Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

“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.

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.