‘Might as well be,’ said Bob Shepherd, face twisted with grief and madness. ‘Not alive. Not dead. Doctors say if he wakes up, he’ll be brain damaged.’

I said nothing. As his voice trailed off, I heard another whine from behind the couch. I didn’t want to think about what Bob had done to Waffles. My mind flashed to the times my dog had saved me—at the shed, on the cliff top—and every fibre of my being wanted to return the favour, but the threat was still very real. I held the baton against my leg and scanned for a weapon. Found one. A gun on the bench. I felt sick.

I took a deep breath. ‘Mr Shepherd, it’s over now. I need you to step around to this side of the bench. The police are on their way.’

‘But it’s not over,’ he said, his voice rising to a scream. ‘It can’t be over while my boy is lying on a hospital bed in a coma.’ He looked into my eyes. I spotted the calculation straight away. Wasn’t my first rodeo.

He threw Nan’s teapot at me, but instead of trying to catch it, I dodged it and let it smash. Then, as he reached for the gun, I sprinted, vaulted the bench with one arm while swinging a roundhouse kick which got Bob Shepherd in the back, flinging him forward and crashing him into the bench. He tried to struggle, but I swung one arm behind his back, grabbed the cuffs from my back pocket and snapped one on, then repeated the process with his other hand. While he was still bent over the bench, I frisked him for weapons before finally shoving him over to one of the kitchen chairs and sitting him down. A sitting man was safer than a standing one.

I grabbed the gun he’d left on the bench, clicked the safety on and tucked it into the back of my trousers.

‘Don’t move,’ I said to him, then ran around the couch to Waffles.

My beautiful black dog lay panting on the floor. His tail thumped weakly at the sight of me. In the shadows where he lay, I couldn’t see what was wrong with him, but something was. I gingerly reached out and patted him. He yelped. Oh God, he was hurt badly.

‘What did you do to him?’ I shouted, standing up from behind the couch.

To my horror, Bob was gone. Then a shadow. Instinctively, I grabbed the gun from my waistband and trained it around the room. A roar. Bob came flying towards me. My brain told me the threat was lessened because he was handcuffed. I sidestepped him. His momentum kept him going and he smashed, face first, into the brick surrounds of the fireplace. He turned to me in a blind rage, blood pouring down the side of his head.

‘Bob!’ I yelled.