The Man in the Moss (42 page)

           
'Sorry,
luv, I'm not very bright this morning.' The postmistress rolled her eyes. 'Go
across street, turn left and after about thirty yards you'll come to an entry.
Go in there, and you'll see a cottage either side of you and it's the one on
the left.'

           
Moira
bought ten postage stamps and two packets of Arrowmint chewing gum in case she
ran into Alfred Beckett again.

           
There
was no answer at Willie's house, a narrow little cottage backing on to other
people's yards. Moira wondered if he lived alone. She squashed her nose to the
front window. There was a bowl of flowers in it, with ferns. A woman's touch.
Females had always been drawn to Willie, born to be mothered. In the old days,
it used to be said that otherwise worldly mature ladies would turn to
blancmange when little Mr Wagstaff smiled coyly and let them put him to bed.

           
Moira
was not that mature, yet. The reason she needed Willie was to talk about Matt,
and also to meet his mother. She came out of the entry, unsure what to do next.
There was no one else in the place she knew, except ...

           
At
the bottom of the village street, Moira found herself facing the pub, the last
building, apart from a couple of wooden sheds, before the street widened into
the causeway across the peatbog.

           
This
was the difficult one.

           
Against
the white morning, the pub looked hulking and sinister, like a gaol or a
workhouse. Stonework so murky that in places it might have been stained by the
peat. Outside on the forecourt, a man in an apron was cleaning windows.

           
A
red-haired woman appeared in the porch, handed the man a steaming mug of tea or
coffee, stopped and stared across the forecourt. Waited in the doorway,
watching Moira.
           
You ready for this, hen?

'They're not Ancient Monuments, these circles.
Ancient, possibly. Monuments ... well, hardly.'
           
Joel Beard kicked at a stubby
stone.

           
'No
signs pointing um out, anyroad,' said Sam Davis. 'Not even proper tracks.'

           
'That's
because they're not in the care of any Government or local authority
department. Unlike, say, Stonehenge, where you have high-security fences and
tunnel-access. Which is why these places are so open to abuse.'

           
The
Reverend Beard, in his dark green Goretex jacket and his hiking boots, striding
through the waist-high bracken. Action priest, Sam thought cynically.

           
'Lights,
you say?'

           
Although
they were less than a hundred yards from the first circle, it wasn't even
visible yet. This was the most direct route from Sam's farmhouse, but he
reckoned that mob last night must have come in from behind. over the hill.

           
'Cocky
bastards,' Sam said, breathing harder, keeping pace with difficulty, due to
shorter legs. 'Bold as brass. If wife hadn't kicked up, I'd've been up theer
last night.'

           
Sam
bunched his fingers into fists. 'I'd give um bloody devil worship.'

           
'I
know how you feel,' the minister said, 'but you did the right thing in coming
to me. This is my job. This is what I'm trained for.'

           
Sam
Davis watched the big blond man flexing his lips, baring his teeth, steaming at
the mouth in the cold air. It was all Esther's fault, this, making him drag the
Church into it.
           
'Look, Mr Beard ...'

           
'Joel
...'

           
'Aye.
Thing is, I don't want to turn this into some big bloody crusade. All I want is
these buggers off me property. Know what I mean?'

           
The
Reverend Beard stopped in his tracks. 'Sam, have you ever had foot-and-mouth
disease on your land?'

           
'God.
Be all I need.'

           
'Swine
fever? Fowl pest? Sheep scab?'

           
'Give
us a chance, I've only been farming two year.'

           
'The
point I'm making,' Joel Beard said patiently, moving on, as the bracken came to
an end and the ground levelled out, 'is that when a farmer's land is infected
by a contagious disease, it's not simply a question of getting rid of the
afflicted livestock. There are well-established procedures. For the purpose of,
shall we say, decontamination.'

           
'Aye,
but ... let's get down to some basic facts, Joel. Who exactly are these
fellers? Your mate, the Vicar ... now he reckoned it's just kids, right?'

           
...
could probably tuck a couple under each arm
...

           
'Kids?'
said Joel Beard.

           
'For
kicks,' Sam said. 'Like drink. Drugs. Shoplifting. Kicks.'

           
'Hans
Gruber said that?'

           
Sam
shrugged. 'Summat like that. Right, this is it.'
           
'I beg your pardon ...'

           
'The
main circle. You're in t'middle of it, Joel. Told you it weren't much.'

           
Around
them, sunk into tufts of dry, yellow grace, were these seven small stones,
stained with mosses and lichens, none more than a couple of feet high, in a
circle about fifteen feet in diameter. Sam found it hard to credit them being
here, in this formation, for about four thousand years.

           
'Don't
know much about these things meself,' Sam said. 'Some folk reckon they was
primitive astronomical observatories. You could stand in um and see where t'sun
were risin'. Or summat.'

           
Personally,
he didn't give a shit. By his left boot were two flat stone slabs, pushed
together. The ground had clearly been disturbed. There were blackened twigs and
ashes on the slabs.

           
'...
but what that's got to do wi' bloody sacrifices is ...'
           
'Sam!'

           
The
Reverend Joel Beard shot up, like a charge of electricity had gone through him,
and then, yelling 'Get back!', seized Sam Davis by the shoulders and shoved him
out of the circle.

           
'What
the ... ?' Sam struggled out of Joel's grip, stumbled back into the bracken.

           
Joel
was still in the circle, swaying like a drunk, swallowing big, hollow breaths
through his mouth. His body bent into a fighting stance, hands clawed, eyes
blinking.

           
Sam
Davis stared at him. He was going to kill Esther for landing him with this big
tosser.

           
'There's
evil here,' Joel said.

           
Stupid
sod looked ready for war. All that bothered Sam was how close the battlefield
was to his kids. Down below, half a mile away, his farmhouse and its barns and
buildings looked rickety and pathetic, like matchstick models he could kick
over with the tip of his welly.

           
Joel
Beard had closed his eyes. The sun, shuffling about behind weak clouds, had
actually given him a faint halo.

           
For
getting on ten minutes, Joel didn't move, except, at one point, to lift up both
hands, on outstretched arms, as if he was waiting, Sam thought, for somebody to
pass him a sack of coal. Then he spoke.

           
'I
give you notice, Satan,' Joel said in a powerful voice, 'to depart from this
place.' He'd unzipped his jacket to reveal a metal cross you could have used to
shoe a horse.

           
Then
he raised his hands so that they were parallel to his body and began to push at
the air like this mime artist Sam had once seen on telly, pretending he was
behind a pane of plate glass.

           
'Bloody
Nora,' Sam muttered to himself, crouching down among the ferns, unnerved by the
whole thing but determined not to show it, even to himself. 'Got a right
fuckin' nutter 'ere.'

Shaw Horridge watched them through binoculars from the
Range Rover. It was parked on a moorland plateau about half a mile away. The
binoculars, being Shaw's own, were very good ones.

           
The
Range Rover belonged to a squat, greasy little man who lived in Sheffield and
was unemployed. He called himself Asmodeus or something stupid out of
The Omen.

           
'They're
moving on, I think,' Shaw said.

           
Asmodeus
had a beard so sparse you could count the hairs. He had the seat pushed back
and his feet on the dashboard. 'Good,' he said, as if he didn't really care.

           
Shaw
lowered his binoculars. 'What would you do if they came up here with spades and
things?'

           
'I'd
be very annoyed indeed,' Asmodeus said in his flat, drawly voice. 'I'd be
absolutely furious. So would Therese, wouldn't you, darling?'

           
Therese
was stretched out on the rear seat, painting her fingernails black. Shaw
scowled. He didn't like Asmodeus calling her darling. He didn't at all like
Asmodeus, who was unemployed and yet could afford a newish Range Rover.

           
And
yet he was still in awe of him, having seen him by night, this little slob with
putrid breath and a pot-belly, not yet out of his twenties and yet able to
change things.

           
And
he was excited.

           
'But
what would you
do
?'

           
Asmodeus
grinned at him through the open window. 'You're a little devil, aren't you,
Shaw? What would you do?'

           
Shaw
said, because Therese was there, 'Kill them.'

           
'Whaaay!
You hear that, Therese? Shaw thinks he'd kill them.'

           
Therese
lifted newly painted nails into the light. 'Well,' she said, 'we might need the
priest, but I must say that little farmer's beginning to get on my nerves.'

           
Shaw
tensed.

           
'Tell
you what, Shaw,' Asmodeus said. 'We'll give you an easier one. How about that?'

They sat at one end of a refectory table, near an
Aga-type kitchen stove, their reflections warped in the shiny sides of its
hot-plate covers. Moira kind of jumpy inside, but Lottie pouring tea with
steady hands, businesslike, in control.

           
And
this was less than twenty-four hours after the set-to at Matt's graveside,
Lottie laying into Willie and Willie's Ma and the other crones, while the
minister was helped away into the vibrating night.

           
Over
fifteen years since they'd been face to face. Lottie's hair was shorter. Her
face was harder, more closed-up. Out on the forecourt, it had been, 'Hello,
Moira', very nonchalant, like their meetings were still everyday events - no
fuss, no tears, no embrace, no
surprise.

           
No
doubt Dic had told her Moira was around.

           
She
sipped her tea and said Lottie was looking well, in spite of ...

           
'You
too,' Lottie said, flat-voiced. 'I always knew you'd become beautiful when you
got past thirty. Listen ... thanks.'
           
'For what?'

           
'For
not coming when he wrote to you.'
           
'I was tied up.'

           
'Sure,'
Lottie said. 'But thanks anyway. Things were complicated enough. Better this
way.'
           
'This way?'

           
'His
music,' Lottie said. 'His project. His beloved bogman. Now stolen, I believe.'

           
'Lottie,
maybe I'm stupid, but I'm not with you.'

           
'It
was on the radio this morning. Thieves broke into the University Field Centre
out near Congleton and lifted the Man in the Moss. I find it quite amusing, but
Matt would've been devastated. Like somebody kidnapping his father.'

           
'Somebody
stole the bogman? Just like that?'

           
Lottie
almost smiled. 'Hardly matters now, though, does it? Listen, I'll take you down
in a bit, show you his music room. He left some stuff for you.'