I shrugged. “What was I doing?”

“Looking for revenge.”

“Is that what Peter thought?”

“He certainly believes MacKenzie thought it. He says he was frightened of you.”

“Good,” I said dispassionately.

BEING CLOTHED made a difference. Even a flimsy cotton top and sarong felt like body armour compared with the shameful exposure of nakedness. When I made the decision to stay in the doorway, I wiped each palm down the side of my skirt while I balanced the axe in the other, then tucked my hem into my knicker elastic to give myself more freedom of movement.

Being able to see changed everything. For the first time, I understood how fear had distorted my perceptions of the man I was up against. For all the violence that I knew MacKenzie could generate, I saw him as a little man, not much taller than I was. And he couldn’t disguise what was going on inside his head. His eyes darted to and fro, checking and double-checking that he still had control of his environment; but whenever he looked at me now, it was with doubt.

Did I still recognize his authority? How much did I care about the other people in the room? Was my hatred of him greater than my loyalty to them? How frightened was I? How much sympathy did I have for Jess’s plight?

“She’ll not be able to stand there all night,” he told me, “and neither will you. Better do as I say, Connie.”

“No.”

He raised the knife to Peter’s face again. “Shall I cut the doctor?”

“No.”

“Then come in.”

“No.”

He placed the tip of the blade under Peter’s right eye. “One flick and he’s blind. Do you want to be responsible for that, feather?” Peter cringed into the back of the chair. “Look at him,” MacKenzie said in disgust. “He’s even more scared than you were.”

“Then untie him and see if he’s as scared when his hands are free.”

“You’d like that.”

“Of course,” I agreed unemotionally. “You ought to be able to take him easily if you were in the SAS. But you never were, were you?”

He didn’t rise to the bait, but I hadn’t expected him to. Instead, he stared at Peter with contempt. “Your father showed more spirit than this creep.”

It was a tactic he’d used with me, and I’m sure on every other victim. The more a person’s belittled the harder it is to retain a sense of worth. I tried the same ploy on him. “What do you think I’m going to do if you use that knife?” I asked with as much scorn as I could muster. “You can’t really be stupid enough to think I’ll suck your cock again. Or maybe you are? Your mother’s IQ was measured at retard levels.”

It was like water off a duck’s back. He played the point of the blade between Peter’s eyes again. “You’ll do what I want I you to do, Connie, the way you did before.”

Peter’s terror was so intense I could feel it. It palpated the air. And I was cold-blooded. I remember thinking, You haven’t begun to experience what I experienced, Peter, or even what Jess is experiencing now. I was angry with him, too, because his fear was feeding MacKenzie’s confidence.

I managed to produce enough saliva to project a globule of spit on to the floor. “That’s what I think of you, you little fucker,” I growled at MacKenzie. “You try anything on me and you’re dead. You should listen to the voices in your head that tell you how frightening women are. You daren’t go near them if their hands are free.”

That didn’t seem to trouble him either.

“Do you know what the prostitutes in Freetown called you?” I said with an abrupt laugh. “ ‘Zoo Queen.’ They thought you were gay because you hated women so much…and the story went that you shafted dogs because you couldn’t afford pretty boys. Why do you think the Europeans gave you such a wide berth? The first thing any of us learnt was, don’t shake hands with Harwood or you’ll catch whatever his ridgeback has.”

I had his attention.

“I told the police you could only get a hard on when dogs were present,” I went on, fishing for anything that would provoke him. “Nothing I did excited you. Look at you now. You’re far more aroused by Peter than you are by me or Jess. You can only do it with women when they’re tied up and subservient. They remind you of your mother…grunting and sweating under any man she brought home.”

He didn’t answer, just stared at me.

“You have to blindfold women so they won’t see the size of your dick,” I went on, “and you force fellatio on them so you won’t have to come into contact with anything intimate. Breasts and vaginas scare the shit out of you. You can fuck an anus, but you sure as hell can’t fuck a vagina.” This time the hit was a very direct one if the momentary shock in his eyes was anything to go by. “It’s all in your profile. They call it ‘stage fright’ because you can’t hold an erection-”

“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.”