Hirsch froze for a moment, then knelt. Touched his forefinger to it. Still sticky; spilt recently, then.

He gazed along the street. Kitchener was a short street, six homes on either side. He ran a mental checklist: who was capable of violence? Who was likely to be on the receiving end?

None of these people.

Movement alerted him, a shape behind a garden hedge, a disturbance of the sparse leaves. The house belonged to an elderly widower named Cromer. Calling, ‘Mr Cromer?’ Hirsch approached the driveway entrance.

A cry, just as he stepped onto the footpath. A queer, soft, alien cry, not of warning but of distress. And more blood. Spooked now, Hirsch entered the front yard. Blood new and glistening on the couch-grass lawn. A panicked sound, high-pitched, and Hirsch jumped in fright as one of Nan Washburn’s miniature ponies retreated, trembling, into the corner between the hedge and the side fence.

He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Not a person in distress. A little horse—covered in blood.

He took a breath and slowly approached, one hand reaching, his voice gentle. Who was he kidding? The pony lunged past, knocking him to the ground, smearing his baggy old morning-walk shorts. It was gone quickly, but one thing Hirsch was certain of: stab wounds. He knew what stab wounds looked like. And the poor creature had been stabbed several times.

He followed. The pony, weak and listing badly, headed back the way it had come, to the end of Kitchener Street and through Nan Washburn’s front gate.

Where it stopped to sniff at and nudge one of its mates, a bloodied shape on the ground. Sensing Hirsch again, it stumbled along the side wall of the house, then, tottering, a great shudder in its hide, settled onto its knees, its hindquarters, and toppled over.

Hirsch felt sick. Pausing to check the animal at Washburn’s front gate—lifeless eyes, intestines oozing across the dirt—he approached the fallen pony. It was still alive, snorting, eyes wild. Nothing he could do at this point, so he continued around to the pens, the small paddock and the stable block at the rear. Gates were open. More blood, gouts of it here and there. A further three bodies. Survivors, too: five traumatised miniatures and Radish at the far end of the paddock, the latter tossing his massive head; backing away as if doubting Hirsch had come in peace.

9

9

HIRSCH KNOCKED ON the back door.

No answer, so he walked right around the house, knocking. Locked tight, no lights, no breakfast radio or TV leaking through a window. But Nan’s Volvo was parked beside the back veranda. A victim? he thought. Or sound asleep. He needed to know.

He found the spare key in a magnetised tin stuck behind the hot-water tank and let himself in. Sounds—deep breaths in and out. Laboured? Injured? He couldn’t tell.