Page 25 of The Psychopath Next Door

He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘How long after?’

‘I don’t know. An hour? Maybe a bit less?’

‘Plenty of time for whoever did it to go back and remove the evidence. It wasn’t an accident. Someone wanted to hurt my boy.’

‘But he’s a kid. Why would anyone want to hurt him?’

‘That’s what I came here to find out.’

I took a step back. ‘What are you talking about? You thinkIhad something to do with Albie’s accident?’

‘Not you. Your son. Eric told me about the fight they had last week.’

This was news to me. ‘What fight?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but your kids were in the fields with your dog and apparently they were pissed off with my lads for riding their bike.’ He paused. ‘And I think my dogs might have scared yours, trying to play with it.’

‘What, one of your giant German shepherds went for Lola?’

‘Did I say that? I said they were playing.’

My hackles were up now. ‘Like your sons were playing when they bullied Rose? The last day of school, Eric and Albie were teasing Rose when she got off the bus. I was going to talk to you about it, but Rose didn’t want to cause a big fuss.’

‘What are they supposed to have done?’

‘They called her names. Said she looked like Taylor Swift.’

He blew air out through his lips. ‘You class that as bullying?’ He muttered something about snowflakes. ‘Sounds like a bit of harmless mucking about to me.’

‘Our next-door neighbour witnessed it and brought Rose home.’

‘Oh yeah?’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of Fiona’s house. ‘Her? The Aussie?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She was there too. In the fields.’

That was news to me, but I didn’t want this bloke thinking I didn’t know what my kids got up to.

‘Listen, I’m in the middle of dinner. You’re wasting your time coming here. There is no way Dylan had anything to do with Albie’s accident. It’s just not the kind of thing he would do. I really hope your son fully recovers but I don’t appreciate you coming here flinging accusations around. Someone placing a nail in exactly the right spot? Then going to remove it before anyone found it? If you ask me, the most likely thing is that the tyre blew out. Maybe there was a sharp rock or something. An accident, that’s it.’

Tommy’s eyes narrowed and, for a moment, I thought he was going to try to push past me and demand to talk to Dylan. Instead, he said, ‘This ain’t over.’

He left and I shut the door behind me. As I re-entered the dining room I heard the buzz of Fiona’s doorbell from the other side of the wall.

‘What was all that about?’ Emma asked.

‘That guy’s an absolute ...’ I didn’t complete the sentence, aware of my children staring at me. ‘Dylan, you didn’t tell me you’d had a run-in with Albie and Eric.’

‘What?’ said Emma.

I repeated what Tommy had told me.

‘That’s not what happened!’ Dylan said. ‘They were riding that stupid bike around and around us and getting their dogs to terrorise Lola.’

‘They were horrible,’ said Rose.

Emma got to her feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

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