The Man in the Moss (56 page)

           
'Shades of things. Aye.' Then Ernie had fallen silent,
thinking of a woman in a black cloak at Matt's funeral. Moira Cairns, former
singer with Matt Castle's Band.

           
Alf said, 'That bloke, Hall, he wouldn't accept it at
first. Said he were convinced it were theer and if he had to dig all night he'd
get it out.'

           
'Aye,' Milly said grimly. 'Happen somebody told him.
Somebody wanted that grave dug up so we'd know there was nowt down there, apart
from Matt. Oh, Christ. Oh, Mother, I don't like this.'

           
Alf sat down on the footstool Ernie would rest his feet
on while thinking. 'This Hall, he even wanted to open Matt's coffin. Thought
happen bogman were in theer.'

           
'God in heaven,' said Ernie.

           
'Joel Beard - he started kickin' up then. Wouldn't let um
go near. Said they 'ad no permission except for t'take coffin out, like.'

           
'Quite right too,' Ernie said.

           
'Alf,' Milly said anxiously. 'The bottle. You did get the
bottle in?'
           
'No.'

           
Milly Gill closed her eyes and clasped her hands together
in anguish.

           
'Couldn't do it,' Alf said. 'Seemed no point.'

           
Milly said angrily, 'Did you even try?'

           
'Oh, aye.' Alf's hands had been dangling between his legs
as he squatted on the stool. Ernie saw that both hands were shaking. 'I got lid
off, no problem. Nobody were watching, thank Christ.'

           
They were all looking at him now. Alf Beckett, soaked to
the skin, moustache gone limp, eyes so far back in his head that they weren't
catching any light from Ernie's green-shaded desk lamp.

           
'Weren't theer!' Alf suddenly squealed. 'Matt weren't
theer! Nowt in t'coffin but bloody soil!'

           
There'd been a silence you could've shovelled into
buckets.

           
Ernie could still hear it now, as he stood looking over
the graveyard, glittering with rain and the blue light of the Beacon of the
Moss.

           
'And worms,' Alf had said finally, shaking on the little
wooden footstool, staring at the floor. 'Handfuls of big, long worms.'

           
At the window, Ernie Dawber sighed very deeply.

Moira awoke with this awful
sense of doom set around her like a block of ice.

           
She was hot and she was cold. She was sweating.

           
And she was whimpering, 'Mammy. Oh, mammy, please ...
don't let them.'

           
She'd dreamed a version of the truth. She was a little
girl again, living with her daddy and her gran in the almost posh Glasgow
suburb, catching the bus to school. Gran's warning shrilling in her ears, '...
and you just be sure and keep away from the old railway, you hear?'

           
On account of the gypsies were back. The gypsies who
still came every autumn to the old railway, caravans in a circle like covered
wagons in a Western when the Indians were hostile.

           
Corning home from school, getting off the bus, the two
dark skinned gypsy boys hanging round. 'Hey, you ... Moira, is it? The Duchess
wants tae see ye ...'

           
'You leave me alone ... Get lost, huh.'

           
'We're no gonny hurt ye . .

           
'You deaf? I said get lost.'

           
'Ye gonny come quietly, ye wee besom, or ...'

           
Dissolve to interior. A treasure cave, with china and
brass and gold. And the most beautiful, exotic woman you ever saw.
           
'My, you're quite a pretty
child ... Now, I have something ... Think of it as a family heirloom ... Tell
no one until you're grown ... Guard it with your life now!' This rich, glowing
thing (which would be dull and grey to most people) heavy in your hand.

           
'You must remember this day, always. You will remember
it, for you'll never be a wee girl again.'

           
And that night she had her first period.

           
Guard it with your life.

           
Moira sprang from her bed, snapped on the light. The
guitar case stood where she'd left it, propped between a mahogany wardrobe and
the wall. She dragged it out, lay it flat on the worn carpet, the strings
making wild discordant protest as she threw back the lid, feeling for the
felt-lined pocket, where might be stored such things as spare strings,
plectrums, harmonicas.

           
And combs.

           
The door was tentatively opened, and Cathy appeared in
rumpled pyjamas. 'What's wrong?'

           
Moira was shivering in a long T-shirt with Sylvester the
Cat down the front.

           
'Moira, what's
wrong?'

           
Moira's voice low and catarrhal, growly-rough, 'The
broken window. Wasny just vandals.'

           
'You're cold.'

           
'Damn right I'm cold.'

           
'Come downstairs. I'll make some tea.'

           
Thrusting her hand again and again into the harmonica
pocket. Nothing. She pulled out the guitar, laid it on the bed.
           
Turned the case upside down.
Picked up the guitar and shook it violently, and listened to nothing rattling
inside.

           
When, slowly, she straightened up, her back was hurting.
           
She felt arid, derelict. She
felt old but inexperienced, incompetent. She felt like an old child.

           
Numbly, she reached behind the bedroom door for her
cloak, to cover her thin, goosebumpy arms.

           
The cloak was not there. They'd taken that too.

Sam stumbled no more than
twice. He knew his ground. Didn't need no fight, although he had the powerful
police torch wedged in his jacket pocket, case he needed to blind anybody.

           
It was pissing down. Sam wore his old fishing hat, pulled
down, head into the rain.

           
Never been raining when these buggers'd been up here
before. They wouldn't like that. Be an advantage for him, two years
windblasted, rained on, snowed on.

           
There was a moon up there, somewhere buried in clouds, so
the sky wasn't all that black. When his eyes had adjusted he could see the
outline of the hill, and when he got halfway up it he could make out a couple
of faint lights down on the edge of Bridelow.

           
But no lights above him now.

           
Moving round so he'd come to the circle from the bit of a
hump behind it, he climbed higher, a lone blue-white disc floating into view,
vague through the rain and mist. Beacon of the Moss.

           
Bloody church. Bugger all use they'd been, pair of um.

           
When he came to the bracken, Sam stopped, stayed very
still, listening. Thought by now he'd have seen their lights, heard some of the
chanting, whatever they did.

           
Sam went down on his haunches, the rain spattering the
bracken. Quietly as he could, he snapped shut the breech of the gun, jammed the
butt under his elbow and crouched there, waiting.

           
The rain corning down hard and cold, muffling the moor,
seeping through his jacket. Might've brought his waterproof, except the thing
would have squeaked when he moved. Have a hot bath when he got in, slug or two
of whisky.

           
Sam hefted the twelve-bore. His mouth felt dry.

           
They were here. He could feel it. They were close.

           
Bastards. Stay aggressive. Aggression generated heat and
aggression was better than fear.

           
Right. Sam moved in closer. He reckoned he was no more
than twenty yards from the circle; couldn't see it yet. Just over this rise.

           
They were there; no question. But were they lying low,
expecting him? Had they somehow heard him coming?

           
Sam pulled in a deep breath, drawing in rainwater and
nearly choking. He stuck his finger under the trigger guard and went over the
rise like a commando, stopping just the other
side, legs splayed.

           
'All
right
, you
fuckers!' he bawled. 'Nobody move!'
           
And nobody moved. Nothing. Not
even a rabbit in the grass. Only the sound of the rain battering the bracken.

           
Holding the gun under his right arm, Sam fumbled for his
torch, clicked it on, swirled the beam around, finding one, two, three, four,
five stubby stones, a circle of thumbs jabbing out of the moor.

           
'Where are you? Fucking come out! I'll give you your
bloody Satan!'

           
Not frightened now. Bloody mad.
'Come on
!'

           
He thought about firing a shot into the bracken, case
they were flattened out in there. But it wasn't likely, was it?

           
No, they'd gone. He switched off the torch, pushed it
back in his pocket and did a 180-degree crouching turn, with the gun levelled.

           
Behind him, up on the moor, he glimpsed a fleeting white
light. Didn't pause to think. Right. They're on the run. Move it.

           
Half-aware that he was departing from his own useless
piece of moorland, Sam set off under a thickly clouded night sky with little
light in it but an endless supply of black water; his jacket heavy with it and
his faithful fishing hat, which once had been waterproof, now dripping round
his ears like a mop rag.

           
He thought of his bed, and he thought of his kids and his
wife, who he supposed he loved really, and he thought this was the stupidest
bloody thing he'd do this year and maybe next, but...

           
... but them bastards were not going to get away with it,
and that was that.

           
He tracked the light. Just one light, hazy, so probably a
fair distance away. Heather under his boots now, waterlogged but better than
the bracken, and the light was getting bigger; he was closing in, definitely,
no question.

           
Two, three hundred yards distant, hard to be sure at
night but the way the rain was coming down, crackling in the heather, there was
no need to creep.

           
Sam strode vengefully onward.

           
Maybe it was due to forging on with his head down and his
eyes slitted to keep the water out... maybe this was why Sam didn't realise for
a few seconds that the light was actually coming, much more quickly,
towards him.

           
A shapeless light. Bleary and steaming and coming at him
through the rain ... faster than a man could run.

           
'Hey ... !' Sam stopped, gasping, then backed away,
bewildered. His index finger tightened involuntarily and the gun went off, both
barrels, and Sam stumbled, dropping it.

           
Something squelched and snagged around his ankle like a
trap. He went down, caught hold of it - curved and hard - and realised,
sickened, that he must have put his foot through the
ribcage of a dead sheep.

           
Pulling at the foot, dragging the bones up with it, he
saw the light was rising from the moor in front of him, misty and shimmering in
the downpour.

           
And it seemed to him - soaked through, foot stuck in a
sheep - that the light had a face, features forming and pulsing, a face veiled
by a thin muslin curtain, the fabric sucked into a gaping mouth.

           
Sam's mouth was open too, now; he was screaming furiously
into the rain, wrenching the torch from his pocket, thumbing numbly at its
switch, until it spurted light, a brilliantly harsh directional beam making a
white tunnel in the rain and mist, straight up into the face.

           
Where the tunnel of light ended suddenly. A beam designed
to light up an object eighty yards away, and it shone as far as the rearing
figure of light, a matter of four, five feet away.
Where it died. In the beam, the figure of light turned into a
shadow, a figure of darkness and cold.