This is particularly true of this nuisance caller. Whoever’s doing it only rings during the day, and your mother hangs up as soon as she’s greeted by silence at the other end. In fact, she has no idea whether it’s a man or a woman as they never speak. There were some 20 calls between Monday lunchtime and yesterday p.m., but dialling 1471 doesn’t help as the caller’s number is withheld. I’ve now asked British Telecom to bar all withheld numbers, which means calls from abroad will be automatically rejected. It’s a bore in the short term, but hopefully this pest will lose interest when there’s no response.

Poor Marianne wouldn’t have mentioned the calls if she thought you would react the way you did, and now we’re concerned that you’re not coping as well as we thought. We both feel we should advance our visit. She’s asked me to talk to you about it as she thinks you’re more likely to say “yes” if I make the request. I’m not sure that’s true, C, but I will phone as soon as I’m free. In the meantime, will you call your mother? You know how she hates falling out with anyone-but particularly you.

All my love, Dad xxx

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

Sent: Fri 13/08/04 16:19

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject: Keith MacKenzie

Dear Connie,

I had some difficulty understanding your email. If you re-read you will see that it’s very confused. However, there seem to be three things worrying you: 1) MacKenzie has left Iraq. 2) He’ll come looking for you. 3) Your parents have been receiving nuisance calls.

Re 1) I can’t see MacKenzie returning to the UK. His most likely course is to go back to Africa where he knows he can find work. That being said, I posted him some time ago for passport-related offences, and Glasgow has your photofit and his 2 known aliases. Ditto Customs & Excise, who will pick him up if he tries to enter the country under any of those names.

Re 2) You say he must know you accused him of serial murder because of the emails you copied to Alastair Surtees. In fact Surtees denies showing them to him because he thought your allegations were malicious. Bill Fraser doesn’t place much reliance on this but, in either event, I believe you’re worrying unnecessarily. You’re the one person who can identify MacKenzie, so he’ll stay as far away as possible from you-whether his crime is rape and murder, or merely forging passports. It is not in his interests to draw attention to himself.

Re 3) Coincidences do happen, and it would be wrong to assume the timing of these nuisance calls to your parents suggests MacKenzie is in the country. Your parents should report the problem to the police as it sounds as if someone’s casing their property, but without very good evidence that MacKenzie: a) knows their phone number; b) their location; c) is in the UK-then giving his name as a suspect will confuse the issue.

Re the clear alarm in your email. You understand that my advice/conclusions are based on the information you’ve given me. In order that neither of us is in error about that information, I have it listed as follows:

1. Following the serial murders in Freetown, John Harwood’s attack on a prostitute and my remark about “the foreign contingent,” you began to wonder if Harwood was responsible for the women’s deaths.

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.