He groans.
'Tell me where it hurts,' she says, her voice soft.
'Sure he's no pissed?' a man's voice says from behind her.
'Canne smell anything on his breath,' she answers the man.
It is now that the full impact of the night's events crash into his mind. He suddenly remembers Beth's attack, the thing that prowled around him, the chase, being dragged to the sea, and then… nothing. But he is alive.
Dante sits up quickly, but immediately grips the sides of his head; the pain is so great his eyes water. 'I'm not dead… drunk. Not drunk.' It sounds like he's sleeptalking. The initial wave of agony subsides inside his skull. He keeps his head still. 'Who are you?' he asks, speaking slowly, feeling the shape of the words on his tongue.
Anxious, the man and woman move away from him. 'We're police officers,' the woman says. The torch beam shines in his eyes again. It blinds him. 'We saw your vehicle from the beach road with the lights on.'
Dante puts a hand to the patch of stinging skin on his throat and winces when his fingertips touch something wet. He looks up and squints until the male officer lowers the torch beam from his face. Now he can see their silhouettes. She is a head shorter than the man and neither of them wear hats. 'What happened?' the man says, his tone brusque.
Dante closes his eyes. His ribs hurt and there is something else bleeding on his back. He can feel his T-shirt sticking to the skin where it stings: a cut from when he was dragged across the ground. But what can he say to the police? His first feeling is an overwhelming gratitude. Inadvertently, they've saved him from the sea. From death out there in the dark and cold water. He shivers. His arm would have been found in the surf, eventually identified from the tattoos on the upper part. Tom would have identified it.
'What were you doing out here?' The woman's voice hardens with suspicion.
'I came out here to meet someone.' He pauses; they wait. 'It turned nasty.'
'You saying you were assaulted?' the man asks, his accent strong.
Dante nods.
'By who?' the male officer asks, losing his patience. The two officers exchange glances. 'Up on your feet,' the man orders. 'Come on.' He stretches an arm down. Dante fingers the sleeve of the man's jumper. His arm is limp and it feels as if there is no strength left in the muscles. Impatiently, the policeman seizes his elbow with a tight, practised grip and pulls him, sharply, to his feet. 'You been drinking, pal? Aye? Drugs maybe?'
The woman stands to one side. She is leafing through his wallet, which is how she must have learned his name. 'Says here your address is in Birmingham. Long way from home, son.'
'Yeah,' he says, and smiles with relief at her reminder of a place that is familiar to him: another world, away from this madness. The smile is not returned. Their expressions remain severe. She is pretty, but her face has gone tight and her eyes are hard.
'What are you doing here, pal? And who assaulted you?' the male officer asks.
Dante panics. What can he say without sounding like he's been taking drugs? What if they make him take a blood test? He and Tom have been smoking weed since they arrived. 'It's difficult,' he mumbles.
'What's difficult?' the man says, his torch in Dante's face again. 'You tellin' me you don't know who assaulted you? I'm not inclined to believe you, pal. We find you lying on the beach in the middle o' the night. What were you doing, staking out your plot before the tourists come down tomorrow?' Many take a similar line with him on account of his long hair and appearance. People's first reaction is distrust, their second ridicule. Not caring for the man's tone, which has become not only sarcastic but condescending, Dante says, 'No, pal. Nothing like that.'
The officer stiffens at the tone of Dante's voice and the mimicry implicit in his answer. 'You're well enough to backchat me, son, you're well enough to come in and do some talking.' Dante's right arm is seized behind the elbow.
'OK. OK,' he says, and struggles to untangle his arm. The iron fingers clench tighter. 'I'm sorry. I don't want to argue. It's just that I've had a shock. I've been unconscious —' his arm is released '— just let me get my bearings. My head is killing me. Please.' The woman moves closer to calm things down. She looks at her partner, who takes a reluctant step away from Dante. 'I'm not a troublemaker,' Dante says, and his voice trembles. He looks at the sea and then down the wide expanse of sand, still dark, and indifferent to what has befallen him. A place to die, where the wind and water and sky will carry on in their circle of tide and rain and day and night forever, unconcerned. He is frightened again and can't think straight. 'You came just in time. I want to thank you…' His weak voice fails him.
'That's all right,' the woman says, and touches his shoulder. Dante wipes his eyes.
She smiles. 'Let's go up to the car and have a wee chat. How's that sound?' Dante nods. All three of them climb away from the sea toward the patrol car parked beside his Land Rover.
Dante stands in the bathroom. He grips the washbasin to stop the shakes. Rinsing his face under the cold tap revives him, but does little to calm the storm inside his skull. It's all an illusion. It must be. This can't be real. It was just a big guy. Someone strong that finished Beth's dirty work. Unconvinced, he then slumps down to his knees and closes his eyes. 'I'm losing it,' he whispers.
Something raggedy and long flings itself through his mind. Immediately, he opens his eyes. He is back in shock. He takes deep breaths. He tries to kill the image. An illusion? Something was expecting him on the dark beach. Whatever it was, it came with Beth at the end of a night they intended to be his last. A final rendezvous at the climax of Eliot's plot where, all along, from their first exchange of letters, something in St Andrews has been waiting for him, or has been promised him.
But murder? No way. That happens to other people. 'No,' he says.
Gripping the lime-green bathroom mat with both fists, he flicks his wet hair out of his eyes and says, 'No,' again and again, until his voice rises in a feeble attempt to erase the image of the thing that stalked him by the sea. Through the wall he hears Tom stir — a muffled and far-off rustle of a sleeping body turning in bed. Dante winces and kills the flow of water still streaming from the tap. Tom will have to be told, even if he ends up thinking his best friend is mad.
Looking at his watch, he sees it is four in the morning. There was an hour at the police station on North Street as he tried to talk himself out of a night in the cells. And then the next two hours in the emergency ward, having his cuts and bruises attended to, finished off the most harrowing night of his life. Three stitches on his neck from her bite, and a weight of salve-soaked dressings on his back and stomach courtesy of her companion. 'Superficial wounds,' the doctor with the slender face had said, with the cheeks scrubbed and pink under the hospital strip lights. 'Just cuts and grazes.'
Because of the injuries the police officers had been forced to take his story seriously. He was Eliot Coldwell's research assistant, or so he told them, and had begun to see one of the lecturer's students out of hours. A girl called Beth who seemed to be having problems. When he met her late that night, she and a third party — an unknown assailant — attacked him for no reason he could gather. There had been no provocation, although she claimed he had disappointed her terribly by expressing concerns about her mental health to Eliot. Not a convincing story, he thought, looking at the unconvinced faces of the police officers, but it was all he had. Although he was desperate to inform them that the unknown assailant wasn't even human, he held his tongue, fearing a drug test. They took it all down in a notebook, but the male officer was clearly unimpressed from start to finish.