Surely, though, there was nowhere to hide? The path was too narrow, the foliage on either side too thick. Leaves would be trembling, snow falling to the ground like shaken sugar if she were tucked amongst the shrubbery. There hadn’t been time, not if she moved like a mortal woman, to run the full length of the garden and tuck herself away behind the shed. And yet, where else—

I heard movement, a scraping sound. She was behind me. I turned and saw her halfway up the wall. She climbed impossibly quickly, springing up like a cat, before pausing at the top and leaping out of sight.

No point trying to follow her. I knew I could never move half as fast as she’d just done. And I was the fittest person I knew.

A starving Muslim woman who could scamper up eight-foot walls like a squirrel? In floor-length robes? This wasn’t feeling normal to me. And the door to my shed, where I store my fitness equipment and which I always keep locked, was open.

My garden was just too dark, I decided as I neared the shed. The walls were high and overhanging trees cut off most of the light from either the moon or the streetlamps. With the snow, it was bad enough. When it had gone, it would be worse. I needed lights out here.

And my sense of unease wasn’t helped by remembering the last time I’d come out here to investigate an intruder. It had been some time in the early hours, and as I’d approached the shed, I’d seen the warm flicker of candlelight. My punchbag, hanging from a hook in the centre of the roof, had been ‘adorned with the addition of a real human head.

I wasn’t in the mood for any grisly early Christmas presents this evening. I pushed at the door, relieved – I think – to find the shed in darkness. Switching on the light didn’t throw up too many surprises either. Everything was much as I’d left it. The punchbag rotated slowly, but it always did when I opened the door. On the other hand, the padded mat that I use for floor work appeared to carry the indentation of a human form. I bent down and touched it. Slightly warm. And that was a chocolate wrapper on the floor.

The woman had eaten in here – the chocolate was the same brand I’d bought in the supermarket – and had lain down on my exercise mat. So Tulloch had been right. She was homeless. I’d given her my address and she’d moved in.

17

WHEN I WOKE in the night, it was to the immediate thought that she was back. The electronic clock told me it was just after two in the morning. I’d been asleep for under three hours. I was groggy, with that ache in my chest and weakness in my limbs that told me the only sensible place to be was back in the land of nod. But I’d heard something that hadn’t been the usual nighttime noise of a kicked beer-can or a horny cat. I sat up and the air around me felt unusually cold.

I’d left the door open. Even now, she was inside, letting cold air and malevolence sneak through the flat.

Except I knew how carefully I’d locked the doors and windows after my adventure in the garden. I’d even switched on the alarm. For a modest, rented flat in south London, my home has state-of-the-art security. Joesbury had arranged it for me when it had looked as though our Ripper copycat was getting just a bit too focussed on me. The windows were double-glazed and lockable, the two outside doors had bolts top and bottom and heavy-duty deadlocks. There were security cameras and an alarm, both of which had at one time been wired up to Scotland Yard. I was no longer on a direct line to the Yard, but everything else was still in place. She could not be inside. But she had come back. There was definitely someone moving around out there. And that was the sound of the outside door handle. Well, I’d practically invited her round, and maybe this time she’d talk.

Not wanting to take her by surprise, I switched on a small bedside light and then, more nervous than I’d have liked to admit, raised the window blind and peered through.

Beyond the conservatory, my garden seemed dark and empty. If anyone were in the shed, I was too far away to be able to tell. I pulled on a sweatshirt before unlocking the door between bedroom and conservatory.

The glass extension at the back of my property is heated, but not efficiently, and I felt a sharp dip in temperature as I stepped from one room to the other. The quarry tiles felt as though I were stepping out across a frozen pond. I pushed the key into the lock and something made me pause. Something made me wipe the glass clear of condensation and lean my forehead against it to look out.

There are many ways in which fear can grab your heart and squeeze tight, but few, I think, can beat the experience of starting out scared, finding the courage to face your fear, and then realizing that what you are up against isn’t fear but mind-numbing terror.

The men who’d set fire to Aamir Chowdhury, and taunted him while he burned to death, were in my garden, not three yards from the door I’d been on the brink of opening. The wolf was closest, his loose, dark clothes in sharp relief against the white backdrop, his teeth gleaming like headstones in the moonlight. Just behind him was the green, huge-eyed alien, and over their shoulders I could see the goblin. Exactly as I remembered them, only this time they’d come for me.

I didn’t scream. My survival instincts weren’t going to waste energy on anything as pointless as making noise no one would hear. Nor did I freeze in horror, beyond that first split-second. I fled, fumbling for the phone I keep by my bed at night, meaning to put another door, ideally another lock, between them and me. But the key fell out of the bedroom door and as one of them started to bang on the glass of the conservatory, I didn’t stop to pick it up.

In my kitchen I leaned against the wall for a second. I had time, surely, to summon help. The reinforced glass of my windows and doors might break under enough force, but not easily or quickly.

Someone was at the front door. The door was making the noise it always did when the postman was trying to deliver something. That was the letter-box being opened, but what landed on the carpet wasn’t paper. That was the sound of liquid being poured. And then the entire room was filled with the smell of petrol and I got it at last. They were pouring petrol through my letter-box. I’d only seen three members of the gang in the garden. The other two were at the front, soaking my carpet with petrol, and a lit match would surely follow.

I dived forward, knowing that if the match came now it could be the end of me. Petrol fumes, as much as the liquid itself, ignite and I was already right in amongst them. The carpet was greasily wet but I reached the letter-box and managed to push it shut. I heard a muttered curse on the other side of the door. It would be the Queen out there. The Queen and the zombie. The Queen of England was on the other side of my front door, trying to douse my home with petrol before setting me on fire.

My radio was on the table and would be faster than the phone, but to reach it I’d have to take my hand away from the letter-box, and the second I did that the match could come my way. With some difficulty, working with only one hand, I managed to dial 999 and waited to be connected.

Something bounced against the front window and landed with a soft thud in the slush outside. The glass held. But if they’d come determined to burn me alive, they’d probably brought petrol bombs. If they managed to get a can or a bottle filled with petrol in here, I had no hope. Once the fuel ignited, it would create a massive fireball as the droplets of fuel spread out around the site of impact. A huge fire would follow as the rest of the fuel burned. I had no sprinkler system, and even if I had, water is no use against petrol bombs.