The front door is covered in black dust, cobwebs thick as angel hair. The brass letter box has greasy fingerprints on it, but apart from that it is as though no one ever uses this door – never goes in or comes out. Bridget’s chest is tight; she locks her knees to stop her legs from trembling. She raises her fist to bang on the glass panel but stops herself. To the left of the door, there is a grey plastic doorbell. She pushes it and hears it chime in the hall, a ridiculous, anodyne sing-song. She is a caller, she thinks. She is delivering a parcel. She is selling organic veg, she is canvassing for the Labour Party, she is a Jehovah’s—

A figure is making its way towards the door. A man, lumbering. Bridget’s guts flip.

‘Just a moment.’ The voice is well spoken, with the slight tremor of age. The door chain rattles. Him, the predator, worried about his own security. The door opens a crack. His face is pale. He is anywhere between mid fifties and seventy. The top half of his large plastic-framed glasses is the colour of cinder toffee, the bottom half clear. The lenses are dirty. Behind them, his eyes are artificially huge, giving him a blinking, bovine expression.

Her fingers splay against her thighs. She grips her left wrist with her own right hand.

‘Hi there,’ she says. ‘I’m… my name is Bridie and I’m… erm… I’m just…’

‘I’m sorry, dear; I’m a little busy. Could you call back later?’

The man makes to close the door, but Bridget jams her foot inside just in time. The base of the door bangs against the metal toecap of her boot, making the rest of the door shudder.

She gives a strangled, apologetic laugh. ‘I’m so sorry, but I really need to speak to you. May I come in?’

She shoves the door with her shoulder.

‘You can’t do that,’ the man protests. ‘I say! You can’t barge into people’s homes like that.’

She shoves again. Dimly she is aware of the chain fitting giving, falling, clattering on the bare floor. She is marching down the hall, her boots loud on the boards.

‘Look here,’ he calls after her, following her towards what must be the kitchen. ‘If you’re the police, I’ll need to see a warrant. Young lady!’

The kitchen matches the grimy exterior. There are spider plants on the windowsill, all manner of bric-a-brac, a horrid Home Sweet Home sampler in a cheap thin frame, a black transistor radio, an old-fashioned spice rack, pale grey with dust, the likes of which Bridget has not seen since the seventies. She turns to face the man. He is hovering at the kitchen door. If anything, he looks afraid.

‘I’m not a young lady,’ she says. ‘I’m a grown woman, and I’ve come for my niece.’

The man’s hair is no more than a few strands. Beneath them, his scalp shines. He blinks his pale, enlarged eyes as if in confusion. But he is not confused – Bridget can feel it.

‘There must be some misunderstanding,’ he says. ‘Who are you? You’re frightening me.’ He sucks air in, hisses it out, begins to hop from foot to foot – a strange, anxious dance.

Doubt crowds Bridget’s senses. The kitchen is run-down but clean, actually, in the main. The draining board winks with soap bubbles. There is a plate on the draining rack, a butter knife.

‘I was washing up,’ the man says, as if to explain. But Bridget hasn’t asked him a question.

‘I’ve traced a fake Facebook account to this address,’ she says. ‘My name is Bridget, and I have strong reason to believe that you have my niece, Rosie Flint, here. I believe you lured her to a café pretending to be a young man called Oliver Thomas. Ollie.’

The man shakes his head, pulls at the zip of his cardigan. He is still blinking, twitching like a woodland creature. But he is not a woodland creature. His face, she sees now, is pink and rough with eczema, and he smells musty, as if he never leaves the house. The house too smells stale: of bodies, unwashed clothes and skin.

But the moment’s silence sends up another wave of doubt. Bridget scans the kitchen. Is it possible she has made a horrible mistake? The man is hovering at the kitchen door. If she wants to check the bedrooms, she’ll have to get past him. He is older than she thought he would be, but she will hit him if she has to.

‘You have to leave,’ the man says, his voice louder. He is still sucking air in through his teeth, expelling it, sucking; still hopping from foot to foot like a child. He pulls his index finger, making it pop, does the same to his other fingers, one by one. His eyes are wild, skittish.

Bridget takes a step towards him. Still sucking in and hissing out air, he moves behind the table, grips onto the back of a chair.

‘Get out,’ he says. ‘Get out of my house.’

He is afraid of her. Good. Bridget runs for the kitchen door, back into the hallway. At the front door, beneath the coats, she sees the sole of a shoe lying on its side. A boot. Rosie’s Doc Marten boot.

She runs back into the kitchen. ‘You fucking worm.’

He scrabbles around the kitchen table, clutching at the chairs. Bridget darts one way, he runs for the door; she reverses, heads him off, lunges at him, sends him falling into the hallway. She’s on top of him; she turns him over and punches him, hard, in the face. His nose bleeds on one side. Her hand explodes in pain. She feels another, sharper pain in her thigh and springs back.

He is holding a kitchen fork. Her jeans darken at the thigh. Blood. He has stabbed her.

‘Get away.’ He jabs at her, ineffectually. She catches his wrist and twists his arm, forcing him to roll onto his front. She pulls his arm up his back.

‘Let me go,’ he shouts. ‘You have no right to be in my house. I’m going to call the police.’

‘Go right ahead. In fact I’ll call them for you, why don’t I?’

She pushes his hand up towards his shoulder blades, hears the crack of his arm as it breaks.

The man yells. He starts to cry, giving off low sobs of self-pity. She plucks the fork from his fingers, spins him back and punches him again in the face. He wails, raises his hand to his cheek. She brings her boot to his chin, feels the metal toecap connect with bone, hears the dull thud of his head on the bare boards. His glasses skitter towards the kitchen door. His jaw is slack. Broken, she thinks. He is out cold.

Bridget runs for the stairs. ‘Rosie!’

She is on the bed in the master bedroom, curled up, her back towards the door, apparently asleep. The room smells worse than the kitchen: dense, floral – lavender? – masking the heavier smell of old fabric, unwashed sheets. Dust motes twinkle in the weak sunlight. The windows are filthy: grey netting, brown floral sixties-style curtains. The whole place is a museum. Rosie’s wrists and ankles have been bound with duct tape. Her mouth too is sealed with the same silvery tape. But she is clothed. She is wearing the same clothes as this morning, and Bridget closes her eyes a moment in the hope that this means something.

Bridget climbs onto the bed. The mattress sinks beneath her knees. She holds her finger to Rosie’s nose and feels heat. One breath, two breaths, three. Alive, alive! Alive, thank God.

‘Rosie! Rosie darling. Wake up. It’s me – it’s Auntie Bridge!’

Nothing.

Bridget scoops her niece from the bed and throws her over her shoulder. She is so light and thin. She is no more than a child.

In the hall, there is no sign of the old man. From what she imagines is the living room, she hears a groan. She should go after him, finish him off. She should cut off his balls as she promised and take them back to Toni on a plate. But she has come to save Rosie – that’s all she has come to do. The police can take care of this fetid excuse for a human being.

She opens the front door. Her lungs are burning. From behind her comes an incoherent shout. She turns – and stares into the twin holes of a shotgun.

The man has the gun trained at her chest. His nose and mouth are dark with crusted blood. His mouth droops, limp and odd. One lens of his glasses is cracked and one arm hangs slack, as if it has no bones in it. He adjusts the gun; it’s obviously heavy, awkward for his one functioning arm. His hair, such as it is, falls outwards in wisps from his bald head, giving him the appearance of a drug-addled clown.

‘Wait,’ Bridget says, laying Rosie down at the foot of the stairs, straightening up, raising her arms in surrender. ‘All right.’

‘U’air’.’ Upstairs? Possibly. All vowels; he is unable to make the consonants. Yes, he is gesturing with the gun towards the stairs, his eyes creased in pain. The gun is heavy. Too heavy to use?

Bridget glances outside, to the sunlit street, the sky blue beyond the houses.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m not going to call the…’ She turns and kicks, quick and high. The gun flies out of the man’s hands. He grabs for it, too late, clutching at nothing but air. Bridget plants her boot into his solar plexus, sending him falling back. She lunges for the gun and turns it on him.

He is flailing on the floor. More vowels come from the slack mouth – incomprehensible, save for the palpable terror beneath. He tries to push himself up, cries out in pain.

Bridget cocks the safety, aims – and shoots. Both barrels empty into the man’s chest. Blood flies, spatters against the wall. His head thuds against the bare boards. A burgundy stain swells on the front of his beige checked shirt. Only then does she feel pain flash up the back of her thigh.

She throws the gun to the floor and picks up Rosie, throws her over her shoulder again and runs.