“And where were the dogs when this happened, Ms. Burns?”

“Milling around MacKenzie. It’s a miracle I didn’t hit one of them.”

“Indeed,” he said with heavy irony. “Perhaps MacKenzie’s hand was protruding conveniently from the pack.” He didn’t seem to expect an answer because he went on: “I’m having trouble understanding how someone with a phobia of dogs had the courage to wade into the middle of a fight between grown mastiffs. At a rough guess their combined weight must have been in excess of six hundred pounds…and by your own admission you thought they were engaged in a feeding frenzy. What you did was either very brave or very stupid.”

“Very stupid,” I assured him. “About as stupid as going back into the house in the first place…but you don’t think straight when you’re frightened.”

More irony. “That’s certainly true of most people.” He smiled slightly. “Tell me why the dogs decided to draw back.”

“I don’t know. I think the sound of the axe striking the stone might have startled them. Only the top half of the blade hit MacKenzie…the bottom half cracked one of the flags.”

He consulted his notes. “At which point you decided to tie him up?”

“Yes.”

“Even though he was wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Using his own duct tape…which meant you had to go back into the office?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t think to release Dr. Coleman and Ms. Derbyshire?”

“I didn’t have time. I was frightened of leaving MacKenzie free even for the seconds it took me to run in and out of the office.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because I was sure he was only winded. His eyes were open…and he was groaning. He called me a bitch when I kicked the flick knife away.” Wearily, I massaged my temples with my fingertips. “I thought about bashing him on the head to knock him out, as a matter of fact, but I didn’t how much force would be needed. I was afraid of killing him by mistake.”

“Mmm…Dr. Coleman mentions the groans. He says they stopped after you retrieved the tape. Did you decide to gag him as well, Ms. Burns?”

“Does Peter say he was gagged?”

He shook his head.

I chose to take that as a firm negative. “He passed out when I bound his hands together. If I’d realized I’d broken his fingers, I might have been a bit more careful…but, at that stage, I didn’t even know I’d made contact with them. Wouldn’t you expect an axe to chop them off…instead of just mangling them?”

“It depends when the axe was last sharpened.”

“I know that now. I didn’t at the time.”

“Wasn’t it obvious to you that he was incapacitated? He’d been savaged by a pack of dogs and attacked with an axe.”

I took a few seconds to order my thoughts. “No, it wasn’t obvious at all. I agree he looked a bit of a mess because he had Bertie’s blood all over him, but I’d seen him in fights in Sierra Leone and I knew he could take punches. I’d have been mad to risk it.”

The Inspector’s expression was sceptical. “Surely a more normal reaction would have been to get a doctor to him as fast as possible…particularly as there was one less than fifteen metres away?”

“That’s effectively what I did,” I said mildly, “and Peter agreed I was right to tie him up first. None of the blood was MacKenzie’s. He had the broken fingers and some bruising on his arms where the dogs had held him through his shirt, but no puncture wounds.”

“Did Ms. Derbyshire ever tell you that’s how she trained her dogs? To terrify and restrain rather than inflict damage?”

“No. All she ever said was that I had no reason to fear them, but she didn’t specify why.” I produced my most ingenuous smile. “If she had done, I’d have known MacKenzie wasn’t in any danger from them.”

“But you knew MacKenzie had a flick knife, so you knew the dogs were in danger from him. Presumably you also knew how angry the death of one of her mastiffs would make Ms. Derbyshire?”

“Not really,” I said apologetically. “I’m not a doggy person.”

His scepticism grew. “Why did you release Ms. Derbyshire before Dr. Coleman?”

“Because she was the most vulnerable. If she’d lost concentration she’d have fallen on the nails.”

“Then why didn’t you release Dr. Coleman directly afterwards?” He consulted the notes again. “He says you and Ms. Derbyshire left the room and it was several minutes before you came back again…which contradicts your earlier assertion that you took Dr. Coleman to Mr. MacKenzie as fast as you could.”

I sighed. “Only if you accept Peter’s estimate of how long anything took…but I honestly believe he’s given you some very exaggerated timings. You said he thought it was half an hour between him leaving the kitchen and my appearing in the office doorway, yet my estimate would be more like fifteen minutes. And as for the dogfight, there’s no way it lasted the five minutes Peter’s claiming. More like sixty seconds. In five minutes, MacKenzie could have killed every one of them.”

“Dr. Coleman’s used to emergencies, Ms. Burns. It’s his job. Why should his timings have been any less accurate than yours?”

“Because I have more experience of frightening situations. You learn very quickly in a war zone that everything becomes inflated…ten minutes under mortar bombardment seems like ten hours…a hundred-strong mob with machetes looks more like five hundred.” I leaned my elbows on the table. “I left Peter just long enough to see Jess to the top of the stairs-one minute max. She was very shaken and she didn’t know what MacKenzie had done with her clothes-so I told her to put on something of mine till we found them. Then I went back down and released Peter.”

The Inspector nodded as if he could accept that. “These being the clothes that were dropped outside the office window?”

“Yes. Jess thinks he did it to confuse the dogs in case they picked up his scent where he came in.”

“You should have left them there for the police to examine, Ms. Burns.”

“I couldn’t. Jess had nothing else to wear. Everything of mine was too long, and she needed her boots.”

Another nod. “Was Ms. Derbyshire in the hall when Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“No, she was still upstairs.”

“Where were the dogs?”

“With Jess. She wanted to check them over for stab wounds.”

“Excluding”-he checked his notes-“Bertie. He was already dead?”

“Yes.”

“Who decided he was dead, Ms. Burns? You? Or Ms. Derbyshire?”

In view of the doubt I’d thrown on Peter’s ability to estimate time, I suspected a neat little trap. “You only had to look at him,” I said flatly, “or smell him. His sphincter muscle had relaxed and the contents of his rectum were on the floor. I’m sure in other circumstances Jess would have tried for a pulse, but she was more concerned about the others. They were covered in blood as well.”

“What did you do while Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“Watched.”

I left out that Peter’s self-control deserted him and he swore like a trooper for a good minute after I removed his gag. At that stage he didn’t know who to blame for his perceived shortcomings. MacKenzie for humbling him? Me for being strong? Jess for taking most of the punishment? Himself for being frightened? His devastation increased when he saw Bertie, as if Bertie had somehow been sacrificed on the altar of his cowardice. Of course these “shortcomings” were his own creation-much as mine had been-for neither Jess nor I saw him in such terms.

Nevertheless, the result of this orgy of self-flagellation was that he set out to paint me and Jess in glowing colours. I became the iron lady who took control and exercised it-Peter even used the word “revenge” after describing what he’d seen on the DVD, claiming anything I did to MacKenzie was “reasonable.” Jess became the martyr figure who refused to give in to exhaustion or threats, and retained an icy composure even after the death of one of her dogs.