“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I just want to see my wife, the same as you do.” He patted his windbreaker pocket, and Farrell saw how heavily the fabric shifted and swung. “You take me on in there. In the house.”

Farrell took another step backward, trying to angle himself toward a parked car. McManus patted his pocket again and shook his head earnestly. “Come on, there’s a dog. I don’t want to hurt the dog.”

“She’s a trained killer,” Farrell warned him. “They had her in the Army, she used to give courses.” He was trying desperately to assess the chance of Suzy’s being in the house that morning. McManus put his hand in his pocket and whistled two notes. Farrell walked slowly past him and up the porch steps.

Briseis met him at the door, whining nervously at the sight of the stranger crowding in behind him. For a moment Farrell entertained a mad vision of scooping the Alsatian up in his arms and hurling, or at least shoving her at McManus. But the man was too close, and Farrell knew himself just as likely to rupture something important or throw his back out. McManus stooped to scratch Briseis’s ears, and Farrell tensed, thinking, This is not happening. Then Suzy came out of a tiny sewing room into the hallway.

When she saw McManus, she caught her breath, started to speak, and then shut her mouth and very carefully set down the sponge mop and bucket she was carrying, leaning the mop against the wall. “Dave,” she said, and stood waiting.

McManus’s ragged lower lip started to bleed again. Tears sprang out of his eyes in a sudden dreadful spurt, more like shotgun pellets than drops of water. “Bitch, fucking bitch!” he shouted at her, his light voice splintering into shrill fragments.