The Devil's Feather

by Minette Walters

  “Shut up!” he hissed, making a convulsive movement of his hand and stabbing the point of the knife towards me. “You’re doing my head in!”

  I swallowed desperately to find more saliva. “You’re a joke,” I grated back. “Your mother’s turned you into a laughing-stock. She said you never had much of a penis and it made you obsessional-”

  His pale eyes gleamed with sudden hatred, and he launched himself out of his chair, charging at me like a bull. I couldn’t have been readier. The minute he moved, I was out of the door and running for the green baize door. I flung the axe under the stairs as I passed because I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it, and grabbed the brass doorknob with both hands. For one sickening moment my damp palms slid around the metal instead of turning it, and it was desperation that prompted me to scream as I dug my fingers in and wrenched at the handle for all I was worth.

  18

  INSPECTOR BAGLEY WOULDN’T believe that my recollection of what followed was as poor as I claimed. Yet the truth is I don’t remember it in any great detail. It remains a blur of noise and bodies, and a realization somewhere along the line that quantities of blood were pouring on to the flagstones.

  I tried to explain to Bagley that if I’d known screams were all that was needed to incite mastiffs to attack a stranger, I’d have taken them with me in the first place instead of leaving them in the corridor to the kitchen. Why confront MacKenzie alone if I could have launched a cohort of giants at his throat? Because I had more faith in his ability to turn them on me than mine to turn them on him. Indeed, my only expectation when I left them behind the green baize door was that they’d create some confusion when I released them into the hall.

  There hadn’t been time to plan. I think I gambled on winning a breathing space for us all to escape or, at the very least, that Jess would be able to issue commands herself and use the dogs to herd MacKenzie into a corner. Everything I did was ad-libbed, and based entirely on my certainty that I’d fail with a weapon. It was immaterial which I selected-axe or walking-stick-MacKenzie would have it off me as soon as I took the first swing.

  “Then why remain in the hall?” Bagley asked. “Why retrieve the axe from under the stairs?”

  “I don’t know. There was so much noise I couldn’t work out what was happening. It’s weird. The dogs never made a sound while they were in the corridor…but when I opened the door they went ballistic…straight for MacKenzie. But why him? Why not me? It wasn’t that long since they’d had me pinned against the outhouse door.”

  “He was in front of them.”

  “How did he get past them in the first place?”

  “Are you sure he didn’t break in before Ms. Derbyshire came back?”

  “Pretty sure. The phone line wasn’t cut until after I emailed my parents…and the only unlocked window you found was the one in the office. Yet I remember looking at that catch while Jess and I were in there earlier, and it was definitely closed then.”

  “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.

  “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.”

&
nbsp; “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.