The Man in the Moss (78 page)

           
He felt his eyes narrow. 'State?'

           
'I think I must have been the last person to see her
alive. She was very down, I'm afraid. She'd picked up a bug of some kind. And
she was upset over the burglary - someone broke in here and stole some things
from her. Including this … famous comb. Which she kept in a secret pocket in
her guitar case.'

           
'They stole the case?'

           
'Just the comb. Seemed silly. 'I'm afraid I didn't really
believe her about that, at first.'

           
'Shit.' Macbeth clenched his fists. 'How would this
sonofabitch know precisely where she kept the comb?'

           
'Mungo …' Cathy hesitated. 'She told me she'd only shown
one person where she kept that comb.'

           
'Wasn't me.'

           
'No,' said Cathy. 'It was Matt Castle.'

           
'The ubiquitous Matt Castle. What was her relationship
with this guy?'

           
'She was in his band. And that was all. She was always
very insistent about him never touching her.'
           
'Yeah, but I bet he wanted
to.*

           
'I
know
he wanted
to. He was crazy about her. Men tend to . . . Oh, gosh, I'm sorry.'

           
'The irony of it,' said Macbeth, 'is I never got to touch
her either.'

           
'But I doubt,' Cathy said, not without compassion, 'if
you're of quite such an obsessive temperament.'

           
'Something hurts, is all. Maybe it's self-pity. I, uh,
thought she was gonna change my life.'

           
'Maybe she has.'

           
'You mind if we get off this subject? Tell me about
Castle.'

           
'Yes.' Cathy sat on the arm of what must have been her
father's wing-backed fireside chair. 'Matt's son, Dic, reckons his father's
lust … unrequited lust … for Moira, just got progressively worse with age.
Eventually developing into almost a … perversion? About women with long, dark
hair.'

           
Macbeth was seized, for the first time, by the reality of
something more potentially soul-damaging than either grief or anger.

           
He said, 'That woman in the room across there …'

           
'Yes,' Cathy said calmly. 'I noticed that too.'

This was more like it. This
was much more like Hell.
           
'Christ, I feel just awful.'

           
Pain in the head, behind the eyes. A growling pain. Put
me back. Put me back into the nice, warm shit.

           
'You've got to come with me,' the Devil urges.

           
Hot coals roaring and crackling all around. The inside of
a furnace, but without the pretty colours. A black furnace with one cold,
flashing, piercing flame.

           
'Piss off, leave me alone.'

           
'Look, I haven't got much time.' Stabbing her through the
eyes with his needle of light.

           
'You've got all the time there is, pal, all the time
there ever was and all the time there's ever gonny be. That no' enough for
you?'

           
'Please. For Christ's sake.'
           
'Listen, will you get rid of
the damn light?'
           
'Sorry. I forgot you'd been in
the pitch dark so long. I'll put it under my jacket, that any better?'

           
'Yeah. You're OK, Satan, you know that?'
           
'Try and sit up.'

           
'Get your fucking hands off me!'
           
'Listen to me, you have to get
moving.'
           
'Who is this?'
           
'It's me. Dic. Dic Castle.'

           
Light on his face. Dark red hair, Matt's jawline, Matt's
stubborn lips.

           
She coughed. It made her head ache. She said, all she
could think of to say, 'Was it you? Was it you who took my comb?'

           
'No,' he said. 'No I didn't. I know who
did
.'

           
'Who?' Her back hurt as she sat up. Like it mattered now.
           
'Bloke called Shaw Horridge.
But that's not important right now.'

           
'No.' The name didn't seem to mean anything to her.
           
'Look, Dic, I don't want to
seem stupid, but what are you doing here? What am I doing here? And where in
Christ's name is here?'

           
Maybe they were
both
dead. Maybe he'd been sent to offer her a cup of tea.

           
'It's a storage building, back of the brewery.'
           
'Brewery?'

           
'Bridelow Brewery. You have to come now, Moira. Please.
I'm supposed to have gone for a pee, that's all. They're going to start
wondering where I've got to, and then we could be in a lot of trouble.'

           
She stood up. There was mist to struggle through, thick
grey mist. A monster rose over her and opened its jaws.
           
Bridelow. Bridelow Black.

           
Her hands fiddled with her clothes. Sweater. Jeans. She
seemed to be fully clothed. She felt naked and raw.

           
'Thought I was fucking dead. Dic, why am I no' dead?'

           
'They've had you on drugs.'

           
'Sure as hell wasn't speed, was it?'

           
'I don't know. I really don't know much about drugs.'

           
'Bridelow Brewery,' she said. 'Why's that scare me? Bridelow
Brewery. Bridelow
Black
.

           
On her feet now, panting, leaning against something,
maybe a wall, maybe a door. He'd put out his light. They were just a couple of
voices. 'Bridelow Black,' she breathed. 'Ran me off the road. Ran me over a
damn precipice.'

           
'No precipice. There was a fiat area over the wall next
to the road. Then a slow drop after that. There was a lot of mist. They took
you out ...'

           
'Fat guy with a half-grown moustache.'

           
'Yeah. Name's Dean-something. Calls himself Asmodeus,
after some biblical demon. Looks like a dickhead, but he isn't.'

           
'He hit me. Also, some big bastard in a dog-collar hit
me. Everybody hits me.'

           
'Can you walk?'

           
'Three of them in the lorry. They were dragging me away.
Who the hell are these people?'

           
'They all work at the brewery. Gannons fired the local
men, brought in these people. Occult-followers from Sheffield and Manchester.
Small-time, no-hope urban Satanists. You can practically pick them up on street
corners. Doesn't really care any more who he brings in, any low-life shit'll
do.'
           
'Who's this?'
           
'Stanage.'

           
'Sorry, my head's, like, somewhere else. I'm not
following this. Who's …'

           
'Can you walk!'

           
'Guess I can. Question is, do I want to?'

           
Then walk out of here. Do it now. You walk out of here in
a straight line until you get to the road. No, look, I'll come with you as far
as the entrance, OK, then I've got to get back or I'm dead. I'll give you the
lamp, but don't use it till you're out of sight of the brewery. Go to the
Rectory. You remember where the Rectory is?'

           
'Rectory. Yeah. Near the church.'

           
'You remember Cath?'

           
'Dic,' she said, 'what's that noise? I was thinking it
was the hot coals.'
           
'Coals?'
           
'Never mind.'

           
'It's just the rain, Moira. The rain on the roof. It's
raining heavily, been like this for hours. You're going to get wet, can't be
helped. OK, I'm opening the door. You see anybody ...
anybody
... run the other way. Tell Cath ... are you taking this
in?'

           
'Doing ma best, Dic.'

           
'Tell her they're going to put out the light. In the
church. The beacon.'

           
'Who's "they"?'

           
'Moira, listen, they've got my dad propped up in there.
And his clothes. And the pipes. And me. And ... you. Please, just go!'

           
'
What did you just
say?'

A shuddering creak and he
pushed her out, and it was like somebody had thrust her head down the toilet
and flushed it.
           
She gasped.

           
'Come on.' He took her arm. She could make out the shapes
of trees and a sprinkling of small lights among the branches.
           
'Not that way.'
           
'What's that tower?'

           
'Part of the brewery. Can't you go any faster? I'm sorry.
They catch you, I'm telling you, they'll kill you.'

           
She'd stopped. She was shaking. Somebody was pouring
bucketfuls of water directly into her brain. She clapped her hands to her head.

           
She screamed.

           
'Christ's sake, shut up!'

           
'Dic.
My hair!
'

           
Voices. Lights.

           
'Moira, run! Take the lamp.' Thrusting it into her hands,
heavy, wet metal. 'Don't use it till you're away from here.'
           
Running footsteps.
           
'My hair's gone!'

           
He pushed her hard in the back and then she heard him
take off in the opposite direction, shoes skidding on the saturated ground.

           
'Dic?'

           
'Run!' He was almost howling. 'Just run! Don't lose that
lamp!'

           
'Dic. what have they done to my hair?
Where have they taken my fucking hair?'

CHAPTER
III

Surprising how vulnerable
you felt in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car up here on a night like this.
Ashton took it steady.

           
He wondered: how much water can a peat bog take before it
turns into something the consistency of beef broth?

           
Not his manor, the natural world. The
un
natural world was more like it. A
number of the people with whom Ashton conversed at length - usually across a
little grey room with a microphone in the wall - were creatures of the
un
natural world.
           
As for the
super
natural world ...

           
I don't know why, Ashton told himself as he drove towards
Bridelow Moss, but in a perverse sort of way this is almost invigorating. To be
faced with something you can't arrest, matters which in no way can ever be
taken down and used in evidence.

           
Completely out of your depth. He looked down at the Moss.
There was an area of Manchester called Moss Side, in which the police also
sometimes felt out of their depth, so choked was it with drugs and violent
crime. Did the name imply that once, centuries ago, it had been on the edge of
somewhere like
this?
           
And, if so, how much had
changed?

           
Not the kind of thing policemen tended to think about.
           
Gary Ashton, facing retirement
in a year or two, spent an increasing amount of time trying to think about
things policemen did not tend to think about. Intent on not becoming just a
retired copper' working as consultant to some flash security firm and tending
people who couldn't give a shit with his personal analysis of the criminal mind
and endless stories about Collars I Have Felt.

           
Just lately, Ashton had been trying to talk to people as
people, knowing that in a very short time he would be one of them.