and I did wonder if Peter had told her I wasn’t who I said I was. It was noticeable that she never called me Marianne, preferring to wait until she caught my attention before saying anything. I had every intention of coming clean-certainly before my parents arrived, as two Mariannes in the same family would need explaining-but I kept postponing it. I wasn’t ready to talk about Baghdad-not then, not ever, perhaps-so I carried on with the pretence because it was easier.

There was no question Peter had told Jess that I knew about her relationship with Nathaniel because she made a reference to it the morning after I’d spoken to him. This left me deeply curious about Peter’s relationship with Jess. Had he been to her house the previous evening? Had he phoned to say I’d visited him? I wasn’t worried by the breach of confidence, because I hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself, but I was intrigued to know why he’d felt it necessary to inform Jess. At the very least, it implied a closer friendship than either of them was admitting to.

“It takes a crisis to show you what a person’s really like,” she said, jerking her chin at one of Nathaniel’s paintings. “He behaved like a complete tosser after my parents died.”

“What did he do?”

“Holed up in London rather than face the emotion down here. It worked out for the best in the end. I might have sold the farm if I’d listened to him. He wanted me to buy a house in Clapham with a studio upstairs.”

“For him?”

“Of course. He had visions of living in Bohemian bliss in some claustrophobic tenement.” She smiled slightly. “On my parents’ money…with him as the charismatic artist and me doing the washing-up.”

“Were you tempted?”

“Sometimes…at night. Come the mornings, I always had the sense to see it wouldn’t work. I need to be on my own with lots of space around me, and he needs an audience.” She paused. “I gave him the boot when I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a servant.”

Interesting choice of words, I thought. “Is that when he took up with Madeleine?”

“Nn-nn. He’d been sleeping with her for ages. She sprogged two months after I said I never wanted to see him again.” Jess gave one of her rare laughs at my expression. “That’s how Lily reacted. It was about the worst thing that could have happened…her only child getting pregnant by a Derbyshire cast-off. The way she carried on, you’d think Nathaniel and I were related. I thought it was pretty funny, myself.”

“Because Lily looked down on you?” It wasn’t my idea of humour.

“No. I liked the idea of Madeleine playing servant for the first time in her life.”

I’m sure it was at that point that I gave up trying to understand Jess. There were innumerable questions I wanted to ask, not least why she’d remained close to Lily, but instead I resorted to banality. “You’re well out of it.”

“I know,” she said, staring critically at Nathaniel’s painting, “but he isn’t. I feel quite sorry for him sometimes. He comes to the farm every so often, wanting to put the clock back, but I haven’t seen him since I told him I’d shoot his dick off if he tried it on again.” There was a glint of humour in her eye.

She really did have the capacity to surprise. “Does Madeleine know?”

Jess gave an indifferent shrug. “I shouldn’t think so. They hardly speak any more, which is why she wants this house. It’s her best chance to get rid of him…and she’d have done it by now if Lily hadn’t stymied her. Lily didn’t approve of divorce.”

“Why did Madeleine tell her?”

“She didn’t. I did.”

I might have guessed that, I thought. “Not a bad revenge, then?”

“Except I didn’t do it for revenge. I did it to protect Lily. Madeleine would have killed her, or stuck her in the cheapest home she could find, if Lily hadn’t reassigned the power of attorney. The only thing that stops her shoving a cushion over Lily’s face is that a solicitor’s involved. She’ll be worth a fortune when she inherits this place…as long as she gets shot of Nathaniel and the son first.”

THERE’S NO QUESTION Jess was my protector when she roared up the drive within ten minutes of my phone call. It was a little like having a knight on a white charger come to the rescue, except there was no chivalry and very little TLC. When I unlocked the back door her dogs came bounding in behind her, and she snapped at me angrily as I shrank against the wall. “I’m not facing an intruder on my own,” she hissed, following the mastiffs into the kitchen. “Wait there.” I heard her unlock the door to the corridor and then the swish of the green baize as she and the dogs disappeared into the body of the house.

It was only when she came back alone five minutes later that I saw she was carrying a gun. She broke it across her knee and put it on the table. “You’re OK. No signs of a break-in, and I’ve left the dogs in the hall. So what happened?”

I can’t remember what explanation I gave, other than to repeat that I thought I’d seen someone in the garden the evening before. The truth was too complicated, and I was too tired to pick my way through the minefield of revelation. Jess was unimpressed. “Why didn’t you call the police? That’s what they’re there for.”

“I don’t know,” I said, sinking miserably to my haunches in the corner. “I didn’t think of it.”

She reached down impatiently and hauled me to my feet. “Stop being so bloody pathetic and show some guts,” she growled, pushing me on to a chair. “I know you’ve got them.”

I wondered if this was how she’d treated Nathaniel. If so, it was hardly surprising he’d preferred Madeleine’s flattery. I don’t know what I’d expected from her-sympathy and a little affection, perhaps-but it never occurred to me that she might be frightened. It should have done. I should have guessed that my mention of an intruder would take her straight to MacKenzie’s photo.

At the time she’d worked on the headshot, I’d expected her to bombard me with questions. She hadn’t, although I do remember her asking what the man’s name was and why I was doing it. She used the computer at the farm, with me sitting beside her, and she seemed content with the answers I gave-that it was someone I knew by sight, who was wanted in Africa for passport offences. The only comment she made was that it was surprising I was ignorant of his name when I remembered his face so well.

“Was it that man?” she demanded now.

I stared at my hands.

“Who is he? Why would he come looking for you?” When I didn’t answer, she reached for the cordless phone and held it out to me. “Call the police…I’ll give you the number of the local station. The person you should ask for is Steve Banks. He’s our community bobby, and this is his area. He’s a good bloke.” She put the receiver on the table in front of me. “You’ve got one minute to make up your mind, then I’ll do it myself.”

I pulled the phone towards me and cradled it against my chest. “There’s no point. I didn’t see anyone.”

“Then why tell me you did? Why lock yourself in here?”

“You wouldn’t have come if I’d said I’d locked myself in for no reason.”

She turned on the tap and ran some water into the kettle. “You look like shit,” she said severely. “Do you want to go upstairs and sort yourself out while I make some coffee? I’ll shut the dogs in the back room so you don’t throw a panic attack when you see them.” She flicked me one of her penetrating gazes as she switched on the kettle before heading for the door to the corridor. “And don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. If you take longer than half an hour, I’ll be gone…and I won’t come back. I really hate weepy women.”

DENIAL’S A WONDERFUL THING. You can survive forever if you say “no.” It’s “yes” that puts you at risk. Yes, I’d like a job. Yes, I’ll go to Baghdad. Yes, I know who abducted me. Yes, I can identify MacKenzie. I had a great-aunt who said “no” to everything. She died a virgin at ninety-eight and her death was the most interesting thing about her. She said: “What was I thinking of?” just before she died, and we’ve been wondering ever since.

Jess was right about my appearance. I did look like shit. Red-eyed and haggard, and easily as old and desiccated as a ninety-eight-year-old virgin. As I washed my face and tugged a brush through my hair, I asked myself what I was thinking of. I’d hardly written anything since I’d arrived-except emails to Alan and Dan-and the only people I spoke to on a regular basis were my parents, Jess and Peter. My days were spent surfing the net, researching information on psychopaths and deviants. My nights were spent dreaming about them.

“Stalker types: The delusional stalker often has a history of mental illness which leads him to fantasize that his victim is in love with him. The vengeful stalker-the most dangerous-seeks revenge…”

“Sadist Rapist: One who seeks to punish a woman by the use of violence and cruelty. The victim is typically only a symbol of the source of his anger. He is usually very deliberate in his rapes and plans each one carefully. The victims are often traumatized, suffer extreme physical injuries and, in many cases, are murdered…”

“Torturer: One who inflicts extreme physical and mental pain for the purpose of punishment or obtaining information. Abuse may include: blindfolding; enforced constant standing or crouching; near drowning through submersion in water; near suffocation by plastic bags being tied round the head; rape…”

When John Donne wrote “no man is an island, entire of itself” he can’t have known about genuine introverts like Jess or sociopaths like MacKenzie. Such people might live within communities-albeit on the fringes-but their reclusiveness, their reticence, even their indifference to what others think, means, at best, that they’re only semi-attached to the “continent” of mankind. If they engage with the rest of us at all, it’s on their own terms and not on ours.

MacKenzie’s isolation had turned him into a predator, although it’s arguable which came first-his sadism or his alienation. It’s unlikely he was born with sadistic fantasies-what baby is?-but a harsh childhood might have led to them. By contrast, Jess’s introversion seems to have been inherited from her father, although the tragedies in her life may have exacerbated it. Sometimes, particularly when she refused to speak, I felt there was an autistic element to her personality. She was certainly a gifted artist and gave the same obsessive commitment to her work that savants show.

In her own way, she was charismatic. She inspired affection and loyalty in those who chose to interact with her, and a disproportionate dislike among those who didn’t. There was no middle ground with Jess. You loved her or loathed her, and in either case accepted her detachment as part of the package.

All of which persuaded me back downstairs within the half-hour limit because I needed her a great deal more than she needed me.

Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16-19/05/04”

…The police in Baghdad suggested that my alleged “ignorance” might be due to Stockholm Syndrome-I’d developed a bond with my captors to stay alive and was withholding information out of gratitude for my release. They told me it was nothing to be ashamed of. It happens to most hostages because their lives depend on their captors, and it’s a classic self-protection measure to befriend the one who threatens you. When I denied it, they lost sympathy with me.

…The only bond I developed was with the footsteps. I longed for them because I was afraid I’d been left to die of slow starvation and dehydration…and feared them because it meant I’d be taken out of the crate. I certainly developed a psychological attachment to sounds. I was owned for three days-and still am.

…I was never going to give details of what happened. How could I explain my smiles to strangers? Did I ever say no? Did I ever think about saying no?

…Do all sadists understand the power they wield? Are all victims programmed to respond in the same way to fear and pain?

…I wish I could believe that. At least it’s an excuse for cowardice. Why am I alive? I don’t understand that at all…

11

MY RETURN DOWNSTAIRS was a replay of my arrival. When I pushed open the kitchen door, Peter was sitting at the kitchen table and Jess stood mutinously by the Aga, staring at the floor. I hadn’t heard Peter’s car, and I stiffened with anxiety as soon as I saw him. He gave me a reassuring smile. “I won’t take offence if you give me my marching orders, Marianne. Jess told me to get my ‘arse over PDQ.’ She said it was an emergency, but, as I’m sure you know by now, diagnosis isn’t her strong point.”

Jess scowled at him. “You need to talk to someone,” she told me bluntly, “and Peter’s probably the best person. Just don’t let him put you on drugs. If he turns you into a zombie, you’ll be easy meat for any psycho that comes calling.”

Peter frowned a warning. “Shut up, Jess. If that’s your idea of tact it’s no wonder your social circle consists entirely of weasels.”

“It’s what she’s afraid of.”

He stood up and gestured towards the other chair. “Please come in, Marianne. You have my word there’s no one here except me and Jess. Against her better judgement, I’ve persuaded her that now is not the time to cure you of your fear of dogs…so you don’t even have mastiffs to contend with.”

Jess turned her scowl on me. “It’s up to you, but you’ll be better off with a dog to guard you. I’m happy to lend you Bertie. He used to be Lily’s till she couldn’t cope anymore, so he’ll settle back fine once you start feeding him…as long as you don’t go spastic and start flapping your hands around. You only need to learn a few commands and he’ll stand between you and danger.” Her expression relented a little. “Think about it, anyway. He’ll be a lot better for you than anti-depressants.”

Peter smiled rather grimly. “You can be a real pain in the arse at times.”

“I’m just giving some options.”

“No, you’re not. You’re blasting off with half-baked theories as usual. I suggest we revert to plan A”-he spoke through gritted teeth-“which was to give Marianne the chance to tell us if there’s any way we can help her.” He caught my gaze and made a valiant effort to suppress the irritation in his. “Can I persuade you to come in? Or would you rather one or both of us left…?”

I knew the irritation wasn’t directed at me, but it was enough to set a flutter of alarm knocking at my ribcage. My response to any display of male impatience or displeasure was a rush of fear. There were too many associations, and not just with MacKenzie. During the police interview in Baghdad-where the questioning became increasingly brusque-I’d started shaking so badly that the American adviser called a halt and asked if I’d prefer to speak to a woman.

I had declined so vehemently that a puzzled frown creased his forehead. “But you seem distressed, Connie. I thought you might be more comfortable with a member of your own sex.”

I’d reached for a glass of water, then changed my mind because I didn’t want the rim rattling against my teeth. “I’m tired,” I managed out of a dry mouth, “and if I start again with somebody new, I’ll miss my plane. I really want to get home to my parents in England.”

He wasn’t unkind. In other circumstances I’d have liked him. “I understand that, but I’ve no wish to upset you, and I have the feeling I’m doing that. Would you care for a female officer to sit in on the session?”

I shook my head. I was afraid of a woman’s sympathy, even more afraid of her instincts. It was easier telling lies to men. I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth and manufactured a convincing smile. “I’m OK. Just exhausted. It was frightening…you don’t sleep when you’re frightened.”

He watched my expression as Dan put an arm across my shoulders to comfort me. I kept the smile in place-just-but I couldn’t stop my eyes widening. Perhaps men are as instinctive as women, because the frown returned immediately. “I’m not happy about this, Connie. Are you sure you’ve told us everything?”

All I could do was stare at him. My whole body was rebelling at Dan’s closeness. That was the first time I had difficulty breathing, although it was more an enforced holding of my breath-a twenty-second freeze-than the panic that came afterwards. It seems to take time for the bombshell of terror to start exploding without warning. Perhaps we function on automatic pilot in the immediate aftermath of trauma, and only experience anxiety when the body needs rest and the brain overrules it for fear of being caught napping again.

Dan spoke for me. “Give her a break, Chas. She’s told you all she can. The men who took her from the taxi wore ski masks, and she was duct-taped and hooded from the off. When I found her, she’d been in darkness so long she couldn’t open her eyes…and that was less than four hours ago. Be grateful she agreed to talk at all. If I’d had my way, she’d have been on the first plane out and you’d have been asking London for information.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I don’t think you do. You heard the doc. He suggested a twenty-four-hour recuperation period before she answered questions, so letting London do the honours would have made more sense. You’d still have got your information…but the delay would have reduced its value. Connie understood that, which is why she’s here.”

“I do appreciate that, Dan, but, unfortunately, Connie hasn’t been able to tell us anything.” He shifted his attention to me. “Do you know if a video was made of you? The home movie seems to be the hostage-takers’ trademark…they want their fifteen minutes of fame just like Westerners do. Do you remember hearing a camera going?”

I managed to say “no,” and smile while I did it, but my heart was going like a hammer. The whole concept was too devastating to deal with. I could have maintained a pretence of dignity if there’d been no record of what I did. He took close-ups-“show you’re enjoying it, feather”-so there’d be an identifiable human face, even with taped eyes, on the obedient, rag-doll body.

What was he planning to do with the tape? How many people would see it? Was I recognizable as Connie Burns? Would Dan see it? My parents? My friends? My colleagues? All other invasions seemed trivial compared to a public unveiling in the Baghdad bazaars, or, worse, through al-Jazeera TV or the Internet. Is life worth living when you’ve had to beg for it? How do you function without self-esteem? How do you find the courage to go out?

“Why do you think you were released so rapidly, Connie? Dan’s told us he wasn’t involved in any negotiations because he didn’t know who was holding you. Nor did we…nor did any of the religious groups. So why did they let you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“The current average is two weeks. At the end of that time, depending on how much pressure has been brought to bear, hostages are either released or beheaded. We think most are being taken to Fallujah-or one of the other no-go areas-but you appear to have been held in Baghdad…then released after three days without any active intervention. It doesn’t fit the patterns we’ve seen, Connie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m trying to demonstrate why we need as much information as you can give us. Our only lead was your driver-and he’s vanished-so we’ve no idea what we’re dealing with here. It may be the beginning of a new pattern…or the emergence of a new group, whose only saving grace is that they haven’t learnt to kill yet.” He watched my eyes grow wider as Dan gave my shoulder a clumsy squeeze in solidarity. “Do you want someone else to suffer your fate, Connie?”

I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d wanted to.

“What sort of a question’s that?” asked Dan angrily. “You know damn well your chance of catching these bastards is zero. Zarqawi’s got a ten-million bounty on his head…and no one’s turned him in. If you increase it to twenty-five million, they still won’t. What can Connie tell you that’s going to change that?”

“Nothing, as far as Zarqawi’s concerned. I’m willing to accept she was taken for onward sale, but in that case why didn’t he buy her?” He held my gaze for a moment, then turned back to Dan. “There’s a lot of mileage to be made out of female journalists. They’re known to their fellow professionals, and women under threat make good copy. Connie and Adelina Bianca have inspired more column inches between them than any other hostages.” He flicked another glance in my direction. “Why would Zarqawi-why would any terrorist-turn down publicity like that? It sure as hell doesn’t make any sense to me.”

It didn’t to Dan either, but he fought my corner as he’d promised he would. My only leverage was the fact that we’d known each other for years. I’d first met him in South Africa when I joined the Cape Times as a rookie sub-editor from Oxford, and he was a columnist. We overlapped for a year before he moved abroad to join Reuters, but we knocked into each other regularly when he was sent to cover an “Africa” story. He came from Johannesburg, but his primary place of residence-according to his tax returns-was County Wexford, Eire, where he “lived” with his Irish wife, Ailish, and their daughter, Fionnula.

It was a strange relationship. His visits to Ireland were even more intermittent than the occasional postings that brought him and me together. I asked him once how he came to marry an Irish girl, and he said it was a shotgun wedding when she fell pregnant. “She was a student in London and was frightened to go home without a ring. Her father believes in hellfire and brimstone. He’d have kicked her out to fend for herself.”

“Why didn’t she have an abortion?”

“Because Ailish believes in hellfire and brimstone more than her old man does.”

“It didn’t stop her sleeping with you.”

“Mmm…except some sins are smaller than others”-he grinned-“and my charm might have had something to do with it. It’s worked out for the best in the end. Fee’s a grand kid. It would have been a crime to abort her.”

“If you feel like that why don’t you make more of an effort to see her?”

He shrugged. “It causes too many problems. The only time the family argues is when I’m there. They all approve of the monthly cheque but not the lodger.”

“Does she live with her parents?”

“Not quite. Three houses down. They’re a close-knit bunch. She has three brothers within a two-mile radius who turn up in force every time I visit to make sure I’m not going to renege on my responsibilities. I feel a bit like Daniel entering the lions’ den whenever I go there.”

It all seemed very peculiar to me. And rather sad. “Do you still sleep with Ailish?”

His eyes crinkled at the edges. “She lets me stay in the spare room, but that’s about as far as her hospitality goes…apart from keeping her lover at arm’s length for the duration.”

“You’re crazy,” I said in disbelief. “Why don’t you get a divorce?”

“What for? There’s no one else to marry…except you…and you won’t have me.”

“You can’t cook.”

“Neither can you.”

“Precisely, which is why we’d make a lousy couple. We’d starve.” I bared my teeth at him. “Are you sure it’s not a scam to avoid paying income tax? Everyone knows writers and artists are zero-rated in Ireland.”

“Only creative writers…and you have to spend six months a year in the country to qualify. Journalists are excluded.”

I couldn’t see that stopping him. He’d worked on a Reuters financial desk at one stage in his career and claimed to know every tax-dodge going. “Are you planning to live there when you write the great novel?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“With Ailish?”

Dan shook his head. “I’d rather have a cottage in Kerry, overlooking Dingle Bay. I took Fee there the last time I was over, and it was beautiful. We walked along the beach.” He paused. “By the time I take the plunge-if I take the plunge-she’ll be a grown woman. What do you think she’ll make of her father then? Will she still want to walk in the sand with me?”

It was said in the same amused tone that he’d used throughout, but the words suggested something else. A feeling for his child that he wanted reciprocated. It surprised me. I thought he was like me, determinedly unwilling to commit as the only way to stay sane in a life that was nomadic. Perhaps his daughter had given him roots. I envied him suddenly.

And I envied Fee. Did she know how Dan felt about her? Did she know who he was? What he’d done? What he’d written? How he was viewed outside the narrow confines of her mother’s family?

“She’ll be a strange woman, if she doesn’t,” I said. “It’s feminine nature to be curious…comes from centuries of having nothing to do except analyse male behaviour. As to what she’ll make of you”-I paused-“I hope you’ll always be a mystery to her, Dan. That way, she’ll keep coming back for more.”

He made a passing reference to that conversation as he waited with me at Baghdad airport. “How am I going to get in touch with you? The only contact number I have is your mobile…and that’s gone. I’m beginning to realize how little I actually know about you, Connie. I need your parents’ details.”

I forced a smile. “I wrote their address and number on the pad in your flat when I called home,” I lied, “but you can always find them in the personnel files under next of kin.” In fact I hadn’t updated the details since my parents left Zimbabwe, so the only address on record was Japera Farm, and I couldn’t see Mugabe’s crony forwarding correspondence.

Dan nodded. “OK. And you’re happy with the arrangements? Harry Smith will meet you at Heathrow and steer you through the press conference. After that, he’ll ask for you to be left alone…although you’ll certainly be chased for quotes if and when Adelina Bianca’s released.” He reached for my hand. “Can you cope with all of that?”

I tried not to show how much I hated being touched. “Yes.”

“You’ll be asked about the length of time you were held. That’s the issue that’s going to interest them. Why only three days? Were you given the reason for your release? Who negotiated it? Was any money paid?” He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “It might be worth thinking it through on the plane. You can legitimately plead ignorance on most things, but they’ll want to know what you said to your kidnappers and whether you think that influenced your treatment.”

Twenty feet away, a woman smacked a toddler on the back of his head. I couldn’t see what his offence was, but the heavy-handed blow seemed disproportionate to any crime a two-year-old could have committed. I felt a rush of sadness in my throat-the precursor to tears-but I’d lost the ability to cry and gazed dry-eyed at Dan as I slipped my hand from his and hunched inside my borrowed jacket. Underneath, I was still wearing my “abduction” clothes, a cotton skirt and shirt, which I’d washed before Dan took me to the police station. I’d accepted the jacket from a female colleague in case it was cold in London.

“Are you asking me to make something up?”

He looked away. “I’m suggesting you get your story straight, Connie. You told the police you couldn’t speak because of the duct tape over your mouth…but in the next breath said you were given water regularly. That can only have happened if the tape was removed, so why didn’t you speak then?”

“Because it wouldn’t have made any difference. If they’d wanted to kill me they’d have killed me.”

“Then, yes,” he said with sudden impatience. “I’m suggesting you make something up. You know the deal. It’s all about column inches, so give them the best story you can.”

I dug my hands into my pockets. “Otherwise what?”

“They’ll compare you with Adelina, Connie, and look for bruises. They’ll ask for the doctor’s report-clean bill of health, with minor bruising on your wrists and some redness round your mouth and eyes from the duct tape-and they’ll want to know why you got off so lightly. What are you going to tell them?”

I ran my tongue across my lips. “That I don’t know.”

“And when they ask what you were wearing-which they certainly will-how are you going to answer that?”

I pulled the jacket tighter around my waist and hips. “What I’ve got on.”

“Then stick to the story we gave the police…that I had your clothes laundered because you had nothing else to wear. I’ll take the flak again,” he finished rather grimly, “even though it makes me look like a bloody idiot.”

He’d been given a rough time by Chas for allowing me to clean myself and my clothes before going to the police station. It was bad enough that he’d kept my release secret for three hours, worse that he hadn’t considered the implications of destroying evidence. There was some excuse for my behaviour because I was traumatized, but none for Dan. He should have known better. How were the authorities expected to secure convictions without forensic corroboration?

Dan had stood by me-in so far as he took the criticism on the chin and kept it to himself that he’d tried to stop me-but he made no secret of his suspicions now. “Why did you need to wash those clothes, anyway?”

“They were dirty.”

But we both knew they weren’t. They hadn’t even smelt dirty, which was why I’d washed them. I’d toyed with saying I’d been given an orange jumpsuit, similar to the one Adelina wore on her video, but I was afraid of provoking further questions. Why were there no orange fibres on my skin or in my hair? Why bother to dress me as a prisoner if no video was made? It was less traumatic to be accused of destroying evidence than admit to wearing nothing.

I wondered if Dan had guessed the truth because he didn’t pursue the issue. Instead, he told me what he planned to say when he announced my release to the press corps in Baghdad. There was heavy emphasis on my cooperation with the police, my refusal to say too much for fear of jeopardizing Adelina’s chances, and my undoubted “courage and professionalism.” It was a clear instruction to stay “on message” in London so that Reuters in Baghdad wasn’t ambushed out of left field.

I sent surreptitious glances towards the clock on the far wall, ticking off the seconds before I could reasonably head for the departure gate. The only luggage I had was a fabric bumbag (borrowed from Dan) which held my ticket stub, boarding-pass and emergency passport (paid for by Reuters), and £25 in precious English fivers from the Baghdad bureau coffers.

“Are you listening to me, Connie?”

I gave another nod. But as I had no intention of performing for the press, it was irrelevant whether I listened or not. If I failed to appear, the only source of information would be Dan’s press conference and, with no photographs, the coverage would be limited to a box somewhere. There might be speculation about why and where I’d gone into hiding, but it wouldn’t amount to much. Stories without legs and pictures died on the editor’s floor.

I’d made the decision to bolt when I phoned my parents from Dan’s apartment to tell them I was safe. My mother answered in Swahili. Literally. As a child, she’d learnt the language from Adia, her Kenyan nanny, and had passed on what she remembered to me. She spoke before I could say anything. “Jambo. Si tayari kuzungumza na mtu mie.” Hello. I can’t talk to anyone at the moment.

It was a device we’d used when things became difficult at the farm. My father was convinced there were physical and wire-tap eavesdroppers. Swahili isn’t commonly understood in Zimbabwe, where English is the official language and Shona and Ndebele the native ones. In this case, I guessed my mother was expecting a call from my father, and was warning him there was somone in the room with her.

I answered: “Jambo, mamangu. Mambo poa na mimi. Sema polepole!” Hello, my mother. Everything’s fine with me. Be careful what you say!

There was a brief pause. “Bwana asifiwe. Nakupenda, mtoto wangu.” Thank God. I love you, my child. There was a catch of emotion in her voice which she quelled immediately. “Sema fi kimombo.” You can speak in English.

In the weeks after my release, that was the closest I came to breaking down. Had she been in the room, I would have become her “mtoto” again, stolen into her warm embrace and told her everything. By the time I saw her in London, that opportunity was gone. I took a breath. “Who’s with you?”

“Msimulizi.” A newspaper reporter.

“Oh, Christ! Don’t let on it’s me!” I could hear the tremors in my voice. “No one knows I’ve been released yet…except Dan…I’m in his flat. I need time to…Do you understand?”

“Ni sawasawa.” It’s OK. She sounded so reassuring that I think she must have been smiling at whoever was in the room. “Nasikia vema.” I understand perfectly.

“I’m flying out this evening via Amman, and should be in London early tomorrow morning.” I glanced towards the door of the room, wondering if Dan was listening. “Is this reporter a one-off or are they plaguing you?”

Another pause while she worked out a strategy. “Yes, indeed, it would be much easier in English. I’m very touched that you’re calling from Connie’s newspaper in Kenya. We’ve had interest from all over the world. As I speak, there are journalists and photographers in the road outside…all of whom are publicizing Connie’s plight. We’re deeply grateful for everyone’s support and assistance.”

My heart sank. “Are they making life hell for you?”

“Yes.”

“How’s Dad bearing up?” I amended that immediately because I knew she wouldn’t be able to answer it. “Don’t worry. I can guess.” After the events at the farm, my father had developed a short fuse when it came to intrusion. He particularly hated being questioned about what had happened, as if other people had a right to pry into his humiliation. “Is he losing his temper with them?”

“Yes. In fact my husband is at the Zimbabwean High Commission today. The British government refuses to talk to hostage-takers, but there’s a possibility Robert Mugabe might intervene because Connie has dual nationality. Andrew is trying all avenues.”

“Oh, God!” My father would cut off his arm rather than ask Mugabe for help. He hated the thieving little dictator more than any man on earth. “I’m so sorry! What a bloody awful mess!”

“Haidhuru. Kwa kupenda kwako.” It doesn’t matter. He’s doing it because he loves you. Another pause. “I wonder if it would be better if you spoke to Andrew? He can tell you far more than I can. Do you have a number that he can call when he returns? Perhaps a mobile?”

“No…it was stolen…and I don’t know where I’ll be in the next few hours. Can you wait till I land in London?” I looked at the door again. “Dan’s organizing a press conference at Heathrow-” I broke off, praying she’d follow up on why.

“Will that be difficult for you?”

“Yes.”

“Is your colleague with you now?”

“I’m not sure. Possibly.” I paused. “Reuters are holding back the news of my release until the press conference…which means I need you to keep pretending you haven’t heard from me. It’s important, Mum. I don’t want cameras filming me as I come into the arrivals hall. Will you promise not to say anything till you hear from me?”

“Of course. All either of us wants is Connie’s safe return.”

I wished I could tell her that I couldn’t go to the flat while photographers were in the street, but I didn’t know if Dan was listening or how good his Swahili was. Instead, I hoped she would pick up a hint. I gave a shaky laugh. “I’m beginning to understand how Dad felt when you left the farm. Do you remember what he said the worst thing was?” (“Talking about it. What am I supposed to say? Does it make people feel better when I admit to being scared?”)

My mother hesitated for a moment before she repeated: “Nasikia vema.” I understand perfectly. “You’d like a private interview…in a hotel perhaps…bila wasimulizi na maswala (without reporters and questions). Is that right? Have I understood your wishes correctly?”

“Yes.”

“My husband will be waiting for your call. I guarantee he’ll help in any way he can. Our daughter needs all the support she can get.”

I took another breath to stop the tremors. “I really am fine, you know…so don’t start imagining things…all that happened was that I was blindfolded for three days. Give Dad a hug from me, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tutaonana baadaye, mtoto wangu. Nakupenda.” We’ll see each other soon, my child. I love you.

It’s fairly devastating at thirty-six to recognize that you have a greater empathy with your mother than with the man you’ve been giving your body to for the last fifteen years. I wondered what would have happened if the roles had been reversed, and it had been Dan on the other end of the phone. Could he have matched my mother’s subtlety or understanding? Or would he have waded in blindly with hobnailed boots, as he was doing now?

“I know you’re not going to like this, Con, but a few tears wouldn’t go amiss. There’s been a lot of sympathy shown you over the last three days and it’ll ebb away PDQ if you refuse to play along for the cameras. No one’s going to believe you’ve been gagged and blindfolded for the last three days if you don’t show a little frailty.”

I dragged my attention back to him. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it when the time comes. I’m good at play-acting.”

He frowned. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

I shrugged. “I do a good impersonation of a mistress, Dan. No demands. No expectations. No drain on the wallet. No interference in the love life when I’m not around. No cause for concern.” I smiled at him. “You should trust me to put on a good show. I’ve seen more bloody victims than you ever have.”

He made a ham-fisted attempt to put his arms around me, but I stepped out of reach. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he demanded. “I’ve done everything you asked…and I get treated like something the cat’s brought in. What’s up? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” I said carelessly. “I’m a recovering hostage.”

He sighed. “Then talk to me about it. You know I’ll listen.”

We’d been through this in the flat. He’d fussed all over me, encouraging me to voice my fears, telling me he’d ask London to organize counselling, running through his own feelings of guilt after his friend died in front of him. Even if I’d been tempted to tell him the truth-which I hadn’t-his swamping insistence would have stopped me. What would I have had left once he-once anyone-had dragged every last secret out of me?

“There’s nothing else to tell. It was frightening while it lasted, but I was luckier than Adelina.” I managed another smile. “Which is why I might not be able to produce crocodile tears for the cameras, Dan. I’m alive…I’m in one piece…and nothing much happened to me. It would be shabby to pretend otherwise, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he agreed slowly. “I guess it would.”

And that’s how we left it, with fifteen years of sporadic intimacy dead on the floor of a war-torn airport. Dan went through with his press conference in Baghdad, and I dodged mine by slipping past Harry Smith in a group of tourists from another flight. The interest died very quickly. Apart from the announcement of my release, there was very little else other than speculation in some of the Iraqi newspapers that I’d faked my abduction. I didn’t mind. I discovered very quickly that it was easier to live with myself when everyone thought I was lucky…or a fraud.

The trouble was I couldn’t live with anyone who believed it. It’s a form of betrayal when people close to you accept what you tell them at face value.

Shouldn’t they know you better than that…?

Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16-19/05/04”

…I never realized how fragile trust is. Can a single person really destroy another’s faith in everyone and everything?

…When I dream of revenge it’s always in retribution for my stolen relationships. What gives anyone the right to make me suspicious of people I’ve liked and loved? Or them of me?

…I can rationalize as much as I like but I know that nothing will ever be the same again. Whatever happens, I am not the person I was…

12

PETER MADE NO comment when I finally entered the kitchen, but he resumed his own seat before I sat down. He shifted it back immediately, as if aware that proximity might worry me. I don’t recall in any great detail what I said that morning, although I do remember telling them that my name was Connie Burns and that I’d been held prisoner for three days by a man called Keith MacKenzie whose story I’d investigated. I said he was a serial murderer who’d threatened to come looking for me if I ever spoke about what had happened.

Peter, who had a surgery he couldn’t miss, urged me to talk to the local police but I refused, saying it would only confuse the issue as there was a detective inspector in Manchester who was already working on the case. Jess took a more practical approach. She agreed to stay with me until lunchtime, when Peter promised to come back and talk to me at more length. Meanwhile her dogs would patrol the garden.

I was asked afterwards by a Dorset policeman what Jess and I had discussed during the five hours she spent with me, and I said I couldn’t remember because it wouldn’t have been anything important. Jess wasn’t the type to ask questions, and I had already said more than I wanted to. Jess wouldn’t have remembered either…

I REMEMBER the conversation I had with Peter later. He had no such inhibitions about asking questions, particularly when Jess wasn’t present. He’d already filled in most of the gaps from what he’d read about my abduction, and reached a number of valid conclusions from my behaviour since.

He told me that my fear of him had been very pronounced from the beginning, although I didn’t seem to realize I was showing it. It was an involuntary withdrawal-holding myself in a rigid posture, always maintaining a healthy distance, crossing my arms as soon as I saw him, never sitting down when he was standing-yet I showed none of the same aversion towards Jess.

At times I even allowed her to sit beside me, although never close enough for accidental touching. According to Peter, an immature woman, who had difficulty expressing emotion, was my perfect companion. I might have longed for someone with more sensitivity and insight, but I couldn’t have coped with the threat they posed. “If that had been the case you’d have stayed with your mother,” he pointed out. “She’d have put her arms around you and coaxed out the truth…but that’s not what you wanted.”

“Sometimes I think Jess is the most perceptive person I’ve ever met. She always knows when not to be curious.”

“But she’s still a virtual stranger to you, Connie…and you’re not worried what strangers think. Few of us are. Self-image is about how the people we know and love perceive us, not the passing acquaintance whom we’re never going to meet again. For most of us the universe is very small.”

I thought how wrong he was. “Until your life is deconstructed across the pages of a newspaper.”

“Is that what you’re worried about?”

I didn’t answer immediately. His questions reminded me of Chas and Dan in Baghdad-“But you seem distressed, Connie”-“Talk to me”-and I understood why my father lost his temper when well-meaning people poked him with well-meaning sticks. There’s so much arrogance in curiosity. It suggests that nothing can surprise the listener, yet how would Peter have reacted if I’d let out the scream that had been in my head for weeks? How would Dan have reacted?

I hunkered down in my chair. “I keep thinking of all the proverbs to do with retribution. Reap what you sow…live by the sword…an eye for an eye. I wake up in the middle of the night with them churning round and round in my head. It seems so inevitable.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve made a career out of exploiting other people’s anguish. I keep remembering a Sierra Leonean woman who’d watched her family being slaughtered by rebels. By the time I met her she was so disturbed she was raving, but I didn’t think twice about using her for a story.” I paused. “It’ll be an apt punishment if the same thing happens to me.”

“I can’t agree with you.”

“You should. Everyone gets what they deserve in the end. It’ll happen to you, too, Peter. We all get paid in our own coin.”

“What’s yours?”

“Death. Disaster. Other people’s misery. I’m a war correspondent, for Christ’s sake.” I dug my fingers into my eyes. “Not that it makes much difference. It would be the same whatever kind of correspondent I was. There’s no such thing as a ‘good news’ story. Who gives a damn about happiness? It makes readers jealous to learn that someone’s better off than they are. Build ’em up ’n’ cut ’em down…that’s all your average Joe wants. If he can’t make it, why should anyone else?”

“That’s very cynical.”

“But I am cynical. I’ve seen too many innocent people die for nothing. Every tinpot dictator knows that the quickest way to control a country is to whip up hatred and fear of a bogeyman…and how does he do that without using the press? Journalists are for hire, just like anyone else.”

He watched me for a moment. “Obviously you know your own trade better than I do,” he said carefully, “but you seem to be taking the most pessimistic view of how you’re going be treated.”

I felt a spurt of irritation at his complacency. “You would, too, if one of your old ladies died, and her relatives said you were responsible. Supposing Madeleine decided to accuse you of neglecting Lily? Then it’d be you being deconstructed on the inside pages…divorce, affairs and all…on the basis that your mind wasn’t on the job.”

But he wouldn’t accept that I’d be “outed” in that way, and argued patiently that however bad the press was-and “gutter” was the adjective he used to describe it-UK newspapers always protected victims. If the sexual secrets of politicians and celebrities were exposed, it was because they were fair game. They controlled publicity to advance their careers, and only objected when the control was wrested from them.

“You’re not in that category, Connie. On the one occasion when you might have milked publicity to advance your career, you deliberately avoided it. Why should your colleagues destroy you now?”

I appreciated what he was trying to do-chop away at the paranoid struts that supported the logic of my hiding under an assumed name for the rest of my life-but he was naïve and he spoke in clichés. “Because the public has a right to know about MacKenzie.” I sighed. “And I agree with that. The public does have a right to know. If MacKenzie starts killing women over here, it’ll be my fault.”

“But that’s not true,” he protested. “From what you said this morning, you’ve done everything you can to bring him to police attention. If he’s caught, it’ll be down to your efforts.”

“Which is when I get to be in the newspapers,” I said with a twisted smile. “Life’s a bitch. If he goes on trial, I’ll have to give evidence.”

“You won’t be named, Connie. Rape victims are granted automatic anonymity in this country.”

“I didn’t say he raped me,” I said curtly. “I didn’t say anything about what he did.”

Peter let a beat of silence pass. “You described him as a rapist this morning. You called him a serial rapist and murderer of women.”

I couldn’t remember what I’d said now. “It won’t make any difference. It’s not just names that identify people. If I were writing it, it would go something like this: ‘Yesterday, at London’s Old Bailey, a 36-year-old newswire journalist sensationally revealed details of her Baghdad kidnap. Far from the lucky-to-be-alive version she gave at the time of her release, it was a three-day ordeal of torture and sadism that persuaded her to change her name and go into hiding. Claiming to be deeply scarred and still in fear of her life, the blonde Zimbabwean named the defendant, Keith MacKenzie, as her attacker. She described how she was held blindfolded in a cellar for seventy-two hours. Asked by defence counsel if she’d ever seen her assailant-’ ” I broke off abruptly.

“Did you?”

“No…so it’ll all be for nothing because he won’t be convicted.”

Peter propped his chin on his hands. “As a matter of interest, how many other versions of that report have you rehearsed in your head? Have you tried one that doesn’t reveal who you are? Or better still…paints you in a good light?”

“How about ‘In detailing the effect this traumatic experience has had on her life, the attractive blonde, 36, explained how she sought refuge in the West Country. She spoke of her gratitude to the local GP, 45. “Without his tireless support,” she said, “I wouldn’t have had the courage to testify.” ’ ” I made a beckoning gesture with my fingers. “Give me your best shot. What will you tell them when they shove a microphone in your face?”

“How will they know it’s me?”

“If I’m still living here, I’ll be asked to give my address. If not, someone will work it out. Probably Madeleine. It doesn’t take Einstein to put blonde writer, Zimbabwean accent and West Country GP together.”

“There’s not much I can say without breaching patient confidentiality…except to applaud your bravery.”

“Boring. It’s been done already. My boss in Baghdad shouted my courage from the rooftops to disguise the fact that I hadn’t shown as much as Adelina Bianca. They’ll keep pestering you until you give them something new.”

“Like what?”

“Whatever they persuade you to say. How, when, where and why did we meet? ‘Dr. C was called to the terrified woman when she broke down after being surrounded by a pack of dogs. She locked herself in her car and refused to get out. “She was trying to manage her fear by breathing into a paper bag,” he said.’ ”

“What then?”

“Door-stepping. Phone calls. Pictures. They’ll argue that my anonymity’s been blown because anyone with a surf engine will have worked out who I am from the Internet, so I might as well pose for the cameras rather than be taken unawares by a telephoto lens. And that’s before the twenty-four-hour news broadcasters muscle in on the act and force a press conference.”

He let a short silence develop before he said: “Is that it? Or does it get worse?”

“MacKenzie walks away scot-free and I get labelled a sick fantasist. I’ve already been accused of faking the abduction.” I leaned forward, hugging myself. “He didn’t leave any marks, so I can’t prove it happened…and now it’s a bit of a blur. If you can’t see, you don’t seem to record events so well.” I glanced at him. “There’s no way I can give evidence on that basis. I’ll be torn to shreds by any halfway decent barrister.”

Peter took some stapled pages out of a folder on the table in front of him. He’d brought it with him, along with a couple of reference books, when he returned from morning surgery. I was suspicious that he wanted to start a file on me, but he said it was just some research he’d done. “I’m a bog-standard GP, Connie. I have some experience of post-traumatic stress disorder because of Jess, but I need to consult the literature if I’m going to be of any real help to you.”

Oddly enough, I found that reassuring. I tend to have more confidence in people who admit the limitations of their knowledge, which was ironic in view of Jess’s tedious insistence that Peter’s answer to everything was chemical intervention. In fact, I felt it was she and Dan who were the more blinkered. Dan remained convinced that a few weeks’ sympathetic counselling was the cure to all ills, while Jess clung to the tougher approach of facing your fears and using a paper bag to deal with the after-effects. Perhaps it’s human nature to assume that if something works for you, it will work for everyone.

Peter pushed the sheaf of pages towards me. “Have you ever heard of the Istanbul protocol? It’s a set of international guidelines for the investigation and documentation of torture, and it’s used to evaluate and prepare evidence for trial. I’ve printed this copy off the net.”

“I didn’t say I’d been tortured.”

“I’d still like you to read it. It might help convince you that you’ll be taken seriously. Among other things, it contains a comprehensive list of the psychological consequences of ill-treatment and abuse. I’ve jotted down some of the commonest responses on the front page-you’ve shown a fair number of them in the last fifteen minutes-although your panic attacks are the clearest indicators that something catastrophic happened.”

I inched forward to read what he’d written. “Flashbacks. Nightmares. Insomnia. Personal detachment. Social withdrawal. Agoraphobia. Avoidance of people and places. Profound anxiety. Mistrust. Irritability. Feelings of guilt. Loss of appetite. Inability to recall important aspects of the trauma. Thoughts of death.”

“Jess shows a fair number of those,” I pointed out, “and she’s not claiming abuse.”

“So? The trauma of losing her family was considerable.”

“Then any trauma can produce similar symptoms. It doesn’t prove that my version of events happened. Perhaps I’m more easily frightened than most people, and just being blindfolded for three days led to panic attacks.”

“Why are you so determined that no one’s going to believe you?”

“Because I didn’t report it at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter. There’s usually a delay before a victim can talk about what’s happened. You may find that document difficult in places-particularly where it refers to physical incapacitation and disintegration of the victim’s personality-but the more you inform yourself about how evidence is taken in conjunction with testimony, the more confident you will feel about being believed.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, I’d say you’re stronger than most people-certainly mentally stronger-which is why you’ve managed to keep this bottled up for so long.”

“That’s not strength,” I said bleakly. “I’m scared stiff. I thought if I didn’t talk about it and no one knew where I was, I’d be OK…and now I wish I hadn’t called Jess. I’ve been jumping at shadows all morning. It’s the old saying, three can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead.”

“What about the inspector in Manchester?”

“He only knows bits.”

“So which secret are we talking about? Your location…or what happened to you?”

I didn’t answer, and Peter watched me with a concerned frown as I hunched deeper in my chair.

“I’m sure you’ve worked out a hundred reasons why keeping the details to yourself is better than speaking out,” he went on carefully, “but not being believed is the least convincing. I’m assuming you’ve told us only half of what happened…less than half perhaps…but Jess and I aren’t doubting you. Nor are we”-he sought for a word-“condemning you. Whatever you did, you were forced to do…but being ashamed of that simply reinforces this man’s right to control your life.”

Simply? What was simple about shame? How many times had Peter woken up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and reliving every minute of humiliation? It was worse not being able to remember it properly, or even have a picture in my mind of what it might look like to a third party. In my imagination, my capitulations were eager and extravagant, my actions degrading and repulsive, and my body something to mock.

“He made a video of me. I keep checking the net to see if he’s posted it somewhere. If he’s arrested…and still has it…it’ll be shown in court.”

“Not necessarily.”

“It’s the only proof of what he did. Of course it’ll be shown.”

Peter was too perceptive. “But you’re more concerned that it’s proof of what you did?” He paused, waiting for a reply. “Do you mind if I say that you’re very optimistic to assume that no one else down here has put blonde Zimbabwean and writer together? At the time, you were headline news, and you haven’t changed that much from the photograph that was used. There was a lot made of your parents being forced from their farm, and you’ve been quite honest about that part of your history.”

I felt goosebumps crawl up my arms. “Does Madeleine know?”

“It doesn’t matter if she does, there’s no mileage to be made out of you. A small community like this is bound to be curious about a new arrival, but there’s no interest anywhere else. The last mention I could find was a brief reference to you when Adelina Bianca was released.”

He was so naïve. I could picture Madeleine dropping my name all over London. Do you remember Connie Burns? The Reuters correspondent who was taken hostage but never told her story? She’s rented my mother’s house in Dorset for six months in order to write a book. We’re such good friends.

“In that respect, you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve, Connie. Your kidnap wasn’t”-he echoed the word I’d used earlier-“sensational enough to make it worth anyone’s while to track you down, otherwise the phone calls and the doorstepping would have started long ago.” He made a reassuring gesture with his hand. “You understand the point I’m making? If anyone thought you had a story to tell, you’d have been put under pressure already…but you haven’t. So it’s up to you how much you want to reveal, or whether you want to reveal it at all. No one’s going to force you.”

I felt like throwing his psychological pap back in his face. It’s my genetic link to my father, this inability to take patronizing comments on the chin. Did Peter have a higher IQ than I? Was he better educated? Wider read? So arrogant about his own abilities that he assumed I was incapable of working it out for myself? Of course I knew I had control of my story. What did he think I’d been doing for the last three months, other than make damn sure no one else had access to it?

If I wrestled with anything, it was Peter’s all-too-accurate observation that MacKenzie controlled me. And through a video. I could have been as brave as a lion if it were my word against that of an ignorant Glaswegian rapist. I could have said anything. That I’d screamed, argued, refused consent, fought for my life. I could have pretended some dignity. Who was going to believe MacKenzie without pictures?

Me.

“They showed a clip of Adelina’s video on the television the other day,” I told Peter then. “They used a close-up of her face-with the black eyes-to give viewers a taste of what’s likely to happen to a Korean woman who’s been taken. I know Adelina quite well. She’s only about five feet three tall-rather like Jess-but she looked so…indomitable. How did she do that?” “She didn’t,” Peter said bluntly. “I saw that clip, too, and I saw a frightened woman. You’re imposing something from your imagination that wasn’t there. Adelina was terrified, and rightly so. She had no idea what was going to happen next, and it shows in her face.” He leaned forward. “Why would hostage-takers release a video showing a victim looking indomitable, Connie? Pictures are propaganda, and terrorists are only interested in portraying terror.”

“She makes jokes about it now.”

“Because she can. None of her worst fears materialized. In any case, a black eye is a visible badge of honour. It proves you’ve taken some punishment.” He pressed his forefingers together and pointed them at me. “Think how much easier it would have been for you if you’d come out with bruises. You might not have wanted to explain them-but they wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. The police would have insisted on a photographic record, and that evidence would have survived until you gave an explanation for them.”

I folded my arms across my chest and tucked my hands under my armpits to avoid lashing out at him. Why did he keep stating the obvious? Why keep implying that I was too stupid to think these things for myself? I thought him intolerably smug, but feared that any display of irritability would bring a self-satisified “I told you so.” The screams that swooped around my head were all about what I should have done.

“Say it,” Peter encouraged.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“I was thinking how debased language has become. ‘Collateral damage’ for civilian deaths, ‘shock and awe’ for relentless bombing, ‘coalition of the willing,’ ‘surgical strike’-that’s propaganda. It’s all designed to put a spin on the truth. Do you know that every time I wrote ‘Iraqi resistance fighters’ the subs changed it to ‘insurgents.’ The words are synonymous but the connotations of ‘resistance’ are laudatory. It makes people think of the French Resistance, and the coalition didn’t want that connection made.” I fell silent.

“Go on.”

“Words are meaningless unless you know why they’re being used. In the context of war, ‘collateral damage’ ought to mean the accidental killing of your own side, but the US military invented ‘friendly fire’ or ‘blue on blue’ for that.” I held his gaze for a moment. “MacKenzie’s favourite expression was ‘shock and awe.’ He defined it as ‘softening up’ and really loved the juxtaposition of the two ideas-terror linked to reverence. He felt it was the natural order of things that the weak should kow-tow to the strong.”

“And your role was to give him the illusion of strength?”

“It wasn’t an illusion,” I said. “It was a reality. I was his devil’s feather.”

“What does that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean. That I was to blame…that I was crushable…that I was something of no account.”

Peter let a silence drift before he tried again. “You were a prisoner. The reality is that you were put in a position of weakness by a man who couldn’t control you any other way. I’m not trying to minimize your response to that, but at least recognize that he was acting out a fantasy of dominance.”

“It wasn’t a fantasy. He’s incredibly intimidating, and knows it. Everyone was afraid of him in Sierra Leone.”

“Except other soldiers. Didn’t you say it was a couple of paratroopers who forced him to pay compensation to the prostitute?”

I tucked my hands tighter under my arms. “Yes…well, soldiers are braver than journalists. I expect it helps if you have some rudimentary knowledge of unarmed combat.” I took a deep breath. “Look, this is all fairly pointless, Peter. Believe it or not, I really do have quite a good grasp of where I am and what I need to do. I appreciate your help, and I’ll certainly read this protocol”-I nodded towards the papers on the table-“but, just at the moment-” I pulled up sharp as fear shot a spurt of adrenalin into my bloodstream. “Oh, God!”

In retrospect, Peter’s reaction still surprises me. I’d have expected some sort of intervention, if only a verbal one to instruct me to “calm down.” But he did nothing except fold his hands on the table and stare at them while I dragged a paper bag from my pocket and sucked air in and out of it with my eyes starting out of my head. Eventually, when my breathing had slowed enough for me to lower the bag to my lap, he looked at his watch.

“That’s not bad. One minute thirty-five seconds. How long does it normally take?”

My face was burning and I had runnels of sweat dripping down my cheeks. “What would you care?” I gasped.

“Mmm. Well, there’s always anti-depressants. If you insist on feeling sorry for yourself, I might even prescribe them.”

“Jess was right about you,” I snarled, fishing in my pocket for some tissues. “You’re about as much use as tits on a bull.”

He smiled. “How long have you had nosebleeds?” he asked, as I put my head back and pressed the wodge of paper to my nostrils.

“None of your business.”

“Do you want some ice?”

“No.”

“What did he use to stop you breathing? Plastic bags?”

It was exactly the way I would have asked that question. In the same uninterested tone and with the same lack of emphasis. And I fell for it because I wasn’t expecting it. “Usually drowning,” I said.

From: connie.burns@uknet.com

Sent: Sat 14/08/04 10:03

To: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Subject: Additional information

Dear Alan,

I’ve spent all night thinking about this email. There are numerous reasons why I don’t want to write it, and only one why I do-because it concerns my parents. Despite the pieces I’ve written over the years, highlighting the tragedies of women and children in war, I honestly believe I’d have allowed a thousand anonymous women to die before I said anything. It’s the old morality tale of the death-ray and the elderly Chinaman. Do you know it?

A rich man shows you a death-ray machine and promises you a million pounds if you push the button. The bad news is an old man in China will die if you do; the good news is no one will know it was you who killed him. The victim will be the only loser. His family are tired of looking after him, and pray regularly for his death, while you have only the rich man’s word that the machine can kill anyone-let alone a man you’ve never met. You have three choices: press the button and spend the rest of your life a million pounds richer, convinced the whole thing was a scam…press the button and spend the rest of your life a million pounds richer, with a murder on your conscience…or refuse to press the button and forgo the million pounds. Which do you choose?

I think the moral is that the first choice is impossible because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You will always be plagued by doubt about its being a scam, and the rich man will always own your soul. The second and third choices are the only honest ones-to accept payment for murder, with all its consequences, or to refuse.

I’ve been trying to implement the first choice. Take the reward (my life) and convince myself that I have no responsibility for anyone else’s death-but I’ve failed because it’s not the choice I made. I opted for number two-took the reward, knowing full well I had a responsibility, but hoping I could live with the consequences. I can’t do that either. Not because my conscience is pricking me-it’s been pretty much dead since I switched my energies to survival-but because my parents are involved. Perhaps we can all kill from a distance-it’s how we fight war now-but it’s different when we know the faces of the victims.

Although this information is certainly redundant-I think you’ve always known the truth-please add the following facts to the ones I’ve already given you:

1. Keith MacKenzie aka John Harwood aka Kenneth O’Connell was my abductor. He had at least two accomplices-the driver of the car and one of the men who pulled me out of it. I can describe the driver because I saw his face in the rear-view mirror-fairly dark-skinned, no moustache, aged about thirty. The other two men wore ski-masks. I can’t tell you what nationality they were, as the only one who spoke was the driver (to confirm in accented English that he was driving me to the airport). However, from the build of one of the masked men, I suspect it was MacKenzie.

2. I remember something being held to my mouth (ether? chloroform?). The next I knew, I was in a crate/cage/kennel, stripped, gagged and blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back. I have no idea where that was or how I got there. From then on, the only person I had any dealings with was MacKenzie, although I never saw him because my eyes were taped throughout.

3. All the bindings felt soft. I have since seen photographs of other hostages who had lint fastened over their eyes with duct tape, and I believe that’s how all mine were done. Despite trying several times to loosen my hands, the doctor who examined me afterwards found only “minor bruising of the wrists-similar to Chinese burns.”

4. On several occasions, the lint over my eyes became saturated with water and was replaced-presumably to prevent the tape losing adhesion-but I have no recollection of when and how that was done. (Sedation?)

5. Similarly, I have no recollection of being taken to the bombed-out building where Dan Fry found me on Tuesday morning. Dan described me as “wobbly and disorientated” but, by the time the doctor examined me three hours later, the effects had worn off.

6. I may have been held on or near a dog-handling establishment. When I saw MacKenzie at the Baghdad academy, he was instructing dog-handlers, and dogs were brought to the cellar regularly during my captivity. Also, the only consistent sound from outside was barking. NB. In Sierra Leone, it was widely known that a Rhodesian ridgeback patrolled MacKenzie’s compound.

7. My best guess is that I was held either in the cellar/basement of wherever MacKenzie/O’Connell was living at the time of my abduction; or the cellar/basement of an empty building which he “inhabited” for the duration of my stay. The length of my captivity was approx 68 hours, and I believe I can recall ten distinct occasions when he came to the cellar. I am having some difficulty isolating specific episodes so that number may be higher. It was not LESS than ten.

8. Allowing for the time he spent with me (I estimate a minimum of 45" for each episode) no more than 6 hours elapsed between visits, assuming they occurred at regular intervals during the 68 hours. While it was not impossible for him to drive away and return within that time-frame, it seems unlikely, as coalition patrols/check-points would have recorded the regular movements of his car. Nor do I think he would have attempted such trips after curfew, which would have drawn more attention to him. NB. I heard a vehicle leave and return on only two occasions.

9. At no time did I sense anyone else’s presence in the building. The barking of the dogs was audible, but there was no “human” noise-e.g., conversation, radio, television, mobile ring-tone, footsteps, moving furniture, etc. Shortly after the two occasions when I heard a vehicle, I was given something to eat. These were the only times I was fed during my captivity. NB. In Sierra Leone, no one went near MacKenzie’s compound because he was notoriously hostile to visitors/workers. His habit was to eat “out,” usually at Paddy’s Bar.

10. MacKenzie made a video of my captivity. Assuming the microphone was switched on, his voice will be heard as he issued numerous instructions to me and the dogs. I believe this video was a “trophy” item for his own private pleasure because it doesn’t seem to have appeared anywhere. If so, he may have it on him if/when he’s arrested.

11. As the only things returned to me on my release were the clothes I was wearing to travel, MacKenzie certainly knows my parents’ address and telephone number, which were stored in my laptop and mobile. If he wrote those details down, they may also be in his possession if/when he’s arrested. NB. I can supply a list of the contents of my suitcase/haversack/bag in case he kept anything else.

12. My hotel bedroom was entered regularly in the days before my abduction. I had no proof it was MacKenzie but, after one such intrusion, my laptop was open and my letter to Alastair Surtees, giving details of the Sierra Leone murders, was on the screen.

13. I believe the intention behind entering my hotel bedroom was to scare me into dropping the story and leaving Iraq (possibly to make a hijack easier). It succeeded. I believe the intention behind the abduction was to stifle any interest I might have in pursuing the story in the UK. To date, this, too, has been largely successful.

14. I cannot visually identify MacKenzie as my abductor because I never saw him. Nor did he identify himself to me by name. However, I recognized his voice and he used certain phrases that recalled a conversation I had with him in Freetown. Viz: “I’m calling in that good turn you owe me.” “Do you like me now, Ms. Burns?” “I warned you not to cross me.”

15. There is nothing I can say at trial that won’t be contested by the defence. At some stage prior to releasing me, he took me outside and hosed me down on some plastic sheeting to remove every last trace of my confinement/contact with him and the dogs. When Dan Fry found me, the binding had been removed from my wrists, the tape on my eyes and mouth had been changed (with the lint removed) and my clothes laundered. Bar a slight reddening where Dan ripped the duct tape away, I had no visible marks to indicate 68 hours of incarceration.

16. I am as convinced as I can be that my parents’ nuisance caller is Keith MacKenzie, and that he knows I was responsible for his photograph being made public. It’s too much of a coincidence that he should “re-emerge” shortly after Dan had the photograph positively ID’d as O’Connell. Which means that, if Surtees is telling the truth about handing MacKenzie his papers at the end of July, then MacKenzie is still in close contact with staff/students at the academy, or colleagues in BG, or Surtees himself. My guess is it was Surtees and he knows where MacKenzie is and how to contact him.

17. It’s possible MacKenzie was phoning from abroad but, in case he’s already entered this country, I’ve persuaded my parents to leave their flat and remove anything showing my current address/whereabouts. I was most concerned about my mother’s safety, as MacKenzie would have killed her if he’d broken into the flat while she was there. Unfortunately, my father’s office details were also stored in my laptop and mobile, but, since I alerted him to the possible danger, he has cleared his desk/computer of all personal information and is planning to take circuitous routes to their temporary address. Their visit to me has been postponed indefinitely.

18. My father feels he should notify his local police but I’ve made him promise not to. They will ask for more explanation than he can give. He knows only what I’ve told him-the rest he’s taken on trust-and I’m not willing to go to London to talk to the police myself or let Dad divulge my address so that they can come here. What I’ve said in this email is all I can say at the moment, and I don’t want to appear “evasive and unconvincing” by refusing to answer every question that’s put to me.

That’s it, Alan. I can’t accept that you’ll protect my confidence because you won’t be able to-you’ll be duty-bound to pass on all my revelations-therefore, before I say any more, I will need some cast-iron guarantees that: a) MacKenzie is in custody and b) my evidence is necessary to convict him.

Otherwise, I shall have passed my secrets to the wind to no purpose.

Best wishes,

Connie

PS. I’m assuming you won’t be in till Monday, but I’d appreciate some suggestions re my parents and the local police when you have a moment. Please don’t bother with advice on counselling because I won’t take it, and please don’t waste your time trying to think up tactful phrases. It isn’t necessary. I know you wish me well without your having to say it.

From: BandM@freeuk.com

Sent: Sat 14/08/04 12:33

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject: Your stalker

Dear C,

This is the new address for my laptop. It’s been a nuisance setting it up, so I hope it was necessary. I hear what you say about this man passing himself off as one of our friends because you had some of their names and addresses in your laptop, but I’m not so gullible as to answer unsolicited emails, even if they do purport to come from Zimbabwe. However…as your concern is for your mother, I’ve gone along with it.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I would appreciate a full explanation. We’re staying in a very cramped room in a mediocre hotel, and it would help to have a time-frame. Your mother’s idea of packing was to include our good stuff and leave out anything comfortable, so we’re dressed to the nines on a Saturday morning and extremely bad-tempered. Our only other choice is to stay in pyjamas all day, but we’re liable to kill each other if we don’t go out.

We’re not happy, C. We’ve done as you asked because you used emotional blackmail to achieve it, but we’ll need some very good reasons to continue. Your mother’s worried and depressed because she doesn’t know why you’re afraid of this man, and I feel powerless to do anything for the same reason. I’m inclined to overrule you and take it to the police. You may have me over a barrel, in that I can’t give them his name, history or full description, but I can give them your address, C, and I may still decide to do that in your own interests.

I’m sorry to be a grouch but you’re asking a lot of us. You may be used to living out of a suitcase, but we’re well past the age of finding it amusing. In case you’ve forgotten, your mother turns sixty-four at the end of the month, which is another reason why she’s cross. Apart from the fact that we won’t be coming to stay with you, the light in the hotel bathroom is less forgiving than the one at home(!).

Please don’t do what you normally do, and leave this sitting in your inbox for days on end. I will not go away if you ignore me. If I don’t receive a reply by tomorrow, with an explanation of why all this is necessary, I shall go to the police. And that’s not emotional blackmail, it’s a threat.

This is emotional blackmail. If we have to remain in this room much longer, you’ll be responsible for your parents’ divorce.

All my love, Dad xxx

From: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Sent: Sat 14/08/04 14:19

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject: Additional information

Dear Connie,

In fact I’m working a weekend shift, so I received your email this a.m. May I quote something my father taught me when I was nine years old and being bullied at school? “The secret of happiness is freedom; the secret of freedom, courage.” When I pointed out that I didn’t have any courage, my father said, “Of course you do, son. Courage isn’t about trying to hit someone who’s bigger and stronger-that’s foolishness-it’s about being scared to death and not showing it.” He was a self-educated coal-miner who died of emphysema when I was 15. I’ll tell you about him one day. He’s never going to make the history books, but he was a good man who spoke a lot of sense.

If Dad was talking to you now, he’d say it was courage that kept you alive, but he’d also tell you that the downside of putting on a brave face is that you have to work through your fears on your own. And the mind has a dangerous habit of distorting facts.

I expect you’ve worked out numerous reasons why MacKenzie didn’t kill you-all of them discounting your own contribution. In abusive situations, victims invariably underestimate themselves and exaggerate the intellect and power of their abuser. He thought Surtees would put two and two together? He didn’t trust his accomplices? You’d falsely accused him and he’s not a murderer at all? They’re all hogwash, Connie. Any man prepared to imprison and brutalize a woman is certainly capable of murder, and there was nothing to stop him following his well-tested MO of disfiguring (even beheading) you, leaving Iraq, changing his identity, and letting terrorists take the blame.

I wish you’d see yourself for what you were-a prisoner without power-but I fear you’re rewriting history to show yourself in the worst light. I may be wrong, but I’m guessing you were forced to do certain things you’re ashamed of, and now your imagination is busy exaggerating your willingness to cooperate. Will you think I’m belittling your experience if I say these feelings are common to every woman, man or child who’s been abused, raped or sexually assaulted? It’s extremely hard to retain a sense of self when the intention of abuse is to reduce the victim to the level of slave.

Since it’s obvious MacKenzie failed in that purpose-you wouldn’t have contacted me/produced the photograph if he hadn’t-can I suggest that the reason you’re still alive is because you won his respect? The way you reacted, however that was, worked in your favour. I’m sure you’ll believe it’s because you cooperated-all surviving victims do-but you’d be wrong to assume that, Connie. There’s no question the two murdered women, whose corpses I saw in Sierra Leone, began by cooperating. Any trained SOCO could read that from their rooms-from the lack of evidence of fettering to the clear indications that intercourse/rape happened on the beds. They set out to appease, and succeeded only in provoking.

So why didn’t that happen to you? What did you do right that they did wrong? I can only assume that he saw you as a person rather than an object. Perhaps you hid your fear better than they did. Perhaps he never fully possessed you. Who knows? But I urge you not to jump to the conclusion that it was because you’re white and spoke his language. To a man like that, any defenceless woman represents the means to self-gratification, and he may not know himself why he didn’t follow through.

I also urge you not to conclude that because you were blindfolded and came away “unmarked,” he never had any intention of killing you. It’ll persuade you that you could/should have rejected some of his demands, and that would be a wrong inference from the facts you’ve given me. If you reread my report on the Sierra Leone murders, you’ll see there are several indicators to suggest the murderer had been in the victims’ rooms for some time-last sightings of the victims, rearrangement of furniture, evidence that food had been consumed, etc.

I made the suggestion in the report that the killer “played” with his victims before unleashing his final attack because he enjoyed watching their responses. It would have been a roller-coaster ride of hope and fear, and the fewer marks he left on them, the greater the hope they would have had of survival. I believe this is what he was doing with you, Connie, and the reason you’re still alive is because you played his “game” better than they did.

In passing, one of the reasons I wanted a pathologist sent out to Freetown was because both the women I saw appeared to have petechial haemorrhaging of the eyes (small spots of blood under the surface). It’s possible they were caused by the ferocity of the attack, but petechiae are commonly found in cases of suffocation-as, for example, when a plastic bag is used to obstruct the airways-and I did wonder if the killer’s “play” involved this type of torture. It’s favoured by totalitarian regimes because it leaves no marks. Mock drownings are also popular…but tend to “saturate” anything over the victim’s eyes. If it’s any comfort, there’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t seen or heard before. There’s a depressing familiarity about the way deficient men bolster their self-esteem, and it invariably involves the attempted “humiliation” of another human being. In your case, I’m glad to see that the attempt has proved unsuccessful, despite your (hopefully temporary) belief to the contrary.

Finally, I’ve passed MacKenzie’s details and picture to the Met and asked for heightened alert in the region of your parents’ flat and your father’s office, and I’m happy to do the same with your county police force if you’re prepared to tell me where you are. I have upped MacKenzie’s description to “extremely dangerous and possibly armed” and I urge you to consider that before you “go it alone” any longer. I understand very well that you feel safer with no one knowing your address, but you’ll be isolated and vulnerable if MacKenzie does succeed in finding you.

Yours as ever,

Alan

DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

From: connie.burns@uknet.com

Sent: Sun 15/08/04 02:09

To: BandM@freeuk.com

Subject: Correspondence with DI Alan Collins

Attachments: Alan.doc (356 KB)

Dear Dad,

I’m really sorry to be causing all this trouble for you and Mum, and I don’t blame you in the least for being a grouch. I’ve sweated buckets trying to put an explanation into words, but I can’t do it. It’s 2 a.m. and I’m exhausted so, instead, I’m attaching some pieces I wrote and my correspondence with a Manchester Inspector called Alan Collins. It’s fairly self-evident. FYI: The conclusions in Alan’s last email (yesterday) are spot on. He’s obviously a very good policeman.

Lol, C xxx

PS: I do NOT need sympathy, so please don’t offer it. I shall refuse to discuss this again if you go tearful on me. You know I don’t mean that unkindly, but the milk’s spilt and there’s no point crying over it.

13

IN RETROSPECT, I’m sure my primary reason for keeping quiet was because I knew how difficult it would be to accept support. Perhaps I’m a deeply contrary person but I started to see everything as a control issue-advice or offers of help were euphemisms for “I know better”-and I struggled with anger in a way I hadn’t before. Yet it was never directed where it should have been, at MacKenzie.

I was still obsessed with the fear that he’d come looking for me, but my new objects of suspicion and dislike were Alan, Peter and my father, who in their various ways spent the following week urging me to step up to the plate. The only one who put it so baldly was Dad, but when I accused him of trying to exorcize his own demons through me, he retired hurt from the battle. Which increased my irritation, because I saw it as a ploy to make me feel guilty.

My mother tried to breach the gap by leaving messages of love on the answerphone; Alan sent well-argued emails, appealing to my intellect, which sat in my inbox; and Peter brought me piles of research until I bolted all the doors and refused to answer the bell. By the end of the week I was so stressed out that I was thinking of doing another vanishing act. In a grotesque way, their generosity and affection were more intrusive than MacKenzie’s sadism. I’d survived brutality, but I couldn’t see how I could survive kindness.

Jess showed up for the first few days and stood around, saying very little, but she stopped coming when I started ignoring the doorbell. I left a message on her phone, saying it was Peter I was trying to avoid, but she didn’t reply or come to the house. It was one of the reasons why I thought about leaving. There seemed little point staying if the only person I felt comfortable with had lost interest. Even if the fault was mine.

SHE FRIGHTENED the life out of me when she walked into my bedroom the following Saturday. It was seven o’clock in the evening and, as far as I knew, every outside door was locked. I hadn’t heard the green baize door open or close, nor her footsteps on the stairs, nor even had a suspicion there was anyone else in the house. It sent me scrabbling to the nearest corner. I’d had my back to the door, sorting clothes on the bed, and in the second between sensing a presence, turning and recognizing her, I thought it was MacKenzie.

“Don’t go weak on me,” she warned, “because I’m not in the mood to play nursemaid. Supposing I’d been this bloke? Were you planning to cower in the corner and let him jump you all over again?”

I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. “You gave me a shock.”

“And you think this bastard won’t?” Her gaze shifted to the empty wine bottle beside the bed, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. “In your shoes, I’d have weapons stashed all over the house and a baseball bat to hand twenty-four hours a day. It’s not you who should end up on the floor, it’s him…preferably with his brains smashed out.”

I nodded to the carving knife on the bed. “I’ve been carrying that.”

“Then why didn’t you use it?”

“I recognized you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she answered bluntly. “You were backed into the corner before you knew who it was…and you never even thought about reaching for the knife.” She stepped into the room and picked it up. “It’s a useless weapon, anyway. He’ll have it off you as soon as you get close enough to stab him.” She balanced it on her palm. “It’s too light. You won’t be able to put enough weight behind it…assuming you have the balls to stick it in, which I doubt. You need something longer and heavier that you can swing”-she stared at me-“then it won’t matter if you’re drunk. You’ll still have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting him.”

I steadied myself against the wall. “I’ll get a baseball bat on Monday,” I said.

“You’ll have to be sober to do that.”

It was a good thing I wasn’t as drunk as she thought I was, otherwise I might have reacted more aggressively. I’d never met anyone who was quite so self-righteous. To a teetotaller like her, a tablespoon of wine represented ruin and perdition; to a hard-headed hack like me, it took several bottles to close me down completely. But in one way she was right. I might not have been paralytic, but I certainly wasn’t sober. The tranquillizing effects of alcohol were easier to come by than Valium or Prozac. As long as I paid by credit card to an anonymous call centre, it was delivered by the caseload to my door.

It didn’t stop me having a go at her. “You’re such a puritan, Jess,” I said tiredly. “If you had your way, we’d all be walking around with steel rods rammed up our back sides. There’s no joy in your world at all.”

“I don’t see much in yours either,” she said dismissively.

I shrugged. “There used to be, and when I’m feeling optimistic there still will be. Can you say that? Will you ever unbend enough to accept someone else with all their frailties?” I stared into her strange eyes. “I can’t see it myself.”

It was like water off a duck’s back. “I’m helping you, aren’t I?” she said impatiently. “I helped Lily. What more do you want?”

What more indeed? Approval? Encouragement? Sympathy? The very things I was rejecting from everyone else, but they seemed more desirable from Jess because they weren’t on offer. Perhaps there’s always a gap between what we want and what we know we can take for granted. “Nothing,” I told her. “This is as good as it gets.”

She studied me closely for a moment. “When did you last eat? You haven’t been out of the house all week, and your fridge was empty when I last put some eggs in it.”

For someone who didn’t want to play nursemaid, she was giving a good impression of one. I wondered how she knew I hadn’t been out. “Have you been watching me?”

“Just making sure you were still alive,” she said. “Your car’s growing moss on its wheels because it hasn’t moved, and you spend so much time checking your doors and windows that anyone can see you…particularly at night when you have all the lights blazing. There might be better ways of saying, ‘I’m here, I’m alone, come and get me,’ but I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”

Belatedly, I asked the obvious question. “How did you get in if all the doors are locked?”

She fished a key-ring from her pocket and held it up. “Spares to the scullery. Lily was worried about falling down and breaking her hip so she put them on a hook behind the oil tank in the outhouse.” She shook her head at my expression. “But, if they hadn’t been there, I’d have come in through the downstairs loo. That’s the easiest window to open from the outside. You just need one of these”-she dropped the knife back on the bed-“to ease up the catch. Any moron can do it.”

I surprised her with a laugh, although her puritan streak blamed the alcohol and not the absurd waste of time of checking locks every two hours. “There’s not much hope then, is there? What do you suggest I do? Use the knife on myself and save MacKenzie the trouble?” I lifted a hand in apology. “Sorry. That wasn’t a dig at you…just tasteless gallows humour.”

“You can start by eating,” she said severely. “I’ve brought some food. If nothing else, it’ll help you think straight.”

“Who says I want to?” I asked, sinking onto the end of the bed. “You don’t get panic attacks when you’re pissed.”

“Too bloody right,” she muttered grimly, pulling me to my feet for the second time in ten days. “If you carry on like this, you’ll be mincemeat for this animal.” She shook me angrily. “It won’t stop you hurting, though. You’ll be sober as a judge the minute he shoves your head in a bucket…but by then it’ll be too late. He won’t be playing with you…he’ll be killing you.”

IT WAS an interesting juxtaposition of ideas. I’d mentioned drowning to Peter but it was Alan who’d suggested that MacKenzie “played” with his victims. All Jess should have known-assuming the Hippocratic oath and police confidentiality stood for anything-was what I’d told her and Peter in the kitchen ten days before. My abductor was British, I’d unearthed his story, it hadn’t surfaced because he was under investigation for serial rape and murder and the reason for the abduction was to warn me off.

Peter drew his own conclusions about what might have happened-“You don’t warn people off by feeding them grapes for three days”-and returned later with a printout of the Istanbul protocol. Jess left the whole subject alone, and talked weasels and crows until I stopped answering the door. I was prepared to accept that Peter might let drowning slip during one of their conversations-in fact I expected it-but there was no way either of them could have known of Alan’s theory.

I stopped on the landing and shrugged Jess’s hand off my arm. “OK. What’s going on? Have you been talking to Alan Collins?”

She didn’t bother to lie. “Only your mother…but I’ve read Alan Collins’s emails. She forwarded them to me this morning…along with the ones you wrote to him.”

“She had no right,” I said angrily, “and you shouldn’t have read them. They weren’t addressed to you.”

“Well, I have,” she said without heat, “so there’s nothing to be done unless you want to sue me. Your mother didn’t do it to hurt you.”

“How did she get hold of you?”

“Rang directory inquiries. You gave her my name, apparently, and told her I had a farm down the road from Barton House. It wasn’t that difficult.”

“You never answer your phone,” I said suspiciously, “and you never return messages.”

“I did this time. She kept phoning till I answered.” Jess held my gaze for a moment. “I thought it was you at first because she called herself Marianne. The pitch of your voice is pretty similar but she’s got a stronger accent.”

“Is she here?”

“No. That’s why she sent me the emails. To explain why I’m having to do this, and not her. She’s frightened of leading this bastard to your front door.”

“Do what?”

“Tell you what an arse you’re being…persuade you to stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Her mouth twisted. “I told her I wasn’t much of a talker, but she wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t give up easily, does she? She was ready to give me your whole bloody life story if I hadn’t said I’d be coming anyway-” Jess broke off abruptly. “Your mother gave me a list of things to say. She said you’d want to hear them.”

“Let me guess,” I said dryly. “My father’s deeply hurt, my mother can’t cope with his mood swings and needs me to start phoning again, they hate the hotel…What else? Oh, yes, I’m their only child and all their love and hopes are vested in me.”

Jess felt in her pocket and took out a piece of paper. “Nothing so corny,” she answered, unfolding it and running her finger down the page. “Your dad’s gone back to the flat. Your mother thinks he’s trying to prove something re demons. He refuses to discuss it and won’t say if the police know. Just keeps telling her Japera was a mistake and he doesn’t want a repeat. He’s moved your mother to a different hotel and banned her from calling him. He’s left the laptop with her, and she wants you to email or phone. She’s given me the number of her new hotel.” She looked up. “That’s it. She said you’d understand the references to demons and Japera.”

Angrily, I snatched the page from Jess’s hand. “I knew I shouldn’t have told anyone. It was all OK, as long as no one knew. What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

Jess took a step back. “The way your mother described him, he’ll be setting traps…which is what you should be doing.”

“He doesn’t have a chance,” I hissed. “He’ll be sixty-five in November.”

“At least he’s trying.”

If that was her best shot, the conversation wasn’t going to last very long. “I tried, Jess. I told Alan Collins. And this”-I shook the piece of paper-“is the result. My father trying to prove he isn’t a coward. He’s ashamed because he thinks he gave up the farm too easily…so he’s salvaging some pride by behaving like a jerk.”

She shrugged. “It runs in the family then. That’s pretty much what you’re doing, isn’t it? Being ashamed and behaving like a jerk, except there’s not much sign of pride.”

“That’s not going to make me do what you want,” I snapped.

“Who gives a shit? You’re not my responsibility.” She set off down the stairs. “I’ll be taking my phone off the hook, so if you don’t want your mother calling the police when she can’t get through, you’d better contact her.”

I think she half-expected me to plead with her to stay, because she paused on the bottom step to look up at me, but when I didn’t say anything she disappeared through the baize door. I didn’t need to say anything. I knew she’d come back.

I DECIDED to speak to my father first, since my mother would ask me to do it anyway. I’d have preferred to dodge any conversation with him that evening because it would certainly develop into a shouting match, but I felt responsible for his being there. Nevertheless, I was so paranoid about my landline registering as the last call that I dialled 141 first to withhold it, and only remembered that withheld numbers were being blocked when I heard the message telling me so. I tried his mobile but it wasn’t responding.

My choice was to redial his landline without 141 or use my mobile, but there were too many hairs bristling on the back of my neck to take the first option. It wasn’t that I expected MacKenzie to be in the flat-I didn’t-rather that Sod’s Law predicted my number would still be registering when he broke in and took a punt on 1471. At least if I used my mobile, there’d be no exchange code and nothing to show I was phoning from Dorset.

My second choice was to rebuild Jess’s pyramid in the back bedroom, which I’d dismantled when I’d had broadband installed, or climb into the attic. I chose the attic as the least onerous option, and went in search of the hooked pole that released the latch on the trapdoor. I found it behind the door in the nearest bedroom, and when I picked it up I realized what a good weapon it would make. It was a homemade construction of two hefty wooden rods, designed to come apart in the middle for storage. The top half was capped by the hook and the bottom by a two-inch screw.

Jess would have said they weren’t heavy enough, but they started me thinking about what else was in the house-the axe in the woodshed; rakes, spades and forks in the toolshed; a hammer in the scullery; empty wine bottles that could be turned into razor sharp clubs. I can’t explain why none of this had occurred to me before, except that my plan had always been to leave through the nearest exit and find a place to hide.

Peter put it down to MacKenzie’s manipulation of my “fight or flight” response. In simple terms, I’d been conditioned to submit rather than rebel, but that doesn’t explain why one of my recurring dreams was an intensely physical one where I bludgeoned MacKenzie to death. The desire to kill him was always there.

Perhaps fear has to be taken one step at a time. Perhaps the mind needs to heal before it can switch from one automatic response to another. Perhaps we all need to suffer the contempt of a Jess Derbyshire before we remember that fighting is possible. Who can say? I do know that I had a new sense of purpose as I climbed the ladder to the attic.

The roof space ran the entire length of the house. I found a light switch beside the trapdoor which lit a series of bulbs that hung from the rafters. Half of the filaments had blown but there were enough still working to lift the gloom. A pathway of planks had been laid across the joists to make access easier, but I still had to navigate my way past two chimney-stacks before I found a decent signal. The whole place was filthy and draped with cobwebs, and from the odd skittering near the eaves I guessed I had bats and mice for company.

In the event, it was a wasted exercise. There was no answer from the flat or from Dad’s mobile. Rather than leave messages, I fished Jess’s piece of paper from my pocket and called the number of my mother’s new hotel, but when I asked to be put through to Marianne Burns’s room I was told she’d checked out.

“Are you sure?” I asked in surprise. “She was definitely there this morning. I was given this number to call.”

“One moment.” There was a pause. “Yes, I can confirm Mrs. Marianne Burns paid her account at three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Did she say where she was going…leave a number for me to call?”

“May I ask what your name is, madam?”

“Connie…Connie Burns. I’m her daughter.”

“I’ll check for you.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, Ms. Burns. There are no messages and no forwarding address. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No…yes,” I corrected immediately. “Did anyone come to collect her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you find out?”

“We’re a big hotel, Ms. Burns. Guests come and go all the time. We don’t keep track of their movements.”

“Then can you check if there was a phone call to her room? And if so, is there any way of finding out where it came from? I don’t understand why she left.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said again with pseudo-regret. “We can’t divulge private information about our guests. Would you like me to make a note that you called in case your mother returns?”

I thanked him and rang off, then redialled the flat and my father’s mobile. I left messages on both phones, just saying, “Please call me,” and for good measure sent a text to his mobile: “Where are you? What’s happening? Mum has checked out. Am worried. C.” I hoped he’d remember to call the landline, but as I climbed down the loft ladder, I placed my mobile on the frame of the trapdoor opening. There was enough of a signal for it to ring, although I wasn’t optimistic about reaching it before the messaging service kicked in. It was worth a try, however.

Of course I assumed MacKenzie was involved in some way-I was too paranoid not to-although I didn’t understand why that should have resulted in my mother leaving her hotel. How could he know where she was unless my father told him? I had enough faith in Dad to believe he’d sacrifice every fingernail before he put my mother in danger. And why would MacKenzie ask the question anyway? Why bother with my mother when it was me he wanted? It didn’t make sense.

I kept telling myself the more likely explanation was that Mum had staged her own little mutiny and decided to go back to the flat. But in that case why weren’t they answering the phone? I stood irresolutely on the landing, wondering what to do. Wait a couple of hours in case they’d gone out for a meal? Try to contact Alan? Call the local police and ask them to check the flat? Even Alan wouldn’t take me seriously. Only a madwoman reports her parents missing after half an hour’s attempt to locate them.

Despite being convinced my mobile would ring the minute I was out of earshot, I went downstairs to see if my mother had emailed. She hadn’t. There was nothing new from her since Thursday afternoon. I played the answerphone in case I’d missed a call but the only messages were those I’d already heard. On the off-chance that she’d decided to return to their previous hotel, I phoned there, only to be told Mr. and Mrs. Burns had left the previous morning. I even tried my father’s office, while knowing that no one would answer at eight o’clock on a Saturday night.

It’s said that our minds can process fifty thousand thoughts a day. I’ve no idea if this is true, or how thoughts can be counted, but I do know that trying to pre-guess events within a knowledge vacuum creates intolerable anxiety. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell yourself that “no news” is “good news,” your brain will always assume the worst. And in the end your instinct goes with what you know to be true.

Shit happens.

Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16-19/05/04”

…I think there were three dogs and I guessed they were Alsatians because that was the breed I saw in the office with MacKenzie at the Baghdad academy. I could feel their breath against the tops of my thighs when they stood around me, so they were the right size for Alsatians. On a couple of occasions he encouraged them to lick me and I heard the camcorder running

(can’t deal with that at the moment)

…So much depended on MacKenzie being able to control them. So much depended on him being willing to control them. I don’t know if he was clever enough to understand the psychology of that, or if he’d learnt the technique from the torturers and murderers he’d worked with, but I was ready to do anything rather than face those dogs. It’s why I came to love the crate. Being in a cage offered safety in a way that nothing else did…

14

IN THE DYING days of apartheid I wrote a piece on South African gold-miners with silicosis and emphysema. Statistics suggested that more blacks contracted the diseases because they worked deeper in the mines and had a higher exposure to silica dust after blasting, but it was surprisingly hard to find long-term black sufferers although I interviewed a number of elderly white men with the complaints.

When I asked a doctor why whites seemed to survive longer with respiratory problems-expecting to be told they had access to better medication-he explained it in terms of exertion. “The more demands anyone makes on his body, the more oxygen he needs. If a black with emphysema could sit in a chair all day, and be waited on hand and foot by a maid, he’d survive just as long. When a man can’t breathe, it kills him just to get up and cook a meal.”

I thought of that doctor as I waded through treacle, trying to gather weapons together. He should have added that failing to cook a meal will also kill you since any engine will seize up without fuel. On my trip to retrieve the axe, I succumbed to the double whammy of uncontrollable anxiety fluttering in my chest and a two-stone weight loss in three months, and folded wearily onto a pile of logs in the woodshed. It was laughable to think about whirling an axe at MacKenzie when I barely had the energy to carry it back to the house.

Ahead of me, fifty metres across the grass, was the fishpond where Jess had found Lily. I stared at it for several minutes as something to focus on and, because Lily was less alarming to think about than MacKenzie, I began wondering about her again. What had taken her there on a cold winter’s night? Peter had said there was no logic to Alzheimer’s wandering-she may have been acting out a memory or following an imperative to feed the long-dead fish-and had slipped and fallen. It could have happened anywhere.

For once, Jess agreed with him. “If Madeleine had been around, I wouldn’t have put it past her to give Lily a push-solve all her problems in one fell swoop-but she wasn’t.” She shrugged. “There used to be fish in the pond but I don’t remember Lily ever feeding them. Maybe she just wanted to see if they were still there.”

Because I was sitting in the woodshed, it occurred to me that Lily might have come out to collect logs for the fire. Whatever Peter said about logic, it was the obvious thing to do on a cold night, and the pond would have proved an easy distraction because it was so close. I still didn’t understand why she hadn’t moved herself into the kitchen. The Aga threw out more warmth than any of the fires and required no effort to keep it burning as long as there was oil in the tank. Why hadn’t an instinct for survival triumphed over snobbery and dementia?

I even wondered if some forgotten memory had prompted her to look for water in the well beneath me. It was dismantled and long-redundant, covered over by the wooden planks that the logs sat on, and I only knew it was there because Jess had told me. She said it was her grandmother’s job to draw the water and heat it for the family’s baths before the house was put on a mains supply. Could Lily’s dementia have taken her back fifty years and sent her outside to look for bathwater?

Fate has a strange way of propelling us forward. I was very close at that moment to unravelling Lily’s riddle, even closer when thoughts of hot baths reminded me that I hadn’t checked the oil since I arrived. It seemed a good time to do it, as the door was just behind me. Perhaps, too, I was curious to see if Jess had returned the scullery keys to the hook behind the tank. Propping the axe against the door jamb, I unlatched the door and pulled it open.

The sun was touching the distant horizon but there was still enough light to show the tank inside the outhouse, though not enough to read the gauge. I felt around for a switch, and in the process dislodged a sheaf of flimsy papers that were fixed to a wooden upright by a drawing-pin. They fluttered apart as they fell, but when I finally located a switch and was able to gather them up again, I saw they were receipts of some sort from the oil supplier. I couldn’t believe they were important since one was dated 1995, but as the drawing-pin had vanished, I tucked them into my pocket to take back into the house.

Having satisfied myself that the gauge was registering over half full and there were no keys on the hook behind the tank, I killed the bulb again. But either my eyes had trouble readjusting or night had fallen during the few minutes I was inside. I realized suddenly how little I could actually see. With no artificial light anywhere, not even in the house because the sun had still been shining when I left it, the garden was a place of stygian shadow.

With shaking hands I recovered the axe and turned towards the path. As I did so the overhead lamp came on in the kitchen, and I saw Jess walk past the window. My immediate feeling was relief, until I saw the gleam of her dogs’ pale coats in the backwash of light and realized they were between me and the house. With nowhere else to go, I stepped back and felt for the outhouse latch again.

Mastiffs can move with extraordinary speed. They covered the ground long before I had the door open. I doubt I’d have been able to use the axe if they’d attacked me-I wouldn’t have had time-but I raised it to shoulder height in preparation. Faced with a visible threat, my brain persuaded me to show some courage for the first time in weeks.

“Get down!” I growled. “NOW! Or I’ll beat your fucking brains out.”

Perhaps eyes are the key. Perhaps they saw real intent in mine because, amazingly, they dropped to their bellies in front of me. Jess claimed afterwards that it’s what she’d trained them to do, but their obedience was so immediate that I lowered the axe. I’d have accepted an indefinite stand-off if one of them hadn’t started inching towards me.

I thought briefly about calling for Jess, but I didn’t want to alarm the dogs with loud noises, and chose instead to put myself on their level by sitting down. I can only explain it by instinct, because logic was telling me I’d have more authority standing up. I remember thinking I’d appear less afraid if I could hold a rock-steady position on the ground with my back against the outhouse door.

Which is how Jess found me, ten minutes later, shivering, cross-legged with three great muzzles in my lap, and two of the male dogs using my shoulders as leaning posts. I don’t recall what I said to them, but it was a long and rather aimless conversation, punctuated by a lot of stroking. In the time I sat there, I became an expert on mastiffs. They have a drooling and flatulence problem, they snort and wheeze, and the boys roll over at the drop of a hat to expose their extremely large testicles.

I watched Jess approach with a torch. “Are you OK?” she asked.

“MacKenzie knows about dogs,” I told her. “If I can do this, he’ll have them eating out of his hand in a minute flat.”

“They’ve got you penned in, haven’t they? Try standing up.”

“They’re too heavy.”

“Point made then.” She clicked her fingers and motioned them to stand behind her. “They’d have barked if you’d tried to move, and I’d have found you a lot quicker. What are you doing out here?”

I nodded to the axe which was lying on the ground where I’d left it. “Looking for weapons.”

She stooped to pick it up. “I’d forgotten Lily had that. I’ve brought you a few things from the farm. There’s a couple of baseball bats that belonged to my brother and a lead-weighted walking-stick. I’d lend you a gun but you’d probably shoot yourself by mistake.” She eyed my rigid posture. “Are you coming back in?”

“What about the dogs?”

Jess shrugged. “It’s up to you. We can leave them out here or take them inside. But I’ll tell you this for free, if you’d had Bertie in the house earlier, I’d never have been able to reach your bedroom without him hearing me.”

“I meant, will they do something if I move?”

“You won’t know unless you try.”

“Can’t you shut them in the hall?”

“No.” She turned away but not before her teeth flashed in a smile. “If you can sit with their heads in your lap, you won’t have a problem walking past them.”

THE MOST DRAMATIC THERAPY for phobias is “flooding,” where a person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear starts to fade. It’s a form of familiarization. The longer you’re exposed to what you fear, the less anxious you feel. It doesn’t work for everyone, and it wouldn’t work for me if I was locked in a cellar again with some Alsatians, but I did relax with the mastiffs. It’s hard to be frightened of an animal that wags its tail every time you stroke its head. “Is this Bertie?”

Jess glanced sideways from where she was cooking a fry-up on the Aga. “No, that’s Brandy. There are two bitches-Brandy and Soda-and three boys-Whisky, Ginger and Bertie. I wanted Lily to call Bertie ‘Jack Daniels’ but she wouldn’t do it. He’s the one with his chin on your feet.”

“Do they fight?”

“The bitches did once…frightened themselves so much, they’ve never tried again.”

“What did you do?”

“Let them get on with it. They’d have had a go at me if I’d put myself between them.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Sure. There’s nothing worse than a dogfight. It’s the noise-sounds as if they’re killing each other-but most of it’s for show. They’re hoping to scare each other off before they do any real damage.” She broke some eggs into the frying pan. “Did MacKenzie’s dogs fight?”

“Yes.”

“What breed were they?”

“I never saw them. Alsatians, I think.”

“How did he get them to fight?” She glanced at me again when I didn’t answer. “You said in your email to Alan Collins that you thought they were police dogs, but police dogs don’t fight. It’d cause mayhem if they started attacking each other in the middle of a riot. They’re selected for their temperaments, and the aggressive ones get booted out PDQ. They’ll bring a man down but they won’t kill him.”

“He threw them something…said it was food…but it was alive because I heard it screaming.”

“Twisted fucker,” she said in disgust. “It was probably another dog…a little one that tried to defend itself. I’ve seen a Jack Russell take on a Rottweiler when it was backed into a corner.” She put the eggs onto plates with bacon and tomatoes. “Did he set the dogs on you?”

“No.”

“But you thought he was going to?”

“Yes.”

She handed me a plate. “I’d have been frightened, too,” was all she said before joining me at the table and lapsing into her usual silence while she ate.

To break it, I told her about my failed attempts to get hold of my parents. “I don’t suppose the phone rang while I was outside?” I asked.

“Nn-nn. I spotted your mobile when I went up the ladder to see if you were in the loft. If you’re expecting them to call on that, you’ll have a job hearing it downstairs.”

“I know. Did my mother say anything to you about checking out?”

“Not that I remember, but it’ll be on that piece of paper if she did.”

I felt in my pocket for Jess’s note, and pulled out a handful of receipts at the same time. “It just seems so odd…and very unlike her. She hates missing calls. And why get you involved? She could have left a message here.” I isolated the note but there was nothing more than Jess had already told me.

“She said you weren’t listening to them.”

“I always listen. I don’t necessarily answer.”

“Maybe that’s what your parents are doing. Teaching you a lesson.”

“It’s not their style.”

Jess’s response was predictably blunt. “So phone the police. If your gut’s telling you something’s wrong, then something’s wrong. Talk to this Alan bloke. He’ll know what to do.”

“He’ll say I’m being ridiculous.” I checked my watch. “It’s barely an hour and a half since I made the first call to Dad. The chances are Ma got bored and went back to the flat, and they’ve gone out for a meal because there’s no food in the fridge.”

“Why are you worrying then?”

“Because-” I broke off. “I’ll have another go on the mobile.” I stood up and pulled the remaining slips from my pocket. “I knocked these down while I was in the outhouse. I think they’re receipts for the oil. Do you know if they’re supposed to be in date order?”

Jess turned the pile to read the top slip. “They’re delivery notes. Burtons’ driver leaves them by the tank to show he’s been, and when the bill arrives you check the delivery note matches what you’re paying for. Lily never bothered to bring hers in, so these probably go back years.”

I looked over her shoulder, curious to see Lily’s signature. “Why aren’t any of them signed?”

“She never bothered. I don’t either. The driver just whacks it in and leaves.” She looked amused at my expression. “Dorset folk are pretty honest. They might go in for a bit of poaching but they don’t try to cheat the oil suppliers. There’d be no point if they ended up on a blacklist.”

“What about the supplier short-changing the customer?”

“That’s what the gauge is for. If you don’t check it, you deserve to be ripped off.”

“On that basis any victim of theft deserves it. We should all live behind security fences with multiple bolts on our doors.”

“Too right. Or kill any bastard who breaks in.” She eyed me for a moment. “You get what you ask for in life…and victims are no different.”

“Is that a dig at me?”

She shrugged. “Not necessarily…it depends how long you plan to let this psycho mess with your mind.”

As I left her sorting the notes by date, I tried to imagine any other circumstance that would have allowed us to become friends. Assuming she’d been willing to talk to me if I’d met her socially-and I couldn’t conceive of that happening except in an interview-her uncompromising attitudes would have had me heading for the door very quickly. Yet the better I came to know her, the better I understood that her intention was to empower and not to censure.

She did it clumsily, in bald, clipped sentences which often followed a prolonged silence, and the views she expressed could be woundingly blunt, but there was no malice in her. Unlike Madeleine, I thought, as I reached the top of the stairs and looked at the photograph at the other end of the landing. One of the messages on the answerphone had come from her two days ago. It was full of exaggerated emphasis and dripping with innuendo and spite, and I hadn’t bothered to respond to it.

“Marianne…It’s Madeleine Harrison-Wright. I’ve been meaning to ring for ages. Peter’s taken me to task for being naughty”-a playful laugh-“he says I shouldn’t have broken Jess’s confidence in the way I did. I do apologize. It’s difficult to know what’s for the best sometimes.” A pause. “A lot of it was Mummy’s fault of course…it’s not fair to play with people’s affections…pretending to love them one moment and showing how bored you are the next. It always leads to problems in the long run. Still…I said more than I should. Will you forgive me? Peter’s talking about having a supper party for me when I come down next week. Will I see you there?” Her voice faded into another little laugh. “I think I’ve been cut off…I’m so bad with these machines. Call me back if nothing I’ve said makes sense. My number’s…”

As far as I was concerned it made perfect sense. Roughly translated, it meant: “Peter and I are so intimate that: a) he talks about his patients; b) he has permission to tick me off for naughtiness; c) he repeated what you said to him; and d) he’s planning to wine and dine me, but won’t be inviting you. While making a token apology for breaking confidences, I am also confirming that what I said when we met is true. Jess has serious problems. PS. I know exactly how to use these machines but I think it’s more attractive to laugh and pretend I don’t.”

It made me question Peter’s role again. Were he and Madeleine genuinely as close as she was suggesting? And if so, was he two-timing Jess? What sort of relationship did he and Jess have? I could well believe Peter was a serial philanderer on the evidence of the two nurses he’d bedded while he was still married to the inept ex-wife, but I found it harder to believe he’d cheat on Jess with her worst enemy.

It may have been that my brain worked better on a full stomach but, looking at Madeleine’s photograph, I thought how all the artistry was Jess’s. The setting. The lighting. The captured sweetness of Madeleine’s face. Move it on five clicks and the sun would have gone behind a cloud, Madeleine’s chin would have been buried in her collar, and the photograph would have been rather more sinister-an unrecognizable, black-coated figure against a raging sea.

“I only did it to make Lily happy…”

But why would a mother need a photograph of her daughter looking pretty? Were the other pictures unflattering? Was it the only one Lily had? I couldn’t work it out at all. I didn’t understand either why Madeleine had left it in Barton House. If it had been a portrait of me, I’d have kept it for myself. I asked Jess once if Madeleine had the negative, and she said, no, it was in a box somewhere at the farm.

“Is this the only print?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn’t Madeleine have it in her own house?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because you took it?”

She didn’t deny it, merely added: “Lily refused to have any of Nathaniel’s stuff on her walls. I expect that had something to do with it as well.”

“Has Nathaniel ever seen this?”

“Sure.”

“What does he think of it?”

“The same as me. There’s too much sweetness in her face. It doesn’t look anything like Madeleine.”

“Why should that matter? It’s very striking…very dramatic. It’s not important who the woman is.”

Jess looked amused. “That’s why Madeleine hates it.”

15

“YOU SEEM HAPPIER,” said Jess when I returned to the kitchen. “Did you get through?”

“I didn’t try. There was a text waiting.” I put the mobile on the table in front of her so that she could read it. All fine. Ma with me. Nothing to worry about. Call soon. Dad. “I’m not sure if he wants me to phone them or vice versa, but at least they’re OK.”

“That’s good. Do you have any more of these slips in your pockets?”

“No. Why?”

“I thought I’d put them back in order for you…but there seems to be one missing.” She turned the pile towards me. “The last note’s dated November 2003, but there should be one from 2004. Lily didn’t go into the home until January but the oil tank was full when I lit the Aga for you.”

“I expect it’s still in the outhouse…or I dropped it on the way back.”

She shook her head. “I’ve just checked. There’s nothing. It’s very odd.”

I noticed the dogs had gone, so I guessed she’d taken them with her and left them outside. “Presumably the agent has it…or Madeleine…or Lily’s solicitor. Who would the bill have been sent to?”

“I don’t know.” She frowned. “The solicitor, I suppose-the house still belongs to Lily so he’s in charge-but how did he get the delivery note without being here when the driver came?”

“How do you know he wasn’t?”

“I don’t for sure, but wouldn’t he have taken all of these at the same time?” She gestured towards the pile. “He cleared out everything else. I was here when he did it. He wanted all Lily’s papers…bank statements…receipts…the works…and it had to be done before Madeleine showed up and tried to burn the evidence.”

I resumed my seat. “What evidence?”

“Anything that showed what a grasping bitch she was. Old cheque-books, mostly.” She fixed me with her unwavering stare. “The other odd thing is that the valve was turned off at the oil tank. I should have thought about it at the time but I didn’t-I just assumed it was something the agent had insisted on. Like when you hire a car, you get a full tank and there’s no arguing about it.” She fell silent.

“Why should that be odd? It sounds quite sensible to me.”

“Because it’s pointless. The valve’s only there in case of accidents, not to regulate the flow of oil to the Aga. There’s a governor near the burner for that.” She paused. “Did you ever read those instructions the agent gave you? Did they tell you the valve was closed?”

“I can’t remember but it’s easily checked.” I nodded to the drawer by her right shoulder. “They’re in there…brown envelope. I think I skipped the Aga page because you’d already done it.”

She pulled out the stapled pages and flicked through them. “OK, here it is. ‘Aga. Location…Functions…Recipe books…Cleaning…’ Well, one thing’s for sure, Madeleine never wrote this. It’s far too organized.” She ran her finger down a few lines. “ ‘Instructions for lighting.’ ” She read them in silence. “These wouldn’t help anyone-they’re straight out of a recent Aga manual and Lily bought hers second-hand about thirty years ago. It doesn’t say anything about having to open the valve first, which it should do if the agent closed it.”

I couldn’t see what she was getting at. “I expect it’s a standard page for all rented property with Agas. If I’d complained at the beginning, they’d have sent someone out to fix the problem, and then rewritten the instructions. You said Madeleine didn’t know how to light it, so presumably she never told them there was a trick to it.”

“But who closed the valve?” she asked. “The solicitor didn’t-he never went outside-and the agent didn’t or he’d have mentioned it in here.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps he forgot.”

“Or didn’t know.” She looked at the pile of slips again. “I think it was turned off at the end of November. I’ll bet you any money you like that’s when the last delivery was made. That’s why the tank was full. Lily never used any of the oil because the Aga was out.”

“She wouldn’t have had any hot water…wouldn’t have been able to cook.”

“Right.”

I watched her for a moment. “So what are you saying, that she turned it off herself? Why would she do that?”

“She wouldn’t,” said Jess slowly. “I doubt she even knew there was a valve…she was pretty ignorant about how things worked. In any case, the wheel was stiff when I turned it, and she had arthritis in her wrists-” She lapsed into a thoughtful silence. “I suppose she might have started worrying about the cost and asked the driver to do it.”

“But she wouldn’t have done that after he’d filled the tank. Not unless she’d lost the plot completely. She’d be billed anyway. Surely she’d have let it run dry…wouldn’t have called him at all…just waited till the Aga went out of its own accord.”

Jess ran her fingers into her hair and tugged ferociously at her fringe. “Then it must have been Madeleine. There’s no one else who would have done it. My God! She really is a bitch. She probably hoped Lily would die of hypothermia.”

I didn’t say anything.

“No wonder she went downhill so rapidly-Peter’s never understood that, you know-” Her frown gathered ferocity. “It would explain why she went looking for warmth in other people’s houses. She probably wanted a bath. They said she washed herself.”

There was a perverted kind of logic to it although it posed more questions than it answered. “Why didn’t she tell someone?”

“Who?”

“Peter? You?”

“I stopped coming and told her not to phone me anymore. She tried once or twice but I wiped the messages without listening to them.”

“Why?”

She shook her head, unwilling to answer that question. “She wouldn’t have told Peter,” she answered instead. “She was terrified he’d tell Madeleine she couldn’t cope. She was convinced she’d end up in an institution somewhere, wearing incontinence pads and tied to a chair. She kept newspaper clippings about old people being abused in homes after their relatives lost interest. It was sad.”

“Is that why you persuaded her to reassign the power of attorney?”

“I didn’t. She thought it up all on her own when Madeleine told her to hurry up and die, and do everyone a favour.”

“When was that?”

“August. She didn’t show again until Lily was taken into care…probably because she hoped neglect would do the job quicker.”

“But you don’t think the valve was closed until November,” I pointed out mildly.

“Madeleine didn’t have to see Lily to do that. She just had to go to the outhouse.”

“But she wouldn’t want the whole world knowing what she was up to. I mean, you’re effectively accusing her of wanting to murder her mother.”

“She’s quite capable of it.”

I doubted that but I didn’t say so. “Supposing Peter had been here…supposing you had been here? Supposing someone had seen her drive through the village?”

“It depends when it was. The Horse Artillery could ride through Winterborne Barton at midnight and none of that lot-” she jerked her head in the direction of the village-“would hear them. If they’re not deaf, they’re probably snoring their heads off.” She crossed her forearms on the table and hunched forward. “It’s the one time Madeleine could have got away with doing something like that. I’m the only person who ever came in here. Everyone else went into the drawing-room. Even Peter.”

I’d learnt from experience that it wasn’t worth repeating questions, because Jess never answered anything she didn’t want to. The only technique that seemed to work was to point out Lily’s failings, which usually provoked her into defending the woman. “It doesn’t explain why Lily didn’t do something about it herself. Peter says she was functioning adequately enough to go on living here alone, so why didn’t she look up a maintenance man in the Yellow Pages? A total stranger wasn’t going to have her committed.”

Jess stared at the table. “She was much worse than Peter realized. As long as she looked neat, and could open the door to him, and roll out a few amusing anecdotes without too much repetition, he thought she was coping. She was pretty good at the airs and graces stuff…forgot everything else…but not that.”

“Was it you who was making her neat?”

Her dark gaze rested on me for a moment. “I wasn’t going to do it forever but while she was still-” she made a small gesture of resignation. “She was frightened about going into a home…made me promise to keep her out as long as possible.”

“Difficult.”

“It wasn’t all bad. I learnt more about my family after Lily went senile than I ever knew before.” Her eyes lit up suddenly. “Do you know, she really envied them? I’d listened to this crap for years about how low-grade we were-straight out of the primeval sludge without a brain between us-then suddenly it’s not fair that trolls with congenital syphilis inherit the earth.”

I smiled. “So what did she say to make you angry?”

“Nothing.”

“She must have done. You wouldn’t have abandoned her otherwise. You’re too kind.”

For a moment, I thought she was going to come clean, but something changed her mind. Probably my mention of kindness. “She was taking up too much time, that’s all. I thought if I left her to cope on her own for a bit, Peter would realize how bad she was and organize proper care.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Fat chance. He relied on me to tell him if she went downhill…then vanished off to Canada for a month.”

I shrugged. “You can’t blame him for that. First you help Lily hide her condition, then you want to expose her. At the very least, you could have told Peter you’d stopped visiting. He’s not a mind-reader. How was he supposed to know Lily had lost her safety net? How was anyone supposed to know?”

An obstinate expression closed over her face. “You’re in the same position. Do you want me to send round a note if I decide to stop visiting you? Whose business is it except yours and mine?”

“I’m not ill. I can ask for help if I need it.”

“So could Lily. She wasn’t completely shot.”

“Then why didn’t she?”

“She did,” Jess said stubbornly. “She took herself to the village…and none of them did a damn thing about it.”

We’d been this route before. It’s where every conversation about Lily ended-with Winterbourne Barton’s perceived indifference. I sometimes felt it was Jess’s excuse. As long as she could accuse them, she didn’t have to address her own part in Lily’s rapid decline. Although in truth I couldn’t see that anyone was really to blame. There was no law that said Jess had to take the brunt of a demanding woman’s care indefinitely, and no law that said her doctor and neighbours should have foreseen their sudden falling out.

It was harder to excuse Madeleine because she was Lily’s daughter, but was she any better at guessing from London what was going on than the people on the ground? I was willing to accept Jess’s view of her character-grasping, vindictive, spiteful, selfish-but not that she had a supernatural intelligence. “How could Madeleine have known that she could turn the Aga off with impunity? Did she know that you and Lily had a row? Would Lily have told her?”

“We didn’t have a row. I just stopped coming.”

“OK. Would she have told her that?”

I saw from Jess’s sudden frown that she knew what I was driving at. She could hardly accuse Madeleine of attempted murder if Madeleine was as ignorant as everyone else. She didn’t dodge the question. “No,” she said flatly. “Madeleine would have wanted to know why.”

I went back to the question she wouldn’t answer. “So what did Lily say to you that made you angry? And was so awful that she couldn’t repeat it to her daughter?” I watched her lips thin to a narrow line. “Come on, Jess. You play slave to a first-class bitch for twelve years…drop her like a hot potato when she really needs you…then start defending her the minute she’s off your hands. Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn’t to me.”

When she didn’t say anything, I lost patience with her. “Oh, to hell with it,” I said wearily. “Who gives a shit? I’ve better things to do.” I stood up and fetched the axe and the lead-weighted walking-stick from beside the door. “Do you want to help me stash these things or are you going home in a huff?”

If her mutinous glare was anything to go by, she was certainly thinking about leaving, and it made me angry suddenly. She was like a spoilt child who used tantrums to get its own way, and I found I didn’t want to play anymore. “There’s only one person who might have turned off the valve, and that’s you, Jess. Who else knew where it was or what impact it would have on Lily? Who-other than you-knew you weren’t visiting any more?”

With a funny little sigh, she pulled the pile of notes towards her and started tearing them up.

I made a half-hearted move towards her. “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Why not? Who do you want to show them to? The police? Peter? Madeleine?” She picked up the pieces and transferred them to the sink. “Can I borrow your lighter?”

“No.”

She shrugged indifferently before pulling a booklet of matches from her back trouser pocket. “It’s not what you think,” she said, striking a light and setting fire to the flimsy pile.

“It seems very clear to me.”

She put out an arm to hold me back, although I wasn’t thinking of stopping her. I couldn’t see the point of getting into a fight over evidence that was certainly duplicated in the oil suppliers’ records, and I wondered why Jess hadn’t thought of that. She might have been reading my mind.

“No one will check unless you mention it,” she said. “And if you do, I’ll say the valve was open and the level about six inches down…which is where it should have been. No one’s going to take your word against mine. You were acting like a zombie after your panic attack, and Peter will back me up on that.”

We stood in silence as the paper reduced to sooty ash in the sink, at which point she turned on the tap and washed it away. By then, of course, I was extremely curious about why she’d done it, as thirty seconds’ reflection told me she wouldn’t have mentioned the valve in the first place if it hadn’t surprised her to find it off. The whole thing was very strange.

“I suppose you’re afraid of me now,” she said abruptly.

“You’re not much different from MacKenzie, that’s for sure. He was very fond of saying no one would believe me…but his threats were a lot more persuasive than yours, Jess.”

She looked uncomfortable. “I’m not threatening you.”

“You said you’d accuse me of being a zombie…and ask Peter to back you up. What’s that if it’s not a threat?” I hefted the walking-stick and axe again, and headed for the corridor. “Don’t forget to lock the mortise when you leave.”

I SAT AT MY DESK in the back room, listening for her Land Rover, but it never left the drive. I used the time to email my parents.

Text received. Phone on the landline when you’re ready. Don’t want to use mine without 141, and it’s a bore climbing into the attic to activate the mobile! Too many rats and bats!!!! Lol, C.

I was acutely attuned to noises I didn’t recognize. Had been for days. I heard Jess’s dogs on the gravel once or twice as they circled the house. Heard the sound of a car as it drove down the valley. Half an hour later I listened to Jess’s steps across the hall. They were more tentative than usual. “It’s not what you think,” she said from the doorway, as if thirty minutes’ deliberation had merely trapped her in a continuous loop of denial.

I turned my chair to look at her. “Then what is it?”

She came into the room and looked past my shoulder to see what I’d typed on my monitor screen.

How did the Derbyshires end up owning more land than the Wrights?

How could they afford it?

I watched Jess’s face as she read the questions. “You said Lily was envious,” I reminded her. “Did she resent the way your family acquired the farm?”

She pondered for a moment. “Supposing I say to you…it’s old history…Lily’s in a good place…and it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie or people will be hurt. Will you drop it?”

“No, but I might agree to keep it to myself.”

She sighed. “It’s really none of your business. It’s no one’s business except mine and Lily’s.”

“There must be someone else involved,” I pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have burnt those delivery slips. I can’t see you doing it to protect Madeleine. You might do it to protect Peter”-I lifted an eyebrow in query-“except Peter wouldn’t have turned off the valve. And that leaves only Nathaniel. I’m betting November was when you threatened to shoot off his dick.”

She capitulated suddenly, pulling up another chair and leaning forward to stare at the monitor. “It’s my fault. I should have guessed he’d do something stupid. I gave him some ammunition to use against Madeleine, and I think he may have decided to take it out on Lily first. He probably thought it was funny.”

“Bloody hilarious,” I said sourly. “He might have killed her.”

“People don’t die because their Agas go out for a few hours. I imagine he wanted to make her angry, and that was the easiest way to do it. He knew where the outhouse was, so all he had to do was leave his car at the gate and sneak across the grass. Lily hated it when things went wrong.” She pulled a face. “I should have told him how bad she was, and he wouldn’t have done it.”

“Madeleine would have told him.”

“I doubt it,” said Jess. “They hardly speak these days.”

“According to who? Nathaniel?”

“He wasn’t lying.”

“Oh, give me a break!” I said crossly. “The man’s a complete shit. He swaps sides at the drop of a hat, dangles his todger in front of any woman who’s prepared to admire it, then thinks he can take up again where he left off. Do you think he tells Madeleine where he’s going when he comes down here to see you? Of course he doesn’t. Cheats never do.”

Jess rubbed her head despairingly. “You’re worse than Peter. I’m not a complete idiot, you know. If you remember, it was me who told you Nathaniel was a shit. I don’t like him. I never have done. I just…loved him for a while.”

“Then why protect him?”

Jess was full of sighs that evening. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just trying to stop this whole damn mess getting any worse. I don’t see that my life is anyone else’s property. Haven’t you ever wanted to bury a secret so deep that no one will ever find out about it?”

She knew I had.

16

ONE OF THE dogs gave a sudden high-pitched bark, and we looked at each other with startled expressions. When it wasn’t repeated, Jess relaxed. “They’re just playing,” she said. “If there was anyone out there, they’d be barking in unison.”

I didn’t share her confidence. The hairs on the back of my neck were as stiff as brush bristles. “Is the back door still locked?”

“Yes.”

I looked towards the sash window but the darkness outside was total. If the moon had risen, it was obscured by clouds, and I remembered how Jess had been lit up like an actor on a stage when she was in the kitchen. Now the pair of us were visible to anyone. “This isn’t the best room to be in,” I said nervously. “It’s the only one that doesn’t have two exits.”

“If you’re worried, call the police,” Jess said reasonably, “but they won’t get here for twenty minutes…and I wouldn’t advise crying wolf unnecessarily. It’s a long way to come for nothing. The dogs will protect us.”

I bent down to retrieve the walking-stick and axe that were lying on the floor. “Just in case,” I said, handing her the stick. “I’ll keep the axe.”

“I’d prefer it the other way round,” she said with a smile. “I don’t fancy being in a confined space with you and that thing. You’ll drop it on your head the first time you try and lift it…or you’ll drop it on mine. If you have any muscles in your arms I haven’t noticed them. Here.” She made the switch and placed the axe on the chair beside her. “Hold the stick by the unweighted end and swing it at his legs. If you’re lucky, you’ll break his kneecaps. If you’re unlucky, you’ll break mine.”

I must have looked extremely apprehensive, because she drew my attention back to the computer screen. “You wanted to know why we ended up with more land than the Wrights. Which version do you want? My grandmother’s or Lily’s?”

It was done to distract me, because she never volunteered information lightly. I made an effort to respond, although my ears remained attuned for sounds I didn’t recognize. “Are they very different?”

“As chalk and cheese. According to my grandmother, my great-grandfather bought the land when Lily’s father sold off the valley to pay death duties. Everything on this side of the road went to a man called Haversham, and everything on our side to us. Joseph Derbyshire took a loan to do it, and increased our holding from fifty acres to one and a half thousand.”

“And Lily’s version?”

She hesitated. “Her father made Joseph a gift of the land in return for”-she cast around for a suitable phrase-“services rendered.”

I looked at her in surprise. “That’s some gift. What was land worth in the fifties?”

“I don’t know. The deeds of title are with the house deeds, but there’s no valuation and nothing to show that Joseph ever took out a loan to pay for them. If he did, the debt was cleared before my father inherited the property.” She fell silent.

“What kind of services?”

Jess pulled a face. “Lily called it a disclaimer. She said Joseph signed a letter, promising silence…but there’s no copy of anything like that with the deeds.”

I was even more surprised. “It sounds like blackmail.”

“I know.”

“Is that the ammunition you gave Nathaniel?”

She shook her head. “It’s the last thing I’d want Madeleine to know. She’d take me to court if she found out.”

I had no idea where UK law stood on property acquired through coercion fifty years before, but I couldn’t believe Madeleine would have a case. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I told her. “The rule of thumb says possession is nine-tenths of the law…and if you demonstrate that at least two generations of Derbyshires have farmed it in good faith…” I petered out in face of her glum expression. “Did your father know?”

“He must have done. The first thing Gran asked me after the funerals was whether Dad had told me the history of the farm.” She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes. “When I said no, she gave me the loan story…and I never questioned it until Lily became confused and started confiding the family secrets.”

“Because she thought you were your grandmother?”

“In spades. Sometimes she’d be re-running conversations they had after the folks died…other times she’d jump back half a century to when Gran was her maid.” She made a rolling gesture with her hand as if to denote a cycle. “It took me ages to work out that a thank-you referred to the nineteen-nineties and an order meant she was back in the fifties. She kept telling me how kind Frank had been to her…and what a sweet wife he’d found in Jenny. How they’d never taken advantage…in spite of her beastliness at the beginning. Her biggest regret was that she’d never acknowledged Dad while she had the chance.” She lapsed into another silence.

“In what way?” I prompted.

“As her brother.” This time her sigh was immense. “If Lily was telling the truth, then my father’s father was her father, William Wright…not Gran’s husband, Jack Derbyshire, who died shortly after the war. Which makes Lily my aunt…Madeleine my first cousin…and me a Wright.” Her stare became very bleak suddenly. “The Derbyshires don’t exist anymore except as a name, and I really hated Lily for telling me that.”

I was at a loss what to say because I couldn’t tell which she thought was worse-to be a Wright or not to be a Derbyshire. “You don’t have to believe it. If it’s the word of a confused woman against what your grandmother said twelve years ago, then I’d put my faith in your grandmother. Why would she lie? Wasn’t that the one time to tell you you weren’t alone-that you still had family?”

“I think Lily asked her not to. She said a couple of times, ‘Don’t tell the girl, I’ll do it, she’s too depressed at the moment.’ ”

“But Lily never did…or not while she was still thinking straight.”

“No.”

“Then either there was nothing to tell,” I pointed out, “or she never intended to do it.”

“I think she changed her mind after Gran died. That’s when I did this.” Self-consciously, she turned her left wrist towards me. “I came up here to tell her Gran was dead and she kept saying the wrong things…like, it was a good way to go…Gran had had a good innings…it wasn’t the end of the world. And I started shouting at her, which brought on a panic attack.” She shook her head. “I was so mad with Lily…I was so mad with my family…and I thought…what’s the point? It is the end of the fucking world.”

“Were you serious?”

“About killing myself? Not really. I remember thinking how much pain I was in because everyone had died…and hoping that other people would suffer a bit…but the act itself”-she shrugged-“it was more of a scream than anything.”

“Have you ever tried again?”

“No. Once bitten, twice shy. I hated the fuss more than anything.”

I identified with that sentiment more than she knew. “What was Lily’s reaction?”

“Called Peter to try and keep the whole thing under wraps. She wanted him to stitch the wounds himself, but he wouldn’t do it-said he’d lose his licence if he didn’t have me properly assessed-so I ended up in hospital with psychiatrists and bereavement counsellors.” She rubbed her eyes again. “It was awful. The only person who remained halfway sensible was Lily. She got me discharged by promising that she’d take responsibility for me, then never spoke about it again.”

“Did you stay with her?”

“No.”

“Then how could she take responsibility for you?”

“She didn’t try, just asked for my word that I wouldn’t do anything stupid if she left me alone at the farm, then gave me a mastiff puppy.” Her eyes sparkled at the memory. “Much better medicine than anything the doctors had to offer.”

“But why should any of that make her change her mind, Jess? It seems so odd. The natural thing would have been to open her arms and say, you’re not alone, I’m your aunt.”

“Except she wasn’t a demonstrative woman, and then the whole thing with Nathaniel happened.” She shrugged. “I suppose she felt there was never a good time to do it.”

Personally, I doubted that Lily had ever planned to acknowledge Jess as a relative, although she certainly seemed to have had a soft spot for her. Perhaps she discovered she had more in common with her niece than her daughter, preferring Jess’s quiet, introverted nature to Madeleine’s more extroverted one. Rightly or wrongly, I’d formed an impression of Lily as a self-contained woman with limited friendships, whose only real loves were her garden and her dogs, and in that she was no different from Jess. She may well have been able to put on a “show” for visitors, but I wondered if it was just that-a show-and in her head she was mentally counting the seconds to their departure.

“So what was the ammunition you gave Nathaniel if it wasn’t to do with your family?” I asked curiously.

“I told him Lily had given enduring power of attorney to her solicitor.”

“I thought you said it was ammunition against Madeleine. Wouldn’t that have helped her…given her a chance to come down here and persuade Lily to overturn it?”

Jess pulled her mouth into a wry twist. “I half-hoped she would, as a matter of fact. Money was about the only thing that might have persuaded her to pull out her finger for the first time in her life…but I didn’t think Nathaniel would tell her. I was only trying to give him a head start before the shit hit the fan. Madeleine kept up a pretence of harmony as long as she thought this place was within her grasp…but she’s probably throwing saucepans at him by now.”

“I don’t understand. A head start on what?”

“Divorce…ownership of their flat…custody of the kid. If he’d moved quickly enough, he might have been able to persuade Madeleine to sign everything over-including her son-before she found out she’d been bypassed. She’d already agreed in principle as long as Nathaniel made no claims on Barton House or Lily’s money.” She smiled at my expression of disgust for the child. “She uses Hugo as a bargaining chip because she knows Nathaniel won’t leave without him. I wasn’t joking about the saucepans, you know.”

“But-” I couldn’t get my head round it. “Are you saying he wants a divorce and she doesn’t?”

“Not exactly. She’ll divorce him like a shot when she gets her hands on this place, but not before. Otherwise they’ll have to sell the flat and split the proceeds, and she won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’ll end up in somewhere like Neasden with her half. At the moment they’re in Pimlico. She’d rather live with people she hates than move down the social ladder. It’s not as if she’s got Lily’s allowance anymore. At least Nathaniel’s salary-” Jess came to an abrupt halt as five throaty barks split the silence outside. “OK,” she said calmly, seizing the axe in both hands. “We have a visitor. What do you want to do? Find out who it is, or sit tight and phone the police?”

I stared at her in horror. Was there a choice?

“It’s up to you,” she said, her eyes glittering dangerously as the dogs kept up their continuous barking. “Do you want to beat the shit out of the fucker…or let him go on thinking women are easy meat?”

I wanted to say we could do both-call the police and beat the shit out of the fucker. I wanted to say it might not be MacKenzie. I wanted to say I was completely terrified. But she was halfway across the room while I was still weighing options, and I could hardly leave her to face whoever was out there alone. So I picked up the walking-stick and went along with her. What else could I have done?

IT’S EASY to be wise after the event, but that’s to ignore the froth of adrenaline that spurs you on at the time. I had so much confidence in Jess and her mastiffs that I didn’t think we were behaving in a particularly reckless fashion. Despite everything she’d told me-about her panic attacks and the wrist-slitting episode-and my experience of her obvious alarm on the day I phoned her from the kitchen, I never thought of her as someone who was easily frightened. That was my role. It was Connie Burns who cowered in corners, not Jess Derbyshire.

The idiocy was, there was nothing to be afraid of. It was Peter surrounded by mastiffs, not MacKenzie, and predictably Jess gave him hell for scaring us. She called off the dogs and lambasted him for not phoning first to say he was coming. “I could have brought this down on your head,” she said furiously, brandishing the axe in front of him.

He looked equally furious in the light spilling out from the open back door and the kitchen window. “I would have done if I’d realized you were planning to set those blasted animals on me,” he said. “What’s got into them? They’ve never barked at me before. It’s bloody terrifying.”

“It’s supposed to be,” she retorted scathingly, “and you’ve never come sneaking up on them before. What do you want, anyway? It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

He took several breaths to calm himself. “I was on my way home from a medical do in Weymouth, had no luck at the farm, saw Connie’s lights were still on and thought you were probably here.”

“You’d have frightened the wits out of her if I hadn’t been,” Jess snapped.

“Your Land Rover’s in the driveway. Where else would you be?” He turned to me. “I’m sorry about this, Connie. Would you rather I left?”

I shook my head.

He relaxed enough to smile. “To be honest, I could do with a double whisky after being savaged by that pack of brutes.”

I put a hand on Jess’s arm to forestall another tirade. “Let’s go back inside. I don’t have any whisky, I’m afraid, but I do have beer and wine. Have you had anything to eat?”

If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d have remembered how easy it was to be lulled into a sense of false security. Fear has such strange effects on the human body. It keeps you at a pitch of concentration while danger’s in front of you, then sends you into carefree mode afterwards. I think I was the first to laugh because Jess looked so disapproving when I offered her a glass of wine, but within a few minutes even she’d lightened up enough to smile. Hysteria was very close to the surface in all of us.

Tears came into Peter’s eyes when I tried to explain what the plan had been. “So let me get this straight. You were going to break my kneecaps while Jess sank an axe in my head? Or was it the other way round? I’m confused. Where do my goolies come into it?”

I snorted wine up my nose. “They get chopped off along with your dick.”

Laughter ripped out of him. “What with? The axe?” He turned a twinkling gaze on Jess. “What do you think I’ve got between my legs? An oak tree?”

The spark between them was unmistakable. It fizzed like an electric charge. Jess came as close to giggling as I’d ever seen her. “More like a Christmas tree,” she retorted. “The balls are for decoration only.”

Peter grinned at her. “You can’t chop men’s dicks off, Jess. It’s not the done thing at all.”

I tittered into my drink, happily playing gooseberry. I couldn’t tell how successful Peter’s courtship had been-they might never have got beyond the teasing stage, or they might have been rogering each other stupid every night-but they were comfortable to be around because I didn’t feel excluded. It reminded me of the relationship I’d had with Dan-easy, affectionate and all-embracing-and I wondered if he and I would ever be able to rekindle that closeness, or if I’d killed it through lack of trust.

“Penny for them, Connie,” said Peter.

I looked up, conscious suddenly that the banter had stopped. “I was thinking about a friend of mine. You remind me of him…same kind of humour.” I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. For some reason, I felt I had to give Jess a push in the right direction. “You’re mad, Jess. If Peter makes you laugh, you should nail him to your floorboards immediately.”

There was a brief silence.

“So now we’re into hammers,” said Peter lightly. “Is there any abuse you’re not prepared to inflict on me?”

Jess pushed her chair back. “I need to check on the dogs,” she said gruffly. “I’ll go out the front door. There’s some food for them in the Land Rover.”

I pulled a wry face at Peter as she disappeared at speed down the corridor. “Sorry. I’ve obviously put my foot in it big time. What did I say that was so awful?”

“Don’t worry about it. Relationships terrify her. As far as she’s concerned, they’re all doomed to death or failure.” He refilled his glass. “It’s not surprising if you consider her history. Even Lily’s effectively dead to her now.”

“I should have been more sensitive.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. She sees herself as a jinx. Anyone who grows too fond of her dies…simple as that.”

“Nathaniel didn’t.”

Peter flicked me a mocking glance. “But he wasn’t fond of her. If he had been he wouldn’t have left her for Madeleine.”

I held his gaze. “Presumably that’s Jess speaking, and not you?”

He nodded. “Nathaniel would have her back in the blink of an eye if she showed the remotest interest-he’s been down here to promote his cause more times than you’ve had hot dinners-but either she can’t see it or she’s genuinely uninterested.”

“She’s comfortable with indifference,” I murmured. “She’s also the most determined walker-away that I’ve ever met. It makes sense if she has a fear of relationships. I thought she was trying to control me, but maybe she’s afraid of being sucked in. Is that why she does nothing to correct her image? Because it’s safer being disliked than having to give anything of herself?”

Peter looked amused. “Possibly, but it’s also her character. She’s hard work…always has been. Lily was the same. You have to chip away at the armour plating if you want to reach the person underneath, and not many people are prepared to do that.”

I wondered if he knew about Lily’s claim to be her aunt. “It must be a gene then,” I said.

His amusement turned to surprise, but he didn’t try to feign ignorance. “My God! You’re either a damn good journalist or you’ve convinced her you won’t repeat it. Is there anything she hasn’t told you?”

“A great deal, I should think, but if you give me a list of what there is to know, I’ll tell you if I know it.”

He laughed. “No chance. Hippocratic oath, remember.”

I thought I’d challenge him on that, but I didn’t want Jess to hear me do it. I cocked an ear for her footsteps returning. There was only silence. “Except you seem to use that oath at your own convenience,” I said. “There’s a message on my answerphone from Madeleine telling me you took her to task for talking out of turn about Jess’s wrist-cutting episode. You can listen to it, if you like. It’s still there.”

He shook his head. “No thanks. I get enough of them on my own damn machine.” He toyed with his glass. “She’s telling the truth. I did repeat what you told me. I’m sorry if that upsets you but I wanted her to know how angry I was.”

“I’m not upset,” I told him. “I’m curious. The implication in the message is that it was you who told Madeleine about Jess…and I remember how uncomfortable you were when I first mentioned it in your kitchen. You tried to convince me it was Lily who’d spoken out of turn, but I don’t think that’s true, is it?”

“No.” He took a mouthful of wine. “It was me. I thought if Madeleine knew how desperate Jess felt about the loss of her whole family, she’d give the poor kid breathing space and back off the affair with Nathaniel.” He paused. “I should have known better.”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I listened for footsteps. At the back of my mind I must have been wondering why there was no sound from outside, because I recall being incredibly conscious of an oppressive silence. At the very least, we should have heard the crunch of gravel and the Land Rover door opening.

“The first thing she did was tell Nathaniel,” Peter went on. “He was in London when it happened, so Madeleine had free rein with her interpretation of events…which was a souped-up version of what she told you, with Jess as a paranoid schizophrenic. It scared Nathaniel off completely.”

I was more interested in the continuing silence. “Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?” I asked, turning towards the window. “What do you think Jess is doing?”

“Looking for the dogs, I expect.”

“Then why isn’t she calling for them? You don’t suppose-” I broke off, unwilling to put the thought into words.

Perhaps Peter, too, was uneasy. “I’ll go and check,” he said, standing up, “but for Christ’s sake stop looking so bloody worried. You’d have to walk on water to get past those animals of hers.” He smiled. “Trust me. I’ve still got the bruises.”

17

HOW LONG DO you wait in such circumstances? In my case, a very long time. I told myself Peter and Jess were having a heart-to-heart, and the best thing I could do was leave them to it, but I remained glued to the window, watching Jess’s dogs patrol the garden. At one point a couple of them spotted me through the glass and ambled over, tails wagging eagerly, in the hope of food. Could someone have got past them? Logic said no, but instinct had every hair on my body standing to attention. If MacKenzie knew about anything, he knew about dogs.

I remember trying to light a cigarette, but my hands were trembling so much that I couldn’t bring the flame anywhere near the tip. Knowing how easily panicked I was, would Peter really abandon me for Jess without calling out that everything was fine? And why couldn’t I hear them? His wooing technique was based on gentle teasing, and he was incapable of speaking to Jess for more than a few minutes without laughing.

In the end I decided to call the police. The chances were they’d arrive to find Jess and Peter in flagrante delicto on the sofa but I couldn’t have cared less. I was happy to pay any fine they liked for wasting official time, as long as I didn’t have to walk down that corridor on my own.

WOODY ALLEN ONCE SAID, “My only regret in life is that I’m not someone else.” It’s funny if you don’t mean it, and desperate if you do. I’d rather have been anyone but Connie Burns when I tried for a dial tone on the kitchen phone and discovered it was dead. I knew immediately what it meant. The line had been cut some time after I emailed my parents. In the vain hope of a miracle, I tugged my mobile from my pocket and held it above my head, but unsurprisingly the signal icon refused to appear.

Panic came back in waves, and my first instinct was to do exactly what I’d done before, lock myself in the kitchen, turn off the lights and crouch out of sight of the window. I couldn’t face MacKenzie on my own. The fight had been knocked out of me when he’d rammed himself into my mouth and told me to smile for the camera. I couldn’t go through that again. His smell and taste still had me bursting out of nightmares every night. What did it matter if he killed other people, as long as he didn’t kill me?

I can’t pretend it was courage, or a sudden flush of heroism, that took me outside. Rather, the memory of my email to Alan Collins re elderly Chinamen, death-rays, and the difficulties of coping with the guilt. Any problems I had now would be magnified tenfold if I had to live with Jess’s and Peter’s blood on my hands. My plan was to run as fast as possible for the nearest hillside and dial 999. But when I opened the back door, I was met by the dogs, and I had a strong sense that taking to my heels would be the wrong thing to do. Either they’d bark and alert MacKenzie, or they’d bowl me over.

Instead, I walked slowly towards the outhouse in the hope that they’d lose interest and let me cut across the grass to the main road. They didn’t. Each step I took was mirrored by five rippling shadows. For big animals they were extraordinarily quiet. The only sound any of them made was the brush of paws over grass. I couldn’t even hear their breathing, but that may have been because mine was noisy enough for all of us.

I stopped after about twenty metres, seriously doubting that MacKenzie was in the house. How could he have got past these dogs unless he’d broken in before Jess brought them? In which case, why had he waited? And why only cut the telephone line after I’d emailed my parents? I’d been alone all day, and for a good hour between Jess’s first and second visits. He could have done what he liked and left. It didn’t make sense to involve other people.

From there, it was a small jump to the absolute conviction that I was doing what he wanted-putting myself at his mercy by leaving the house. It’s hard to think logically when you’re frightened. I turned rather wildly to head back towards the kitchen and found myself looking at MacKenzie.

He was sitting at my desk with his hands linked behind his head, staring at my computer screen. He laughed suddenly and swivelled the chair to talk to someone behind him. With a dreadful sense of inevitability I caught a glimpse of Peter’s face before MacKenzie completed the turn and blocked Peter from sight again.

THE SAME POLICEMAN who’d asked what Jess and I had talked about during our five hours alone the previous week suggested I might have acted differently if MacKenzie had shown her the same respect that he showed Peter. “I’m assuming it was this man’s mistreatment of Ms. Derbyshire that persuaded you to confront him? Was it seeing her in trouble that took you back into the house?”

I shook my head. “Jess wasn’t visible from outside. The first time I saw her was when I reached the hall.”

“But you guessed she was in distress?”

“I suppose so. I saw that Peter was frightened-which almost certainly meant Jess was, too.” I couldn’t see the point of his questions. “Wouldn’t you be scared if someone broke into your house?” I paused. “I knew he’d kill her…he liked hurting women.”

“So why weren’t you scared, Ms. Burns?”

“I was. I was terrified.”

“Then why didn’t you continue with your original plan”-he glanced at his notes-“to run for the nearest high point and use your mobile? Wouldn’t that have been more sensible than going back inside?”

“Of course it would, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to say? That I was stupid to do it? I agree with you. I was the fool that rushed in. I acted first, thought later.”

“You thought long enough to take an axe with you,” he pointed out mildly.

“So? I was hardly going to tackle MacKenzie empty-handed.”

I CREPT DOWN the corridor on bare feet and eased the baize door open a crack before sliding through and letting it close silently behind me. MacKenzie had turned up the volume on my computer and I could hear my own voice coming through the speakers. I knew then what he was looking at. There was no mistaking my begging tone even if the only words I could make out were a repetitive “please don’t…please don’t…please don’t…”

The sound died suddenly. “Is that you, Connie?” he said in his familiar Glaswegian accent. “I’ve been expecting you, feather. Will you show yourself to me?”

How did he know I was there? I hadn’t made a sound. I didn’t make a sound.

“You know what’ll happen if you don’t,” he warned with a grunt of amusement. “I’ll have to make do with your friend. She’s an ugly little bitch but her mouth seems to work.”

My flesh crawled in response to his voice, and it took considerable will-power to move into the open doorway. I hated the way he spoke. It was mangled vowels and glottal stops and exploded any myth that “Glesca patter” was attractive. No printed words can convey the ugliness of his accent or the effect it had on me. I associated it with his smell and his taste, and nausea flooded my mouth immediately.

He was still sitting at my desk, and Peter was where I’d seen him from outside, in the chair Jess had perched on earlier. He was fully clothed and his eyes were uncovered, but there was duct tape across his mouth, and his hands and feet were bound. MacKenzie had half-turned the chair towards the desk so that Peter could see the images that were flickering on the computer screen, and beyond them Jess, who was standing in the far corner.

I hardly looked at Peter because I was focusing all my attention on MacKenzie, but I saw the panic in his eyes before I picked out Jess at the edge of my vision. She was naked, blindfolded, gagged and bound, and balanced precariously on a footstool. I felt a lurch of panic for her because I knew how frightening that was. Unable to see, and without being able to move your hands or feet, your only point of reference is the wall behind you. If you lose contact with it, you fall. The strain of concentration is unbearable.

I’ve no idea if MacKenzie’s intention was to frighten me into complying-or if the degradation of women was irresistible for him-but Jess’s frailty shocked me. Without its normal covering of a man’s shirt and jeans, her body looked too small and childlike to take the kind of punishment that MacKenzie liked to inflict. I was aware of an object on the carpet in front of her. I couldn’t see it properly because I didn’t want to lose sight of MacKenzie for a second, but the serrated outline reminded me of one of my father’s homemade stingers.

They were short planks with nails hammered through them, and he’d used them anywhere on the farm where he found rustler or poacher tracks. His favourite trick was to bury the wooden base in the dry earth and leave the nails poking half an inch above the surface. Occasionally he caught elderly vehicles which were abandoned when their tyres burst, but the more usual result was bloody footprints in the dirt. No one died from having his feet pierced but it was an effective deterrent against stealing from my father.

Where had it come from? Had Dad made it?

I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth. “How did you find me?”

“The world’s smaller than you think.” He took note of the axe that I was holding across my chest. “Are you planning to use that, feather?”

Dad always used two-inch nails…They’d kill Jess if she fell on them… “Don’t call me that.”

MacKenzie smiled. “Answer the question, feather. Are you planning to use that?”

“Yes.”

His smiled widened. “And when I take it off you and use it on Gollum over here”-he tilted his head towards Jess-“what will the plan be then?”

“To kill you.”

I think my expression must have shown that I meant it, because he was in no hurry to move. “I persuaded your father to tell me where you were. He didn’t want to, but I gave him a choice…you or your mother. He chose your mother.” There was a glint of humour in his pale eyes. “How does that make you feel?” He pronounced “father” in almost the same way as he pronounced “feather”-“fay-ther”-a rasping, grating sound.

My fists tightened round the axe. “Flattered,” I said from a dry mouth. “My father has faith in me. He knows I can survive you.”

“Only if I let you.”

“Where is he? What have you done to him?”

“Taught him the facts of life. It was sad. It’s always sad when old men fight.”

“You wouldn’t have taken him on if his hands had been free. You won’t even take on a woman unless she’s bound, gagged and blindfolded.”

MacKenzie shrugged indifferently and took my father’s mobile from his pocket, turning it towards me so that I could see it. “Recognize it? Remember this? ‘All fine. Mum with me. Nothing to worry about. Call soon. Dad.’ Your text came through while I was still on the road. I thought I’d put your mind at rest by answering.” He studied my face for a reaction. “I’d have sent another one but I lost the signal when I reached the valley. Why would you want to live in a dead zone, Connie?”

I moistened my mouth again. “How do you think I sent the text? It depends which server you use.”

“Is that right? So why doesn’t this guy have a signal?” He nodded at Peter’s mobile, which was on the desk. His eyes narrowed speculatively. “You wouldn’t have come looking for me if you’d been able to call the police. Am I correct, feather?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t like that, yet how strange that it was the truth that made him uneasy. I think he wanted me to bluster and pretend, because no one in my position would admit so readily that help was unavailable. I don’t even know why I did it, since my hope had been to persuade him the police were on their way.

He darted a suspicious look at the hall behind me. “You’d better not be lying.”

“I’m not,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster. “How could I have called them without a signal? The landline’s not working. You know that.”

It was the smallest of hits-a nervous toying with my father’s mobile as he confirmed the lack of signal-but it seemed to hand me an advantage. A fear that he hadn’t read the situation as well as he believed. My difficulty was that I couldn’t see how to exploit it, as I had no idea how long he’d been in the house or what he knew, and his doubts would vanish, anyway, when the cavalry failed to appear.

“They know about you,” I said. “Your mother’s made a statement.”

He stared at me. “You’re lying.”

Was there doubt in his voice?

“If you go into my inbox, you’ll find it as an attachment to the last email from DI Alan Collins.” I could hear the clicks as my tongue rasped against my dry palate. “I remembered her name from the letter you asked me to post.”

The flicker of recognition, brief though it was, was unmistakable.

“I told Alan Collins she was called Mary MacKenzie, and had probably been…or still was…a prostitute. He passed the information to Glasgow and they found her quite easily.”

I wasn’t committing myself to much. If he denied his mother was a prostitute, or that Mary MacKenzie was her name, I’d say my information had been wrong and the police had located her another way. He didn’t. He was more interested in the axe. “You’d better not take me for an idiot, Connie. Do you think I’ll turn my back on you? It’s no matter, anyway. My bitch of a mother’s been dead to me for years. Tell me what her statement says.”

Oh God! Such tiny steps and each one had to be understood and profited from immediately or MacKenzie would smell a rat. I shouldn’t need thinking time to recall a statement. It helped that I’d given some thought to his mother, helped that I’d trawled the net for information on sadists and rapists. I’d even had the idea of trying to find her myself, either by using a private detective agency or going to Glasgow and searching through the local newspaper archives. It seemed incredible to me that a man of his violence hadn’t shown up in the courts before he left his native city, or that his hatred of women was unassociated with his mother.

I gave a passable attempt at a shrug. “She blames herself for the way you are…says it was her being on the game that started you off. You found school difficult and started truanting…and she talks about thieving and drunken fights.” There was enough of a reaction to make it worth trying something I’d found on a website-the term Glasgow prostitutes use for the red light district. “She says she was more frightened of you than going on the drag.”

“That’s crap,” he grated angrily.

“It’s what she says. There’ve been seven unsolved prostitute murders in Glasgow since 1991, and she’s told Strathclyde police she thinks you’re responsible. It’s all in her statement.”

He didn’t know whether to believe me or not. Would a Zimbabwean know that Strathclyde police was the over-arching force for Glasgow or that files were still open on seven prostitutes from the drag? The murders had happened, although they weren’t thought to be linked to a single individual. Did MacKenzie know that?

He sent a darting glance towards the computer screen. I kept my eyes on his face, but at the edge of my range I could see Peter struggling to release his hands. I knew from experience that it was wasted effort but I prayed for a miracle, anyway. “It’s your mother who provided the photograph,” I said.

I was afraid that might be a step too far. Would Mary MacKenzie have a recent picture of her son? Apparently so, because he didn’t question it. I wasn’t entirely clear where it took me, except that it seemed to keep his unease alive. My real hope was to persuade him that taking out his anger on me, Jess and Peter would achieve nothing if it was his mother who had given most of the information to the police.

“Your photograph has been posted with every police force in the UK, along with a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of the Glasgow murders. Once you’re in custody, Alan Collins and Bill Fraser will be given time to question you about the Freetown and Baghdad murders. You came under UK jurisdiction as soon as you entered the country…which means you can be questioned about crimes anywhere in the world.” Carefully, I adjusted my grip on the axe. My palms were so wet I could barely hold it. “It’s all in Alan’s email.”

If I could indeed tempt him into turning his back, I would certainly hit him, but I had few illusions about my ability to do any serious damage. I was more likely to miss him completely and bury the axe in my monitor. At least I’d kill the awful repetition of my own tearful entreaties, followed by mute obedience, that filled the screen behind him. The images, many in close-up, were worse than anything I’d imagined.

I had to try twice before any words came. “They’ve done a psychological profile on you that says if you filmed me, then you’ll have filmed the women you murdered as well. They say you’re an addictive trophy killer…you hang on to evidence that will convict you because you need to keep reminding yourself-”

The speed with which MacKenzie’s fist whipped out to flick a knife blade in front of Peter’s face stopped me in my tracks. “Stay where you are,” he warned. “I don’t give a shit for this man’s sight…but you probably do.” With his other hand, he felt behind him for the CD-ROM button. “You talk too much, Connie,” he said, glancing round to retrieve a disk from the open tray. “All women talk too much. It does my fucking head in. I liked you better when your tongue was tied.”

He played the point of the knife between Peter’s terrified eyes while he slid the DVD into his pocket. “What else does this profile say?”

Christ! Which was better? Back off or keep going? How much did he know about psychological profiling? What was more likely to tip him over the edge? Something anodyne or something brutal? I dredged facts from the research I’d done. “That you’re an organized killer…a vengeful stalker who blames women for your inability to make relationships…that you target your victims carefully and plan your murders to avoid detection.” I kept my eyes on the blade. “That your socioeconomic group is at the lower end of the scale…you’re unlikely to be married…possibly delusional…have no interest in personal hygiene…” I fell silent because his aggression suddenly vanished.

He lowered the knife to the table and assessed me critically. “You’re skin and bones, feather,” he said gently. “What happened to you?”

“I haven’t been eating. I feel sick if I put something in my mouth.”

“You think about me then?”

“All the time.”

“Go on,” he encouraged, placing the knife on the desk to reach for a canvas bag that I hadn’t noticed within the embrasure of the desk. I watched him pull back the flap to put my father’s mobile and the DVD inside, and with a small shock I recognized it as my own bag.

“At night, I wake up screaming because I’m afraid you’re in the room,” I said in a monotone. “During the day I have panic attacks because I see a dog or smell something that reminds me of you.” Inside the bag, I could see a pair of miniature binoculars that I was sure belonged to my father. “There isn’t a single minute in twenty-four hours when Keith MacKenzie doesn’t fill my mind.”

I lapsed into silence again because I didn’t know what he was doing. Part of me wondered if he was preparing to leave; the other part remained intensely suspicious. His only way out was past me, but I wasn’t so naïve as to lower the axe to let him pass. Nor was I prepared to separate myself from Jess and Peter. However incapacitated they were, I drew a confidence from their presence that I wouldn’t have had if I’d faced MacKenzie alone.

My concern now was Jess. She was beginning to tire. On the fringes of my vision, she kept jerking her head back to keep her shoulders in contact with the walls. Peter’s fear for her was intense. He doubled his efforts to free his hands, and I saw his desperation every time he looked from her to me.

MacKenzie saw it, too, and smiled as he jerked his head towards the stinger. “It’s a neat little thing, isn’t it? I assume it was meant for me, feather. If your friend’s unlucky, the nails will get her in the belly. I’ve seen more soldiers die of gut wounds than anything else. The filth from the intestine infects the blood.” He gave an indifferent shrug. “It’s your choice. You can come in and move the trap…or you can let her fall. I’ll even make a deal with you. As soon as you’re through the doorway, I’ll leave.”

Peter nodded violently, begging me to obey. I forced my tongue across my lips so that I could generate some noise. “JESS!” I cried. “Listen to me! You must concentrate! I can’t come in. Do you understand?” Her head ducked a millimetre in response. I went on more calmly: “I don’t care how tired you are or how much it hurts, you stay upright. At least you’re on your feet and not cowering in a corner. Understand?” Another dip of her head.

I don’t know when I realized that I wasn’t as afraid as I’d expected to be. I showed physical signs of it in my parched mouth and sweating hands, but that had more to do with fear of being taken by surprise than fear of MacKenzie himself. Rightly or wrongly, I felt it was he who was isolated, and I who was in control.

He was smaller than I remembered and a great deal seedier, with stubble on his jaw and a shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been changed for days. I could smell it from ten metres away. It stank of dirt and sweat and caused my only genuine falters when the nausea of memory scorched the back of my throat. For the most part, I wondered how someone so unprepossessing could have gained such a hold over my imagination.

The policeman who interviewed me later asked me why I hadn’t accepted MacKenzie’s offer to leave. “Because I knew he wouldn’t,” I answered.

“Dr. Coleman’s less sure.”

“Peter was frightened for Jess-it’s what he wanted to believe. All I could see was that we’d all be more vulnerable if I did what MacKenzie wanted. While I was free and barring the exit, he was the one in the trap…but if I’d entered the room the dynamics would have changed completely.”

“Weren’t you worried that Ms. Derbyshire would fall?”

“Yes…but I felt she could hang on a bit longer. In any case, I couldn’t have moved the trap easily. I’d have had to look at it-which would have meant taking my eyes off MacKenzie-and he’d have jumped me immediately. I don’t see I had a choice except to stay where I was.”

“Even when Dr. Coleman was threatened?”

“Even when,” I agreed. “It’s easier to understand if you think of it as a game of chess. As long as I controlled the doorway to the hall, MacKenzie’s moves were limited.”

The policeman eyed me curiously. He’d introduced himself as Detective Inspector Bagley and, despite my request that he call me Connie, he insisted on the more formal Ms. Burns. He was ginger-haired and stocky, not much older than I was, and, though he remained courteous throughout, his suspicion of me was obvious. “Were you that cold-blooded at the time?”

“I tried to be. It wasn’t always easy…but I couldn’t see what good it would do any of us if I didn’t stay one step ahead of him.”

Bagley nodded. “Did you and Ms. Derbyshire make the stinger, Ms. Burns? Was that part of the plan to stay one step ahead?”

“No.”

“According to Dr. Coleman, MacKenzie said the stinger was meant for him. Are you sure you didn’t plan a trap that went wrong?”

“No,” I said honestly. “In any case, I don’t think Peter heard MacKenzie right. He speaks with a very strong accent. The way I heard him, he said it was meant for me.”

“So it was MacKenzie who made it? Along with the other five we found?”

“He must have done.”

Bagley consulted some notes. “Dr. Coleman says you told MacKenzie that your plan was to kill him.”

“Only when he asked me what I’d do if he used the axe on Jess. I didn’t have any plan when I first went into the hall except to try to convince him the police were on their way.”

“That’s not the impression Dr. Coleman received, Ms. Burns. He says you knew what you were doing from the moment you appeared in the doorway. He also says MacKenzie had the same impression.”

I shrugged. “What was I doing?”

“Looking for revenge.”

“Is that what Peter thought?”

“He certainly believes MacKenzie thought it. He says he was frightened of you.”

“Good,” I said dispassionately.

BEING CLOTHED made a difference. Even a flimsy cotton top and sarong felt like body armour compared with the shameful exposure of nakedness. When I made the decision to stay in the doorway, I wiped each palm down the side of my skirt while I balanced the axe in the other, then tucked my hem into my knicker elastic to give myself more freedom of movement.

Being able to see changed everything. For the first time, I understood how fear had distorted my perceptions of the man I was up against. For all the violence that I knew MacKenzie could generate, I saw him as a little man, not much taller than I was. And he couldn’t disguise what was going on inside his head. His eyes darted to and fro, checking and double-checking that he still had control of his environment; but whenever he looked at me now, it was with doubt.

Did I still recognize his authority? How much did I care about the other people in the room? Was my hatred of him greater than my loyalty to them? How frightened was I? How much sympathy did I have for Jess’s plight?

“She’ll not be able to stand there all night,” he told me, “and neither will you. Better do as I say, Connie.”

“No.”

He raised the knife to Peter’s face again. “Shall I cut the doctor?”

“No.”

“Then come in.”

“No.”

He placed the tip of the blade under Peter’s right eye. “One flick and he’s blind. Do you want to be responsible for that, feather?” Peter cringed into the back of the chair. “Look at him,” MacKenzie said in disgust. “He’s even more scared than you were.”

“Then untie him and see if he’s as scared when his hands are free.”

“You’d like that.”

“Of course,” I agreed unemotionally. “You ought to be able to take him easily if you were in the SAS. But you never were, were you?”

He didn’t rise to the bait, but I hadn’t expected him to. Instead, he stared at Peter with contempt. “Your father showed more spirit than this creep.”

It was a tactic he’d used with me, and I’m sure on every other victim. The more a person’s belittled the harder it is to retain a sense of worth. I tried the same ploy on him. “What do you think I’m going to do if you use that knife?” I asked with as much scorn as I could muster. “You can’t really be stupid enough to think I’ll suck your cock again. Or maybe you are? Your mother’s IQ was measured at retard levels.”

It was like water off a duck’s back. He played the point of the blade between Peter’s eyes again. “You’ll do what I want I you to do, Connie, the way you did before.”

Peter’s terror was so intense I could feel it. It palpated the air. And I was cold-blooded. I remember thinking, You haven’t begun to experience what I experienced, Peter, or even what Jess is experiencing now. I was angry with him, too, because his fear was feeding MacKenzie’s confidence.

I managed to produce enough saliva to project a globule of spit on to the floor. “That’s what I think of you, you little fucker,” I growled at MacKenzie. “You try anything on me and you’re dead. You should listen to the voices in your head that tell you how frightening women are. You daren’t go near them if their hands are free.”

That didn’t seem to trouble him either.

“Do you know what the prostitutes in Freetown called you?” I said with an abrupt laugh. “ ‘Zoo Queen.’ They thought you were gay because you hated women so much…and the story went that you shafted dogs because you couldn’t afford pretty boys. Why do you think the Europeans gave you such a wide berth? The first thing any of us learnt was, don’t shake hands with Harwood or you’ll catch whatever his ridgeback has.”

I had his attention.

“I told the police you could only get a hard on when dogs were present,” I went on, fishing for anything that would provoke him. “Nothing I did excited you. Look at you now. You’re far more aroused by Peter than you are by me or Jess. You can only do it with women when they’re tied up and subservient. They remind you of your mother…grunting and sweating under any man she brought home.”

He didn’t answer, just stared at me.

“You have to blindfold women so they won’t see the size of your dick,” I went on, “and you force fellatio on them so you won’t have to come into contact with anything intimate. Breasts and vaginas scare the shit out of you. You can fuck an anus, but you sure as hell can’t fuck a vagina.” This time the hit was a very direct one if the momentary shock in his eyes was anything to go by. “It’s all in your profile. They call it ‘stage fright’ because you can’t hold an erection-”

“Shut up!” he hissed, making a convulsive movement of his hand and stabbing the point of the knife towards me. “You’re doing my head in!”

I swallowed desperately to find more saliva. “You’re a joke,” I grated back. “Your mother’s turned you into a laughing-stock. She said you never had much of a penis and it made you obsessional-”

His pale eyes gleamed with sudden hatred, and he launched himself out of his chair, charging at me like a bull. I couldn’t have been readier. The minute he moved, I was out of the door and running for the green baize door. I flung the axe under the stairs as I passed because I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it, and grabbed the brass doorknob with both hands. For one sickening moment my damp palms slid around the metal instead of turning it, and it was desperation that prompted me to scream as I dug my fingers in and wrenched at the handle for all I was worth.

18

INSPECTOR BAGLEY WOULDN’T believe that my recollection of what followed was as poor as I claimed. Yet the truth is I don’t remember it in any great detail. It remains a blur of noise and bodies, and a realization somewhere along the line that quantities of blood were pouring on to the flagstones.

I tried to explain to Bagley that if I’d known screams were all that was needed to incite mastiffs to attack a stranger, I’d have taken them with me in the first place instead of leaving them in the corridor to the kitchen. Why confront MacKenzie alone if I could have launched a cohort of giants at his throat? Because I had more faith in his ability to turn them on me than mine to turn them on him. Indeed, my only expectation when I left them behind the green baize door was that they’d create some confusion when I released them into the hall.

There hadn’t been time to plan. I think I gambled on winning a breathing space for us all to escape or, at the very least, that Jess would be able to issue commands herself and use the dogs to herd MacKenzie into a corner. Everything I did was ad-libbed, and based entirely on my certainty that I’d fail with a weapon. It was immaterial which I selected-axe or walking-stick-MacKenzie would have it off me as soon as I took the first swing.

“Then why remain in the hall?” Bagley asked. “Why retrieve the axe from under the stairs?”

“I don’t know. There was so much noise I couldn’t work out what was happening. It’s weird. The dogs never made a sound while they were in the corridor…but when I opened the door they went ballistic…straight for MacKenzie. But why him? Why not me? It wasn’t that long since they’d had me pinned against the outhouse door.”

“He was in front of them.”

“How did he get past them in the first place?”

“Are you sure he didn’t break in before Ms. Derbyshire came back?”

“Pretty sure. The phone line wasn’t cut until after I emailed my parents…and the only unlocked window you found was the one in the office. Yet I remember looking at that catch while Jess and I were in there earlier, and it was definitely closed then.”

“He certainly came in that way. He scraped the paint when he used his flick knife to slip the catch…and left traces of mud and grass on the carpet. It’s also the window where the phone line enters. The whole operation-cutting the wire and forcing the lock-wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. We think the most likely explanation is that he’d been watching you for some time from outside the garden and took advantage of Dr. Coleman’s arrival to break in. While the dogs were distracted, he had plenty of time to circle round. He would have seen how straightforward that window was if he’d been watching you and Ms. Derbyshire through binoculars.”

I pulled a face. “We made it easy for him.”

Bagley shook his head. “If he was determined to get in, he’d have found another way.” He went back to what had happened after I’d released the dogs into the hall. “Dr. Coleman said you were screaming all the time. He was afraid you’d been wounded.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Please try, Ms. Burns,” he murmured patiently. “The explanation you gave Dr. Coleman was that you thought the mastiffs were fighting over a cat. But there is no cat at Barton House.”

I do remember freezing. The roaring and snarling shot iced water through my veins and I stood in petrified fear for what seemed like an eternity. The echoing guttural noises were amplified by the stone floor and the high ceiling above the stairwell, and my response was to do what I’d done in the Baghdad cellar-stand like a pillar of salt until the frenzy died down.

If I was screaming, I wasn’t conscious of it, although I’m not convinced that Peter’s recollection of events was any clearer than mine. All he really saw was MacKenzie’s sudden leap from the chair in pursuit of me, and he developed the rest out of an overactive imagination. For example, he persuaded the police that I gave the dogs commands-first to attack, then to stand back-but as I kept telling Bagley, I couldn’t have been screaming and giving commands at the same time. In any case, Jess hadn’t taught me which commands to use.

“I can’t accept that, Ms. Burns. You’re a resourceful woman. You didn’t have a statement from Mrs. MacKenzie either, yet you were able to give a plausible account of what might have been in it. The same with the nonexistent profile.”

“It was all very vague. I was only repeating generalizations from case studies I found on the Internet.” I paused. “I knew quite a lot about him already…which is the part Peter forgets. MacKenzie gave away more than he realized in Baghdad.”

“I think you’ll find Dr. Coleman stands in awe of your investigative abilities,” said Bagley with a small smile. “As far as he’s concerned, you’d have discovered how to control Ms. Derbyshire’s dogs within half an hour of knowing her.”

“I’m phobic,” I protested. “Tonight’s the first time I’ve been able to go within ten metres of a dog. I’m sure Dr. Coleman’s told you that.”

“Indeed, but you’re not deaf and blind, Ms. Burns.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ve spent three months watching and listening to the commands Ms. Derbyshire gives. Did you learn nothing from that?”

I might have been flattered by Peter’s glowing description of my ascendancy over psychopaths and mastiffs if it hadn’t resulted in prolonged questioning about my motives. It was explained to me in no uncertain terms that under UK law a home owner or tenant had the right to defend his property and himself against intruders. For the purposes of the law “himself” included any family and friends who were under his roof at the time and whose lives he believed to be threatened.

However, the level of force used against the intruder had to be “reasonable,” and premeditation of any kind-be it setting traps, inflicting further punishment on a man already disabled, or pursuing him for the purposes of revenge-was a criminal offence. In simple terms, a pack of mastiffs could be used to corral an intruder but not to tear his throat out; homemade stingers, placed about a house with the intention of maiming and wounding, were illegal; as was the use of an axe against an intruder who was already subdued.

Bagley’s biggest question mark was over why I’d re-entered the house when my obvious course of action was to do what I’d planned and run to the nearest hillside to phone the police. “Revenge” hung over my head like a bad smell. I’d known Peter was alive because I saw him, and there was nothing to indicate that Jess was in the room, let alone in trouble. Indeed, at the point I turned round, I had no reason to believe that either of them was being threatened since I admitted I hadn’t noticed the duct tape on Peter’s mouth.

“It’s a ridiculous law,” I said with considerable indignation. “In Zimbabwe we were taught that an Englishman’s home is his castle.”

The Inspector wasn’t impressed by my playing the colonial card. “It is,” he assured me, “and he’s allowed to defend it as long as he doesn’t use disproportionate violence.”

“It’s an open invitation to burglars to bang their heads against the wall every time they’re caught,” I said crossly. “That way, they never leave empty-handed. They might not get away with the stereo system, but they can sure as hell sue for compensation on the grounds of unreasonable force.”

“You obviously read your newspapers.”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Mmm. Well, I don’t disagree, Ms. Burns, but it is the law…and I am obliged to enforce it. Why did you retrieve the axe?”

“Because I saw blood on the floor.”

A great deal of blood. It was like a war zone. Whoever was injured was pumping pints of the stuff onto the flagstones. I didn’t gave a thought to its being MacKenzie. Fate was never so obliging. I knew immediately that it was one of Jess’s dogs, and that MacKenzie’s flick knife had found an artery. I don’t know what was in my mind when I picked up the axe. Perhaps I did want revenge. I do remember thinking it was incredibly unfair.

“You talk as if I know how dogs behave,” I told Bagley, “and I don’t. I’ve spent years avoiding them because everywhere I go there’s rabies. It’s a different world. You learn to be wary around animals in hot climates. They lose their tempers in the heat just as people do.”

“You saw blood,” he reminded me patiently.

“I thought they might react like sharks-go into a feeding frenzy because of the smell.”

He eyed me doubtfully. “You mean eat MacKenzie?”

“Rip apart,” I corrected him, “the way hounds rip foxes.”

“So you picked up the axe to protect him?”

“And myself. It was all happening only a few feet away from me.”

“Did you know it was a mastiff that was dying?”

“Yes. I saw Bertie collapse.”

He glanced at some notes. “Do you recall what you did next?”

“Not really. All I could think about was trying to stop the fight.”

“So your plan was to use the axe on the mastiffs?”

“I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I had to do something.”

He held my gaze for a moment then returned to the notes. “According to Dr. Coleman you screamed ‘bastard’ then ordered the dogs behind you and brought the axe down on Mr. MacKenzie’s right hand…the one that held the flick knife. Dr. Coleman’s impression was that you wanted to defend the dogs from further damage…not Mr. MacKenzie.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to say except that Peter’s investing me with a level of control that I didn’t have. It’s true I hit MacKenzie’s hand, but it was a complete fluke. If I repeated the action a thousand times, there’d be a thousand different outcomes. I can’t even use a hammer properly…so how on earth could I expect to hit what I was aiming at with an axe?”

I could have proved the point better by telling him that my target had been MacKenzie’s head and I’d missed it by a yard, but that would have been a spectacular own goal since I was doing my best to persuade him that undue violence had never been part of my agenda. Or Jess’s. Or my father’s.

“And where were the dogs when this happened, Ms. Burns?”

“Milling around MacKenzie. It’s a miracle I didn’t hit one of them.”

“Indeed,” he said with heavy irony. “Perhaps MacKenzie’s hand was protruding conveniently from the pack.” He didn’t seem to expect an answer because he went on: “I’m having trouble understanding how someone with a phobia of dogs had the courage to wade into the middle of a fight between grown mastiffs. At a rough guess their combined weight must have been in excess of six hundred pounds…and by your own admission you thought they were engaged in a feeding frenzy. What you did was either very brave or very stupid.”

“Very stupid,” I assured him. “About as stupid as going back into the house in the first place…but you don’t think straight when you’re frightened.”

More irony. “That’s certainly true of most people.” He smiled slightly. “Tell me why the dogs decided to draw back.”

“I don’t know. I think the sound of the axe striking the stone might have startled them. Only the top half of the blade hit MacKenzie…the bottom half cracked one of the flags.”

He consulted his notes. “At which point you decided to tie him up?”

“Yes.”

“Even though he was wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Using his own duct tape…which meant you had to go back into the office?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t think to release Dr. Coleman and Ms. Derbyshire?”

“I didn’t have time. I was frightened of leaving MacKenzie free even for the seconds it took me to run in and out of the office.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because I was sure he was only winded. His eyes were open…and he was groaning. He called me a bitch when I kicked the flick knife away.” Wearily, I massaged my temples with my fingertips. “I thought about bashing him on the head to knock him out, as a matter of fact, but I didn’t how much force would be needed. I was afraid of killing him by mistake.”

“Mmm…Dr. Coleman mentions the groans. He says they stopped after you retrieved the tape. Did you decide to gag him as well, Ms. Burns?”

“Does Peter say he was gagged?”

He shook his head.

I chose to take that as a firm negative. “He passed out when I bound his hands together. If I’d realized I’d broken his fingers, I might have been a bit more careful…but, at that stage, I didn’t even know I’d made contact with them. Wouldn’t you expect an axe to chop them off…instead of just mangling them?”

“It depends when the axe was last sharpened.”

“I know that now. I didn’t at the time.”

“Wasn’t it obvious to you that he was incapacitated? He’d been savaged by a pack of dogs and attacked with an axe.”

I took a few seconds to order my thoughts. “No, it wasn’t obvious at all. I agree he looked a bit of a mess because he had Bertie’s blood all over him, but I’d seen him in fights in Sierra Leone and I knew he could take punches. I’d have been mad to risk it.”

The Inspector’s expression was sceptical. “Surely a more normal reaction would have been to get a doctor to him as fast as possible…particularly as there was one less than fifteen metres away?”

“That’s effectively what I did,” I said mildly, “and Peter agreed I was right to tie him up first. None of the blood was MacKenzie’s. He had the broken fingers and some bruising on his arms where the dogs had held him through his shirt, but no puncture wounds.”

“Did Ms. Derbyshire ever tell you that’s how she trained her dogs? To terrify and restrain rather than inflict damage?”

“No. All she ever said was that I had no reason to fear them, but she didn’t specify why.” I produced my most ingenuous smile. “If she had done, I’d have known MacKenzie wasn’t in any danger from them.”

“But you knew MacKenzie had a flick knife, so you knew the dogs were in danger from him. Presumably you also knew how angry the death of one of her mastiffs would make Ms. Derbyshire?”

“Not really,” I said apologetically. “I’m not a doggy person.”

His scepticism grew. “Why did you release Ms. Derbyshire before Dr. Coleman?”

“Because she was the most vulnerable. If she’d lost concentration she’d have fallen on the nails.”

“Then why didn’t you release Dr. Coleman directly afterwards?” He consulted the notes again. “He says you and Ms. Derbyshire left the room and it was several minutes before you came back again…which contradicts your earlier assertion that you took Dr. Coleman to Mr. MacKenzie as fast as you could.”

I sighed. “Only if you accept Peter’s estimate of how long anything took…but I honestly believe he’s given you some very exaggerated timings. You said he thought it was half an hour between him leaving the kitchen and my appearing in the office doorway, yet my estimate would be more like fifteen minutes. And as for the dogfight, there’s no way it lasted the five minutes Peter’s claiming. More like sixty seconds. In five minutes, MacKenzie could have killed every one of them.”

“Dr. Coleman’s used to emergencies, Ms. Burns. It’s his job. Why should his timings have been any less accurate than yours?”

“Because I have more experience of frightening situations. You learn very quickly in a war zone that everything becomes inflated…ten minutes under mortar bombardment seems like ten hours…a hundred-strong mob with machetes looks more like five hundred.” I leaned my elbows on the table. “I left Peter just long enough to see Jess to the top of the stairs-one minute max. She was very shaken and she didn’t know what MacKenzie had done with her clothes-so I told her to put on something of mine till we found them. Then I went back down and released Peter.”

The Inspector nodded as if he could accept that. “These being the clothes that were dropped outside the office window?”

“Yes. Jess thinks he did it to confuse the dogs in case they picked up his scent where he came in.”

“You should have left them there for the police to examine, Ms. Burns.”

“I couldn’t. Jess had nothing else to wear. Everything of mine was too long, and she needed her boots.”

Another nod. “Was Ms. Derbyshire in the hall when Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“No, she was still upstairs.”

“Where were the dogs?”

“With Jess. She wanted to check them over for stab wounds.”

“Excluding”-he checked his notes-“Bertie. He was already dead?”

“Yes.”

“Who decided he was dead, Ms. Burns? You? Or Ms. Derbyshire?”

In view of the doubt I’d thrown on Peter’s ability to estimate time, I suspected a neat little trap. “You only had to look at him,” I said flatly, “or smell him. His sphincter muscle had relaxed and the contents of his rectum were on the floor. I’m sure in other circumstances Jess would have tried for a pulse, but she was more concerned about the others. They were covered in blood as well.”

“What did you do while Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“Watched.”

I left out that Peter’s self-control deserted him and he swore like a trooper for a good minute after I removed his gag. At that stage he didn’t know who to blame for his perceived shortcomings. MacKenzie for humbling him? Me for being strong? Jess for taking most of the punishment? Himself for being frightened? His devastation increased when he saw Bertie, as if Bertie had somehow been sacrificed on the altar of his cowardice. Of course these “shortcomings” were his own creation-much as mine had been-for neither Jess nor I saw him in such terms.

Nevertheless, the result of this orgy of self-flagellation was that he set out to paint me and Jess in glowing colours. I became the iron lady who took control and exercised it-Peter even used the word “revenge” after describing what he’d seen on the DVD, claiming anything I did to MacKenzie was “reasonable.” Jess became the martyr figure who refused to give in to exhaustion or threats, and retained an icy composure even after the death of one of her dogs.

It left Bagley with the impression of two tough and determined women who, for different reasons, had wanted MacKenzie dead. An impression not helped by the various weapons hidden around the house, particularly Jess’s baseball bats and my carving knives. To Peter’s credit, he tried to set the record straight as soon as he realized the damage he’d done, but by then it was too late. If both Ms. Burns and Ms. Derbyshire were subject to panic attacks and agoraphobia, Bagley asked, why had we shown no evidence of it that night?

“You watched,” he echoed now. “Yet I understand Dr. Coleman asked you to call the police and an ambulance. Why didn’t you do that?”

“The landline wasn’t working.”

“But you knew your mobile worked in the attic.”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave Peter alone with MacKenzie.” I rested my forehead on my hands and stared at the table. “Look, what I’m going to say isn’t very kind, but it is true. Peter was petrified from beginning to end of the whole thing. I didn’t blame him-I don’t blame him now-but I guarantee MacKenzie would have freed himself somehow if I hadn’t stayed.”

“How?”

I dropped my hands into my lap. “Probably by pretending to be more injured than he was. Peter was uncomfortable about the way I’d bound his hands behind his back, particularly when he realized the fingers were broken. He wanted me to retie them at the front while MacKenzie was still unconscious.”

“But you refused. Why?”

“Because I wasn’t as convinced as Peter that he was unconscious.”

“You think a doctor would make a mistake about something like that?”

I shrugged. “It’s hardly difficult to fake but, in any case, it wasn’t a risk worth taking. I couldn’t see Peter leaping to my rescue if MacKenzie decided to grab me round the throat and throttle me. There’d have been a lot of hand-flapping and not much action. He made a hell of a fuss about getting Bertie’s blood on his trousers.”

It wasn’t a very fair description of Peter but it seemed to strike a chord with the Inspector. “Dr. Coleman certainly seems to have found the experience more”-he searched for the appropriate phrase-“soul-destroying than you and Ms. Derbyshire.”

“You don’t know much about women then,” I said flatly. “If it’ll bring an end to this, I’ll happily burst into tears and throw hysterics. Is that what you want me to do? It’s easily done…almost as easy as MacKenzie pretending to be unconscious.”

A gleam of humour appeared in his eyes. “I’d rather you told me why you persuaded Dr. Coleman to go back to his own house and call the emergency services from there. That puzzles me.”

“It didn’t happen like that,” I demurred. “It was Peter’s idea…I merely agreed it was sensible.”

The Inspector consulted his notes. “Dr. Coleman has the roles reversed, Ms. Burns. I quote: ‘When I told Connie we needed the police and an ambulance as a matter of priority, she pointed out that MacKenzie had cut the telephone line. She said the only option was for me to go home and call from there. I agreed.’ ”

“I honestly don’t recall it that way…but does it matter?”

He frowned. “Of course it matters. There were five working mobiles in the house, yours, Dr. Coleman’s and Ms. Derbyshire’s…plus Mr. MacKenzie’s and your father’s. We’ve already established there’s a perfectly good signal in the attic, so why not send Dr. Coleman upstairs? Why tell him going home was the only option?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember doing that…but, even if I did, how does it make me the bad guy? Peter knew about the signal in the attic. He could have thought it through just as well as I could. It wasn’t a normal situation…we weren’t exactly sitting around, discussing the best way to proceed, you know. We were both shaking like leaves…and all I recall is jumping at the first suggestion that was going to bring us some help.”

“In fact Dr. Coleman expressed surprise when we told him it was possible to use a mobile at Barton House.”

“Then he’s two-faced,” I said crossly. “He knew all about the pyramid Jess built in the back bedroom so that I could use my laptop when I first arrived. You can ask my landlady. It was Peter who told her about it when I asked permission to install broadband.”

The Inspector steepled his hands in front of his mouth and studied me reflectively for several seconds. “He recalls that now,” he agreed, “but not at the time. And you didn’t remind him.”

“Then I can only apologize for a blonde moment,” I said sarcastically. “Has Peter apologized for a senior moment? It all happened very fast. As soon as he made up his mind to go, he ran for the door.” I folded my hands on the table. “I wish I could make you understand how disorientated we all were…but maybe you’ve never had a psychopath break into your house and take you prisoner.”

He didn’t rise to that bait either. “So what happened next? When did Ms. Derbyshire join you in the hall?”

“Almost immediately. She heard Peter’s car on the gravel and came down to find out what was happening.”

“Were the dogs with her?”

“No. She left them in the bedroom…she was worried they’d start sniffing around Bertie.”

“What was she wearing?”

“My dressing-gown. It was too long for her and trailed across the floor. She knelt down to stroke the dog, and-” I sighed. “It all got very messy.”

“What was on her feet?”

“Nothing. None of my shoes fit her. Which is why she asked me to find her boots.”

“But you weren’t wearing shoes either.”

“No, I took them off before I went into the hall. I didn’t want MacKenzie to hear me coming.”

Bagley nodded. “What made you look for Ms. Derbyshire’s clothes outside the office window?”

“Because they weren’t in the office. MacKenzie had kept her knickers-he’d put them in the bag-but there was no sign of anything else. Then Jess told me she’d heard the window open and close after he put her on the footstool…so I raised the sash and spotted them immediately.”

“And you went through the kitchen to retrieve them?”

“You know I did. You found my bloody footprints.”

“Mmm. And during the time it took for you to go outside and return, Ms. Derbyshire was alone with Mr. MacKenzie?”

“Yes,” I said wearily. “We’ve been over this twice already. I ran-you can measure my strides-and when I returned, the only thing that was different was that Jess was sitting in the armchair under the stairs. If you spray it with Luminol I’m sure you’ll get a reaction from the bloodstains on my dressing-gown.”

“You’re very knowledgable about crime scenes, Ms. Burns.”

“I’ve covered a fair number of trials over the years. It’s amazing how much information you pick up from hours of police evidence. You should try it yourself some time.”

It was impossible to provoke him to anything other than displays of polite scepticism, except when it came to MacKenzie’s disappearance. On that subject, his disbelief was total. Yet again, he took me through the sequence of events.

“You say MacKenzie was lying on his side and you could see the duct tape was still firmly in place.”

“Yes.”

“You then handed Ms. Derbyshire her clothes and suggested she have a bath to wash off Bertie’s blood because it was clearly distressing her. She went directly upstairs, and shortly afterwards you heard the water running.”

“Right.”

“You were also distressed by the dog’s blood, so you chose to wash in the kitchen sink before changing into a skirt and T-shirt that were waiting to be ironed in the scullery. And to avoid the blood setting on your stained clothes, you left them soaking in a bleach solution in the sink…because they were ‘whiteish’ and made out of cotton.”

“Yes.”

“Did you expect it to work?”

“Not really, but it seemed worth a try. My wardrobe’s hardly bursting, and it was only dog’s blood. The pathologists will prove me right. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that DNA is still recoverable after a garment’s been washed.”

“Except we’re not talking about washing, Ms. Burns, we’re talking about bleaching…and all the literature says bleach destroys DNA.”

“Really?” I murmured. “I didn’t know that.”

“Why did Ms. Derbyshire do the same thing? Why did she leave your dressing-gown in a bleach solution in the bath? Was it your suggestion? Did you take the bleach to her after you’d finished in the kitchen?”

I dropped my chin onto my clasped hands. “It’s ‘No’ to the last two questions, and ‘That’s what women do’ to the first two. Every woman in the world has a problem with bloodstains on her clothes. You should watch African girls spending hours at the rivers, hammering away with stones to get rid of them. We’re all programmed to do the same thing…never mind our cultures. Do you have a wife? Ask her.”

“Did you take the bleach upstairs, Ms. Burns?” he repeated.

“I’ve already said I didn’t. There was a bottle of Domestos beside the lavatory in the bathroom. Look”-I paused, wondering if it was wise to continue-“you must see how ridiculous this line of questioning is.” What the hell! I was exhausted. “Peter wasn’t away more than twenty minutes…and the police and ambulance arrived shortly after he returned. How could Jess and I kill MacKenzie and get rid of his body in that short time?”

“You couldn’t.”

“Then why keep implying we were in some sort of conspiracy? Has Jess told you a different story?”

“No. Her account matches yours. MacKenzie was still tied up when she went for a bath, and she only learnt he’d gone when Dr. Coleman started shouting in the hall.”

19

POOR PETER. He became intimately acquainted with panic that night. His first idea when he found the front door wide open, and no MacKenzie on the floor, was that he was about to be jumped again. His second was that Jess and I were probably dead. His third-not very sensible in view of the first two, as they suggested MacKenzie was hovering around with the axe-was to start hollering for us.

His voice was high-pitched and uneven, and I heard it in the kitchen. “Connie! Jess! Where are you? Are you all right?”

I called back that I was in the kitchen, but when it became obvious that he hadn’t heard me, I dried my hands and went down the corridor. Peter described me as behaving “with extraordinary calm.” Indeed, I was so relaxed that when I urged him “to get a grip,” he came to the strange decision that Jess and I had moved MacKenzie somewhere else.

“But you hadn’t?”

“Of course not. Peter told me to leave him where he was until the ambulance arrived. How could we have moved him, anyway, without releasing his feet? We couldn’t have carried him.”

“Two of you might have been able to.”

“Where to?” I asked reasonably. “You’ve searched the house three times, and he’s not here. And you’ve tracked every one of our footprints.”

“Those we can find. Blood dries quicker than you think, Ms. Burns. We’ve found your outward tracks through the kitchen when you went for Ms. Derbyshire’s clothes, but there’s nothing to show you returned.”

“Except that I must have done since she was wearing them by the time the first police car arrived.”

I think he found my composure as frustrating as Peter had done. They both felt that hand-wringing and breast-beating suited the mood better than hard-headed analysis. Peter lost it completely in the middle of the hall when he asked me what I’d done with MacKenzie. He even accused Jess and me of “doing something awful” since MacKenzie couldn’t have freed himself without assistance.

“And did you, Ms. Burns?”

“No.”

“Then how did he free himself?”

“I don’t know. At a guess, he used Jess’s Leatherman. She said he took it off her. If it was in his trouser pocket, he might have been able to move his arms enough to wriggle it out.”

“Hard to pull out a blade with broken fingers.”

“He had quite an incentive,” I said dryly. “He was about to be arrested.”

Bagley studied me for a moment. “Why weren’t you as worried as Dr. Coleman when you saw that MacKenzie was missing? He could have been anywhere…upstairs with Ms. Derbyshire for example.”

“Jess arrived on the landing about the same time as I came into the hall…and Peter’s voice was so far up the register that most of what he said was incomprehensible. I’m not sure I even realized MacKenzie was missing until Peter started to calm down…and then we heard the sirens. It was all very quick.”

“You’re an observant woman, Ms. Burns. You must have noticed the floor was empty.”

“I was looking at Peter.”

But Bagley couldn’t accept that. “As soon as you realized Dr. Coleman was frightened, you’d have checked on MacKenzie as a matter of priority.”

I shrugged. “This would be a lot easier if Peter hadn’t given you such an inflated opinion of me. You seem to think I have an immediate grasp of what’s going on in any situation. Well, I don’t. I may have seen Bertie out of the corner of my eye-a shape-and assumed it was MacKenzie…although I don’t remember doing it, and I don’t remember thinking about it.” I tugged a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it with relief. “Just out of interest, why isn’t Peter being put through the third degree? He’s far more likely to have freed MacKenzie than Jess or I.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because he was worried about MacKenzie’s hands. Perhaps he decided to loosen the duct tape when he came back in.”

“I don’t think so.”

I absorbed as much nicotine in one shot as I could, then blew the smoke in Bagley’s direction. “Is that a bloke thing, Inspector? The fact that you’re willing to believe a man, but not a woman?”

He took it in good part. “Ms. Derbyshire heard Dr. Coleman’s car come back. She says there was a few seconds’ time lapse between that and his shouting. I haven’t ruled out that he did what you suggest but it seems unlikely. He didn’t have a knife on him when we searched him, and he’d have needed one to cut through the duct tape.”

“Perhaps MacKenzie took it off him.”

“Did Dr. Coleman look as if he’d been in a fight?”

“No…but if he had any sense he’d have relinquished the knife and run out the front door before he got slashed with it.”

“Leaving MacKenzie to collect his bag and disappear through the office window? Is that what you’re saying happened?”

“Why not? It’s what you’re suggesting Jess and I did, isn’t it?”

“We think he left through the front door…and, from the impressions on the floor, he appears to have been on bare feet.” Bagley smiled slightly. “We have a lot of bare feet, Ms. Burns. It’s quite confusing.”

“All different sizes…and with different toeprints.”

“Prints don’t register well on stone. There was a lot of skating done through the blood. It’s hard to say who went where when.”

“Only in the hall. Have you found MacKenzie’s prints anywhere else?”

He wasn’t going to answer my questions. “One line we’re pursuing is that he managed to ease his shoes off in order to slip out of the duct tape round his ankles. You told us you wrapped the tape round the bottom of his trousers. Do you recall how many turns you made and whether he was wearing socks?”

I thought back. “Not really. About four, perhaps. I just wound it till it seemed tight enough. I don’t remember seeing socks.”

“What sort of trousers were they?”

“Denims.”

“Do you remember Dr. Coleman undoing the fly to help him breathe?”

I nodded.

“So all MacKenzie had to do was slide out of the trousers to free himself?”

I saw criticism immediately. “I’m damned if I’ll take the blame for that,” I said indignantly. “It wasn’t me who unbuttoned his stupid trousers. Blame Peter. He could have worked it out just as well as I could.”

“I’m not blaming you, Ms. Burns, I’m pointing out what might have happened. Did you bind his hands in the same way? Was the duct tape over his cuffs or against his skin?”

I was very tempted to say it was over his cuffs but it wouldn’t have been true. “Against his skin. The cuffs were rolled back.”

He’d obviously been told the same by Peter because he nodded. “He had more opportunities once his feet were free, of course. Do you remember what happened to the flick knife?”

“I kicked it away from him. As far as I remember, it went under the stairs.”

“We haven’t found it.”

I shrugged, suspecting another trap. By his twisted logic, victims were probably required to retrieve all pieces of evidence and line them up for inspection when the police arrived.

“A flick knife would have been easier to manipulate than Ms. Derbyshire’s Leatherman…but, in either event, he seems to have taken them with him. We haven’t found the Leatherman either.”

I drew in a lungful of smoke. “Why didn’t you tell me this at the beginning? Why accuse me of murder if you’ve known all along how he freed himself?”

“No one’s accusing you of murder, Ms. Burns.”

“Well, it feels like it,” I said. “The only difference between you and one of Mugabe’s henchman is that I still have some fingernails left.”

He lost patience with me. “Interviewing witnesses is a necessary part of any criminal inquiry, and it’s not police policy to exempt women. I agree it can be a stressful experience…however, given your views, I’m surprised you feel unequal to it.”

I grinned. “Ouch!”

He took an irritated breath. “Did you or Ms. Derbyshire move MacKenzie’s canvas bag from the office to the hall, Ms. Burns?”

“My bag,” I corrected. “He stole it from me in Baghdad.”

“Did you move it?”

“Yes. I handed it to Jess on my way to collect her clothes so that she could check the pockets. He’d put her knickers in the flap, but I thought he might have taken her bra as well. He was that kind of pervert.”

“Do you remember what she did with it?”

“I think she left it on the chair.”

“Did either of you take anything out of it?”

“I can’t speak for Jess, but I didn’t.” I stubbed out my cigarette. “I should have done. My father’s binoculars and mobile were in it. Why do you ask?”

“Just tying up loose ends.” He saw my frown. “The SOCOs found your imprints on the office floor, but none that matched those by the front door. We wondered why, since you and Dr. Coleman both said the bag was by the desk.”

He was very thorough, I thought. “Have you found the bag? Why did you think we might have removed something?”

“It was a hope, Ms. Burns. If you’d kept something of MacKenzie’s we’d have a better chance of extracting some DNA.”

“Oh, I see.”

“We have foot- and fingerprints but nothing else. There might have been saliva traces on your father’s mobile or an eyelash on the binoculars, although the most likely source would have been your clothes, since you came into contact with him when you tied him up. If Ms. Derbyshire’s dogs had drawn blood or the axe had broken his skin-” he shrugged.

“What about Jess’s clothes or Peter’s clothes?”

He shook his head. “If you’d left Ms. Derbyshire’s untouched, we might have found a rogue hair, but there was too much moving and handling…and Dr. Coleman lost anything on his way back to his house.”

“Do you need DNA evidence if you have his fingerprints? Peter and I can both identify him.”

Bagley smiled rather grimly. “It depends if he’s recognizable when we find him, Ms. Burns.”

CHAOS FOLLOWED hard on the arrival of the police and the ambulance. I remember the terrible clamour as the sirens wailed into the drive, and the ensuing confusion as Peter tried to explain that the “patient” had vanished. We all had different priorities. Mine was to find out what had happened to my parents, Jess’s was her dogs, and the police wanted a clear picture of events before they did anything at all.

In the first instance, they wanted to know whose blood was all over the floor and why it had been trodden in so freely, and they weren’t prepared to accept that it had all come from Bertie. Neither could I when I looked at it through the objective eyes of startled newcomers. What the dogs hadn’t flicked around in the immediate aftermath of Bertie’s death, Peter, Jess and I had tracked across the flagstones in our movements to and fro. It looked like a bloodbath and felt like a bloodbath, and the police chose to view it as one until tests proved different.

We learnt later that Bertie suffered massive haemorrhaging from his carotid artery where MacKenzie had slashed the flick knife across one side of his throat. Jess’s grief was that he didn’t die immediately but continued to pump blood until his heart gave up. Mine was that I hadn’t used the axe sooner to split MacKenzie’s head open. In the great scheme of things, Bertie’s contribution to life, liberty and happiness so outweighed MacKenzie’s that there was no contest between which of them deserved to live and which deserved to die.

Much to Jess’s and my annoyance, we were relegated to second place behind Peter. While he was invited into the dusty dining-room to give the first account of what had happened, we were instructed to wait in the kitchen under the eagle eyes of a WPC. By that time, several more police cars had arrived and the house and garden were being scoured for MacKenzie. I kept trying to raise the issue of my parents but no one wanted to hear. “One thing at a time,” I was told. In the end Jess threatened to punch the WPC if she didn’t whip up some action, and instructions were finally given to alert the Metropolitan police.

Inspector Bagley was curious about why I hadn’t used my mobile to contact my parents myself. If they were such a priority, he argued, I’d have headed for the attic as soon as Peter left the house. “You could have phoned Alan Collins,” he pointed out. “He knew the history, and he was already in contact with the Met.”

I did understand his dilemma. An obsessive need to clean seemed a poor excuse when the lives of well-loved parents were at stake. Predictably, we disagreed about how long Jess and I had been alone with MacKenzie-the Inspector favoured forty minutes (Peter’s assessment), while I favoured twenty. We compromised on thirty when police records showed that the time lapse between Peter’s 999 call and the arrival of the first police car was just over twenty-three minutes, allowing seven minutes for Peter to drive home from Barton House. But, in the Inspector’s view, even thirty minutes suggested I hadn’t accounted for all my actions.

“That’s a mighty lot of washing, Ms. Burns, and it doesn’t explain why you only remembered your parents when we arrived. You admit you saw your father’s binoculars in the bag. Why didn’t they prompt you to contact him?”

His suspicion wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t tell him DI Alan Collins of the Greater Manchester Police had a file on MacKenzie. Alan only entered the equation when he contacted Dorset police himself at lunchtime on Sunday, after hearing via the Met in London that my father had been rushed to hospital at three o’clock in the morning after being found, brutally attacked, in his sitting-room. With no details of what had happened at Barton House, the Met simply informed Alan that Keith MacKenzie was a suspect in the assault, and the request to check the flat had come from Dorset police.

In the belief that MacKenzie would head straight for me, but unable to warn me because he didn’t have my address or number, he rang Dorset’s Winfrith headquarters. What he told them subsequently of my history with MacKenzie, which was a great deal more detailed than anything I’d said, persuaded Bagley that I was not only well-practised at withholding information but also made a habit of it.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you failed to report this man to the Iraqi authorities, Ms. Burns? Or that it’s only in the last two weeks that you’ve divulged any information at all about your captivity?”

I toyed with saying, “You didn’t ask,” but decided he wasn’t in the mood for flippancy. “There hasn’t been time. I’ve tried to fill in some of the gaps, but most of your questioning has been about what happened here.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I suppose I could have insisted on talking about Baghdad, but wouldn’t that have made you more suspicious?”

His eyes didn’t drop, but a perplexed frown puckered his forehead. “I can’t make you out at all,” he said. “From Dr. Coleman’s description of the video, you suffered the most appalling abuse at this man’s hands…Alan Collins says you were so frightened of him you wouldn’t divulge his identity and went into hiding…Ms. Derbyshire says you haven’t eaten or been out for a week…your parents are in hospital…MacKenzie’s still free…yet you’re sitting here in front of me as cool as a cucumber.”

“Is that a question?”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Yes. Why are you so calm?”

“I’m not sure a man would understand.”

“Try me.”

“In the first place, my parents aren’t dead,” I said.

There was no mystery about how they both ended up at the flat as MacKenzie’s prisoners. My father did exactly as Jess described, set out to lure MacKenzie into a trap, using himself as bait. Afterwards, he was given the same lecture I received about vigilantism and revenge but, as Dad took most of the punishment, no charges were brought despite question marks over his purchase of wood and nails on Friday morning.

He wasn’t very forthcoming about the details of his plan-claiming only that his intention was to confine MacKenzie and call the police-and denied knowledge or responsibility for the homemade “stingers” that ended up in Barton House. Of course Jess and I did, too, which left MacKenzie as the guilty party. I told Alan privately that my father had made them, and MacKenzie had brought them to Barton House; but, with the law as it was, none of us was going to admit to it publicly.

Initially, my father had some difficulty agreeing with Met detectives that his idea of an ambush was ill-considered and naïve, but under pressure from my mother he ate humble pie. Perhaps it was a mercy he could only nod his agreement, because the air would have turned blue if he’d been able to speak. The only detail he genuinely conceded was that, had he entered the flat accompanied by a police officer, MacKenzie wouldn’t have taken him prisoner so easily.

It’s unclear how long MacKenzie had been there-several hours if his intensive search of the place was anything to go by-but my father had no inkling of danger when he let himself in on the Friday evening. The last thing he remembered was stooping to collect the post; the next, waking up trussed and helpless in the sitting-room. He’s even less communicative about this experience than he is about Mugabe’s thugs, but when he reached hospital sixty hours later, he had five fractured ribs, a dislocated jaw and so many bruises his skin was a uniform purple.

My mother says he refused to tell MacKenzie anything and would probably have allowed himself to be punched and kicked to death if she hadn’t decided to go back to the flat herself on Saturday afternoon. “I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I tried phoning him at the flat and on his mobile, but both went straight to voice messaging. Then I called you and the same thing happened.” She smiled rather ruefully. “I could have murdered you that morning, Connie. I was so worried.”

“Sorry.”

She squeezed my hand. “It all worked out for the best in the end. If you had answered…or if Jess had passed on my message a little more promptly…you’d have persuaded me to stay in the hotel. And where would your father be then?”

Six feet under, I thought. There’s a limit to how much punishment anyone can take, and MacKenzie’s frustration would have killed him eventually. He’s a good old boy, my Dad-a tough old boy-but he’s lucky one of his ribs didn’t snap completely and puncture a lung. I asked my mother why she hadn’t called the police, instead of going to the rescue herself, and she said it would have required too much explanation.

“Did you get the vigilante lecture?” I asked her.

She shook her head with a twinkle in her eyes. “I burst into tears and said how foolish I’d been…but then I’m not as bullheaded as you and your father.”

In fact, despite a gut-feeling that Dad was in trouble, she was more inclined to think there was a rational explanation for the phones not being answered. As I had done, she wondered if he’d gone out for food or was refusing to answer because he’d instructed her not to contact him.

“I expected to have my head bitten off for meddling,” she admitted, “but I couldn’t let the nonsense go on. You must have known he’d do something silly when you refused to talk to him. There isn’t a cut-off point when a man like your father stops trying to prove himself, Connie…any more than there is for you. I wish you’d learn that caring what others think is a form of slavery.”

Her safety net in the event of trouble-a little simplistic as things turned out-was to ask the taxi driver to wait while she went inside for his money. As he wouldn’t leave until she paid him, she must either return with her wallet or force him to come knocking on the door. “I was as naïve as your father,” she said. “I should have realized the driver wouldn’t care who handed over the money as long as he got it.”

MacKenzie must have been watching from the window because he was waiting behind the front door when Mum opened it. As soon as she was over the threshhold with her suitcase, he slammed it shut and had her mouth and hands bound with duct tape before she even reached the sitting-room. When the knocking began and an angry voice demanded payment, he calmly bundled her out of sight, took her wallet from her bag and paid up. “He’s not stupid,” she said reluctantly. “Most people would have panicked.”

“Did you?” I asked her.

“I did when I saw your father. He looked terrible-face all bruised and misshapen-body curled into a ball to protect himself. He started crying when MacKenzie threw me on the carpet beside him.” She shook her head. “That’s the only time I felt I shouldn’t have gone back. Poor love. He was devastated. He’d tried so hard to protect me…and there I was.”

She had no qualms about bargaining my address against their lives. “It would have been madness to do anything else,” she said. “While there’s life there’s hope, and I knew you’d worry if you couldn’t get me at the hotel. I prayed you’d phone that policeman friend of yours in Manchester. Your father was unhappy about it…but”-she squeezed my hand again-“I was sure you’d understand.”

I did. I do. Whatever nightmares I still have would be a thousand times worse if I were carrying my parents’ deaths on my conscience. My mother believes my father’s “unhappiness” related entirely to his fears for me, but his concerns were rather more practical. He was appalled at her naïve assumption that a man like MacKenzie would honour a promise to leave them alive if she gave him the information he wanted.

He tried to dissuade her, but his dislocated jaw had seized the muscles in his face, making speaking difficult. To stop any further attempts, MacKenzie muzzled him completely by winding several turns of duct tape round his head. The ironic upside was that, with his jaw supported, my father’s pain lessened, and he survived the next twelve hours in considerably more comfort than he would otherwise have done. The downside was that it increased my mother’s concern for him, thereby encouraging compliance.

“Weren’t you worried that MacKenzie would kill you anyway?” I asked her.

“Of course…but what could I do? He threatened to strangle your father in front of me if I refused. At least there were slivers of hope if I betrayed you…none at all if I betrayed Brian.” A small crease of doubt furrowed her brow. “You do see that, don’t you, darling? It was a card game…and you were my only trump. I had to use you.”

I didn’t know how to answer. Absolutely…? Don’t worry about it…? I’d have done the same…? They were all just anodyne forms of words that meant nothing if she didn’t believe them. “Thank God you had enough faith in me,” I said bluntly. “Dad wouldn’t have done. He still thinks of me as a little girl in pigtails who screams every time she finds a spider in the shower.”

“Only because he loves you.”

“I know.” We exchanged smiles. “He was very brave, Mum. Is his tail wagging now? It damn well ought to be.”

Her smile played around her eyes. “You’re so alike, you two. You both assume the only way to win is to show no weakness. You should have played bridge with Geraldine Summers. I’ve never known anyone conjure so many triumphs out of hands that contained nothing.”

“By bluffing? Is that what you did with MacKenzie?”

“I couldn’t do anything until he removed my gag because he wanted the password to your father’s laptop. Before that, he went through my suitcase. I told him he wouldn’t find your address in the computer, but I suggested he read the email you sent to Alan Collins. I hoped he’d realize how pointless it would be to kill any of us.”

“What did he say?”

“That you’d chosen a good parallel in the story of the death-ray and the Chinaman. The only point of killing was to gain from it. He wasn’t very talkative-I doubt he spoke more than twenty sentences from the moment I arrived-and he became extremely agitated when I asked what he gained from killing. That’s when he said he’d strangle your father if I didn’t tell him what he wanted…and the gain would be the look on both our faces when it happened.” She shook her head. “And I’m sure he was telling the truth…I’m sure that’s why he does it.”

I felt a shiver of goosebumps on my arms. “Then why didn’t he go ahead with it?”

“Because your address was my trump card, darling. Supposing I was lying? He had no way of checking unless he phoned you-which would have alerted you-so I persuaded him to take me along as security. It was the only bargaining chip I had…and it meant your father and I stayed alive for a few more hours. I felt I’d won the trick when he produced the car keys and demanded to know where the car was parked.” She laughed suddenly. “Poor Brian! I don’t know which offended him more…my pandering to the brute or the brute driving his precious BMW.”

“You know damn well,” I said severely. “He was worried sick for you.”

Again, my father never speaks about the hours he lay on the sitting-room floor, except to say that his lowest moment was when I left my message and he couldn’t answer. I know he imagined the worst-we all do when situations are outside our control-but it wasn’t until the police broke into the flat in the early hours that the search began for my mother. She doesn’t dwell on those hours either, several of which were spent in the BMW’s boot, but her cramps were so severe by the time she was found that she had to be given morphine before her back and legs could be straightened out.

“It’s only when the bidding starts that you realize how many cards you have,” she went on. “The wretched man had to free me to walk to the car, and my price for not attempting to escape or draw attention to myself was that we left your father alive. If he could have put me in the boot immediately, I’m sure he’d have gone back to finish Dad off, but”-another laugh-“I’ve never been so glad of street parking before. You can’t mistreat women with half of Kentish Town watching.”

There wasn’t much else she could tell. She recalled MacKenzie tucking my father’s mobile and binoculars, together with their two wallets, into a canvas knapsack, which he tossed on to the back seat of the BMW. Then he taped her hands and feet again and told her he was going to move her to the boot as soon as they were clear of built-up areas. He warned her to keep her mouth shut until he did or he’d tie her up so tight she wouldn’t be able to breathe, but it wasn’t until they’d passed the Fleet service station on the M3 that he left the motorway and made the transfer on a quiet country road.

He must have rejoined the motorway because my mother remembered constant traffic noise but, as happened to me in the cellar, she quickly lost track of time. She remembered one other stop of about ten minutes, which was probably when he sent me the text, and her last contact with him was five minutes after the engine died for good. She’d been in darkness for so long that, when the boot suddenly opened, she had to close her eyes against the daylight.

“He apologized,” she said. “It was very strange.”

“For shutting you in?”

“No. For the fact that, if I’d given him the right address, he was going to come back and burn the car with me in it.” She gave a muted laugh. “I presume he wanted me to panic but, you know, I was so tired by then I fell asleep…and the next thing I knew, the alarm was going like the clappers, and a rather jolly policeman was wrenching the boot open with a crowbar.”

It was all lies. She couldn’t possibly have slept with the level of cramp she had when she was found, any more than my father could have passed “a halfway reasonable night.”

From: Dan@Fry.ishma.iq

Sent: Sun 22/08/04 17:18

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject: MacKenzie

Of course I’m upset that you didn’t tell me at the time. I’m not made of stone, Connie.

What did you think I was going to do? Invoke your contract and force you to write the story with all the salacious details? Write it myself? Sell you to the highest bidder? I thought we trusted each other, C. I thought we loved each other…but maybe that was all on my side. Jesus! I’m not some fly-by-night. When have I ever not been there for you?

OK, I’ve calmed down a bit. I wrote that first paragraph three hours ago after reading your email. Now I’ve had some time to think. I realize I’m being unfair. I’ve decided not to delete the para because I want you to know that I am hurt. I wouldn’t have done anything differently if you’d told me the truth…except perhaps protect you a little harder. Reading between the lines, I wonder if that’s what you were afraid of? I’m sure it’s no accident that the only person you felt you could trust in the last few months was a woman.

The newswires are short on detail. They’re all naming MacKenzie and describing him as extremely dangerous and wanted for questioning re abduction and murder in the UK, Sierra Leone and Baghdad. But there appears to be a blackout where you’re concerned. Is this at your request? Or is it something the police have imposed because you’re still being questioned?

An answer ASAP would be helpful, as I’m already fielding questions re my piece on the Baycombe Group which named MacKenzie/O’Connell re passport fraud. How little/much should I say? Do you want it known that MacKenzie held you in the cellar? Or have you asked for anonymity under UK rape legislation?

AAGH! I can’t believe what a tosser I was. I keep remembering that I told you to play-act some tears and milk the sympathy vote. I am SO sorry, C. Will you see me if I come to England? Or have I burnt my boats? I’m due some time off.

Love, Dan.

PS. Sorry to be the journalist but do you have any updates on MacKenzie? Have there been any sightings, or do they think he’s fled the country?

20

“WHAT’S THE SECOND REASON?” Inspector Bagley asked, after reminding me that I’d said a man wouldn’t understand why I was so calm. “You said, ‘In the first place, my parents aren’t dead.’ What comes next?”

“Jess and Peter?” I suggested. “I wouldn’t be remotely calm if anything had happened to them.”

“No one would. Why should a man have trouble understanding that?”

“He wouldn’t. It’s what I thought of MacKenzie that he might have problems with. For a kick-off, I couldn’t get over how small he was. He’d been in my head for so long as something monstrous that to find he was just a dirty little runt was…strange. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t frightening…but I had him in perspective for the first time, and it felt good.”

“Was?” he echoed. “Had? Felt? Is he dead, Ms. Burns?”

We’d been this route several times already. “I don’t see how he can be,” I said. “I might wish it…I might earnestly pray for it…but he was alive the last time I saw him. It depends on whether broken fingers can kill you…but I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“If that’s all that was wrong with him.”

I shrugged. “Peter said it was.”

“You and Ms. Derbyshire were alone with MacKenzie for thirty minutes. A man can suffer a lot of damage in that time.”

“Then where is he? Why haven’t you found him?”

“I don’t know, Ms. Burns. That’s what I’m trying to discover.”

I showed my irritation. “How about I turn the questions on you? What sort of police force allows a man to escape as easily as MacKenzie seems to have done? He can’t have left the house much before you arrived…but it was two hours before you started searching the valley. He could have been anywhere by then…on a ferry out of Weymouth…on the train to Southampton airport. Have you checked those places?”

He gave an impatient nod as if the question didn’t warrant an answer. “We’re more interested in your father’s BMW, Ms. Burns. That was his obvious choice of transport. It was parked less than half a mile down the valley-he could have been out of the area before anyone knew it was missing-yet he didn’t return to it. I find that strange.”

“Me, too.”

Bagley hated it when I agreed with him. He seemed to think it was a form of mockery. “Perhaps you have an explanation,” he murmured sarcastically. “You seem to have explanations for everything else.”

“I expect he got lost,” I said. “It happens to me all the time…and I only go walking in the daylight. It’s a big valley. If you lose your bearings and take the wrong footpath, you end up at the Ridgeway instead of in the village. I suppose you’ve checked the empty houses in Winterbourne Barton? Perhaps he’s holed up in a weekender’s cottage, eating their food and watching their telly. Or maybe he went the other way and fell off a cliff?”

There’s no question Jess and I sparked an intense suspicion in Bagley. He knew we couldn’t have magicked MacKenzie out of existence in half an hour, but our attitudes offended him. I was too glib, and Jess was too mute. According to Peter, who heard it from a friend on the force, she was no more forthcoming with the police than she was with anyone else.

What happened when you left the kitchen, Ms. Derbyshire? I was jumped. Can you be more explicit? No. Did you know who your assailant was? I guessed. Who removed your clothes? He did. Did you think he was going to rape you? Yes. Even with Dr. Coleman and Ms. Burns in the house? Yes. Did MacKenzie speak to you? No. Then why did you think he wanted to rape you? He took my clothes off. Can you be more explicit? No. Were you upset by your dog’s death? Yes. Did you want revenge for Bertie? Yes. Did you want revenge for yourself? Yes. Did you take it? No. Why not? There wasn’t time. But you would have done if the police hadn’t arrived? Yes.

Our worst fault seemed to be that we weren’t frightened enough. With MacKenzie on the loose, we should have demanded round-the-clock police protection or seclusion in a safe house, but neither of us did. Jess refused to leave the farm because she couldn’t rely on Harry and the girls to run it alone, and with search teams scouring the valley, I effectively had police protection anyway.

IT WAS an odd few days. Although Jess and I were never arrested or charged with anything, we were both treated like suspects in a murder investigation. I was asked several times if I wanted a solicitor present, but I always refused on the basis that I had nothing to hide. I believe Jess did the same. The silver lining was that the press was held at bay while every nook and cranny of Winterbourne Valley was painstakingly examined, and the police withheld our names-including Peter’s and my parents’-after Jess and I invoked our right to anonymity because of the nature of the crimes against us.

I was allowed to see my mother briefly in Dorset County Hospital before she was transferred back to London to be near my father, and I was able to speak to Dad on the phone. Because of his jaw, I did most of the talking, but he gave a couple of grunting laughs and seemed pleased when I suggested he and Mum come to stay as soon as the brouhaha died down. He managed a few sentences that I understood. “Did we win? Are the demons dead?”

“Dead and buried,” I said.

“Good.”

Perhaps it was a mercy no one overheard that little exchange, because it would certainly have been misinterpreted. As would my conversation with Jess when the police finally ackowledged we’d had no hand in MacKenzie’s disappearance. We were warned to expect further questioning if and when MacKenzie was taken into custody, but in reality it was a green light to pursue our lives as normal.

I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jess since the early hours of Sunday morning. There was no official ban on our communicating with each other, but, with the continuous police presence in Barton House, neither of us felt inclined to do it. The telephone line was repaired almost immediately, more for police convenience than mine, but I was given permission to operate my laptop in the back bedroom when I explained that my boss in Baghdad deserved an explanation before MacKenzie’s name appeared on the newswires.

For three days, the back bedroom and the kitchen were the only areas I was allowed to use. Even the bathroom was sealed off for forty-eight hours while the U-bend was taken apart for forensic examination. The same happened in the scullery. I asked Bagley what he was expecting to find since both drains had had bleach down them, but he said it was routine. I pointed out that it was routine for me to take regular baths and wash my clothes, and with bad grace he ordered the plumbing to be reinstated on the Monday afternoon.

On Wednesday evening, I watched Jess’s Land Rover nose up the drive less than half an hour after Bagley had taken his leave. I remember wondering how she knew he’d gone, and half-suspected she’d been squatting in her top field with binoculars. The one thing I knew about Jess was that her patience was inexhaustible. It had taken one hundred hours of filming to capture the antics of weasels on a fifteen-minute video loop.

“I hope you understand why all this was necessary, Ms. Burns,” Bagley said as he left, offering me his hand in a gesture of peace.

I shook it briefly. “Not really. Is it a job’s-worth thing? Do policemen get chopped off at the knees if they don’t go through the motions?”

“If that’s how you want to see it.”

“I do,” I assured him. “Peter tells me he’s only been questioned twice…once to give his version…and the second time to confirm or deny what Jess and I said. That doesn’t seem fair when we were all witnesses to the same crime.”

“What happened before Dr. Coleman left isn’t in dispute. It’s how MacKenzie freed himself and vanished into thin air that interests us.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps he used his SAS training.”

“I thought you believed the SAS claim was a lie.”

“I do,” I agreed, “but it doesn’t mean I’m right.”

There was a moment’s silence before he gave an abrupt laugh. “Well, that’s something I never thought I’d hear.”

“What?”

“Ms. Burns admitting she might be wrong.” He eyed me for a moment. “I hope you and Ms. Derbyshire know what you’re doing.”

I felt the familiar flutter round my heart. “In what way?”

“Staying put,” he said with mild surprise. “I’m not sure either of you is strong enough to face MacKenzie again…”

THERE WAS something immensely reassuring about Jess’s scowl as she stomped into the kitchen and put a bulging carrier bag on the table. “I hate that bastard,” she said.

“Which one?”

“Bagley. Do you know what his parting shot was? ‘You’ve been thoroughly obstructive, Ms. Derbyshire’ ”-she screwed her mouth into a Bagley sneer-“ ‘but Dr. Coleman tells me you lack communication skills so I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt.’ Bloody wanker. I told him to get stuffed.”

“Peter?”

“Bagley.” Her eyes gleamed with sudden amusement. “I’m holding Peter on ice. Christ knows what he said to them, but it sure as hell didn’t do us any favours. Bagley seems to think we’re a pair of Amazons. Did he ask you what your sexual orientation is?”

“No.”

“I suppose I have the idiots in the village to thank,” she said without animosity. “He asked me if I thought it was worse for a lesbian to have her clothes taken off by a psychopath. What kind of question’s that?”

“How did you answer?”

“Told him to fuck off.” She started unpacking the bag. “I’ve brought you some food. Have you been eating properly?”

“Mostly sandwiches. The police have been ordering them in by the cartload.”

“Champagne,” she said, producing a bottle of Heidsieck. “I don’t know if it’s any good…also, smoked salmon and quail’s eggs. It’s not the kind of thing I usually have but I thought you’d like it. The rest’s off the farm.” She handed me the bottle. “I reckon you’ve earned a little celebration.”

I couldn’t resist a nervous look over my shoulder towards the drive. What would Bagley make of this? I wondered.

Jess read my mind. “Bertie deserves a toast,” she said, taking some glasses from the cupboard, “and your parents. I don’t see why we shouldn’t remember them just because Bagley’s got bees in his bonnet. Go on, open it. We’d all be dead but for you.”

That’s not how I saw it. “It was me who put you in danger in the first place,” I reminded her. “If I’d never come here, it would never have happened.”

“Don’t go feeble on me,” she said scornfully. “You might as well blame your father for going back to the flat…or Peter for showing up when he did…or me for leaving the kitchen. You should be on cloud nine.”

“Keep talking like that and I will be,” I said more cheerfully, peeling the wire from the neck of the bottle. “It’s unnerving to have you ply me with drink and compliments, Jess.” I popped the cork and poured froth into one of the glasses. “Are you going to have some?”

She inspected it as if it was devil’s brew. “Why not? I can always walk home.”

“When did you last have champagne?” I asked, wondering how drunk it was going to make her.

“Twelve years ago…on my mother’s birthday.” She clinked her glass against mine. “To Bertie,” she said. “One of the good guys. I buried him in the top field under a little wooden cross with ‘For valour and gallantry’ on it, and that bastard Bagley got his men to dig him up again to see if MacKenzie was underneath. Can you believe that? He said it was normal procedure.”

“To Bertie,” I echoed, “and a plague on Bagley. What did you say to him?”

She took a tentative sip and seemed surprised when she didn’t drop dead. “Called him a grave robber. Peter was there when they did it, and he gave Bagley hell…kept asking him how I could have smuggled MacKenzie’s body out of Barton House without anyone noticing. I don’t think he realized until then what a bloody great hole he’d dug for us. You know he repeated our conversation about chopping MacKenzie’s dick off? I got more questions about castration than anything else.”

I watched her thoughtfully over the rim of my glass. “Mine were all about manipulation and control. Peter told them I knew what I was doing…even to the extent of giving your dogs commands.”

For the first time ever, Jess defended him. “He was trying to give praise where praise was due. It backfired spectacularly…but he meant well.”

“What did they tell him we were saying?”

She flicked me an amused glance. “Men are a waste of space.”

“Well, that didn’t come from me. I might have thought it, but I didn’t say it.”

She nodded. “It was Peter quoting Bagley quoting me. I said something like ‘Men are useless in a crisis’ but Bagley milked it for all it was worth. Did you accuse Peter of releasing MacKenzie?”

“Not exactly. I asked why he wasn’t being given the third degree when he’d had the same opportunities that you and I had.”

“It was presented as a full-on accusation. According to Bagley, you bust a gut to implicate Peter, and it was only my evidence about timing that exonerated him.”

I took a mouthful of champagne. “Is Peter upset about it?”

Jess shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s being a bit odd at the moment.” She changed the subject. “Madeleine phoned him to say she’s coming down tomorrow. She spoke to someone in the village and they told her MacKenzie targeted you because you knew him from before. Now she wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the inquiry.”

“Why?”

Jess shrugged. “Maybe she thinks there’s money in it.”

“How?”

“Cheque-book journalism.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “You’re back in the news-or could be if your anonymity’s blown. She’ll sell your story like a shot if Bagley gives it to her. She was pumping Peter for all he was worth over the phone. Who was MacKenzie? Where had you met him? She said she’d read that he was wanted for abduction in Iraq…and it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.”

“What did Peter say?”

“That he’s been warned to keep his mouth shut in case it jeopardizes a future trial.” She picked up her glass and examined it. “He says Bagley’s bound to give her the details of what happened…if only to winkle out any information she might have.”

“What kind of information?”

“Anything. Madeleine lived here for over twenty years, don’t forget. I’m sure she’ll be asked if she has any ideas where MacKenzie might have gone. That’s the only thing Bagley’s interested in.”

Maybe champagne was as potent for me after four days of alcohol-abstinence as it was for Jess after twelve years, because my first instinct was to laugh. “Do you have any idea how much it would piss me off to have Madeleine muscle in on the act? People might think we were friends.”

Jess grinned. It was the widest smile I’d ever see on her face. “She told Peter she’s coming here first to see how much damage was done. Do you want to play my trump card?”

It might have been my mother speaking. Was bridge a metaphor for life? “Which one? You hold so many. Cousinship…Lily…Peter…Nathaniel…What matters most to her?”

Jess tapped her foot on the quarry tile floor. “Barton House,” she said. “Lily rewrote her will at the same time she reassigned power of attorney to her solicitor. She gave him complete freedom to realize any of her assets to pay nursing-home fees, but if on her death Barton House still remains in her estate it’s to come to me.”

I looked at her amazement. “So what does Madeleine get?”

“Whatever money’s left after all the bills have been paid.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t any money.”

“There isn’t…but there would be if the solicitor sold the house and invested the capital. It’s worth about one point five million, and as soon as it’s converted to cash it becomes part of Madeleine’s inheritance, not mine.”

“God!” I took a swig of alcohol to oil my brain. “So why is she blocking the sale?”

“Because she doesn’t know the will’s been changed. Neither of us was supposed to know. Lily only told me because she thought I was Gran. She said Madeleine would win or lose depending on how greedy she was…and if the house ended up with me then so be it.” Jess tugged at her fringe. “I told you it was a mess,” she said ruefully. “I tried to get Lily to change her mind, but it was too late by then. She didn’t know what I was talking about five minutes later.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t inventing it? Perhaps it was a fantasy will…something she’d like to have done, but never did.”

“I don’t think so. I phoned the solicitor and said, if it was true, I didn’t want to be involved, but instead of denying it-which he could have done-he said I had to take it up with Lily.”

“Did you tell him she was gaga?”

She sighed. “No. I was afraid he’d come piling in to take charge and the will would have been set in stone. I thought if I stayed away Lily might have some lucid days, and Madeleine would get back into favour. I even wrote to the silly bitch and told her I’d fallen out with her mother…but she didn’t act on it. If anything it encouraged her to neglect the poor old thing even more. She really did want her dead, you know.”

I wondered why she thought I needed convincing. It would take a lot to make me doubt Jess’s word on anything. You don’t face danger with someone only to start mistrusting them afterwards. “Why don’t you want the house?” I asked curiously. “It’s worth a bob or two. You could sell it and buy more land.”

Another shake of her head. “I can’t manage any more. In any case, Madeleine’s bound to contest it…and what kind of hell will that be? I’m damned if I’ll have a DNA test to prove I’m related to her. I don’t even want it known.”

“Have you told Peter?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“Not even Nathaniel?”

She took another sip of champagne, but I couldn’t tell if her look of disgust was for the liquid or for Madeleine’s husband. “No, but I think he guessed. When I told him about the power of attorney, he kept asking if the will had been changed as well. I said I didn’t know-” She broke off in irritation. “He really bugged me that night…said I owed him a second chance because he’d supported me through the folks’ death. Bloody joke, eh?”

I was tempted to ask, why that night in particular? Nathaniel Harrison would have bugged me every night. Instead, I said: “Was this before or after your letter to Madeleine?”

“After.”

“Then I’ll bet she put him up to it…or, more likely, came with him. Maybe they started on Lily and couldn’t get any sense out of her, so Nathaniel tried you. You take everything he tells you on trust, Jess, but-seriously-what kind of man would leave an old lady to freeze to death just because he was annoyed with her? At the very least, he should have had a rethink the next day and phoned you or Peter to check she was all right.”

“I know,” she agreed, “and I’m not trying to defend him, but if he told Madeleine about the power of attorney why didn’t she do something about it?”

“Maybe she did. Maybe she and Nathaniel put the fear of God into Lily to make her change her mind. If you want to coerce an old woman into doing what you want, turning off her heating supply is a good place to start.” I paused. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few days, Jess, and whichever way I look at it, I’m convinced Madeleine knows there’s a relationship between you. She’s too over the top about your family. If you’re not Down syndrome, syphilitic or servants, you’re tenants with bad genes who die young.”

“She got all that from Lily.”

“And the rest,” I said slowly. “Perhaps Lily felt lonely after her husband died and wanted to reconcile with her brother…and made the mistake of thinking her daughter would feel the same. Perhaps that’s what the allowance was about…compensation for being related to plebs.”

Jess threw me a withering look.

“It’s how Madeleine sees you. Lily, too, if you’re honest.”

“I know.” She glanced back down a bleak corridor of time. “She treated my father like dirt until Robert died, then she was all over him. Do this…do that…and he did it. I remember telling him he was embarrassing us. It’s the only time he shouted at me.”

“What did he say?”

Her eyes narrowed in memory. “That he’d expect a remark like that from Madeleine, but not from me. God! Do you suppose that’s what he had to put up with-Madeleine screaming and yelling and calling him an embarrassment? Poor old Pa. He wouldn’t have known what to do. He always ran away from arguments.”

“Did he know Lily asked you to take the photograph?”

She nodded. “He put pressure on me to do it because he said it would be kind. Lily was at the farm one day and saw some of my other stuff. She asked if I’d be willing to do one of Madeleine before she left for London. She wanted a portrait shot-the sort of things studios do”-Jess injected scorn into the words-“but I said I’d only do it if I could have the sea in the background.” She lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

“And?”

Jess shrugged. “Madeleine spent most of the time scowling or simpering-all the other negatives are crap-but that one came out OK. It’s weird. I started off being halfway nice to her, but it wasn’t until I told her what I really thought of her that she turned and gave me that smile.”

“Perhaps she took it as proof that you didn’t know you were related to her. That would make her smile, wouldn’t it?” I raised inquiring eyebrows. “She was probably worried sick while you were being nice…particularly if it was out of character.”

Jess’s frown was ferocious. “Then she’s even more stupid than I thought she was. What makes her think I’d admit to having a talentless slapper for a cousin?”

I hid a smile. “So stop bellyaching. Move on. Let her go.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“No.”

“What would you do?”

“Get her to retract every bit of slander she’d ever spread about me and my family, then tell her to go fuck herself.” I tipped my glass to her. “Personally, I can’t see it matters a damn whether you’re a Wright or a Derbyshire-to me you’re Jess, a unique individual-but if the Derbyshire name means something to you then fight for it.”

“How can I?” she asked. “The minute I admit I’m a Wright, the Derbyshires cease to exist.”

I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that I couldn’t identify with this view. I certainly wasn’t as sensitive towards her turmoil as I might have been, but I’ve never viewed labels as much of a guide to what’s in a package. “If you want to be pedantic, Jess, they ceased to exist when your father was born. The last surviving member was your great-grandfather, an alcoholic blackmailer who saw an opportunity to grab some land and took it. It was probably the single most effective thing a Derbyshire ever did, but I guarantee the farm would be a wasteland today if your father hadn’t come as part of the deal.”

She stared unhappily at her hands. “That’s worse than anything Madeleine’s ever said.”

“Except the Wrights are no better,” I went on. “The only one who had any get-up-and-go was the old boy who bought the house and the valley, but his successors were a useless bunch-lazy…mercenary…self-obsessed. By some fluke, probably because your grandmother’s genes were so strong, your father didn’t inherit those traits-and neither have you-but Madeleine has them in spades.”

“So? It still doesn’t make me a Derbyshire.”

“But it’s a good name, Jess. Your grandmother, father and mother were happy with it…your brother and sister, too, presumably. I don’t understand why you’re so unwilling to fight for it.”

She rubbed her head in confusion. “I am. That’s why I don’t want any of this to get out.”

“It won’t,” I said, “not if you keep it between you and Madeleine.”

Her unhappiness grew. “You mean blackmail her?”

“Why not? It worked for the Derbyshires last time.”

21

I HAD TO admire Madeleine’s flair for duplicity. She appeared with a concerned smile at eleven o’clock the next morning and said she’d just come from Peter, who’d been telling her about the awful events of the previous weekend. She looked cool and pretty in a white cotton shirtwaist, and I thought how well she confirmed my mother’s advice that no one should judge a book by its cover.

“I had no idea you and Barton House were involved until I spoke to Peter,” she said with convincing sincerity. “The papers talked about Dorset, but didn’t specify where. You must have been terrified, Connie. This man sounds appallingly violent.”

She used my name with casual ease, even though it was only a few days since she’d left a message calling me Marianne. “Come in,” I invited, pulling the door open. “How nice to see you.” She had no monopoly on duplicity.

Her eyes darted about, looking for anything unusual, and she found it immediately. Despite the efforts of a professional cleaner, brought in by the police, and further attempts by me and Jess the previous evening, the bloodstains on the unsealed flagstones and porous fifties wallpaper refused to come out. They were more the colour of mud than freshly spilt haemoglobin, but it didn’t take much imagination to work out what they were.

Madeleine clapped her hands to her mouth and gave a little cry. “Oh, my goodness!” she squeaked. “Whatever’s happened here?”

It was a girly response-the sort of thing clichéd actresses do-but it was genuine enough to persuade me that Peter hadn’t told her much. If anything at all. Jess had been certain the previous evening that, when it came to taking sides, he’d pick me and her over Madeleine, but I wasn’t so easily convinced. In my experience he had verbal diarrhoea where Madeleine was concerned.

I led her towards the green baize door. “Didn’t Peter tell you?” I asked in surprise. “How very strange of him.”

“Is it blood?” she demanded, her heels pecking across the flagstones behind me. “Did someone die?”

I shook my head, pushing open the door and ushering her through. “Nothing so dramatic. Jess’s dogs had a fight and one of them was wounded. It looks worse than it is.” I shepherded her down the corridor. “Would you like a coffee?” I asked, pulling out a chair for her. “Or are you caffeined out on Peter’s espressos?”

She ignored me to wave her hand rather wildly towards the hall. “It can’t stay like that,” she protested. “What will prospective tenants think?”

I retreated to the worktop. “I’m told the flagstones will come up good as new if the top layer is sanded off,” I said, ostentatiously lighting a cigarette. “I’ll have it done before I leave.”

“What about the walls?”

“Those, too.”

She looked suspiciously around the kitchen and I wondered if she’d noticed the faint hum that was coming from the scullery, or the two loops of fabric tape at either end of the Aga rail. “What were the dogs fighting about?”

I shrugged. “Whatever dogs usually fight about. I’m not much of an expert, I’m afraid. Should I stick to the same colour scheme, or would your mother’s solicitor prefer something different?”

“I don’t-” she stopped abruptly. “Did it happen while this man was here?”

“Didn’t Peter tell you?”

She folded herself on to the chair, placing her bag on the floor beside her feet. “Not every detail. I think he wanted to shield me from the worst.”

“Why?”

“Presumably because he didn’t want to worry me.”

“I see.”

She had trouble with short answers. In her world everyone played the game and readily divulged their scrubby little pieces of gossip. She forced a smile. “Peter’s so sweet. He kept it as low-key as possible to avoid upsetting me but the truth is, I’d rather have had the details. It is my house, after all.”

“Oh dear,” I murmured, tapping ash into the sink, which brought an immediate scowl to her face, “that means I’ve given the wrong information to the police. I told them it belonged to your mother. I believe Peter did as well. He even supplied them with the solicitor’s address…the one who has power of attorney.”

She kept the smile in place. Just. “It’s the family home.”

I nodded. “You told me last time.”

She opened her mouth as if to say, “Well then,” but seemed to think better of it. “The papers said this man-MacKenzie-held three people captive then escaped before the police arrived. Was Jess one of the three? You said her dogs were here.”

“I said they had a fight,” I corrected mildly.

“While MacKenzie was here?”

“Jess’s mastiffs are better guard dogs than that.”

Her impatience got the better of her. “Then who was here? You must see how worrying it is for me to know that a man broke in so easily with three people on the premises. Did one of them let him in? What did he want? Was he after something in the house?”

“Why don’t you ask your mother’s solicitor?” I suggested. “I’m sure he’ll be able to set your mind at rest. Or even the police. I can give you the name of the detective leading the inquiry.”

“I already know it,” she snapped. “I’ve asked to see him this afternoon.”

“Then there isn’t a problem,” I pointed out reasonably. “He’ll tell you as much as he can.”

She stared at me for a moment, trying to assess if there was any mileage in continuing, then with a shrug reached for her bag. “You’d think the crown jewels had been stolen the way everyone’s behaving.”

“Well, you can be reassured on that front at least,” I said with a small laugh. “MacKenzie didn’t think there was anything worth stealing…so your husband’s paintings are still here.”

She threw me a look of dislike. “Perhaps he was targeting my mother’s antiques. Perhaps he didn’t know she’d left.”

“That was Inspector Bagley’s first idea,” I agreed, “which is why he wanted a list of anything that had struck me as unusual since I took over the tenancy. I said there were several things…but I didn’t think they were connected with Saturday’s events.”

Madeleine froze. Only briefly, but enough for me to notice. “Like what?”

I blew a ring of smoke towards the ceiling. “The water had been turned off.”

It was a guess, much like the guesses I’d made about MacKenzie’s mother, but as I’d said to Jess the previous evening, why stop at turning off the Aga? Why not the water? I couldn’t get it out of my head that Jess had found Lily beside the fishpond. Or that memory might have told her there was a well under the logs in the woodshed. What was she doing outside at eleven o’clock at night? And why did she go to other people’s houses to clean her teeth and have a cup of tea?

“That wasn’t me,” Madeleine said abruptly, searching through her bag so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. “It must have been the agent. The stopcock’s under the sink. All you had to do was turn it back on again.”

“I didn’t mean it was off when I arrived,” I told her. “The taps in the kitchen were fine. The problem was upstairs. There was so much air in the water pipes to the bathroom taps that they all started banging. It scared the living daylights out of me.”

“It’s an old house,” she said carefully. “Mummy was always complaining about the pipes.”

“I called in a plumber because I was so worried, and the first thing he did was check the stopcock. According to him, air gets into a system when the main supply is interrupted and people keep trying the taps because they don’t understand why nothing’s coming out. Water runs out downstairs and air fills the void upstairs. He said it could only have happened while someone was living here…and that must have been your mother because the house was empty till I took it on.”

She took a tissue from her bag and touched it to the end of her nose. “I don’t know anything about the water system. All I know is that Mummy said the pipes were always banging.”

I was relying very heavily on the fact that she knew nothing about the water system. Or any other system. My “oddities” were courtesy of Jess. “Try Madeleine with the electricity as well,” she had said. “The night I found Lily, the house was in darkness and I couldn’t get the outside lights to work. That’s the main reason I took her back to the farm. I didn’t want to waste time trying to find out which of her fuses had blown. Everything was working fine the next day, and I rather forgot about it.”

“Something else that was unusual,” I went on, “was that several of the fuse cartridges had been removed from the electricity box. If Jess hadn’t been here, I’d have spent my first night in darkness because none of the lights in the bedrooms worked. It was only when she checked the box that we discovered why. They were laid in a row on the top of the case…and as soon as they were plugged back in the lights came on.”

Madeleine played with her tissue.

“Do you know who might have done that? The police are wondering if an electrician did some work. If so, how did he get in? They’re very keen to find anyone who’s had access to the house in the last six to nine months. They’re wondering if your mother let him in…but why would he leave her in darkness?”

She shook her head.

“The really strange thing,” I said, reaching into the sink to turn on the tap and drown my fag end, “is that the valve on the oil tank was turned off but the gauge was reading full. And that doesn’t make any sense, because Burton’s last delivery was at the end of November…and your mother didn’t go into a nursing-home until the third week in January. It meant she had no hot water or cooking facilities for the last two months she was here.” I paused. “But how could that have happened without you knowing? Did you not visit her during that time?”

Madeleine found her voice at last. “I couldn’t,” she said rather curtly as if it was a criticism she’d faced before. “My son was ill and I was helping Nathaniel prepare for an exhibition. In any case, Peter came in regularly so I would have expected to hear from him if anything was wrong.”

“But not from Jess,” I said matter-of-factly. “She’d already written to tell you that she’d withdrawn her support from Lily.”

“I don’t recall that.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, taking a copy of Jess’s letter from my pocket. “Do you want to remind yourself of what she said. No? Then I’ll do the honours.” I isolated a passage. “ ‘Whatever’s gone before, your mother needs your help now, Madeleine. Please do not go on ignoring her. For a number of reasons, I can no longer visit, but it’s in your interests to come down and organize some care for her. Without support, she cannot stay at Barton House alone. She’s more confused than Peter realizes but if you allow him or anyone else to decide on her competence you might regret it.’ ” I looked up. “All of which was true, wasn’t it?”

She abandoned denial in favour of protest. “And why should I believe it when Mummy’s GP was saying the opposite? If you knew Jess better, you’d know that stirring up trouble is her favourite pastime…particularly between me and my mother. I wasn’t going to take her word against Peter’s.”

I showed surprise. “But you and Nathaniel drove down as soon as you received this letter…so you must have given it some credence.”

There was a brief hesitation. “That’s not true.”

I went on as if she hadn’t spoken: “You sent Nathaniel to find out from Jess what ‘regret’ meant while you stayed here and tried to prise it out of your mother. Did she tell you? Or did you have to wait for Nathaniel to come back with the bad news about the power of attorney?”

I watched her mouth thin to a narrow line. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. The first I heard about the solicitor being in charge was when Mummy was taken into care.”

“That’s good,” I said encouragingly, “because when I told Inspector Bagley about the utilities being turned off, he said it sounded as if Lily had been subjected to a terror campaign. He’s wondering if it had something to do with MacKenzie.” I paused. “I told him it couldn’t have done-MacKenzie was in Iraq between November and January-but, as Bagley said, if not MacKenzie, who? What kind of person deprives a confused old lady of water, light, heat and food?”

Perhaps I should have predicted her answer-Jess certainly did-but I honestly hadn’t realized how slow-witted Madeleine was. The old adage about tangled webs might have been written for her. She was so caught up in the knowledge of what she and Nathaniel had done that the obvious answer-“There was nothing wrong with this house when I prepared it for let”-escaped her.

The intelligent response would have been surprised disbelief-“a terror campaign?”-and a finger pointed straight at Lily and her Alzheimer’s: “It must have been Mummy who did it. You know what old people are like. They’re always worrying about the cost of living.” Instead, she offered me her pre-prepared “culprit.” In some ways it was laughable. I could almost hear her brain whirring as she produced the “line” that she and Nathaniel had rehearsed.

“There’s only one person in Winterbourne Barton who’s that disturbed,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen.”

Her eagerness to implicate Jess was faintly disgusting. She looked pleased, as if I’d finally asked a question that she knew the answer to. “Jess?” I suggested.

“Of course. She was obsessed with my mother. She was always creating problems so that Mummy would have to call her up. Her favourite trick was to put the Aga out because she was the only one who knew how to relight it.” She leaned forward. “It’s not her fault-a psychiatrist friend says she probably has Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy-but it never occurred to me she’d go as far as turning off the water and the electricity.”

I smiled doubtfully. “So why didn’t she follow through?”

“On what?”

“Milking the benefits. Munchausen by proxy is an attention-seeking syndrome. It needs an audience. Sufferers make other people ill so that they can present themselves in a caring light.”

“That’s exactly what she did. She wanted Mummy to be grateful to her.”

I shook my head. “It’s not the victim who’s the audience-victims tend to be babies and toddlers who can’t speak for themselves-it’s the sympathy and admiration of neighbours and doctors that sufferers want.”

Annoyance hardened her eyes. “I’m not an expert. I’m merely repeating what a psychiatrist told me.”

“Who’s never met Jess, and doesn’t know that she’s so reluctant to attract attention to herself that hardly anyone in Winterbourne Barton knows her.”

“You don’t know her either,” she snapped. “It was Mummy’s attention she wanted-her undivided attention-and she lost interest as soon as the Alzheimer’s took over. She was happy being the constant companion but she wasn’t going to play nursemaid. That’s what that letter was about-” she jerked her chin towards the piece of paper-“shuffling off the responsibility as soon as it became arduous.”

“What’s wrong with that? She wasn’t even related to Lily.”

There was the shortest of hesitations. “Then she had no business to insist on Mummy being sectioned. Why was it done in such a hurry? What was Jess trying to hide?”

“Peter told me it was social services who ordered it, and they did it for her own safety. It was a temporary measure while they tried to locate you and her solicitor. Jess wasn’t involved…except to give them your phone number and the name of the solicitor.”

“That’s Jess’s story. It doesn’t mean it’s true. You should ask yourself why Mummy had to be silenced so abruptly…and why Jess was so keen to accuse everyone else of neglecting her. If that’s not attention-seeking, I don’t what is.”

If you repeat a lie often enough people start to believe it-it’s a truism that’s seared into the brains of tyrants and spin doctors-but of all Madeleine’s lies, the most pernicious was her use of “Mummy.” She used it to paint a picture of innocent love that didn’t exist, and I was amazed at how many people found it charming. Most of those who condemned Jess as unnatural for hanging pictures of her dead family on her walls never questioned whether Madeleine’s relationship with Lily was healthy and close.

“But Lily was neglected, Madeleine. As far as I can make out, she lived here for seven weeks in the most appalling conditions until Jess found her half-dead beside the fishpond. Peter went away…the surgery safety net didn’t work…the neighbours weren’t interested…and you stayed as far away as possible.” I took out another cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. “Or claim you did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

“Only that I find it hard to believe you didn’t keep tabs on what was going on.” I tucked the cigarette in my mouth and lit it. “Weren’t you and Lily close? You always call her ‘Mummy.’ The only other middle-aged woman I know who does that phones her mother every day and visits at least once a week.”

Her eyes narrowed to unattractive slits at being called middle-aged but she chose to ignore it. “Of course I phoned her. She told me everything was fine. I realize now it wasn’t true, but I didn’t at the time.”

I smiled doubtfully. “It must upset you, though. I’d be mortified if my mother didn’t feel able to tell me she was in trouble. I can just about understand why she wouldn’t ask strangers for help…although she seems to have tried by going to the village. But her daughter? Wouldn’t she have been straight on the phone to you as soon as the water failed?”

“You should ask Jess that question. She was always the first person Mummy called in a crisis. Why didn’t she do anything?”

“Who was the second?”

Madeleine frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Who did your mother phone when Jess wasn’t available? You?”

“I was too far away.”

“So Jess turfed out every single time. For how long? Twelve years? And before that her father? Was either of them ever paid?”

“It wasn’t a question of payment. They did it because they wanted to.”

“Why? Because they were so fond of Lily?”

“I’ve no idea what their reasons were. I always found it rather sad…as if they couldn’t get over the class barrier. Perhaps they felt they had to follow in Jess’s grandmother’s steps and play servant to the big house.”

I gave a snort of laughter. “Have you ever actually been to Barton Farm, Madeleine? The house is marginally smaller than this, but it’s in a lot better repair. At a rough guess, and with all the land she has, I’d say Jess’s estate is worth two or three times your mother’s. If she ever sold up, she’d be a millionairess. Why on earth would someone like that want to play servant to impoverished gentry?”

She smiled faintly. “You’re assuming she owns the property.”

“I’m not assuming anything. I know it for a fact. I believe you do, too.” I took a thoughtful puff of my cigarette. “But why does it matter to you so much that everyone should think she’s a tenant?” I went on curiously. “Does it stick in your throat that her family built on their successes while yours frittered theirs away?”

As a lure, it almost worked. “They wouldn’t have anything if it hadn’t been for-” She clamped her mouth shut suddenly.

I tapped more ash into the sink to ratchet up her irritation. “You’re lucky she’s so self-effacing. If Winterbourne Barton knew she was the richest woman in the valley, you wouldn’t get a look-in. They’d be queueing up to lick her arse.”

If looks could kill, I’d have had a dagger in my chest. “There wouldn’t be room,” she snarled. “They’d have to get you out of the way first. Everyone knows you’re her latest conquest.”

My eyes watered as I choked on some smoke. “Do you mean her latest fuck? I might have thought about it if she wasn’t shagging Peter every night. Wouldn’t you say that’s a fairly good indication that she prefers cocks to cunts?”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Why?” I murmured in surprise. “Because I said she shags blokes? Surely Nathaniel’s told you what a good a lay she is? I gather they went at it like rabbits before you muscled in on the act. He’s down here all the time, trying to resurrect the good old days. He was even here the night Jess found Lily.”

A flicker of something showed in her eyes. Fear? She looked away before I could decide. “That’s rubbish.”

“Then who turned the utilities back on before Lily’s solicitior and social services came in?”

It was like pressing the “on” button. As long as I fed her questions she’d prepared for, she could produce her rehearsed answers. “Jess, of course,” she said confidently. “She was the only one who knew Mummy had collapsed. Everything she did was designed to cover her tracks. She could have phoned for an ambulance or put Mummy back to bed herself and called a doctor…but instead she drove her to the farm and waited till the morning to bring in social services. Why did she do that if it wasn’t to give herself time to put things straight at Barton House?”

“It was too cold to wait for an ambulance, so Jess took Lily back to the farm and called the surgery as soon as she got there. A locum turned up an hour later-by which time your mother was cleaned, fed, warm and fast asleep-and he advised Jess to leave her where she was until the morning. I thought you knew all this.”

“Why at the farm, though? Why not here?”

“Because it would have meant carrying your mother fifty yards just to get her to the back door, and she couldn’t see anything because none of the outside lights were working,” I said patiently. “Instead, she drove the Land Rover onto the lawn and lifted Lily into it. Her first plan was to take Lily to hospital herself, but as soon as your mother was in the warmth of the cab, and wrapped in the dogs’ blanket, she perked up and asked for food.” I eyed Madeleine curiously. “Peter told me all this within a week of my arrival. Did he not tell you? I thought you were such friends.”

“Of course he did,” she snapped, “but he’s only repeating Jess’s story. He doesn’t know it for a fact because he wasn’t here.”

I shrugged. “Then what did the locum say in the messages he left on your answerphone? Or social services? Did they give different explanations?”

“I didn’t listen to them all. The only one that mattered was Mummy’s solicitor saying she’d been taken into care…and I responded to that as soon as I got back from holiday.”

“So you didn’t hear the message that Jess left at twelve-thirty to say your mother was at the farm? The locum was with her when she did it. She told you you had twelve hours to take charge before the surgery alerted social services.” I folded my arms and watched her closely. “She gave you every chance, Madeleine, but you didn’t take it.”

“How could I? I was away.”

“Nathaniel wasn’t.”

“That’s not true. Nathaniel wasn’t in the flat either. He took our son to visit his parents in Wales. It’s something he does every year. Ask my in-laws if you don’t believe me.”

“It’s quite easy to pick up messages from a distance…and most of Wales is no farther from Dorset than London is. At a guess, it was you who turned the utilities off and Nathaniel who raced down here to put them back on before social services came in the next morning.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, her breath hissing angrily through clenched teeth.

“No one else had a reason to make Lily’s life miserable.”

“Jess did.”

“I can’t see it,” I said. “I don’t think the police will either. She wouldn’t have written to you if it meant you’d find out she’d been mistreating your mother.”

“What reason did I have?”

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “At first I thought you were trying to coerce her into reassigning the power of attorney…but now I think it was straightforward cruelty. You punished her because she wasn’t mentally competent to do what you wanted…and then found you enjoyed it. Simple as that. It’s why most sadists do what they do.”

She stood up abruptly. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“I suggest you do,” I said mildly, “otherwise you’ll be hearing it from Inspector Bagley. So far I’ve told him very little, but only because your mother didn’t die. If she had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation…you’d be at the police station answering questions about murder. You’ll just answer different ones if you walk out now.”

“No one’s going to believe you.”

“I wouldn’t rely on that. It just needs a chink of doubt.” I tossed my still-smoking butt into the sink. “Your problem’s the Aga. The Burton’s delivery notes prove it was off for two months. But if Jess had been responsible for that she’d have relit it…because she’s the only one who knows how.”

Madeleine shook with suppressed anger. “I suppose she put you up to this. She’s always hated me…always told lies about me.”

“Is that right? I thought lies were your specialty.” I ticked my fingers. “Predatory lesbian…stalker…obsessive…mentally ill…servant mentality…tenant farmer…syphilitic grandmother…hates men…only has sex with dogs. What have I left out? Oh, yes. Your grandfather had a yen for maids and raped every poor girl who entered his service, including Jess’s grandmother.”

She looked shell-shocked. “I’ll sue you for slander if you repeat that.”

“The bit about the rape? Is that not true? I thought he handed over fifteen hundred acres in compensation after his son was born? It was cheap at the price…the land cost him nothing and his reputation would have been in ruins if Jess’s grandmother had gone to the police.”

“It’s all lies,” she hissed. “There was no saying who the father was. Mrs. Derbyshire was a tramp…she slept with anyone and everyone.”

I shrugged. “It’s easily proved by a DNA test. The closest match will be Jess and your mother.”

“I won’t allow it.”

“It’s not your permission to give. Lily handed that right to her solicitor.” I smiled at her. “It’ll make a grand story. Skeletons rattle in Wright closet as DNA proves link. Abuse jumps a generation as failed artist’s wife seeks to silence mother. Career scrounger cites class as justification for sadism…”

Jess had predicted she’d take a swipe at me if I provoked her enough-“Lily was afraid of Madeleine, and her kid’s completely terrified”-so I should have been expecting it. But she still managed to take me by surprise. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m really quite naïve about the levels of violence that some people are prepared to use. I shouldn’t be-I’ve seen too much of it in Africa and the Middle East-but my experience of war is different. I’ve always been a bystander, and never a participant.

MacKenzie should have taught me the dangers of complacency. And he did, as far as he was concerned. But it never occurred to me that a twisted psychopath, who raped and mutilated women, had anything in common with a Dresden china blonde in high heels and an elegant shirtwaist. I should have paid more attention to Jess. From day one, she had described Madeleine as a manipulative, narcissistic personality of shallow emotions, who demanded instant gratification, resorted to bullying when she didn’t get it and showed no remorse for the impact her behaviour had on others.

And that’s as good a definition of a psychopath as you’ll find.

22

I’D EXPECTED a slap across the face, not an all-out assault on my eyes with crimson fingernails. I was on the floor, shielding my head from her kicking shoes, almost before I knew she’d attacked me. It was very fast and very noisy. I remember her screaming “Bitch” as she grabbed me by the hair and spun me round so that she could aim at my face, but I curled into a tight ball and took most of the punishment on my arms and back.

She wasn’t fit enough to keep it up for long. The kicks became less frequent as her mouth took over. How dare I question her? Didn’t I know who she was? Who did I think I was? It was an interesting insight into her character. At no point did she consider the consequences of what she was doing or whether my provocation had been deliberate. Quite simply, a red mist descended and she went ape.

I won’t pretend it wasn’t painful-her shoes were leather with pointed toes-but it was a walk in the park compared with Baghdad. Her balance was precarious, her aim was bad, and her foot had very little weight behind it. I put up with it because anger, like alcohol, loosens tongues, and she thought my refusal to fight back meant she had nothing to fear.

“It was the best day of my life when the Derbyshires died…the only one left was the runt…and she was so feeble she tried to kill herself. I told my mother she should have let her bleed to death…and do you know what she said? Be nice… you owe it to her…you have Nathaniel. God, I hated her! She couldn’t keep her mouth shut…had to talk to her brother…had to apologize…wanted me to call him uncle. I said I’d rather die than admit I was related to a slut’s bastard…and he laughed and said the feeling was mutual. Then he had the nerve to beg my mother to keep the secret…for the sake of his children…”

She referred obliquely to the cruelty she and Nathaniel had inflicted on Lily. “I told Nathaniel no one would help her…she was such a bitch they never went near her. Even Peter wasn’t that bothered…he said the troll would always tell him if things got worse. Blame her for neglect…she’s the one who walked away and left me to deal with it…as if I were the servant…”

I’d have let her run her head even farther into the noose if she hadn’t decided to grind her heel into my hip bone. Enough was enough. I was out from under her heel and on my feet while her gabby mouth was still flapping about her status in life, and she wasn’t ready for the pile-driving charge that drove her against the Aga rail and knocked the wind out of her.

I don’t think she noticed when I slipped her right wrist through a fabric loop and pulled it tight, but she certainly struggled as I grabbed her left wrist and yanked it the other way. “My God, you really are a piece of work,” I said in disgust before raising my eyes to the webcam on a cupboard next to the sink. “Did you get all that, Jess?”

Jess pushed the scullery door wide and the sound of her hard-drive fan intruded noticeably into the kitchen. “The camera in the hall failed,” she said, coming in, “but the three in here worked perfectly. Are you OK? It looked pretty bad on screen but as you didn’t yell-” she broke off to stare at Madeleine. “I don’t think she’s ever taken on anyone of her own size before…just frail old ladies and children.”

I rubbed my shoulder gingerly where a bruise was beginning to form. “Not so different from MacKenzie then. I wonder what else they have in common.”

“Arrogance,” said Jess, examining the other woman curiously as if she’d never seen her before. “I should have guessed it was Dad who wanted it kept secret. He used to say if any of us pretended we were better than we were, he’d disown us. I thought it was because we came from working stock, but now-” she jerked her chin at Madeleine-“I think he was terrified we’d turn into this.”

MADELEINE’S IGNORANCE of Jess’s proficiency in computer technology and film-making meant we could only convince her of what we had by moving Jess’s hard-drive and monitor into the kitchen, playing the scene again from the perspective of three different cameras and demonstrating how easy it was to copy the images to disk. She harangued us fluently throughout, accusing us of blackmail and kidnap-both of which were true-but when I retrieved a pack of envelopes from the office and started addressing them to the inhabitants of Winterbourne Barton, she quieted down.

“You can have a go at persuading the neighbours it was a joke or a piece of play-acting,” I told her, “but it doesn’t show you in your best light, does it?” I glanced thoughtfully at the muted monitor. “I wonder what your smart friends in London will make of it.”

Madeleine stopped trying to wrestle her wrists free and took a deep breath. “What do you want?”

“Me personally? I’d like to see you charged with attempted murder of your mother and assault on me but”-I gestured towards Jess-“your cousin’s even less inclined to admit a relationship with you than her father was…and she won’t have a choice if we send these disks out and the police become involved. The easiest solution will be for you to instruct Lily’s solicitor to sell this house. That way you can cut your ties with Winterbourne Barton and Jess can keep the secret.”

She gave an angry laugh. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“No.” I wrote on another envelope.

She wrenched at the fabric tape again. “I’ll have you prosecuted for this.”

“I doubt it. You may be the stupidest woman I’ve ever met, but you’re not that stupid.”

“Go ahead,” she spat. “Make as many copies as you like. There’s no better proof that you set out to blackmail me. What does a film prove? I’ll say you held me prisoner and forced me to do it.”

“The cameras are still running,” I said mildly. “Every word that comes out of your mouth is being recorded.”

“Yours, too,” she hissed. “Are you going to try and claim this isn’t blackmail?”

“No. We’ll give you one hour to make up your mind-we’ll even let you consult with Nathaniel via loudspeaker phone-but if you don’t call your mother’s solicitor at the end of it…and if he doesn’t confirm to Jess that the house will be up for sale at the end of my tenancy”-I put my hand on the envelopes-“these will be on everyone’s doorsteps in the morning. Including Bagley’s.”

“What if I refuse? Are you planning to keep me prisoner forever? What do you think Nathaniel’s going to do when I tell him you’ve tied me up?”

“Give you some good advice, I hope. We’ll let you go at the end of the hour whatever you decide. You can have your interview with Bagley and say whatever you like about us. You can do the same in the village. You’ll have twelve hours to convince everyone that we forced you to implicate yourself before we mail-drop our version.”

“You’re mad,” she said in disbelief. “The police won’t let you.”

“Then take the gamble,” I urged. “You’ve nothing to lose.”

None of us spoke again until Jess had connected the speaker phone from the office to the socket in the kitchen. She set the dial tone buzzing through the amplifier. “Is he at the flat?” she asked Madeleine. “OK.” She punched in a series of numbers from a piece of notepaper. “Your hour starts as soon as he picks up.”

Madeleine wasted the first five minutes by gabbling at high speed and high volume about being taken prisoner by me and Jess, forced to say and do things for blackmail and being threatened with the sale of the house. It made sense to her and us, but none at all to Nathaniel. He could hardly get a word in edgewise, and when he did her strident voice overrode him, ordering him to listen.

I was interested by Jess’s reaction. She sat impassively, staring at the monitor, apparently uninterested in the exchange until Madeleine called Nathaniel a moron. With a hiss of frustration, she picked up the receiver and spoke into it. “This is Jess. The situation is this…” She explained it succinctly in a few sentences, then put him back on loudspeaker. “Now you can talk to Madeleine again. You’ve got fifty minutes.”

There was a short hesitation. “Are you listening, Jess? Is the other woman listening?”

“Yes.”

“Are you recording this conversation?”

“We’re filming it.”

“Christ!”

“Stop being-” Madeleine began.

“Shut up!” he ordered her. “If you keep digging you’re going to be in real trouble.” Another pause. “OK, Jess, have I understood you right? You’ve got some film of Madeleine abusing your friend and some kind of admission that she also abused her mother. In return for keeping that under wraps, you want her to approve the sale of Barton House. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And if she refuses you’ll release her to say whatever she likes, then you’ll send out copies of the DVD to anyone who’s interested.”

“Yes.”

Madeleine tried again. “They won’t be able-”

“Shut up!” A longer silence. “Can I talk to the other woman? Is it Connie? What do you really want?”

“Exactly what Jess has told you. Madeleine can approve the sale or she can explain the DVD. It’s up to her. Either way she won’t be able to stay in Winterbourne Barton. She’s given too many details of how you and she terrorized Lily.”

“That’s a lie,” Madeleine called out. “I said hardly any-”

“Jesus!” Nathaniel shouted down the line, showing real anger suddenly. “Will you keep your mouth shut? I’m damned if I’ll let you drag me into this. There’s only one devil in this family…and we all know who that is.”

“Don’t you dare-”

“You say one more thing, Madeleine, and I’ll hang up. Do you understand?” He let a beat pass. “OK,” he went on more calmly, “I want to hear what you’ve got, Jess.”

“You don’t have time for it all,” she told him, “so I’ve keyed in the seven minutes that matter. You’ll hear Connie’s voice at the beginning saying: ‘You know, what really surprises me,’ then-”

Nathaniel cut across her. “How come you’ve already keyed it in?”

“I knew you’d ask for it.”

“How do I know it hasn’t been edited?”

“No time, but in any case I ran a clock on the three cameras. For the DVD, I’ll do a split screen to show the action synchronized.” She pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. “I’m showing Madeleine the digital numbers so that she can tell you if any of them are out of sequence.” She clicked her mouse. “Running now.”

Madeleine and I went through our motions again on screen, but, to me, the more I saw the clip, the less convincing it became. Madeleine won hands-down on the photogenic front. Even at her most furious, she remained elegant and pretty, and it was hard to believe that her Jasper Conran designer shoes were doing any damage at all. I just looked ridiculous. Why hadn’t I fought back instead of allowing myself to be kicked?

I don’t know if Jess was aware of my dejection, but when the clip ended she spoke before anyone else could. “The images are graphic and don’t flatter your wife, Nathaniel. She’s enjoying it too much. If I decide to run the fight in slow-motion, which I will for the DVDs, it’ll be even more obvious. No one’ll believe she didn’t do the same thing to Lily. You said she’s done it to the kid.”

“That’s a lie,” Madeleine shouted.

Jess glanced at her briefly then leaned towards the telephone speaker. “Was it, Nathaniel? You told me you can never leave her alone with Hugo…which is why he never comes to Dorset with her. Is that true or not?”

We all heard him take an audible breath through his nose. “True.”

“Liar!” Madeleine stormed. “Don’t you try and blame-”

Nathaniel cut in again. “I had nothing to do with any of this, Jess. You’ve got to believe that. My only involvement was to pass on what you told me about the power of attorney and phone Madeleine when I picked up your message about social services.”

“Connie thinks you came down the night I found Lily.”

“No. The last time I came down was when I spoke to you in November. Hugo and I didn’t see Madeleine at all for most of December and January. We thought she was looking after Lily-it’s what she said she was doing-playing the dutiful daughter in the hopes of reversing the power of attorney. If I’d guessed-” he broke off abruptly. “Lily was supposed to die of hypothermia that night, Jess. Madeleine was furious when you turned up and took her away.”

There was a short silence.

Jess stirred herself. “She was here? She was watching?”

“All the time.”

“Staying in the house?”

“Yes. She couldn’t abandon Lily completely. Anyone could have arrived out of the blue, and there’d have been hell to pay if they’d found Lily drinking from the fishpond. Madeleine switched the water on and off as it suited her…sometimes Lily had water…sometimes she didn’t…the same with the lights.”

“He’s lying,” Madeleine said. “It’s all lies.”

“She made Lily take cold baths, then locked her in her room in the dark. The only thing she couldn’t turn on and off at will was the Aga, so she booked herself into a hotel some nights to have a bath and a decent meal. That’s when Lily got out and went looking for help in the village.”

There was a horrible logic to it. “Why did no one see Madeleine?” I asked.

“Because she was only going to show herself if someone came to the door. Her story would have been that she’d just arrived and discovered Lily in extremis. It never happened.” He gave a hollow laugh. “She said it wouldn’t. She said if her mother died, the body would lie in the house for weeks until Jess went in.”

I glanced at Jess’s bent head. “Why didn’t she show herself when Jess found Lily outside?”

“Too scared. She’d parked her car in the garage at the back so that no one would see it…and she never did that normally. In any case, the house was in darkness, and she had no explanation for why she hadn’t turned on the lights to look for her mother as soon as she arrived.” He paused. “You let her off the hook by taking Lily to the farm, Jess. If you’d stayed and called an ambulance, Madeleine would have been trapped in the house.”

When Jess didn’t say anything, Nathaniel spoke again. “I can’t see her being prosecuted for it. It’s maybe what you want but”-he faltered briefly as if deciding how honest to be-“I don’t think you’d be doing this if you had any real evidence.”

“We do now,” I said. “You’ve filled in the gaps.”

“I can’t swear to any of it-I wasn’t there-and Madeleine will deny it. I’ve only said as much as I have because I’m hoping you’ll back off for Hugo’s sake.” He appealed to Jess. “You know what’ll happen if you go public, Jess. Madeleine will accuse everyone but herself-me included-and the only person who’ll suffer will be the child. I really don’t want that.”

“If I go straight to the police-” Madeleine began.

“You’ll be screwed,” he told her harshly. “Can’t you see that? Whatever you do, you’ll be screwed. If you try to justify yourself in advance, Jess will quietly dispose of the film and leave you to hang yourself on your own…and if you call her bluff, and she sends it out, you’ll be in the police station with her answering questions. Maybe she and Connie will get done for blackmail but it’s nothing to what’ll happen to you if you can’t keep your stupid trap shut.”

Jess raised her head. “It’s not blackmail if we only show it to the police,” she said. “It’s evidence.” She looked at me with troubled eyes. “What should I do? I’m not sure anymore.”

Neither was I. The idea had been to give Jess some leverage over Madeleine so that she could be rid of the woman with a clear conscience. Lily’s will would allow Madeleine to inherit the money eventually, and none of the history of the two families need ever come out. We also hoped we could scare her back to London without talking to Bagley. There was a canvas bag and a DVD that I’d successfully hidden from the police-both of which I regarded as my private property-but, in any case, I resented the idea that my story might be handed to a woman who would certainly sell it, or use it to enhance her standing. She’d drop my name and the details of my captivity all over London if she thought it would earn her some kudos.

Jess had been sceptical when I proposed the idea the previous evening. “Even if she does say something damaging, she’ll never agree to the sale of Barton House. What do we do then? I don’t mind filming her and threatening her with blackmail”-her eyes lit with mischief-“I’ll even enjoy it-but we can’t do it for real. She’ll be into Bagley’s office like a rat down a drainpipe.”

“Then you’ll have to come clean about Lily’s will,” I said cheerfully. “Just give her an hour of hell before you do it. Think of it as Lily’s revenge. Yours, too, if you like. At least let Madeleine know what you think of her before you hand her a million and a half quid on a plate. Personally, I’d rather see you inherit this house-I’m sure it’s what Lily wanted-but there’ll be no keeping quiet about the Derbyshire-Wright connection if you do.”

Neither of us had expected to hear revelations of attempted murder. Jess had felt she could live with the knowledge of absentee cruelty and neglect-“It’s what Madeleine’s been doing all her life”-but that was a far cry from sending a confused old lady into the cold and standing idly by while she succumbed to hypothermia. What stuck in my throat more than anything was the idea that Madeleine might profit from what she’d done.

I reached across Jess for the mouse and double-clicked on the live feeds. “Are they off?”

“Yes.”

“OK.” I put my thoughts in order. “I don’t think my conscience will let me do this, Jess. Madeleine’s dangerous. For all I know, her creep of a husband is as well. If he was truly interested in protecting his child, he’d have reported her himself. What if she has another go at Lily? Could you live with that…because I certainly couldn’t.”

“No.”

“We have to report her.”

“I know.” She sighed. “But who to? Bagley?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “We can do what Lily would have done…send everything to her solicitor and let him decide.”

The angry protests that erupted simultaneously from Madeleine and Nathaniel sent Jess reaching for an envelope. It seemed they were considerably more worried about the man who held the purse strings than they were about the police.

From: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Sent: Thur 26/08/04 10:12

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject: Your extraordinary resilience

Dear Connie,

I’m impressed by your resilience, though not as impressed as Nick Bagley seems to be. After what you’ve been through, he’s astonished by your determination to stay put and carry on. I explained that you’ve been in worse situations and survived them but with MacKenzie still on the loose, Nick feels you should be more afraid. Your response appears to be “out of character for a woman.” I might have cast aspersions against Dorset ladies, but he says your friend Jess is being equally bullish.

I’ve had several conservations with Nick re MacKenzie’s disappearance. He tells me there’ve been a number of sightings across the south-west although none is reliable. He’s interested in MacKenzie’s alleged SAS training (still to be corroborated) and asked if I thought it possible/likely that the man never left Winterbourne Valley. I said I thought it unlikely as I understand the entire area was swept twice and no trace of him was found. I hope I’m correct, Connie. If not, please take extra precautions. The consequences could be extremely serious for you if MacKenzie is still in the vicinity.

I was sorry to hear that one of Jess’s mastiffs died trying to protect you. It’s not a breed I know much about except that they’re large and extremely powerful. Nick tells me the “Hound of the Baskervilles” was a mastiff-he referred to it as “a huge beast that hunted men and ripped their throats out”-and I know he views Jess’s pack with the same alarm. He keeps a close eye on them, although he’s surprised they’re now confined to their enclosure when Jess’s previous routine was to exercise them daily across her land.

Finally, Nick is surprised that you didn’t destroy the DVD of your captivity when you had the chance. From the concerns you expressed both to me and Dr. Coleman about being filmed (and Dr. Coleman’s description of what he saw), Nick wonders why you seem so indifferent to the fact MacKenzie still has it. I presume you aren’t, and that you’re still anxious about it?

Yours as ever,

Alan

DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

From: connie.burns@uknet.com

Sent: Fri 27/08/04 08:30

To: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Subject: My extraordinary resilience

Dear Alan,

Thank you. I deeply appreciate the thoughts behind your email.

So…for your reassurance…

Nick Bagley would have been no less suspicious if Jess and I had folded ourselves into heaps and demanded 24-hour protection. Peter Coleman’s evidence about our courage was so OTT that a sudden collapse afterwards would have looked very odd. We can only be what we are, Alan, and there was no sense assuming different personas to satisfy Bagley’s view of how women ought to behave. You know very well I could have kept up a sham for as long as I liked-I’ve done it successfully in the past-but Jess is too honest.

I took your Thucydides quote to heart. “The secret of happiness is freedom; the secret of freedom, courage.” I’ve tried to explain to Bagley that merely confronting MacKenzie was a liberation. I saw him for what he was-not what my imagination had made of him-and I’m a great deal happier for it. I can’t, and won’t, pretend a fear I don’t feel anymore. Bagley’s given me a panic alarm, but I’m sure MacKenzie won’t come back. He seemed far more frightened of me that night than I was of him.

In so far as anyone can guarantee anything, I guarantee that MacKenzie is NOT in the valley. Dorset police searched it twice from end to end, and there was no sign of him on either occasion. He may have holed up somewhere else but I’m sure the more likely explanation is that he left the country under a different passport. He seems to have unlimited access to them.

FYI, Dan has requested a filter on all Reuters files to pull out anything relating to unexplained murders, so if MacKenzie starts again somewhere else we may be able to spot him.

Re the Hound of the Baskervilles. Conan Doyle describes it as a mastiff/bloodhound cross, the size of a small lioness with phosphorous flames dripping from its jaws (!), and trust me, even Bagley’s interesting imagination would have trouble embroidering Jess’s soft-mouthed mutts into anything so exciting. It’s true you can’t move when they sit on you, but their favourite occupation is to drool saliva into your lap not grab you by the throat and shake you. She’s keeping them in for the moment because Bertie’s buried in the top field and she’s worried they’ll dig him up. Once the turf has grown over the grave, they won’t be interested. She explained this to Bagley but, unfortunately, it seems to have made him more suspicious.

Re the DVD. It never occurred to me to destroy it. Am I still anxious about it? No. If I’m honest, I’m rather proud of it. I even wish Bagley could see it. It might help him to understand why I’m so jubilant about taking MacKenzie on a second time. As a wise man once said: “Winning is everything.”

You’ve been a good friend, Alan, and I hope I’ve set your mind at rest. In passing, if I ever do kill MacKenzie I won’t bother to hide his body. There’ll be no point if I can hack him to death in the hall with a blunt axe and plead self-defence. Maybe I should have done it when I had the chance!

With my love and thanks,

Connie

23

I DIDN’T KNOW THEN if Madeleine kept her appointment with Inspector Bagley. If she did, he never referred to it. He fell into the habit of dropping in unexpectedly, both at Barton House and Barton Farm, sometimes making two or three visits in a day. He usually found me working at my computer, but invariably missed Jess, who was out in her fields, bringing in a late harvest after one of the wettest summers for years.

On several occasions she discovered his car in her drive and the man himself poking around in her outhouses, but she took it all in good part, even though he didn’t have a search warrant. She told him he was welcome any time, and suggested he keep checking the back garden so that he could satisfy himself the only bones there were beef bones. Her dogs lost their suspicion of him once they learnt the sound of his engine, but he never lost his suspicion of them.

I, too, remained wary around them. Some phobias aren’t susceptible to logic. I could cope with one dog at a time but the four en masse still alarmed me. It was clear they missed Bertie. Outside, they patrolled their wire enclosure looking for him, and, inside, sat by doors, watching for his return. Jess said they’d do it for a month before they forgot him, but Bagley didn’t believe her.

“They’re not waiting for the other dog to return,” he told me one morning, “they’re trying to get out.” He was standing behind me, reading what was on my computer screen, a complicated paragraph on post-traumatic stress statistics. “You haven’t got very far with that, Ms. Burns. You’ve only added one sentence since last night.”

I clicked “save” and pushed my chair back, narrowly missing his foot. “It would go a lot faster if you didn’t keep coming in and breaking my train of thought,” I told him mildly. “Can’t you ring the doorbell once in a while? At least give me a chance to pretend I’m out.”

“You said I could walk in whenever I felt like it.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to take up residence here.”

“Then shut your back door, Ms. Burns. It’s an open invitation to anyone to enter.” He offered me a cigarette. “After what happened, I’m surprised you’re so unconcerned about unwanted visitors.”

It was a variation on a question he’d asked a hundred times already. I accepted a light. “I’m not unconcerned,” I answered patiently, “but the alternative is to turn this place into a prison. Is that what you want me to do? I thought modern policing was all about persuading victims to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

“But this isn’t normality for you, Ms. Burns. Normality was checking the locks on the doors and windows every two hours.”

“And a fat lot of good it did me,” I pointed out. “It raised my stress levels, and MacKenzie got in anyway.” I fingered the panic alarm round my neck. “In any case, I now have this. It’s given me confidence that the cavalry will turn up…which was the intention, wasn’t it?”

He smiled rather sourly as he dropped into the armchair beside the desk. “Indeed, but I suspect it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. Are you ever going to use it? Ms. Derbyshire refuses to wear hers.”

“There’s no point when she’s out in the fields. It needs a landline or a telephone signal to work.”

He cast his usual glance around the office as if something would suddenly show itself to him. “I had a word with Alan Collins last night. He said you’re too clever for me, and I might as well give up now. He also said he won’t be shedding any tears if MacKenzie’s never heard of again. If anyone deserves what he gets, it’s your attacker.”

I doubted Alan had said anything so crass, particularly to an opposite number in a different county. “Really?” I asked in surprise. “I’ve always thought of him as such a stickler for the rule of law. I can’t imagine him ever going on record with favourable views about summary justice and vigilantism.”

“It wasn’t on record,” Bagley said. “It was a private conversation.”

“Still…will he repeat those remarks to me, do you think? I like the one about my being too clever for you. If I were to broaden that out into a general piece, contrasting IQ levels among the police with those of prison inmates-” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“That you’re probably the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” he said grimly. “Why doesn’t it worry you to be interviewed, Ms. Burns? Why doesn’t it make you angry? Why don’t you have a solicitor? Why isn’t he arguing police harassment?”

“He? If I had one, don’t you think he’d be a she?”

Bagley flicked ash irritably into the ashtray on the desk. “There you go again. Everything has to be turned into a joke.”

“But I enjoy your visits,” I said. “Winterbourne Barton’s a black hole as far as social interaction’s concerned.”

“I’m not here to entertain you.”

“But you do,” I assured him. “I love watching you poke around the garden looking for clues. Have you found anything yet? Jess says you keep going back to her granary, so presumably you’re wondering if we buried MacKenzie under a ton of wheat? It wouldn’t have been easy, you know. Grain’s like quicksand. We’d have had trouble lugging a corpse on to the heap without sinking in ourselves.”

“She’s added another ton in the last couple of weeks.”

“And it’s all about to be shifted to a commercial grain store. Don’t you think someone will notice if a body tumbles out?” I watched his mouth turn down. “I don’t understand why you can’t accept that he freed himself and took to his heels. Is it because you’d have killed him if you’d been in our shoes?”

He took a thoughtful drag of his cigarette. “I’m sure you dreamt of revenge.”

“All the time,” I said with a small laugh, “but it did me even less good than checking the window locks. I lost so much weight over it that I feel like an old hen about to drop off her perch. Look.” I extended a bony right arm. “If there’s any useful meat on me you’d need a microscope to find it. How could that”-I cocked my left forefinger at a grape-sized bicep-“vanish a corpse in thirty minutes?”

He smiled reluctantly. “I’ve no idea. Would you like to tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell, but even if there were you wouldn’t be able to use it. You’re on your own and there’s no recorder. Anything I said would be inadmissible as evidence.”

“For my own satisfaction then.”

I glanced towards the hall. “I wanted to kill him,” I admitted. “I would have done if I’d been a better shot. I was aiming for his head when I hit his fingers…and the only reason I didn’t take another swipe was because it felt as if I’d been electrocuted when the axe slammed on to the flagstones. I had judders all the way up my arms and into the base of my neck. That’s when I decided it would be better to tie him up.”

I squashed my fag end into the ashtray. “Jess wanted to kill him, too-she was devastated about Bertie-but we couldn’t see how to do it. Peter had already left and there wasn’t time to work anything out. I suggested we untie MacKenzie and argue self-defence, but Jess said we’d have to corner him to do it”-I sighed-“and I had this sudden picture of the women in Sierra Leone…all huddled against walls because there was nowhere else to go.” I fell silent.

“Did Ms. Derbyshire agree with you?”

“Yes. She said it might have been different if he’d been blindfolded but it wasn’t possible after she’d seen into his eyes.” I pulled a wry smile. “I don’t think it’s easy killing people. I don’t think it’s easy killing animals. I couldn’t kill a rat if it looked at me the way MacKenzie did. I can’t even kill woodlice. There’s a nest in some of the rotten wood in Lily’s drawing-room and the only way I can deal with them is to hoover them up and chuck them outside…”

H. L. MENCKEN ONCE SAID: “It’s hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place.” If I’d realized earlier that Bagley shied away from killing animals, I’d have introduced rats and woodlice at the beginning. His views on psychopaths and sadists were extreme-they should all be hanged-but he empathized strongly with my inability to crush the life out of vermin. I’m not sure I ever fully understood the logic of his argument, but apparently my clear reluctance to kill anything was more convincing than repeated denials that I’d killed MacKenzie.

In a shameless PR exercise to encourage complete exoneration, I persuaded Jess to release her dogs in front of him. As she predicted, they headed straight up the field for Bertie’s grave and began a mournful howling around it. Bagley asked how they knew he was there and Jess said they’d attended the first funeral. Like elephants, they never forgot. Whether he believed that, I don’t know, but he declined her invitation to dig poor Bertie out a second time. The remaining dogs showed no inclination to go anywhere else in the valley, and had to be dragged away from the grave on leashes.

After that, Bagley left us in peace. Alan was amused by the motives I ascribed to this sudden end to suspicion, saying it had more to do with an absence of evidence than Bagley being unable to kill woodlice, but I still feel I showed my best side as a woman when I mentioned the hoover.

THE SECOND WEEK of September saw the arrival of my parents and the beginnings of an Indian summer after the rains of July and August. Jess took to them immediately, and in no time at all my father was up at the farm, lending a hand. My mother worried that he was over-exerting himself after his injuries, but Jess assured us he was only driving a tractor and helping Harry feed the livestock.

The subject of MacKenzie was taboo. None of us wanted to talk about him or what had happened. For all of us, it was done and dusted, and there was nothing to be gained by conducting a ghoulish post-mortem on who had suffered the most. Nevertheless, within a few of days of her arrival, my mother read some signals that were invisible to me and sought out Peter for a long chat.

I’d hardly had any contact with him since the incident, but I assumed he was still making regular visits to Jess. She’d mentioned his attendance at Bertie’s exhumation, and defended him for some of the information he’d given Bagley, but, bar a phone call one evening to ask if I was all right, he hadn’t been near me. I remember cutting the conversation short when he insisted on beating himself up for sins of omission and commission, but as Bagley arrived shortly afterwards Peter dropped out of focus again.

My mother gave me a hard time over it. I, more than anyone, should have understood how crippling it was to feel a failure. It was worse for men. They were expected to be courageous, and it destroyed their confidence to realize they weren’t. Tongue in cheek, I asked her if it would have been better for Peter if Jess and I had failed the bravery test as well, and she echoed Bagley’s statement about finding me deeply annoying.

“I don’t like to see you gloating, Connie.”

“I’m not gloating.”

“I don’t like to see your father gloating either.”

“He’s having fun,” I protested mildly. “Ploughing Jess’s fields is a lot more exciting than sitting at a desk all day.”

“He’s been cock-a-hoop since you phoned him in hospital,” she said accusingly. “What did you say to him?”

The demons are dead and buried… “Nothing much. Just that we’d all survived and MacKenzie had run away with his tail between his legs.”

Mum was peeling some potatoes at the sink. “Why should that please him? He wanted the beastly man dead or behind bars, not free to do the same thing to someone else. I can’t understand why you’re all so unconcerned about him getting away. Aren’t you worried that he’ll murder some other poor woman?”

I watched her busy hands and debated the merit of truth over lies. “Not really,” I said honestly. “It’s the age of the global village. The story’s gone round the world with his photograph, so he’ll be found very quickly if he’s alive. There are too many people looking for him.”

She turned to look at me. “If?”

“Wishful thinking,” I said.

“Mmm.” A pause. “Perhaps that explains your father. He’s behaving like a schoolboy at the moment.”

“Being on a farm reminds him of home.”

“Except the last time he operated a tractor was twenty years ago,” she said. “We employed a workforce for ploughing…Dad was the boss man who drove a four-by-four and checked the furrows were straight.” She held my gaze for a moment before returning to the potatoes. “But I’m sure you’re right. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

ONE AFTERNOON, Jess said she was going to visit Lily and asked if I’d like to go, too. I knew Jess went to the nursing home regularly, even though Lily had no idea who she was, but this was the first time she’d invited me to accompany her. I went out of curiosity-a desire to put a face to the personality I’d come to know-and I’m glad I did. Even though the fires that had driven her were now absent, Lily’s beauty was so much sweeter than her daughter’s. It proved nothing-for I firmly believe that looks are skin deep-but I did understand when she smiled why Jess was so fond of her. I’m sure the same bemused affection had been in Frank Derbyshire’s smile when his daughter had quietly taken his hand in hers, and stroked it without saying a word…

IF I LIVE to be a hundred I’ll never understand my mother’s gift for socializing. When she and my father first arrived in London, they were on the Zimbabwean exiles’ dinner party list within hours of the plane landing. My father complained about it-“I hate being trapped at tables with people I’m never going to meet again”-but underneath he was secretly pleased. He had more in common with ex-pat farmers who had experienced Mugabe’s ethnic cleansing at first hand than he did with the London chattering classes who could only talk about their second homes in France.

Suddenly, visitors started appearing at Barton House. I knew a few of them through Peter, but most I’d never seen before, and I certainly wasn’t on dropping-in terms with any of them. The first time anyone appeared-a jolly couple in their sixties from Peter’s end of the village-Jess was in the kitchen and, despite her best efforts to melt into the background, my mother drew her back out again. I warned her she’d scare Jess away if she wasn’t careful, but it didn’t happen. Jess turned up each evening with Dad, and seemed content to be quietly included in whatever was happening, albeit on the fringes.

On a few occasions Julie, Paula and their children came too. Even old Harry Sotherton put in an appearance, and had to be driven home by my father after consuming more ale than he was used to. It reminded me so much of life in Zimbabwe where meals were regularly stretched to accommodate anyone who was passing. Jess was never going to be the life and soul of a party, but to see her held in genuine affection by the people who knew her did her nothing but good.

Peter became the most regular visitor. I never did find out what my mother said to him, but she asked me to make the first move by inviting him over. I decided to go to his house and, if necessary, slap a MacKenzie embargo on him, but the subject never arose. He was more interested in Madeleine. “Listen to this,” he said, pressing the button on his answerphone. “I got back about five minutes ago and it was waiting for me.”

Madeleine’s strident voice filled the speaker. “Peter, are you there? The bloody nursing home’s locked the door against me. I need you to come and tell them not to be so damn…stupid! They say they’ll call the police if I don’t leave immediately. How dare the solicitor stop me seeing Mummy? He’s taken out an injunction against me. I’m so angry. Oh, to hell with it!” There was a muffled shout which sounded like “I’m going, for Christ’s sake,” then silence.

I couldn’t avoid a smile and Peter saw it. “What’s she on about? Do you know?”

“The solicitor’s obviously given the nursing home authority to exclude her.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story,” I told him. “You can ask Jess about it.”

“I haven’t seen her for days. She’s not answering her phone or her door.”

“Nothing new there then,” I said. “Since when did you have to announce yourself? I thought you always went in the back.”

“I did, but-” he broke off on a sigh. “I don’t think she’s speaking to me anymore.”

“I’m not surprised if you keep ringing her doorbell. She probably thinks it’s that worm Bagley.” I watched him give a small shake of his head. “Then it’s your fault,” I said bluntly. “You changed the rules of the game and she doesn’t know how to play anymore.”

“What rules?”

“The ones that say you have to barge in on her all the time and tease her mercilessly till she laughs. She probably thinks you don’t fancy her now that you’ve seen her naked.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Mmm. About as ridiculous as you hanging around outside her front door like a nervous adolescent.” I gave his arm a friendly buffet. “We’re talking about the most introverted woman in Dorset, Peter. She’s been manhandled by a psycho…watched one of her dogs die…stood up to the third degree from Bagley…and suddenly she’s supposed to understand why a man she likes doesn’t want to tease her any more? You’re an idiot!”

He smiled grudgingly. “That’s for sure. I got it all wrong, Connie. I thought we should humour-”

I gave him another buffet, rather harder this time. “Don’t lay a guilt trip on me. I’m on a roll…I’m writing again…I’m eating again. Life’s grand. Does it matter who did what, when?” I smiled to take the sting from my words. “You helped me from the day I arrived, Peter. You and Jess helped me just by being there that night. If I’d been on my own I couldn’t have done it. Can’t you feel good about that? For me and Jess…but mostly for yourself?”

“You’re a nice person, Connie.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

The smile stretched to his eyes. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll tell you after I’ve barged in on Jess.”

HALFWAY THROUGH my parents’ stay I received a letter from Lily’s solicitor, asking what my intentions were with regard to the information Jess and I had given him. My father was deeply unimpressed by him. As he pointed out, the man was a typical lawyer. He’d failed to protect his client before the event, but was happy to keep her alive and skim his percentage afterwards.

I didn’t disagree, but I took the line of least resistance. Did I care enough about Lily to make myself available for more police questioning? No. There wasn’t a sliver of paper to draw between her and her daughter. Lily had been no more willing to acknowledge Jess than Madeleine had. There’d been no public championing of the Derbyshires, and no stamping on Madeleine’s libels. Lily had treated her brother and her niece like servants and exploited their goodwill to the nth degree.

Did I think it would do an eleven-year-old boy any good for me to spend days in court, fighting off blackmail charges, in order to separate him from his parents? No. Rightly or wrongly, I accepted Jess’s word that Nathaniel genuinely cared for his son, and I hadn’t the will or the energy to take responsibility for a child I knew nothing about.

But in the end I kept quiet for Jess’s sake. Some debts can only be repaid with loyalty.

BALLDOCK & SIMPSON SOLICITORS

Tower House Poundbury Dorset

Ms. C. Burns

Barton House

Winterbourne Barton

Dorset

14 September 2004

Dear Ms. Burns,

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Re: Ms. Derbyshire’s account of an alleged assault on you by Madeleine Harrison-Wright; and information contained in a film purporting to show the incident

As you know, I act on behalf of Mrs. Lily Wright and I have taken the view that it is not in my client’s interests to pursue charges relating to alleged events between November 2003 and January 2004. Because of her frail health, Mrs. Wright would be unable to testify, and I believe this would result in a failed prosecution. Your case is different since you have a film of Madeleine Harrison-Wright’s apparent assault on you, and an independent witness in Ms. Derbyshire.

I cannot, of course, advise you on what action to take as you are not my client, however I hope you will forgive my presumption in pointing out some likely consequences of proceeding. Madeleine Harrison-Wright will argue that nothing she said can be relied on as there is clear evidence of provocation and coercion. Your own credibility will be questioned because you failed to report your suspicions to the police. The same is true of your witness. In addition, the very existence of the film may result in you and Ms. Derbyshire being charged with conspiracy to blackmail.

As my primary concern is Mrs. Lily Wright’s welfare, I have introduced various measures to ensure her continued welfare and safety. Please feel confident that she is being looked after with kindness, and is as happy as her condition allows. Before her health failed, she gave me certain instructions regarding herself, her family and her estate. Despite, or perhaps because of, the information you and Ms. Derbyshire obtained from Mrs. Madeleine Harrison-Wright, I see no reason to move away from those instructions.

1. For the foreseeable future, Barton House will remain in Mrs. Lily Wright’s estate.

2. Mrs. Wright’s nursing-home care will continue to be covered by income from its rental and income from her investments.

3. Should the sale of Barton House become necessary, the money will be placed in trust for the benefit of Mrs. Wright during her lifetime.

4. Upon her death, the benefit will pass to her grandson, Hugo Harrison-Wright, with all disbursement of money at the discretion of trustees.

5. In the event that Barton House remains unsold at the time of Mrs. Lily Wright’s death, it will pass to her niece to keep or dispose of as she pleases.

Ms. Derbyshire tells me you fully understand the implications of these decisions, but should you require further clarification please feel free to contact me. As per Mrs. Lily Wright’s instructions, Nathaniel and Madeleine Harrison-Wright remain in ignorance of her wishes.

While I accept that you have a genuine grievance against Madeleine Harrison-Wright, I worry that an attempted prosecution will exonerate her and allow her access to confidential information. For this reason, may I urge you to consider all of the above and let me know if you intend to proceed? You will, of course, be aware that any such action will lead to disclosures about Ms. Derbyshire’s connection with the family.

Finally, on behalf of Mrs. Lily Wright, I would like to thank you and Ms. Derbyshire for bringing these matters to my attention. I am distressed that my client was unable to inform me of what was happening to her at the time, but I am advised that her long-term condition would not have been unduly affected by her daughter’s mistreatment. Sadly, the progress of the disease was always irreversible.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Balldock

24

SEVERAL RUMORS SURFACED at the same time, although it wasn’t clear where they started. Everyone knew about the injunction preventing Madeleine from visiting Lily, and it was generally assumed that she’d made an attempt on her mother’s life in the nursing-home. From that developed the Chinese whispers. I was told variously that Madeleine had been diagnosed with a personality disorder; that she was under compulsory psychiatric care; that she’d been forced to leave the London flat after assaulting her son; that Nathaniel had filed for divorce; and that a restraining order had been imposed to stop her coming within a mile of Winterbourne Barton.

The only whisper I knew to be true (apart from the nursing-home injunction) was the restraining order which Thomas Balldock had applied for on behalf of Jess and myself. I don’t know what evidence he presented, but we were told to notify the police if Madeleine or Nathaniel tried to contact us or enter our properties. However, it wasn’t until Peter bumped into an acquaintance of Nathaniel’s in London that the separation was confirmed. According to the acquaintance, it was Nathaniel and Hugo who’d moved out of the flat, and Madeleine who remained in possession. Father and son were living in Wales with Nathaniel’s parents, and Madeleine was struggling to pay the bills.

The residents of Winterbourne Barton were surprisingly honest in their reactions. Most claimed to be shocked by the rumours, but a few said they’d always found Madeleine’s charm superficial. I was the recipient of several indirect apologies to Jess for some of the things that had been said and thought about her, but no one was brave enough to make them in person. If they tried, they were met with a ferocious scowl.

I stayed out of it, but I know my mother urged her to be generous since people were “only trying to be nice.” Jess replied that it was she who was being nice, by letting them “gawp” at her, because the only thing that had changed was their perception of Madeleine. Jess was the same as she’d always been and Winterbourne Barton remained a retirement village for rich, ignorant pensioners who knew nothing about the countryside. Under my mother’s emollient balm, she was persuaded to produce the odd smile in place of a scowl, but small talk remained beyond her.

I suggested to Mum that as soon as she and Dad went back to London Jess’s brief renaissance would be over. “I don’t want to schmooze the locals any more than she does,” I pointed out, “and my tenancy ends in December.”

“Jess has a kind heart,” she said. “If she hears of someone in trouble, she’ll help them. She helped you, didn’t she?”

“But I didn’t impose on the friendship.”

My mother laughed. “And neither will anyone else. People aren’t stupid, Connie. As long as she keeps making social calls, everything will work out fine. It’s hard to dislike someone with as much warmth as Jess has.”

Warmth…? Were we talking about the same person? Jess Derbyshire? Dysfunction on legs? “Jess doesn’t make social calls.”

“Of course she does, darling. How many times has she dropped in on you since you arrived here?”

“That’s different.”

“I don’t think so. When Peter tells her one of his patients needs some eggs, she’ll be round like a shot. It’s her nature to look after others. She’ll make an excellent doctor’s wife.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Do you think that’s likely? I don’t think she’s the marrying type.”

“Perhaps not, but she could do with a baby or two,” said my mother matter-of-factly. “Otherwise her farm will go to strangers when she dies.”

I eyed her with amusement. “Have you told her that? How did she respond?”

“Rather more positively than you’ve ever done.”

I didn’t believe her for a moment. Jess’s most likely retort was that giving birth to me hadn’t stopped strangers taking my parents’ farm in Zimbabwe-it was the answer she’d given when I’d strayed on to the subject of inheritance-but I decided not to argue the point. My mother was too well practised at turning other people’s babies into a lecture on my lack of commitment in the same department. In any case, I rather liked the idea of Jess producing little Derbyshire-Colemans. I thought they’d grow up to be as affectionate, competent and well balanced as her mastiffs.

I SPENT a couple of days in Manchester at the end of September, giving Alan Collins a full statement of the events in Baghdad. By then he’d built up quite a file against MacKenzie, which was available to other national and international police forces in the event of an arrest. I asked him if he was optimistic, and he shook his head.

“I think he died the night he came to your house, Connie.”

“How?”

“Probably the way you suggested to Nick Bagley…he lost his bearings in the dark and fell.”

“Off the cliff?”

“Unlikely.”

I watched him for a moment. “Why not?”

Alan shrugged. “His body would have been found. Nick tells me there’s a rocky shoreline along that part of the Dorset coast.”

“Perhaps he went in farther down. Some of the cliffs to the east are sheer.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

He smiled slightly. “Did I ever tell you I took the family on holiday to Dorset once? We rented a cottage near Wool, about ten miles from where you are. The children loved it. There was a well in the garden with a thatched roof and a bucket painted red. They were convinced there were fairies living at the bottom of it, and they used to climb on the stone surround to look down. My wife was terrified they were going to fall in.”

I folded my hands in my lap. “I’m not surprised.”

“It was quite safe. It was capped below the parapet to prevent accidents. I asked the old boy next door what he’d done with his well, and he told me he’d filled it in and put a patio over the top. He said he’d had to wait until the late sixties for mains water, and he didn’t want any reminders of the back-breaking days. According to him, every old house in rural Dorset has a redundant well somewhere. The big houses usually have two…one outside and one inside.”

I squeezed my hands between my knees. “Well, if there are any at Barton House they were covered over long ago. You could look forever and never find one.”

Alan watched me while he shuffled his papers together and tapped them on the desk to square them up. “Nick tells me the woman who owns Barton House asked for an interview but never turned up. Do you know why not?”

“Lily Wright?” I said in surprise. “She can’t have done. She has advanced Alzheimer’s. Her solicitor put her in a nursing home eight months ago.”

“I believe he said the name was Madeleine Wright.”

“Oh, her!” I said scathingly, wondering how many conversations he’d had with Bagley, and how much he’d said to him about wells. “You mean Madeleine Harrison-Wright, the double-barrelled daughter.”

He looked amused. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Not my type,” I told him. “Not yours either, I wouldn’t think, unless you like spoilt forty-somethings who expect to be kept all their lives. She doesn’t work-far too grand-but she’s not above selling a story. She tried to pump Peter Coleman for the gory details on MacKenzie, and when he refused she said she’d ask Bagley.”

“So why didn’t she?”

“I don’t know for certain. I was told Lily’s solicitor became involved, and he read her the riot act on behalf of Jess and me.” I pulled a wry face. “Madeleine lives in London and never lifted a finger to help her mother…which makes her very unpopular in Winterbourne Barton. They’re all over sixty-five and imagine their children love them.”

Alan gave a snort of laughter. “Meaning what? That you and Jess won the grey vote, and the wrinklies ran her out of town so that she couldn’t make money out of you?”

I smiled in return. “Something like that. They’ve been very protective of us.”

“And the fact that Madeleine’s the only person who knows the ins and outs of Barton House has nothing to do with it?”

“Hardly. If Bagley wants to talk to her, he can always ask Lily’s solicitor for her phone number.”

“He’s done that already.”

“And?”

“Nothing. She said she didn’t keep the appointment because her car broke down, and the only thing she wanted to ask was whether she could go ahead with having the flagstones cleaned.”

I shrugged. “That’s probably right. She told me it all had to be done before I left so that the next tenant wouldn’t complain about Bertie’s blood all over the place.”

Alan tucked the papers back into MacKenzie’s file. “Will anyone ever ask me for this, Connie?”

“I don’t know,” I said lightly. “Maybe a body will wash up on the Dorset coast one day, and put us all out of our misery.”

“Then let’s hope there’s salt water in its lungs,” he said, standing up and helping me into my jacket.

FROM MANCHESTER I drove down to Holyhead in North Wales to meet the ferry from Dublin. I saw Dan before he saw me. He looked no different from the day we’d parted at Baghdad airport-big, weatherbeaten, slightly crumpled-but the sight of his well-remembered face gave me such a jolt of recognition that I had to retreat behind a pillar until my schoolgirl blush faded.

Back in Dorset, Jess and he tolerated each other for my sake but neither understood what I saw in the other. It was like introducing a boisterous grizzly bear to a cautious feral cat. There were no such problems with Peter. In no time at all, he and Dan were playing rounds of golf together, and stopping off for a jar at the local hostelry. Each told me the other was a “good chap,” and I wondered why men found it easier than women to strike up a casual bond and move on without regret.

I wouldn’t be able to do that with Jess. The ties we had ran too deep.