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.