The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

  I don’t know when I realized that I wasn’t as afraid as I’d expected to be. I showed physical signs of it in my parched mouth and sweating hands, but that had more to do with fear of being taken by surprise than fear of MacKenzie himself. Rightly or wrongly, I felt it was he who was isolated, and I who was in control.

  He was smaller than I remembered and a great deal seedier, with stubble on his jaw and a shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been changed for days. I could smell it from ten metres away. It stank of dirt and sweat and caused my only genuine falters when the nausea of memory scorched the back of my throat. For the most part, I wondered how someone so unprepossessing could have gained such a hold over my imagination.

  The policeman who interviewed me later asked me why I hadn’t accepted MacKenzie’s offer to leave. “Because I knew he wouldn’t,” I answered.

  “Dr. Coleman’s less sure.”

  “Peter was frightened for Jess—it’s what he wanted to believe. All I could see was that we’d all be more vulnerable if I did what MacKenzie wanted. While I was free and barring the exit, he was the one in the trap…but if I’d entered the room the dynamics would have changed completely.”

  “Weren’t you worried that Ms. Derbyshire would fall?”

  “Yes…but I felt she could hang on a bit longer. In any case, I couldn’t have moved the trap easily. I’d have had to look at it—which would have meant taking my eyes off MacKenzie—and he’d have jumped me immediately. I don’t see I had a choice except to stay where I was.”

  “Even when Dr. Coleman was threatened?”

  “Even when,” I agreed. “It’s easier to understand if you think of it as a game of chess. As long as I controlled the doorway to the hall, MacKenzie’s moves were limited.”

  The policeman eyed me curiously. He’d introduced himself as Detective Inspector Bagley and, despite my request that he call me Connie, he insisted on the more formal Ms. Burns. He was ginger-haired and stocky, not much older than I was, and, though he remained courteous throughout, his suspicion of me was obvious. “Were you that cold-blooded at the time?”

  “I tried to be. It wasn’t always easy…but I couldn’t see what good it would do any of us if I didn’t stay one step ahead of him.”

  Bagley nodded. “Did you and Ms. Derbyshire make the stinger, Ms. Burns? Was that part of the plan to stay one step ahead?”

  “No.”

  “According to Dr. Coleman, MacKenzie said the stinger was meant for him. Are you sure you didn’t plan a trap that went wrong?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “In any case, I don’t think Peter heard MacKenzie right. He speaks with a very strong accent. The way I heard him, he said it was meant for me.”

  “So it was MacKenzie who made it? Along with the other five we found?”

  “He must have done.”

  Bagley consulted some notes. “Dr. Coleman says you told MacKenzie that your plan was to kill him.”

  “Only when he asked me what I’d do if he used the axe on Jess. I didn’t have any plan when I first went into the hall except to try to convince him the police were on their way.”

  “That’s not the impression Dr. Coleman received, Ms. Burns. He says you knew what you were doing from the moment you appeared in the doorway. He also says MacKenzie had the same impression.”

  I shrugged. “What was I doing?”

  “Looking for revenge.”

  “Is that what Peter thought?”

  “He certainly believes MacKenzie thought it. He says he was frightened of you.”

  “Good,” I said dispassionately.

  BEING CLOTHED made a difference. Even a flimsy cotton top and sarong felt like body armour compared with the shameful exposure of nakedness. When I made the decision to stay in the doorway, I wiped each palm down the side of my skirt while I balanced the axe in the other, then tucked my hem into my knicker elastic to give myself more freedom of movement.

  Being able to see changed everything. For the first time, I understood how fear had distorted my perceptions of the man I was up against. For all the violence that I knew MacKenzie could generate, I saw him as a little man, not much taller than I was. And he couldn’t disguise what was going on inside his head. His eyes darted to and fro, checking and double-checking that he still had control of his environment; but whenever he looked at me now, it was with doubt.

  Did I still recognize his authority? How much did I care about the other people in the room? Was my hatred of him greater than my loyalty to them? How frightened was I? How much sympathy did I have for Jess’s plight?

  “She’ll not be able to stand there all night,” he told me, “and neither will you. Better do as I say, Connie.”

  “No.”

  He raised the knife to Peter’s face again. “Shall I cut the doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Then come in.”

  “No.”

  He placed the tip of the blade under Peter’s right eye. “One flick and he’s blind. Do you want to be responsible for that, feather?” Peter cringed into the back of the chair. “Look at him,” MacKenzie said in disgust. “He’s even more scared than you were.”

  “Then untie him and see if he’s as scared when his hands are free.”

  “You’d like that.”

  “Of course,” I agreed unemotionally. “You ought to be able to take him easily if you were in the SAS. But you never were, were you?”

  He didn’t rise to the bait, but I hadn’t expected him to. Instead, he stared at Peter with contempt. “Your father showed more spirit than this creep.”

  It was a tactic he’d used with me, and I’m sure on every other victim. The more a person’s belittled the harder it is to retain a sense of worth. I tried the same ploy on him. “What do you think I’m going to do if you use that knife?” I asked with as much scorn as I could muster. “You can’t really be stupid enough to think I’ll suck your cock again. Or maybe you are? Your mother’s IQ was measured at retard levels.”

  It was like water off a duck’s back. He played the point of the blade between Peter’s eyes again. “You’ll do what I want I you to do, Connie, the way you did before.”

  Peter’s terror was so intense I could feel it. It palpated the air. And I was cold-blooded. I remember thinking, You haven’t begun to experience what I experienced, Peter, or even what Jess is experiencing now. I was angry with him, too, because his fear was feeding MacKenzie’s confidence.

  I managed to produce enough saliva to project a globule of spit on to the floor. “That’s what I think of you, you little fucker,” I growled at MacKenzie. “You try anything on me and you’re dead. You should listen to the voices in your head that tell you how frightening women are. You daren’t go near them if their hands are free.”

  That didn’t seem to trouble him either.

  “Do you know what the prostitutes in Freetown called you?” I said with an abrupt laugh. “ ‘Zoo Queen.’ They thought you were gay because you hated women so much…and the story went that you shafted dogs because you couldn’t afford pretty boys. Why do you think the Europeans gave you such a wide berth? The first thing any of us learnt was, don’t shake hands with Harwood or you’ll catch whatever his ridgeback has.”

  I had his attention.

  “I told the police you could only get a hard on when dogs were present,” I went on, fishing for anything that would provoke him. “Nothing I did excited you. Look at you now. You’re far more aroused by Peter than you are by me or Jess. You can only do it with women when they’re tied up and subservient. They remind you of your mother…grunting and sweating under any man she brought home.”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at me.

  “You have to blindfold women so they won’t see the size of your dick,” I went on, “and you force fellatio on them so you won’t have to come into contact with anything intimate. Breasts and vaginas scare the shit out of you. You can fuck an anus, but you sure as hell can’t fuck a vagina.” This time the hit was a very direc
t one if the momentary shock in his eyes was anything to go by. “It’s all in your profile. They call it ‘stage fright’ because you can’t hold an erection—”

  “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 disproportionat
e 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.”