Then suddenly he was aware of a bright light shining in his face. He blinked rapidly, half strangled, half brain-dead, desperately trying to work out what was happening. It was a torch. Of course. A torch. And for some reason his attacker was shining it directly into his face. Why? Why would he do that? Even in Kelly’s befuddled state the answer came quite quickly. Just to double-check. To be sure that he had the right man. That would be it. Yet again Kelly prepared to die.
The torch remained shining straight into his face for several seconds. Then, as abruptly as it had arrived, the blazing light was gone. The torch had been switched off. Kelly could hear his heart beating even louder and faster than ever, and was absolutely sure it would not be doing so for long. He was also aware of a warm wetness between his legs. Somewhere, deep in his subconscious, he registered that he must have involuntarily urinated.
Then the arm around his throat was abruptly withdrawn. Instinctively, Kelly tried to turn around, his legs buckling beneath him, to face whoever was attacking him.
Before he could do so, the dull thud he had been anticipating came. But there was no knee in his back. Instead he felt the torch smash into the side of his head. Obscurely, as he sank to his knees on the beach, the thought occurred to him that it must be a rubber torch or else the blow would have been much more brutal. Perhaps even lethal.
Neither could he have been hit with as much power as he would have expected, because he had not been caused to collapse totally nor plunge into full unconsciousness. Instead, swaying only slightly, he remained kneeling almost upright for a moment, the rough edges of the shingle digging through his thin trousers into the flesh of his knees. Then, needing more support, he toppled forwards onto his hands.
His head felt as if it belonged to somebody else, and somebody else that he did not know, at that, but he still remained just about conscious, even though a million coloured lights danced before his eyes.
Then, just as he had earlier been aware of the close proximity of his assailant immediately before being attacked, Kelly realised that he was once again more or less alone. He heard the crunching of shingle to his left and peered into the gloom. He could just make out a shadow heading for the cover of the densely wooded hill.
His head felt as if it were taking a ride on a fairground roundabout without him. And suddenly he was not aware of his heart beating at all. Although, as he was still breathing, he assumed it must be.
He straightened slightly and sat back on the beach, bringing his knees up to his chest and resting his head on them. His head was still spinning. He recognised that he had concussion. He had experienced it once before when he had taken a nasty fall ranch-riding in Arizona. On a story, of course. Kelly had never had time for hobbies. And he had had no more opportunity to fully master the art of horse-riding than the art of self-defence.
He wrapped both his hands around his head in an effort to soothe it, tentatively fingering the bruise which was already beginning to form on his forehead, and remained there, sitting on the stony beach for several minutes. The shingle was icy-cold and slightly wet, probably just from the mist and the dampness of the sea air, yet Kelly barely felt it as he struggled to regain normal consciousness. But then, his trousers were already wet. And as his mind and senses began to function again, even if only marginally, he became aware of the stench of urine mixing with the salty tang of the air.
After a bit, and with extreme caution, he raised his head from his knees and moved it slowly from side to side. It no longer spun for England. And although there was already considerable swelling on his forehead where he had been hit, it seemed that there was no blood. Apparently, the skin had not been broken and the blow had missed the more vulnerable spots. The potentially lethal spots. The parts of a man’s head and neck with which Kelly somehow felt sure his assailant would be thoroughly familiar. It was almost as if he been hit with care. That didn’t make sense, of course. But Kelly could think of no alternative, not in the state he was in, anyway.
Obliquely, the story of John Lee, the man they couldn’t hang, drifted across his muddled mind. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Lee had been employed as a footman in a house secluded in the hillside woodland above Babbacombe beach, the woodland into which Kelly’s attacker had just disappeared. Lee had been condemned to death for the murder of his mistress, but had always denied the crime. When sentenced, he had predicted: ‘The Lord will not let me hang.’ And, indeed, when he was taken to be hanged in the courtyard of Exeter’s forbidding old walled castle, now the regional crown court and in those days home of the assizes, the trap beneath the gallows had, quite extraordinarily, failed to open three times. So, as was customary, after the third attempt, nineteen-year-old Lee’s death sentence had been repealed.
Crazy, violent images coursed through Kelly’s dazed brain. He was still unable to think rationally and there were still bright lights dancing around before his eyes, not unlike the symptoms of a very bad migraine.
He could, however, think clearly enough to register one thing.
He should be dead. Like John Lee more than a century earlier, he really should be dead. He was sure of it. Somebody had come onto that beach that night to kill him. Somebody skilled in the art of death. And yet, at the last moment, his attacker had backed off and left him.
Kelly was alive. He was still alive. And he didn’t know why.
Nineteen
Eventually, Kelly staggered back to his car. It took him several seconds of fumbling to unlock the door before he was able to fall gratefully into the driver’s seat. In spite of his shaky condition he switched on the Volvo’s engine straight away. He had no wish whatsoever to spend a moment longer than necessary in the deserted beach car park. It was, after all, not remotely beyond the realms of possibility that his attacker might regret letting him live and return for another go. Kelly did not intend to give him that opportunity. Clumsily, he jerked the Volvo into gear and took off as fast as he could up the steeply winding hill past The Cary Arms. His head was still swimming alarmingly and he could barely focus. Swinging the big, cumbersome vehicle around the near-vertical right-hand bend, part way up the hill, almost proved beyond him. His first two attempts to tackle the bend in the big car failed. Each time, he ended up having to slip the clutch and allow the car to run backwards, before slamming it into forward gear and having another go. He succeeded on the third attempt, and, although functioning so inadequately, he eventually reached the main road at the top of the steep winding hill, where he pulled to a halt in the first lay-by and slumped over the steering wheel. And he remained there for another ten minutes or so before he dared try to drive again. He was well aware that he still should not be driving, but he just wanted to get away from Babbacombe and to get home as soon as he possibly could. He had absolutely no intention of calling the police, not even Karen, until he was able to think more clearly.
So instead, when he felt recovered enough to at least make the attempt, he drove very slowly home to St Marychurch, keeping the driver’s window open, partly because he thought fresh air might help clear his head, and partly because he couldn’t stand the acrid stench of his own urine.
As he drove, he tried not to think about anything except getting home safely. He needed every ounce of concentration he could muster. He reckoned it would probably be several hours before the effect of his concussion fully departed. And then there was the shock to consider. He knew that he was definitely in shock. He had expected to die, after all.