The police arrived with flashing blue lights, a screech of brakes, and a shower of gravel on the driveway. There were two of them, in uniform, and they had their Taser stun guns drawn at the ready.

I could do with one of those, I thought—if only they were legal.

‘You’re too late,’ I said to them. ‘The intruders knocked me over and ran off when they heard you coming.’

I wondered if a stealthier approach might have been more productive, but my assailants might have beaten me up in the meantime or, even worse, done away with me completely. And it wouldn’t have been much comfort for me, if I was already dead, that my killers had been caught red-handed.

On balance, I was happy not to have been beaten up or murdered, even if the two men were still on the loose to have another go in the future.

As the policemen searched my garden, I unlocked the back door and went into the house to give Rosie her much-deserved supper.

Eventually, the two police also came into the house. They had discovered no additional persons lurking in the shadows, but they had found something equally disturbing—an abandoned plastic container full of petrol.

Perhaps it was me who should have been checking that my fire insurance was up to date.

CHAPTER

18

I HAD A DISTURBED night. Every bump or creak from the cooling house had me on edge, straining to hear if my unwelcome visitors had returned.

The two policemen had stayed for nearly an hour. Most of the time they had been out in the garden looking unsuccessfully for any other discarded evidence, but they also came into the kitchen to ask me some questions.

Did I know who the men were?

No.

Did I know what they were after?

No.

Did I know of anyone who might want to do me harm?

No.

The answer to the third question, of course, was ‘yes’, but that would have involved me giving them detailed reasons, and I wasn’t yet ready to do that.

But the thought of anyone setting fire to me, or to my house, did fill me with terror. Once before I’d had to deal with a man who liked to use fire as a weapon against me and, ultimately, he’d been the one who’d been consumed by it. I remembered that image all too clearly, and it was something I never wanted to see again, let alone experience.

‘It was probably just an attempted burglary that you foiled by returning home when you did,’ one of the officers had said in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘But what about the petrol?’

‘Forensic teams are so good these days at finding people’s DNA from the slightest drop of sweat or saliva that some burglars will do anything to cover their tracks. And fire destroys DNA. Maybe it was their intention to burn the house down after robbing it.’