“This one!” she yelled to the officers scrambling from the van. “Wife said they were round the back.”

Guided by the sound of raised voices, they moved en masse, no plan or formation, just five uniformed officers itching for a scrap after a shift spent dragging cars out of floodwater and supervising sandbag distribution. Rosie pushed the side gate with the hand that wasn’t holding her baton. She lived for calls like this, pelting full-tilt into the gods only knew what, with an assortment of crappy weapons at her disposal and a team of her best mates backing her up.

The commotion became louder and more distinct as she jogged between two garages: a woman’s voice, high-pitched and hysterical, and two men shouting over each other.

“Help!” the woman shrieked. “Someone please help us!”

Rosie bolted around the corner expecting carnage—an ongoing fight to the death, blood spraying, bones breaking, perhaps a severed limb or two—and found a housewife whacking at her neighbour over a neatly trimmed privet hedge, as her husband waved a pair of loppers like the spoils of battle.

“What the actual fuck?” one of the officers said, almost going arse-over-tits on a tub of slug pellets.

“Help!” the woman screeched again, still brandishing what appeared to be a rolled-up apron. “Help!”

“Oi!” Rosie’s bellow was loud and low enough to cut through the melee. “Police! What the hell is going on here?”

The three potential perps froze in unison and looked across at their audience. Confronted by a wall of solid blue, they swiftly surrendered their garden implements and raised their empty hands.

“He stabbed him,” the woman wailed, fanning herself with a hanky. “Oh, my heart can’t stand this. I might faint, or have my angina.”

“Shall I zap the buggers anyway?” the officer asked.

Tempting though the suggestion was, Rosie holstered her baton and breached no man’s land by stepping onto the lawn. “Who exactly stabbed whom, ma’am?”

“He”—the woman flapped her hands at the neighbour—“stabbed my Malcolm. Show them, Malcolm.”

Now looking sheepish, Malcolm lifted his shirt to reveal a taut beer belly with a smudge of green on it. “Here,” he said, indicating the smudge.

Rosie touched the mark. It was a piece of privet leaf, which fell off onto her palm. “I think you’ll live,” she said. “What did he use? A garden cane?”

The man toe-poked the loppers. “He was cutting our side of it. We’ve asked him not to umpteen times, but he’s sneaky. He’ll wait till we’ve gone out or the weather’s like this and we’re not watching for him.”

“Sir?” Rosie turned to the neighbour. “Do you have anything to add to this?”

“He threatened to break my loppers,” he mumbled. “And I only bought ’em on Saturday.”