“It wasn’t a machete,” I corrected amiably. “It was an axe.”

“Near enough.”

We were sitting opposite each other and I examined his face to see how serious he was. “I don’t believe in an eye for an eye, Alan. It’s a crazy form of justice. In any case, if I’d wanted the perfect revenge, I’d have kept MacKenzie in a crate for three days.”

His eyes creased attractively. “It crossed my mind.”

I laughed. “Bagley would have found him. There wasn’t an inch of Barton House that wasn’t searched at least twice.”

“Mmm.”

“You don’t really think I’d do something like that, do you?”

“Why not? He was a killer. A sadist. He liked hurting people. He boasted about what he’d done to your father…humiliated your friend and killed her dog. You’re good at hiding your feelings, Connie. You have a brain…and you have courage. Why wouldn’t you kill him if you had the chance?”

“It would make me no better than MacKenzie.”

Alan took a sip from his teacup and eyed me over the rim. “Do you know Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote about being corrupted by evil? I have it pinned to a board above my desk. Simplified, it says: ‘When you fight with monsters take care not to become one yourself.’ It’s a warning to all policemen.”

I nodded. “It goes on: ‘If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.’ How would you simplify that?”

“You tell me.”

“When you’re teetering on the brink, step back.”

“And did you?”

“Of course,” I said, offering him a biscuit. “But MacKenzie didn’t. He fell in.”

MINETTE WALTERS’S best-selling novels have been published in more than thirty countries. She has won the John Creasey and Golden Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the Grand Prix des Lectrices d’Elle in France. She lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.