“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.

“It’s a ridiculous law,” I said with considerable indignation. “In Zimbabwe we were taught that an Englishman’s home is his castle.”

The Inspector wasn’t impressed by my playing the colonial card. “It is,” he assured me, “and he’s allowed to defend it as long as he doesn’t use disproportionate violence.”

“It’s an open invitation to burglars to bang their heads against the wall every time they’re caught,” I said crossly. “That way, they never leave empty-handed. They might not get away with the stereo system, but they can sure as hell sue for compensation on the grounds of unreasonable force.”

“You obviously read your newspapers.”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Mmm. Well, I don’t disagree, Ms. Burns, but it is the law…and I am obliged to enforce it. Why did you retrieve the axe?”

“Because I saw blood on the floor.”

A great deal of blood. It was like a war zone. Whoever was injured was pumping pints of the stuff onto the flagstones. I didn’t gave a thought to its being MacKenzie. Fate was never so obliging. I knew immediately that it was one of Jess’s dogs, and that MacKenzie’s flick knife had found an artery. I don’t know what was in my mind when I picked up the axe. Perhaps I did want revenge. I do remember thinking it was incredibly unfair.

“You talk as if I know how dogs behave,” I told Bagley, “and I don’t. I’ve spent years avoiding them because everywhere I go there’s rabies. It’s a different world. You learn to be wary around animals in hot climates. They lose their tempers in the heat just as people do.”

“You saw blood,” he reminded me patiently.

“I thought they might react like sharks-go into a feeding frenzy because of the smell.”

He eyed me doubtfully. “You mean eat MacKenzie?”

“Rip apart,” I corrected him, “the way hounds rip foxes.”

“So you picked up the axe to protect him?”

“And myself. It was all happening only a few feet away from me.”

“Did you know it was a mastiff that was dying?”

“Yes. I saw Bertie collapse.”

He glanced at some notes. “Do you recall what you did next?”

“Not really. All I could think about was trying to stop the fight.”

“So your plan was to use the axe on the mastiffs?”

“I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I had to do something.”

He held my gaze for a moment then returned to the notes. “According to Dr. Coleman you screamed ‘bastard’ then ordered the dogs behind you and brought the axe down on Mr. MacKenzie’s right hand…the one that held the flick knife. Dr. Coleman’s impression was that you wanted to defend the dogs from further damage…not Mr. MacKenzie.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to say except that Peter’s investing me with a level of control that I didn’t have. It’s true I hit MacKenzie’s hand, but it was a complete fluke. If I repeated the action a thousand times, there’d be a thousand different outcomes. I can’t even use a hammer properly…so how on earth could I expect to hit what I was aiming at with an axe?”

I could have proved the point better by telling him that my target had been MacKenzie’s head and I’d missed it by a yard, but that would have been a spectacular own goal since I was doing my best to persuade him that undue violence had never been part of my agenda. Or Jess’s. Or my father’s.