The Man in the Moss (40 page)

           
Joel
sobbed once, felt the savage strength of rage. He bunched a fist and drove it
through the shed window.

Ernie Dawber had heard about the bogman on the morning
news. So he wasn't exactly surprised when,' round about 10.30, he heard a car
pulling up irritably in the schoolhouse drive.

           
Hadn't
given much thought to how he was going to handle this one. Too busy making
notes for a daft book that would never get published.

           
The
page he was writing, an introduction, began:

           
Bridelow might be said to operate on two
levels. It has what you might call an
underlife,
sometimes discernible at dusk when all's still and the beacon is about
to light up ...

           
He
looked up from the paper and the room went rapidly in and out of focus and
swayed. Bugger. Not again. Damn.

           
He
pushed his chair back, swept all the papers from his desk into an open boxfile
and went to let the man in.

           
'A
raw day, Dr Hall.'

           
A
word, Mr Dawber, if you're not ... too
busy
.'
           
Innuendo. It was going to be
all innuendo this time, he could tell.

           
'I'm
a retired man. I'm not supposed to be busy. Come in. Sit down. Cup of tea? Or
something a little ...'

           
'No,
thank you. Nothing.' Oh, very starchy. 'It's interesting that you don't seem at
all surprised to see me, Mr Dawber.'

           
'I'm
not daft,' Ernie said. 'That's how I got to be a headmaster.'

           
Underneath
Hall's open Barbour jacket was a suit and tie. An official visit.

           
'Well,
at least shut the door,' Ernie said. 'It's the worst kind of cold out there.'

           
The
archaeologist consented at last to come into the study. Ernie closed the
boxfile and placed it carefully under his chair. 'Look around,' he said. 'You
don't need a search warrant.'

           
'I
haven't said anything to the police,' Hall said. 'Not yet. I'm giving you a
chance either to bring it back or tell me where it is.'

           
Ernie
didn't insult him by asking what he was talking about. 'Dr Hall, this is a very
serious allegation.'

           
'Don't
worry, I know enough about the libel laws not to make it in public. That's why
I've come to see you. If we can keep it between the two of us and the, er ...
if it comes back undamaged, that'll probably be as far as it goes.'

           
'Now
look, you don't really trunk ... ?'

           
'Oh,
I don't for one minute think you were personally involved. Besides, you were at
the funeral, I saw you. Wouldn't have been time.'

           
'So
I'm just the mastermind. The brains behind the heist. That it?'

           
'Something
like that.'

           
'All
right,' said Ernie Dawber. 'I'll be straight with you. Yes, I did come to you
on behalf of the village and urge you to put that thing back in the bog. That
was me, and I meant it. But - and I'll say this very slowly, Dr Hall - I do
not
know who stole the bogman from the
Field Centre. I'll say it to you and I'll say it again before a court of law.'

           
And
he truly didn't know. Nobody ever knew these things apart from those concerned.

           
Had
his
suspicions
, who wouldn't have?

           
But
nothing black and white. Ma Wagstaff was right. There was never anything in
black and white in Bridelow, which was how it was that balance and harmony
could always be gently adjusted, like the tone and contrast on a television
set.

           
Shades
of things.

           
Oh,
aye, naturally, he had his suspicions. Nowt wrong with suspicions. Suspicions
never hanged anyone.

           
Roger
Hall had changed colour. His beard-rimmed lips gone tight and white. Dr Hall's
tonal balance was way out.
           
'It's here, Dawber. I know
it's here.'
           
'You're welcome to search ...'

           
'I
don't mean this house. I mean in Bridelow. Somebody has it ...'

           
'Don't
be daft.'

           
'That's
if it hasn't already been put back in the bog. And if it has, we'll find it. I
can have two coach loads of students down here before lunch. We'll comb that
moss, inch by inch, and when we find the area that's been disturbed ...'

           
'I
wish I could help you, Dr Hall.'

           
'No,
you don't.'

           
Ernie
Dawber nodded. That was true enough. No, he didn't.

Joel lugged the ladder through the graveyard and into
the church, dragging it along the nave, putting it up finally against a stone
pillar next to the rood screen. He shook the ladder to steady it, then began,
with a cold determination, to climb.

           
In
his ankle-length black cassock, this was not easy. Close to the top, he hung on
with one aching, bruised and bloodstained hand, the big, gilded cross swinging
out from his chest, while he rummaged under the cassock for his Swiss Army
knife, using his teeth to extract its longest, sharpest blade.

           
The
topmost branches of the Autumn Cross were almost in his face. It was about six
feet long, crudely woven of oak and ash with, mashed up inside for stuffing,
thousands of dead leaves and twigs, part of a bird's nest, shrivelled berries
and hard, brown acorns.

           
Disgusting
thing.

           
Fashioned
in public, he'd been told, on the field behind The Man I'th Moss, with great
ceremony, and the children gathering foliage for its innards.

           
'Oh,
Lord,' Joel roared into the rafters, 'help me rid your house for ever of this
primeval slime!'

           
He
leaned out from the ladder, one foot hanging in space, tiny shards of glass
still gleaming amidst the still-bright blood on the hand gripping a rung. His
fatigue fell away; he felt fit and supple and had the intoxicating sensation of
grace in his movements.
           
Deliverance.

           
Orange
baling-twine bound the frame of the cross to a rusted hook sunk into a
cross-beam. He swung his knife-arm in a great arc and slashed it through.

           
'Filth!'
he screamed.

           
The
Autumn Cross fell at once, and Joel watched it tumble and was glad.
           
A beginning.

           
The
sapless, weightless artefact fell with a dry, slithering hiss. Like a serpent
in the grass, he thought, satisfaction setting firm in the muscles of his
stomach, his head filled with a wild light.

           
He
did recoil slightly, throwing the lightweight ladder into a tilt, as the
so-called cross burst apart on the stone flags, fragments of leaves and powdery
dust rising all around until the belly of the church was filled up with a dry
and brackish-smelling sepia mist.

           
Joel
coughed and watched the filthy pagan detritus as it settled. A bigger job than
usual for the women on the Mothers' Union cleaning rota.

           
He
hoped the foul bitches would choke on the dust.

CHAPTER V

With a nod to Our Sheila, Moira slipped quietly into
St Bride's church just before 10 a.m.

           
To be
alone. To confront the spirit of Bridelow. Maybe find something of Matt Castle
here.

           
Special place.
Matt had said, a long,
long time ago on a snowy night in Manchester.
It's got ... part of what I've been trying to find in the music. That's
where it is ... where it was all along.

           
Cathy
Gruber had persuaded her to stay the night in the guest room. She'd slept
surprisingly well, no awful dreams of Matt in his coffin. And awoken with - all
too rare these days - with a sense of direction: she would discover Matt, trace
the source of the inspiration. Which was the essence of the village.

           
Bridelow,
last refuge of the English Celts.

           
A more pure, undiluted strain than you'll
find anywhere in Western Europe.

           
She
stopped in the church porch.
           
Who said that? Who
said
that?
           
The American said it. Macbeth.
           
Macbeth?

Yeah, quoting somebody ... some writer addressing the
Celtic conference. Stanhope, Stansfield, some name like that ... from the North
of England.

           
Connections.

           
She
felt like a small token in a board-game, manoeuvred into place by the deft
fingers of some huge, invisible, cunning player.

           
And
she knew that if she was to tap into Matt's imagination, she was also going to
have to confront his demons.

           
As
she walked - cautious now - out of the porch, into the body of the church,
something whooshed down the aisle and collided with her at chest-level.

           
'Hey!'
Moira grinned in some relief, holding, at arm's length, a small boy.

           
'Gerroff!'
Kid was in tears.

           
'You
OK? You hurt yourself?'

           
The
child tore himself away from her, wailing, and hurled himself through the door,
an arm flung across his eyes, like he'd been blown back by an explosion.

           
Moira's
grin faded.

           
Something
had changed.

           
The
place looked bare and draughty. Even through the stained-glass windows, the
light seemed ashen and austere. On a table near the entrance, next to the piles
of hymn books, al1 the lanterns and candlesticks had been carelessly stacked,
as if for spring cleaning. One of the slender, coloured candles had rolled off
the edge and lay snapped in two on the stone flags.

           
She
picked up the two halves, held one in each hand a moment then placed them on
the table and wandered up the central aisle of a church which seemed so much
bigger than yesterday at Matt's funeral, so much less intimate, less friendly.

           
Something
was crunched under her shoe. She looked down and saw curled-up leaves and
broken twigs, shrivelled berries and bracken and acorns and all the rustic
rubble of autumn scattered everywhere.

           
Like
a savage wind had blown through the nave in the night. Looking up, she saw what
was missing, what the mess around her ankles was.

           
Somebody
smashed the Autumn Cross.

           
'No
accident, this,' Moira said aloud. Shivered and wrapped her arms around her
sweatered breasts. It was still cold, but after what she'd learned last night,
she'd left the black cloak at the Rectory. This was obviously not a place in
need of a spare witchy woman.

           
She
stood by the rood screen and looked back down the naked church. She looked down
at the mess all around her, on the stone floor and the scratched and homely
pews. Saw, for a moment, a scattering of bleached white skulls. But she knew
almost at once that it wasn't the same.

           
Or at
least that
she
was not to blame this
time.

           
This
was a rape.

           
She
experienced a moment of awe
. I walked
into someone else's conflict.

           
But
it was not
quite
someone else's
conflict. There was a connection, and the connection was Matt Castle.

           
Last
night, she'd said to Cathy, just as abrupt as the girl had been, 'Why did they
open Matt's coffin? What was in that bottle?'