I stood up quickly, adrenalin jolting me upright. The police officers were across the road, one of them talking into his radio.

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘The police said you might come here. And I should call them if you did. And now you’re going to stay right here and tell them the truth about what you did to my boy!’

The sound of boots crunching quickly up the gravel drive to the front door. I moved towards the hallway. I had only seconds.

‘Mrs Delaney, I had nothing to do with –’

‘Don’t come near me!’ She jabbed the knife in my direction and the dogs picked up her fear instantly, their hackles raised, mouths drawn back in a snarl to show rows of teeth.

I held my hands out as I edged past her.

‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

One of the Jack Russells leaped forward and locked onto my ankle with a growl. I stumbled backwards into the hall, dragging the dog with me, its teeth like a line of needles in my flesh. There was a hammering on the front door and shouts from the two police officers, dark shapes through the glass of the front door.

Got to get out of here.

The dog continued snarling and biting down and I half dragged it down the hallway with me as I headed for the kitchen, feeling its hot breath on my skin, blood in my shoe. Finally I shook it loose, turned and ran as Ruth Delaney started screaming.

‘This is your bitch wife’s fault! God help you if you’ve hurt Benjamin, you bastard! I’ll kill you myself, I swear it!’

I turned right into a conservatory, sent a wicker side table flying and burst through the open French doors, sprinting the length of her garden without looking back. I could still hear wild barking and screaming as I smashed through a trellis panel and dived headlong over the wall into her neighbour’s garden.

I kicked through a panel in the next fence and kept going.

Chapter 74

74

There were seven splinters in the heel of my right palm from the variety of fences I had vaulted, shinned up and heaved myself over as I ran from the police. Four of the tiny wooden shards came out, but the other three were lodged too deep, and the more I tried to wheedle them out, the deeper they went. The harder you push, the more you struggle, the deeper the barb is buried.

I had pushed too hard, and now it was me that was about to be buried.