Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

2. You mentioned your suspicions to some of your colleagues, who threw cold water on your ideas, and you didn’t take them any further. Shortly afterwards you left Freetown, but not before Harwood showed you an envelope with the name “Mary MacKenzie.” At that point you remembered he was calling himself Keith MacKenzie in Kinshasa.

3. Two years later, you recognized him in Baghdad but were told his name was Kenneth O’Connell. When you raised the issue with Alastair Surtees, you were dismissed as unreliable and malicious.

4. You searched the Iraqi press for similar murders to those in Freetown. You found two, attempted to raise interest among Iraqi journalists, got nowhere, so informed me and by extension Bill Fraser.

5. You copied those emails to Alastair Surtees.

6. Shortly afterwards, you were abducted on your way to the airport by an unknown group who released you three days later. You were blindfolded the entire time and were unable to give the police any useful information. Because your abduction was unlike any other, and because you’ve refused to talk about it, this has led to you being branded “a faker.”

7. On your return to the UK, you went into hiding and have never told your story. As far as I know, I am one of the few people in contact with you-certainly the only policeman as you refuse to give your email address to Bill Fraser-but you have not made me party to your address or telephone number.

8. Your mobile and laptop were stolen during your abduction. Therefore, any information stored on them-contact details of family and friends, notes/emails re the murders in Freetown and Baghdad-is available to your abductor(s).

9. You are now terrified that MacKenzie is looking for you.

At the risk of repeating myself, Connie, you know how to contact me if there’s anything you wish to add. I cannot force you to say anything. If I could, I would have done it when you returned to England.

I won’t pretend I can guarantee a positive result on a crime/crimes committed abroad but, if MacKenzie is as dangerous as you claim, there’s everything to be gained by trying. Not least for your sake. Fear of retribution is a powerful disincentive to speak out, but I hope you know by now that anything you say to me will be treated in confidence.

Kind regards as ever,

Alan

DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

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.