No Reason To Die (37 page)

Oh, my God, thought Kelly. This is it. This is really it. I am going to die. This time, I really am going to die.

He forced himself to think. He realised he probably had only a few seconds of life left. Kelly knew a bit about unarmed combat. Certainly enough to be aware that his assailant was a professional. And Kelly reckoned he knew exactly what was coming next. He steeled himself for the sickening thud of a knee in the small of his back, before his head would be jerked back and his neck broken. Swift, silent and brutally efficient.

He struggled to clear the black fog inside his head, which was now every bit as dense as that outside.

He had once, briefly, undergone self-defence training with an elite para unit. The purpose had allegedly been to write a feature for his newspaper, but Kelly at the time was travelling the world seeking out the worst trouble spots. He had already been kidnapped by guerrilla forces in a remote part of a war-torn African state, and had had a narrow escape. So he’d paid close attention to his brief experience of military training, reckoning it might one day save his life. But he had never before had occasion to use any of the manoeuvres he had learned, and had no idea whether, even if he could remember what to do, he would stand a chance of executing any of it. Particularly against a professional. Kelly was twenty-odd years older, and carried a couple of stone more weight, almost all of it around his belly, than he had back then. And there was also the little matter of not one, but two drug and alcohol detoxes along the way.

Never mind, he told himself. He knew it was brain power which counted for most, in these situations,
rather than brute force. He forced his brain to work. To remember. To maintain the discipline not to lose control even as death looms. To tell his body what to do. But the fog inside his head was already impenetrable.

So instead, he abandoned all thoughts of conjuring up some magical move of self-defence from the distant past, and merely struggled mindlessly, trying to slide his body down and away from the steel-like grip. Quite frantic now, he wriggled and kicked with all his might. One thing he did remember, was that a moving target was always more difficult to dispatch, not that he could move very much.

However, his terror seemed to give him a kind of frenzied strength, and he thought he actually managed to kick his assailant sharply on one shin – certainly, the grip around his throat suddenly slackened just enough for him to be able not only to breathe but to do the only other thing he could think of by way of a counter-attack. He yanked his head downwards and twisted his lower jaw as best he could in order to find his target, then buried his teeth into a section of what appeared to be exposed wrist, using all his strength to drive them into the bare flesh. The grip around his neck slackened totally then. Kelly realised two things. One was that he was no longer being strangled and, the other, that this slight reprieve would not last. After all, the grip of the second arm, the one pinioning his own arms to his body, had not slackened at all.

However, he took advantage of the brief, partial respite to cry out with all his might. Even in this moment of abject terror, logic told him that there was no one around to hear him – the pub and the pair of
houses below it would both be tightly shut against such an unpleasant night and, in any case, were at the far side of the beach, but he didn’t know what else to do. And, curiously, he found that just the sound of his own voice, which he had thought he might never hear again, gave him some fleeting comfort.

‘No, no,’ he yelled as loudly as he could manage. ‘Help, help, help!’

But the moment was over in a flash, as he had expected it to be. The steel-like grip of his assailant’s arm locked around his throat again, once more crushing his larynx, not only making any further sound impossible but also again making it extremely difficult to breathe. Kelly could only gasp for air. His legs had turned to jelly. He felt his body begin to go limp, his eyes start to glaze over, and all reason begin to drain from his brain.

He prepared to die. And with what remained of his strength, he braced himself against the sickening thud he expected to feel at any moment in the small of his back.

But, instead, the grip around his arms and body slackened. It made little difference, however, and he was sure his assailant would have known that, because he had no strength left to put up any further fight. And he was certainly not able to even attempt to break free and escape. In any case, he knew he had no chance at all of getting away. Instead he half stood, half leaned against his attacker, barely breathing, like an old, broken, rag doll.

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.

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.

The five minutes or so that it took to reach his home were just about the longest of his life. His little terraced house, high above Torquay’s town centre, suddenly seemed like the most desirable place in the world. He desperately wanted some time there alone, to change his clothes, perhaps to have a shower, and to rest and recuperate a little before doing anything else. He knew he should probably drive straight to the casualty department of Torbay Hospital, but he didn’t intend to do that, either. For a start, he wasn’t yet ready to even attempt to explain what had happened to him.

Gratefully, he pulled up outside his house, vaguely aware that he seemed to have parked at an acute angle to the pavement but totally incapable of doing anything about it. At his first attempt to step out of
the Volvo, he almost fell over. His knees gave way. It seemed that his legs were still not fully capable of supporting him. He leaned against the car for a minute or two, before taking a cautious step across the pavement and grabbing hold of the gate post. He realised that he was trembling from head to foot.

Once safely inside, he peeled off his soiled clothes as soon as he had closed the door behind him, dropping them in an untidy pile on the tiled floor of the hall, and made his way uncertainly upstairs to the bathroom, being careful to hold on to the banister.

He stepped into the shower and turned on the water to very hot and full power. His head was beginning to ache unpleasantly, but no longer seemed quite so strange. In fact, the shower helped even more than he had expected, and when he stepped out of it onto the bathmat, he was already a little less shaky than he had been when he had arrived home. He wrapped a couple of towels around his dripping body, and rummaged in the bathroom cabinet for the packet of Nurofen he knew was in there somewhere. As he closed the cabinet’s mirrored door, he caught a glimpse of his reflected face. It was not a pretty sight. He was white as a sheet, apart from the swollen, multicoloured bruise on his forehead. And it also looked as if at least one black eye was beginning to form. Wincing – as much at his own sorry image as because of his headache – he struggled to control trembling fingers in order to remove three of the small white pills from their foil container. He put them in his mouth and washed them down with tap water which he brought clumsily to his lips in cupped hands, spilling half the water over his front as he did so.