Finally, Nick is surprised that you didn’t destroy the DVD of your captivity when you had the chance. From the concerns you expressed both to me and Dr. Coleman about being filmed (and Dr. Coleman’s description of what he saw), Nick wonders why you seem so indifferent to the fact MacKenzie still has it. I presume you aren’t, and that you’re still anxious about it?

Yours as ever,

Alan

DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

From: connie.burns@uknet.com

Sent: Fri 27/08/04 08:30

To: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Subject: My extraordinary resilience

Dear Alan,

Thank you. I deeply appreciate the thoughts behind your email.

So…for your reassurance…

Nick Bagley would have been no less suspicious if Jess and I had folded ourselves into heaps and demanded 24-hour protection. Peter Coleman’s evidence about our courage was so OTT that a sudden collapse afterwards would have looked very odd. We can only be what we are, Alan, and there was no sense assuming different personas to satisfy Bagley’s view of how women ought to behave. You know very well I could have kept up a sham for as long as I liked-I’ve done it successfully in the past-but Jess is too honest.

I took your Thucydides quote to heart. “The secret of happiness is freedom; the secret of freedom, courage.” I’ve tried to explain to Bagley that merely confronting MacKenzie was a liberation. I saw him for what he was-not what my imagination had made of him-and I’m a great deal happier for it. I can’t, and won’t, pretend a fear I don’t feel anymore. Bagley’s given me a panic alarm, but I’m sure MacKenzie won’t come back. He seemed far more frightened of me that night than I was of him.

In so far as anyone can guarantee anything, I guarantee that MacKenzie is NOT in the valley. Dorset police searched it twice from end to end, and there was no sign of him on either occasion. He may have holed up somewhere else but I’m sure the more likely explanation is that he left the country under a different passport. He seems to have unlimited access to them.

FYI, Dan has requested a filter on all Reuters files to pull out anything relating to unexplained murders, so if MacKenzie starts again somewhere else we may be able to spot him.

Re the Hound of the Baskervilles. Conan Doyle describes it as a mastiff/bloodhound cross, the size of a small lioness with phosphorous flames dripping from its jaws (!), and trust me, even Bagley’s interesting imagination would have trouble embroidering Jess’s soft-mouthed mutts into anything so exciting. It’s true you can’t move when they sit on you, but their favourite occupation is to drool saliva into your lap not grab you by the throat and shake you. She’s keeping them in for the moment because Bertie’s buried in the top field and she’s worried they’ll dig him up. Once the turf has grown over the grave, they won’t be interested. She explained this to Bagley but, unfortunately, it seems to have made him more suspicious.

Re the DVD. It never occurred to me to destroy it. Am I still anxious about it? No. If I’m honest, I’m rather proud of it. I even wish Bagley could see it. It might help him to understand why I’m so jubilant about taking MacKenzie on a second time. As a wise man once said: “Winning is everything.”

You’ve been a good friend, Alan, and I hope I’ve set your mind at rest. In passing, if I ever do kill MacKenzie I won’t bother to hide his body. There’ll be no point if I can hack him to death in the hall with a blunt axe and plead self-defence. Maybe I should have done it when I had the chance!

With my love and thanks,

Connie

I DIDN’T KNOW THEN if Madeleine kept her appointment with Inspector Bagley. If she did, he never referred to it. He fell into the habit of dropping in unexpectedly, both at Barton House and Barton Farm, sometimes making two or three visits in a day. He usually found me working at my computer, but invariably missed Jess, who was out in her fields, bringing in a late harvest after one of the wettest summers for years.

On several occasions she discovered his car in her drive and the man himself poking around in her outhouses, but she took it all in good part, even though he didn’t have a search warrant. She told him he was welcome any time, and suggested he keep checking the back garden so that he could satisfy himself the only bones there were beef bones. Her dogs lost their suspicion of him once they learnt the sound of his engine, but he never lost his suspicion of them.

I, too, remained wary around them. Some phobias aren’t susceptible to logic. I could cope with one dog at a time but the four en masse still alarmed me. It was clear they missed Bertie. Outside, they patrolled their wire enclosure looking for him, and, inside, sat by doors, watching for his return. Jess said they’d do it for a month before they forgot him, but Bagley didn’t believe her.

“They’re not waiting for the other dog to return,” he told me one morning, “they’re trying to get out.” He was standing behind me, reading what was on my computer screen, a complicated paragraph on post-traumatic stress statistics. “You haven’t got very far with that, Ms. Burns. You’ve only added one sentence since last night.”

I clicked “save” and pushed my chair back, narrowly missing his foot. “It would go a lot faster if you didn’t keep coming in and breaking my train of thought,” I told him mildly. “Can’t you ring the doorbell once in a while? At least give me a chance to pretend I’m out.”

“You said I could walk in whenever I felt like it.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to take up residence here.”

“Then shut your back door, Ms. Burns. It’s an open invitation to anyone to enter.” He offered me a cigarette. “After what happened, I’m surprised you’re so unconcerned about unwanted visitors.”

It was a variation on a question he’d asked a hundred times already. I accepted a light. “I’m not unconcerned,” I answered patiently, “but the alternative is to turn this place into a prison. Is that what you want me to do? I thought modern policing was all about persuading victims to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

“But this isn’t normality for you, Ms. Burns. Normality was checking the locks on the doors and windows every two hours.”

“And a fat lot of good it did me,” I pointed out. “It raised my stress levels, and MacKenzie got in anyway.” I fingered the panic alarm round my neck. “In any case, I now have this. It’s given me confidence that the cavalry will turn up…which was the intention, wasn’t it?”

He smiled rather sourly as he dropped into the armchair beside the desk. “Indeed, but I suspect it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. Are you ever going to use it? Ms. Derbyshire refuses to wear hers.”

“There’s no point when she’s out in the fields. It needs a landline or a telephone signal to work.”

He cast his usual glance around the office as if something would suddenly show itself to him. “I had a word with Alan Collins last night. He said you’re too clever for me, and I might as well give up now. He also said he won’t be shedding any tears if MacKenzie’s never heard of again. If anyone deserves what he gets, it’s your attacker.”

I doubted Alan had said anything so crass, particularly to an opposite number in a different county. “Really?” I asked in surprise. “I’ve always thought of him as such a stickler for the rule of law. I can’t imagine him ever going on record with favourable views about summary justice and vigilantism.”

“It wasn’t on record,” Bagley said. “It was a private conversation.”

“Still…will he repeat those remarks to me, do you think? I like the one about my being too clever for you. If I were to broaden that out into a general piece, contrasting IQ levels among the police with those of prison inmates-” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”