I wished so hard for a super-power. If I could spontaneously combust them, or send an electric current through my fingertips, or squirt acid from my eyeballs, how wonderful that would be.

Instead I tried to keep my fury hidden and said, ‘All you’re doing is taking resources away from finding Violet. Is that what you want? There’ll be more than pig’s blood on your hands if we don’t find her.’

‘Finding Violet, finding Violet, why do you keep saying that? You know she’s dead. They killed her and fed her to pigs.’ I wondered if knife-man was on drugs. His energy felt unstable. Unpredictable.

‘If she is dead,’ I said, as calmly as I could, ‘this will divert resources from finding her killer.’

He pushed the knife closer. It touched the skin of my neck. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’ll punish those fucking Animal Vigilantes. Because everyone knows it was them that killed Violet.’

I shrank away from him but my hands were held firm by his two cronies. I could see his eyes through the holes in the balaclava. Grey and bloodshot. ‘It won’t bother the Animal Vigilantes,’ I said. ‘They know what you’re doing is irrelevant. They already spend their lives thinking about the millions of pigs who get their throats slit every single day. What you’re doing is punishing ordinary people who don’t think like that. And the owner of that poor pig.’

A noise in the distance. I flicked my eyes towards it. A woman had appeared at the end of the path which led from my road. She froze for a second, then started running towards us. ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted. ‘Let her go!’

Knife-man looked at me and then at the woman, who was getting closer, undeterred by the balaclavas and the knife.

I realised she was familiar. I’d only seen photographs, but this looked very much like Jai’s girlfriend, Suki.

Knife-man spoke. ‘Let this bitch go.’

They dropped my hands and shot off down the railway track.

‘Suki?’ I said weakly.

She ran the last few steps and grasped my arm, supporting me as my knees weakened. ‘DI Dalton? Are you okay? Oh my goodness, what were they doing?’

My heart rate slowed. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine. Thank you for intervening. That was very brave.’

‘How could I not? What awful men. Are you hurt? Shall I take you somewhere?’

‘No, thank you, I should get to work.’ I gently removed my arm and took a step in the direction of my house. She came with me.

My mind was swirling with images of balaclavas and knives, but through some bizarre quirk in my personality I was almost more stressed about what Suki was up to. She didn’t have a dog. Why would she be walking near my house?

‘Lucky I was here,’ she said.