The Man in the Moss (53 page)

CHAPTER
II

By now the sky was the
colour of police trousers, Ashton thought prosaically, and damn near as thick.
'Tent would've been better,' he said as the rain started up again, steel
needles in the arc lamp. 'Does it matter if he gets wet?'

           
'Depends what state he's in.' Roger Hall was struggling
with his umbrella.

           
'Glad to see you're still sure he's down there.'
           
'Count on it,' Hall said.

           
Ashton's lads had erected a grey canvas screen, about
seven feet high, around the grave; still just a mound of soil, no headstone
yet, that saved a bit of hassle.

           
'Anyway, you've brought your own coffin, have you?'

           
'I wouldn't call it that,' Hall said. 'My assistant has
it, over there.' Pointing at Chrissie White, shivering in fake fur, a plywood
box at her feet.

           
'What's that white stuff inside then, Dr Hall?'

           
'Polystyrene chips. Shut that lid properly, Chrissie, we
don't want them wet. We've also brought a few rolls of Clingfilm, Inspector. We
wrap him in that first, so we don't lose anything.'

           
'Like a frozen turkey,' Ashton said. 'Anyway, it's good
to see we haven't pulled a crowd. Yet. Let's just hope we can get this sorted
before anybody knows we're here. Now, where's that gravedigger bloke?'

           
The big, curly-haired clergyman came over. Wearing his
full funeral kit, Ashton noticed. Long cassock and a short cape like coppers
used to have on point-duty in the good old days.
           
He looked nervous. Might he
know something?

           
'This is Mr Beckett, Inspector. Our verger.'

           
Little pensioner with a big, stainless-steel spade.
           
'You dig this grave first time
around, Mr Beckett?'
           
'Aye, what about it?'
           
'Usual depth?'

           
'Six feet, give or take a few inches. No need to measure
it, sithee, when tha's done t'job a few score times.'

           
'And when Mr Castle was buried, did you notice if the
earth had been disturbed?'

           
'It were bloody dark by then,' said Mr Beckett
uncompromisingly, patting his chest, as if he'd got indigestion.

But actually smoothing the
bulge in his donkey jacket.

           
For, in its inside pocket, shrouded in household tissue,
lay a little brown bottle.

           
Be his job, this time, to get the bloody bottle into Matt
Castle's coffin, which they'd have to get out of the way before they could get
at the bogman.

           
This was a new bottle. Alf had gone with Milly Gill to Ma
Wagstaff's house, and he'd stood guard while Milly made it up, all of a dither,
poor lass, "I'm not doing it right, Alf, I'm
sure I'm not doing it right.'

           
'It's thought as counts,' Alf had said, not knowing what
the hell he was on about. 'Ma always said that.' Standing at the parlour door,
watching Milly messing about with red thread and stuff by candlelight.

           
'Alf.'

           
'What?'

           
'Go in t'kitchen, fetch us a mixing bowl.'
           
'What sort?'

           
'
Any
sort. Big
un, I'm nervous. Come on, hurry up.'

           
Alf handing her a white Pyrex bowl, standing around in
the doorway as Milly put the bowl on the parlour floor, feeling about under her
skirts. 'Well, don't just stand there, Alf. Bugger off.'

           
The door closed, only streetlight washing in through the
landing window, ugly shadows thrown into the little hall, the bannisters
dancing. Milly's muffled muttering. And then the unavoidable sound of her
peeing into the Pyrex.

           
Alf, trying not to listen, standing where Ma's body must
have landed. Looking up the stairs into a strange, forbidding coldness. Him,
who'd patrolled the empty church on wild and windy nights and never felt other
than welcome.

           
'Hurry up, lass. Giving me t'creeps.'

           
'This is Ma's house.' The sound slowing to a trickle.
'There's not a nicer atmosphere anywhere.'

           
Alf deliberately turning his back on the stairs.

           
'Aye. But that were when Ma were alive.'

This time Moira went off to
make the tea. Gave her time to think.

           
She'd asked Cathy who was left in the Mothers' Union,
apart from Milly Gill. Cathy had looked gloomy and said, don't ask.

           
Moira lifted the teapot lid and watched the leaves
settle. Seemed the Mothers' Union wasn't what it used to be. Ma Wagstaff used
to say they'd let things slide a bit, Cathy said.

           
Moira put the teapot on a tray with a couple of mugs.
Some dead leaves hit the window. From the doorway behind her, Cathy said, 'Ma
thought there was something out there trying to get in. She said the air was
different.'

           
'How do you know all this, Cathy? Do you have to be a
mother to be in the Mothers' Union?'

           
Cathy grinned. There were bags under her eyes and her
hair looked dull in the hard kitchen light. 'They'll even take virgins these
days.'

           
'Are you?'

           
'A virgin?'

           
'A mother.'

           
'Pop's an enlightened clergyman,' Cathy said, 'but not
that enlightened.'

Two young coppers helped
Alf with the spadework, which was a good bit easier - just when you didn't
bloody need it - than he'd have expected under normal circumstances.

           
He was ashamed of this grave, the soil all piled in
loose, big lumps, nothing tamped down. But he'd rushed the job, as rattled as
anybody by that ugly scene between Ma Wagstaff and Joel Beard, and then Lottie
Castle screaming at them to get her husband planted quick.

           
Three feet into the grave, getting there faster than he
wanted to, he could see Joel peering down at them. Unlikely the lad'd know yet
about Ma Wagstaff's death, nobody rushing to tell him after the way he'd been
carrying on.

           
Thing was, Joel probably had no idea what he was up
against. Just a bunch of cracked owd women.

           
Which, Alf conceded, wasn't a bad thing for him to think
just now; at least he didn't suspect Alf, and he wouldn't be watching him too
closely.

'The problem is,' Cathy
said, 'that it's become more of a way of life than a religion.'

           
'Is that no' a good thing?'

           
'Well, yeah, it is for ordinary people, getting on with
their lives. This sort of natural harmony, the feeling of belonging to
something. It's great. Until things start to go wrong. And your brewery gets
taken over and most of the workforce is fired. And your village shop shuts
down. And your local celeb arrives to save your pub from almost certain closure
and he's dead inside six months. And your placid, undemanding Rector develops
quite a rapid worsening of his arthritis, which Ma's always been able to keep
in check. Except Ma's losing it, and she doesn't know why.'

           
Cathy looked at Moira's cigarettes on the chair-arm. 'How
long's it take to learn to smoke?' She waved an exasperated hand. 'Forget it.
Oh, this place is no fun any more. Atmosphere's not the same. People not as
content. I've been home twice since the summer and it's struck me right away.
Maybe that's the same all over Britain, with this Government and everything.
But Bridelow was always ...'
           
'Protected?'

           
'Yeah. And now it's not. I mean, somebody like Joel would
never have got away with what he's done - ripping down that kid's cross. And
Our Sheila ... I mean, we've had these religious firebrands before, maybe even
my old man was a bit that way when he first arrived, but... something calms
them down. Ma Wagstaff used to say it was in the air. Shades. Pastel shades.
You know what I mean?'

           
The old Celtic air,' Moira said. 'Everything misty and
nebulous. No extremes. Everything blending in. You can sense it on some of the
Scottish islands. Scotch mist. Parts of Ireland too. Maybe it was preserved
here, like the bogman, in the peat.'

           
Cathy said, 'You're not going to rest until I tell you,
are you?'

           
'And I do need to get to bed, Cathy. I feel terrible.'
           
Cathy sighed. 'OK. They stole
the bogman back. They buried him in Matt Castle's grave before Matt went in.'
           
'Jesus,' said Moira. 'Who?'

           
'We're not supposed to know. But ... everybody, I
suppose. They're all in it. They've done it before. A few bits of bodies have
turned up in the Moss over the years, and that's what they do with them. Save
them up until somebody dies. And curiously, somebody always does - even if it's
only an arm or a foot turns up - somebody conveniently snuffs it so the bits
can have a Christian burial. Well ... inasmuch as anything round here is one
hundred per cent Christian. But this body ... well, it's the first time there's
been a whole one.'

           
'And the council discovered it, didn't they? So no way
they could keep this one to themselves.'

           
'And then the scientific tests, revealing that this had
been a very special sacrifice.'

           
'The triple death.'

           
'Mmm.'

           
'So Ma Wagstaff and Milly Gill and co. and ... Willie? Is
Willie in this?'

           
'Willie used to be a carpenter.'
           
'He did too.'

           
'And he's good with doors and locks. And then there's
that mate of his, the other chap in the band ...'
           
'Eric.'

           
'He works for a security firm now, in Manchester. The
same firm, as it happens, that was hired to keep an eye on the Field Centre.'

           
'Bloody hell.' Moira slumped back in her chair, it's
beyond belief. It's like one of those old films, where everybody's conspiring.
Whisky Galore
or something. So the
body's back home, in Bridelow soil.'

           
'It didn't go
completely
right. Milly says that right at the last minute Ma started getting funny
feelings about it going in Matt Castle's grave.'

           
'I'm no' surprised.'

           
You've got to
purify yourself
. Of course.

           
'So she made up this witch bottle to go in Matt's coffin.
It's got rowan berries in it, and red cotton and ... the person making up the
bottle has to pee in it.'

           
Moira said,
'Rowan
tree, red thread / Holds the witches all in dread.'

           
'What?'

           
'It's a song,' Moira said.

           
'Well, it's the wrong way round. Mostly it was the
witches themselves who use the bottles, to keep bad spirits at bay. The spirits
are supposed to go after the red berries or something and get entangled in the
thread. It's all symbolic.'

           
'So she wanted to save Man from evil spirits?'

           
Or maybe she wanted
to save the bogman from something in Matt.

           
'I don't know,' Cathy said. 'I'm the Rector's daughter.
I'm not supposed to know anything. We turn a blind eye.'
           
'But the bottle never got in
the coffin, did it?'
           
'I don't know.'

           
'The supposed contaminant remains.'
           
'I don't
know
, Moira.'

He stood at the edge of the
grave looking down. Forcing himself to look down.