The Man in the Moss (73 page)

           
Ok, Christ." said Maurice Winstanley, subsiding into
his pain. What's the bloody use?'

Even though Deirdre
Winstanley opened all the windows into the place, the smell of fried skin
wouldn't go away; only seemed to get stronger.

           
When she opened the door, Susan Manifold, having seen the
ambulance ran across the street through the torrent, asking her what was wrong,
could she help.

           
'His own fault,' Dee said. 'Silly bugger. Thirty years, I
don't know.'

           
'Will he be all right?'

           
'Will any of us?'

           
'I'm sorry?' Susan Manifold stepped inside the chip shop,
to escape the wet, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

           
'Well, look at it.' Dee gestured at the water, now level
over cobbles and the drains weren't taking it. She seemed more worried about
that than Maurice's injury, or perhaps she was looking for something to take
her mind off it.
           
'Will it flood?' Susan asked.

           
'Never has before, but there's always a first time. Look
at them drains. Is there nowt you can do?'
           
I'm not a plumber,' said
Susan.
           
'No,' said Dee. 'But you're a
Mother.'
           
'Oh, come on!' Susan flicked
back her ash-blonde fringe. We can't alter the weather.'

           
'Could've, once. Not you, maybe, Susan. Happen before
your time.'

           
'Old wives' tale,' Susan said carelessly, and the full
horror of what she'd said came back at her like a slap in the mouth. She was
betraying Milly Gill and the memory of Ma Wagstaff.
But, God help her,
Mother
help her,
she had no belief in it any more.

           
Upset, she walked back across the drowned cobbles, Frank
wasn't home yet from the pub. When he did arrive he'd be drunk and nasty.
Another problem the Mothers were supposed to be able to deal with.

Dee Winstanley slammed the
door. That was stupid, what she'd said. Stupid what Susan had replied. Stupid
what Maurice had done. Stupid to have lived behind a stinking chip shop for
thirty years.

           
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

           
And the smell wouldn't go away; the layer of fat, from
fish and pies and peas and fried human skin, hung from the ceiling like a dirty
curtain, and the fluorescent tubelight was a bar of grease.

           
Dee threw up the flap, stumbled behind the counter,
slammed down the chromium lid on a fryer full of flabby chips congealing
together like a heap of discarded yellow rubber gloves.

           
Couldn't clean that tonight. Just couldn't.
           
'Cod and six pennorth o'
chips. Please.'

           
The nerve of some people. 'We're closed,' Dee yelled into
the thick air around the high counter.
           
'... and six pennorth o'
chips.'

           
Dee sighed. Some people still thought it was funny to
demand six pennorth o' chips, same as what they'd asked for in old money when
they were kids.

           
'We've had to close early,' she explained patiently.
'Maurice's had an accident. Gone to hospital. All the chips are ruined.'

           
She peered through the shimmering grease at the
persistent customer. Recognised the voice straight away, just couldn't put a
name to it.
           
'…pennorth o' chips. Please '

           
The customer clambered through the lardy light and she
heard the clatter of coins on the glass counter.

           
'You deaf or summat Matt? I can't serve you. It's Maurice
...they've taken Maurice off in th'ambulance. He's had a ...'
           
' .. and six pennorth.. :

At first there was no sound
in the crowded, flowery sitting room, except for the endlessly percussive
weather and Willie Wagstaff 's fingers on his jeans picking up the same rapid
rhythm.

           
'John Peveril Stanage,' Macbeth repeated in a stronger
voice, because the name'd had the same effect as throwing three aces into a
poker game.

           
Doing this for the Duchess.

           
Willie said, 'Never heard of him,' about a second too
late to be convincing, and Macbeth, suddenly furious, was halfway out of his
chair when there were four hollow knocks at the front door, all the more
audible for being way out of synch with Willie's fingers and the rain.

           
'Mr Dawber,' Milly Gill said tonelessly, but made no move
to answer the door.

CHAPTER
VIII

Milly Gill half rose and
then sat down again and looked at Willie and then at Mungo Macbeth.
           
'I'm sorry, Mr Macbeth. Sorry
to've given you such awful news. But...' Spreading her hands: what else can I
do?

           
Telling him to get the hell out in other words.

           
Macbeth stood up but made no move toward the door. 'I
don't think so,' he said.

           
The hollow knocking came again, a little faster this
time, a little closer to the tempo of Wagstaff's restless fingers.

           
'Why d'you do that?' Macbeth said, in no mood for tact.
'With your fingers.'

           
Willie looked non-plussed, like nobody ever asked him
that before.

           
'He has a problem with his nerves,' Milly Gill said
hastily. 'If you don't mind, Mr Macbeth, there's a gentleman come to see us.'

           
So they know who it is. Knocking comes at the door,
latish, and they know what it's about before they open up.

           
'Sure,' Macbeth said. 'Thanks for your time.' Maybe he
should
go. Cancel his room at the inn,
drive out of here, head back north. Maybe organise a flight home. And call on
the Duchess? Could he ever face the Duchess again?

           
He nodded at Willie Wagstaff, followed Milly Gill to the
door.

           
'Good luck,' he said, not sure why he said that.

           
And then something told him to turn around, and he found
Willie on his feet, a whole series of expressions chasing each other across the
little guy's face like videotape on fast-forward.

           
'Look.' Willie was clasping both hands between his legs
like a man who badly needed to use the John. 'It's not nerves. It's ...'

           
'Hey.' The big woman pulled back her hand from the door
catch. 'A few minutes ago you were telling me to shut up.'

           
'I know, lass, but happen we've kept quiet too bloody
long. This ... Moira. Dead. Finished me, that has. Too many accidents. Going
right back to that lad who fell off top of the brewery. Too much bad luck. And
when I hear Jack's name ... Hang on a minute, lad. Milly, let Ernie Dawber in.'

           
Milly said, 'If it's Jack - which I...' She swallowed.
'If it is, we've got to sort it out for ourselves.'

           
'Oh, aye. Like we've sorted everything else out.
Let him in.'

This Ernie Dawber was a
short, stout, dignified-looking elderly guy in a long raincoat and a hat. He
didn't look pleased at being kept wailing in the rain. He looked even less
pleased to see Macbeth.

           
'This bloke's a friend of Moira's,' Willie Wagstaff
explained.

           
'Mungo Macbeth.'

           
Old guy's handshake was firm. Eyes pretty damn shrewd.
'My condolences,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

           
'Mr Dawber,' Willie said, 'I'll not mess about. This lad
- Mungo - reckons Moira ...' He took a breath. 'He reckons there's a connection
with Jack. With... John Peveril Stanage.'

           
Willie's voice was so thick with loathing that Macbeth
had to step back.

           
'Not possible,' Ernie Dawber said. 'I know what you're
saving, but it's not possible.'
           
'No?' said Willie.
           
'He was banished, Willie. In
the fullest sense. Forty-odd years ago. In all that time he's never once tried
to come back. And if your ma was here now she'd go mad at you for even saying
his name.

           
'Aye. But she's not. She's dead.' Willie's voice hardened.
'Suddenly. Under very questionable circumstances.'

           
Ernie Dawber shook his head. 'You're clutching at
straws.'
           
Milly Gill said, 'Leave it,
Willie. We've problems enough. Jack couldn't set foot in this village ...'
           
'While Ma was alive!' Willie
shouted.
           
'He's a rich man now, Willie,
he's got everything he needs. And like Mr Dawber says, he's never once tried to
get back in. Why should he?'

           
'Aye,' said Willie. 'Why should anybody want owt to do
wi' Bridelow? Why's Bridelow suddenly important? Why's it on everybody's lips
when things here've never been so depressed? Why? - Mr Dawber'll tell you, he's
got the same disease.'

           
'Willie, stop it off!'

           
Willie brought a hand down on the gateleg table with a
crack. 'Bogman fever! That little bastard's contagious. Look at Matt, he got
too close for his own sanity. How close did you get, Mr Dawber, that you want
to die for it as well? Did you ever think it'd got at
your
mind ... staid, cautious old Ernie Dawber, man of letters?' He
turned away. 'Ernie Dawber, human sacrifice. Don't make me laugh!'

           
'Stop it!' Milly Gill advanced on Willie like she was
figuring to pull him apart. 'How dare you, little man? There's things we
never
can laugh at. Maybe something's
turned your mind.'

           
'Jesus.' Macbeth stepped between them. 'Bogman fever?
Human sacrifice?
 
What kinda shit
is
this? Guy in the bar said everybody
was on edge tonight, I figured he was making small talk. Back off, huh?'

           
Removing his hat, Ernie
Dawber stepped further into the room, leaving the door ajar behind him. No
visible ease-up in the rain. 'Could I ask you, Mr …'

           
'Macbeth. Like the evil Scottish King, had all his
buddies iced.'

           
'That's as maybe,' Ernie Dawber said. 'But could I ask
you, sir, what precisely is your interest here?'

           
'I got nothing to hide.' Macbeth let his arms fall to his
sides. 'I fell in love with a woman.'

           
The noise from outside was like Niagara.

           
'And now she's dead,' Macbeth said. 'Some bastard's
keeping secrets about that, maybe it's time for me to research a few ancestral
vices, yeah?'

           
He shifted uncomfortably. Starting to sound like some
steep-jawed asshole out of one of his own TV shows.

           
'Perhaps,' said Ernie Dawber, 'we should all calm down
and discuss this. And for what it's worth - history being my subject - despite the
Bard's best efforts to convince us otherwise, Macbeth was actually quite a
stable monarch.'

           
'Ernie ...' Macbeth pulled out a chair. 'I wasn't so
pissed about this whole thing, I could maybe get to like you.' He sat. 'Now.
Somebody gonna tell me about John Peveril Stanage?'

           
Only Milly Gill still looked defiant. She folded her
arms, pushed the door shut with her ass.

           
'Oh, hell, tell him, Willie,' Ernie Dawber said.

It had been novelty value,
and now it was wearing off.

           
Chris wasn't stupid; he wasn't blind, being born-again to
God didn't blind you to common sense.

           
Most of them were young. They sought, Chris conceded, a
vibrancy and an excitement in religion which the Church had failed to give
them. They found it at outdoor rallies, in marquees and packed rooms that were
more like dancehalls. And now they were back where, for many of them, it had
begun first time around in the stone clad starkness of an old-fashioned church.
To defend it, Joel had told them. Against evil. But an evil they could not see,
nor comprehend.