The Man in the Moss (90 page)

           
Which, in the end, he thought, you were. You were a
sitting duck.

           
Wanted to ask, What happened to your mother? What
happened after she forced herself to come down to the village and scream tor
sanctuary outside Ma's door? While you were inside, presumably. For who else
would it be? Who else could destroy Ma's defences so surely? Who else would Ma
allow to push her downstairs?

           
'I didn't ker-kill her, you know,' Shaw said suddenly.
'She said she was der-der-dead already. Dead already!'

           
And at that moment, directly above Ernie's head, the door
chimes played their daft little tune and there was a banging on the glass
panels and, 'Mr Dawber! Ernie!'

           
Shaw jerked from the waist, as if the electric doorbell
had been connected to his testicles. 'Ger-go away!'

           
Ernie grabbed a breath and raised his voice. 'It's Willie
Wagstaff, Shaw. Let him in, eh?'

           
'Mr Dawber!'

           
'Come on, Shaw!' Ernie shouted. 'You know Willie!'

           
Across the hall, the front door shuddered as a boot went
into it, flat, under the lock. Shaw leapt across the hall and threw himself
against the back of the door as the foot went in again, and then he sprang
back, lurched towards Ernie, face full of blood and glass, terror, confusion
and fury. He turned, tore open a white-panelled door on the other side of the
room and flung himself into the passage beyond as the front door heaved and
splintered open.

           
Willie was alone. His eyes flickered under his mousy
fringe in the bright lights. 'Ernie.'

           
'Give us a hand, Willie. Done me ankle, I think.'

           
'Where's the lad?'

           
'Let him go, eh? He's got a lot to think about. We need
to get to the brewery, if it's not too late.'

           
'Never mind that.' Willie got a hand under Ernie's arm
'Can you ... that's fine. That's excellent, Mr Dawber. Hang on to me. The
brewery ... Moira's seeing to that.'

           
'That lass? By 'eck, Willie, you're ...'

           
'She's not just "that lass", Mr Dawber, take my
word. Anyroad, Mungo's with her, the Yank. He give me his car keys; we need to
get you back. You're our last hope, Mr Dawber. Come on. I'll tell you.'

The body was up against a
huge metal tub. There was the smell of beer, the smell of vomit and a smell
Macbeth would soon recognise again as the smell of blood.

           
'I don't know him,' Moira said. 'I've never seen him
before.'

           
Macbeth covered his mouth with his hand. This was it. The
final proof he'd half-imagined he was never going to get, that this affair was
real, life and death. Bad death.

           
'This is crazy, Moira." He grabbed hold of the iron
railing, for the coldness of it. Only it was slick with something and he jerked
his hand away. 'I never saw a stiff before. Never saw a dead relative. Never
went to a funeral with an open coffin.'
           
Moira had nothing to say to
this. She turned her lamp on man's face. His whole head was a weird shape, like
it had been remoulded. Violently. There was blood over the face and down from
the rim of the big tank. Macbeth felt his gut lurch. He leaned over the side of
the huge beer vat and he threw up, shamed by the way it echoed around the
scrubbed metal.

           
He turned back to Moira, wiped his mouth. She was kind
enough to direct the beam of her lamp away from him. Real macho stuff, huh?
Either I'm in this with the rest of you or I'll go solo, start kicking asses.

           
Or maybe I'll just throw up the shitburger I had near
Carlisle.

           
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That was unavoidable. Thing is, I
do recognise him. His name is Frank. He was in the pub earlier, was pretty
smashed.'

           
He certainly looks pretty smashed now,' Moira said,
sounding harder than he liked to hear. He was shocked.
           
'He fell?' Looking up the
steps, all slimy with something that stank.

           
'You could convince yourself of anything, Macbeth. OK,
after you.'

           
'Up there?'
           
'Well, we're no' going back
now.'
           
Oh, shit. Please. Get me outa
here.
           
'OK. You stay down here, then.
Wait for me.'
           
'No! Jesus. But, like, I mean,
what if they're waiting for us?'

           
'There's nobody here, Macbeth.'
           
'How'd you know that?'

           
'I was ... listening. And watching. And ... you know.'

           
No, he didn't fucking know. But he wasn't going to make
an issue of it. He went slowly up the metal steps. She stayed at the bottom,
lighting his way, until he reached a blank wooden door.

           
He hesitated, looked back down the stairs at where the
beam bounced off the white walls and cast a soft light on her. She looked
smaller than he remembered inside this bulky duffel coat, too big for her by a
couple of sizes. And yet she seemed strangely younger, without most of her
hair.

           
Well, shit, of
course
he'd seen that, soon as he'd walked in out of the rain. It was the most awful
mutilation, like slashing the
Mona Lisa
,
taking the legs off of the
Venus de Milo.
It was a goddamn offence against civilization.

           
But was it
self-
mutilation?
Was it like a novice nun cuts off, all her hair to give herself to Christ?

           
And this was why he'd never even mentioned it. This was
why, Willie being in the car too, all he'd said to her by way of explanation
for him being here was, 'The Duchess asked me to lookout for you.'

           
To which she'd made no reply.

           
Moira's face creased sympathetically now in the white
light. 'Look, Mungo ... fact is, if the sight of this poor guy made you chuck
your lunch, you're not gonny find it too pleasant in there. There's no shame in
that. Willie's pretty squeamish, too, which is why he was glad to go off in
search the old schoolmaster guy. So ... if you ... what I'm saying is, this
isn't your problem. You really don't have to put yourself through this.'

           
'And you do?'

           
'Yeah,' she said. 'I'm afraid I do. Me more than
anybody."

           
He just stared down at her.

           
'Goes back nearly twenty years. This is the consequences
of getting involved with Matt Castle.'
           
'He's dead.'
           
'Yeah,' Moira said.

           
Macbeth said, 'People here keep seeing his ghost. That's
what they say. You believe that?'
           
'Yeah,' Moira said.

           
'What am I gonna find behind that door?'

           
'You don't ever have to know, Mungo. That's what I'm
trying to tell you.'

           
'Aw, shit,' Macbeth said. 'The hell with this.' He scraped
the hair out of his eyes, opened them wide and pushed open the door with his
right foot.

CHAPTER
IV

Willie's youngest sister
was in her dressing gown, making tea. 'Sleep through this weather? Not a
chance. Our Benjie's messing about up there, too, with that dog. I've told him,
I'll have um both in t'shed, he doesn't settle down.'
           
'Where's Martin?'

           
'Working up Bolton again. Takes what he can. Bloody
Gannons.'

           
'Right,' Willie said. 'Well, if you can get dressed, our
Sal. You've been re-co-opted onto t'Mothers.'

           
'Get lost, Willie. I told Ma years ago, I said I'll take
a back seat from now on, if you don't mind, it's not my sort of thing.'

           
Aye, well, no arguing with that. Certainly
wasn't
her sort of thing these days.
Sal's kitchen was half the downstairs now. Knocked through from the dining room
and a posh conservatory at the back. Antique pine units, hi-tech cooker,
extractor fan. All from when Horridges had made Martin sales manager, about a
year before Gannons sacked him.

           
'Anyroad,' Sal said. 'Can't leave our Benjie. God knows
what he'd get up to, little monkey.'

           
'Well, actually,' Willie said, 'I wouldn't mind getting
the lad in as well. We're going to need a new Autumn Cross, a bit sharpish.'

           
'Be realistic. How can a child of his age go out
collecting bits of twigs and stuff on a night like this?'

           
'Aye, I can!' Benjie shouted, bursting into the kitchen,
already half-dressed, dragging on his wellies. 'I
can,
Uncle Willie, honest.'

           
'Get back to bed, you little monkey, if I've told you
once tonight, I've ...'

           
'Lay off, eh, Sal. We need everybody we can get.'
           
'Is this serious, Willie? I
mean,
really?
'
           
Willie said nothing.
           
'What's in that briefcase?'
           
'This and that.'

           
'Uncle Willie,' said Benjie, 'T'Chief's been howling.'
           
'They're all howling tonight,
Benj.'
           
'And t'dragon. T'dragon
growed, Uncle Willie. T'dragon's
growed.'

When Milly caught Cathy's
eye over the heads of the assembled Mothers they exchanged a look which said,
this is hopeless.

           
Altogether there were seven of them squeezed into Ma's
parlour, standing room only - although at least a couple were not too good on
their pins and needed chairs.

           
'Susan!' Milly cried. 'Where's Susan?'

           
'Staying in with the little lad,' Ethel, Susan's mum,
told her. 'Frank's not back. Likely on a bender. She won't leave the little lad
on his own on a night like this.'

           
'Wonderful!' Cathy moaned. 'Hang on, what about Dee from
the chippy? Needs must, Ethel.'

           
'She's had a shock, what with Maurice, she won't even
answer the door.'

           
'Well, get somebody to bloody break it down. And if
Susan's got to bring the kid along, do it, though I'd rather not. That'll be
nine. Willie! How's it going? Any luck?'

           
'We found it, I think.' Willie came in clutching Mr
Dawber's old briefcase. 'Here, make a bit of space on t'table.'

           
'How is he?'

           
'He's resting. Had a bit of a do wi' Shaw Horridge.'
Willie was spreading out sheets of foolscap paper. 'Thank God for Mr Dawber, I
say. Anything to do with Bridelow he collects. Whipped it off Ma 'fore she
could put it back of t'fire.'

           
'Looks complicated.'

           
'It's not as bad as it looks. They're all numbered, see,
and they join up, so we've got a complete map of t'village wi' all the key
boundary points marked. Ma did um all barefoot. But
that were summer. What you want is one woman at each, and each to take a new
stone. Alf's got um ready for consecration, like, end of his yard.'

           
'How big are they, these stones?'

           
'Size of a brick, maybe half a brick. Some of um
are
bricks, come to think of it. Ma used
a wheelbarrow.'

           
'We'll never do it,' Milly said in despair. 'Are you
proposing to send old Sarah out to the top of Church Field with half a brick?'

           
'She could do one of the closer ones,' said Cathy. 'If
you or I take the Holy Well …'

           
'We still haven't got enough.' Milly lowered her voice.
'And what kind of commitment we'll get out of half this lot I
don't
know. Ma was right. We've been
hopelessly complacent. We let things slide. We haven't got a chance.'