Sashi hobbled up behind her. ‘There was this guy, right, the tall one with the tied-back blond hair? He wanted to tell my fortune.’
‘It looked like he was trying to do it by staring down the inside of your shirt.’
‘What’s wrong with that? Honestly, Meera, ever since you joined the police you’ve become so boring about men.’
‘Maybe that’s because most of the ones I see are drunk, abusive, vomiting and in handcuffs.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you’re a lesbian. Hey!’ Meera looked back. Sashi had come to a sudden halt. ‘What’s he doing?’ She pointed to a low ridge of turned earth on her right. About fifty feet away a man stood beneath a spotlight in the drifting rain, his head down, his legs braced.
‘Is that a sculpture or something?’
‘No,’ said Meera, ‘that’s a guy.’
He seemed abnormally tall and thick-legged. There was something odd about his legs; the trousers were low-slung and made from a strange kind of furry brown material. Something on his head glittered in the overhead light. For a moment she was reminded of the Highwayman, the murderous figure they had tracked across London, because this man too was dressed up in some kind of weird outfit. Not a historical costume filched from a fancy dress shop, though, but something rough and hairy, so that he looked oddly mythical, like a large animal standing on its back legs.
Slowly he raised his head and studied them. He was wearing a black mask like a bandanna across his eyes. Long metallic branches sprouted from above his ears, catching the light. ‘Oh, I get it,’ said Meera. ‘He’s dressed as a stag. It’s his stag night. He looks really drunk.’
‘Well, he’s creeping me out. Come on.’ Sashi grabbed at her arm and paced faster, but the path took them further toward him, and the two young women were not prepared to scrabble up the muddy bank that now rose at the sides.
He turned his head to watch them. His muscular arms were bare, his chest and thighs covered in some kind of coarse fur. They had almost passed him when he abruptly dropped from the ridge and loped toward them. Sashi screamed.
Meera turned as the stag-man came alongside, reaching down and looping his arm around Sashi’s waist to lift her easily off the ground. The detective constable was about to kick out at his knees when she saw that he was playing with Sashi, swinging her from side to side. Sashi’s shrieks were fearful but flirtatious, like those of a girl at a funfair.
The stag-man swung her onto his hip and Sashi started to laugh. His shining eyes were deep-set above a short-haired snout. In the lamplight Meera could see that the brown-and-white fur on his chest and shoulders rose seamlessly to his thick neck and headpiece, on top of which was a magnificent pair of glittering steel antlers. They must be heavy, Meera thought vaguely as she stood by, miserable in the rain. ‘Come on, Sashi, stop—’
But then the stag-man swung his captive high above his right shoulder and let her go, so that she tipped and fell into the surrounding vale of mud, landing heavily on her side. Sashi’s yelp of laughter turned to anger and confusion as Meera ran forward, first pulling her friend up to her feet, then slamming into the stag-man. He’s stoned, he’ll go down, she thought as she struck out, kicking him in the stomach, but it was like hitting rock. As that didn’t work her next kick aimed lower. This time he cried out. As he dropped his head at her, she saw that the steel horns were not made of sticks and tinfoil, but comprised the blades of dozens of kitchen knives bolted together. That’s why the headpiece is so light, she remembered thinking, that’s how he can keep his head up, but by that time he had slashed at her, slicing open the material of her leather sleeve and cutting through to the skin of her right arm.
By the time she looked back he had disappeared over the ridge, and Sashi was left kneeling in the mud, crying.
Meera sat on an orange plastic chair in a cubicle of the A&E department at University College Hospital, watching dispassionately as a nurse placed sutures across the cleaned wound.
‘You were lucky,’ said the nurse, tapping her forearm. ‘He just missed the artery here.’ She had a strong Irish lilt in her voice that most patients would have found comforting.
‘Yeah, right, lucky me,’ said Meera, who was not comforted. She had sent her mud-spattered friend outside for a smoke. Sashi was probably on the phone by now, telling everyone what had happened. Meera was surprised she hadn’t managed to film the attack for her Web page.
‘Why did you have a go at him, love?’ asked the constable who had accompanied her to UCH.