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.”