The Man in the Moss (84 page)

           
'Dic.' Moira let Milly take the glass away. 'Thank you.
Cathy, what are we going to do about Dic?'

           
'I told you, didn't I?' Cathy said. 'I said it wasn't Dic
who took the comb.'

           
'Aye, you did. I'm sorry. But why's he with Stanage? How'd
he get into this? And the girl. The woman.'
           
'Therese. Pure poison. Lady
Strychnine.'
           
'But Dic was
helping
them.'
           
'Dic was helping
us
,' Cathy snapped.
           
'Us?'

           
'The Mothers.'

           
'You told me ... Hang on, I'm confused, you said you
weren't one. You said your father wouldn't...'

           
'I didn't know you well enough. I lied. It's OK to lie
sometimes. Except to yourself.'
           
'Sure.' Moira sighed.

           
'Dic lied to himself a lot. He lied about his father. He
lied about not hating his father.'

           
'I know. Maybe we all lied to ourselves about Matt.'

           
'Aye.' Willie Wagstaff was sitting on the arm of the
sofa. I never wanted him to come back to Bridelow, me. He were too ...
disruptive, you know?' He paused. 'Like our Jack.'

           
'How it happened,' Cathy said, 'Dic read Stanage as a
kid. His dad was all for it. Imaginative stuff, full of Celtic reverberations.
' She looked up at Willie in appeal. 'They didn't
know
, you see. Matt had been away too long. He didn't know Stanage
was Jack Lucas. Not at first.'

           
'Makes sense,' Willie said. 'It were a long time before
any of us found out. Peveril. Stanage. Derbyshire place-names. Peveril of the
Peak. Nothing too local. How
should
we know? He were never on telly, never give interviews to t'papers.'

           
'So, like a lot of kids,' Cathy said, 'Dic wrote him a
fan letter, but
un
like a lot of kids,
he got a reply inviting him to visit the great man. Beginning of a beautiful
friendship. It was Stanage who persuaded Dic to learn the Pennine Pipes. Matt
was delighted, as you'd imagine. Dic having always rejected traditional stuff.'

           
'Why would Stanage be so interested in Dic?' Moira asked.

           
'He wasn't. He was interested in Matt. They'd known each
other as kids, obviously, and Stanage was looking for ways into Bridelow. That
was
his
ruling obsession, to get back
at them.'

           
'At... ?'

           
'At Bridelow. Specifically at the Mothers. The Bridelow
establishment. The keepers of the Bridelow tradition. The keepers of... I don't
know.'

           
'The balance,' Milly said. 'The keepers of the balance.'

           
'God knows,' said Willie, 'they tried to sort him out.
They tried everything. He were just ... just bloody
bad
, what can you say? And when he like ... finally overstepped the
mark, he had to go. He were halfway gone by then, anyroad, gone off to
university, smartest lad ever come out of Bridelow. Can say that again.'

           
Moira said slowly, 'How do you mean, overstepped the
mark?'

           
Willie looked at the others. Milly nodded. Willie said
bitterly, 'He desecrated a grave.'

           
'Spell it out, little man,' Milly said softly.
           
'He dug up Owd Ma. That were
me granny. Ma's ma. Been dead a week.'

           
'He had it all timed,' Milly said. 'The right day, the
right hour. the right position of the moon, all this. He had to
know
, you see. He had to know what was
being denied to him because he was a man.'

           
A gout of rain came down the chimney. On the fire, a red
coal cracked in two with a chip-pan hiss.

           
Moira said, 'He did this? Necromancy? He tried to get
information out of a dead woman?'

           
Willie reached for Milly's hand. She said, 'I was only a
youngster. I only know what I was told later, by Ma. She said there were things
he knew, things he threw in her face ... that he couldn't possibly have learned
from anyone else. So either Old Ma told him stuff on her deathbed, which is so
unlikely as to be ...'

           
Moira started to feel sick, and it wasn't Ma Wagstaff's
crisis Mixture. 'Willie, sooner or later Matt would know about this guy. What
he was.'

           
'We never talked about it, lass. But, aye, sooner or
later. but he'd be too far in, maybe, by then. To be charitable. In the end,
though, it's two of a kind. Exiles wanting in.'
           
'Men,' said Milly. 'Men
wanting knowledge.'
           
'And now he's doing it to
Matt. What he did to your gran. Dic told me, he said, "He's got my
dad." How can ... ?'
           
'We know,' Milly said. 'Matt's
coffin's full of soil.'
           
Cathy said, 'Listen, the night
Dic brought you to the rectory, afterwards he had a few drinks, got a bit ...
mixed up? He was approached. There was a sexual approach. He thought it was
you.'

           
'What a compliment.'

           
Cathy frowned. 'Next day he told me about it He's always
told me things. He was in a hell of a state. He needed ... calming down. You
can tell how easily they get people.'

           
Moira nodded. She knew well enough.
           
'I said you were with me the
whole time,' Cathy said, 'so it couldn't have been you.'
           
'Thank you.'

           
'And then we talked about it for ages. It was
our
only way in. For Dic to go along
with it, see what happened. I think he saw it as a way of getting out of the
influence of his dad and Stanage and the whole thing.'

           
Moira started shaking her head. Lamb to the slaughter.

           
'He's been through hell.' Cathy's eyes looking hot with
sorrow. 'Yes, they've got Matt's body. Yes, they've been … arousing him.'

           
Moira covered her face with her hands.

           
'There's Stanage and this Therese. Calls herself Therese
Beaufort. He claims, apparently, that she's his niece. That's crap. All kinds
of people've been attracted to him over the years. He's, you know, he's ...
magnetic'

           
'I know.' Moira rubbed her eyes. 'I know his kind. Who
else?'

           
'Detritus. There's a Satanic-type cult based in Sheffield
that's been holding rituals on the moors, in the old Bronze Age circles. Been
going on for years. They move as close as they can to Bridelow - it's got a
reputation in the occult world, you can imagine. Place of power.'

           
Moira felt herself back in the churchyard, deformed stone
across the moor, hopping like a toad, a quick splash of blood ...

           
'Therese,' Cathy said. 'Tess - she's Tessa-something, Dic
says, she came up from the Welsh border - Tess brings them along. They're
revolting. That farmer - there was a farmer killed on the moor, Sam Davis - he
came to see Pop last week. Lights in the night, rams killed. His wife reckoned
they were even sacrificing babies.'

           
'It's not unknown,' Moira said. 'I believe some of these
cults are actually breeding babies for sacrifice. How did that guy die?'

           
'Fell down a quarry at night. How do you know that, about
the babies?'

           
'Read it in the
News
of the World,
' Moira said quickly.

           
'Look, you say they get as close as they can to Bridelow.
But they can't get
in
, right!' You
told me the other night there were defences. The kind you can't see.'
           
Milly said, 'Jack could let
them in. Down in Cambridge, Jack was mixing with all kinds of people. Jack was
learning all the time. We had to do something or else Bridelow'd be ... just
like everywhere else. Soiled. Only more so, because ...'
           
'… because it was a place of
power. Right?'
           
'We had to do something,'
Milly said. 'Or Ma did. Ma was the only one could do it.'

           
'Why?' Moira hunched forward, hands clasped. 'I mean,
what? What could Ma do?'

           
Milly looked down into her lap where Willie's hand lay.
           
'Come on, Milly,' Moira said
almost angrily. 'What is it you're not telling me? Cathy, do
you
know?'
           
Yes,' Cathy said. 'I think
so.'

CHAPTER
VII

Ernie had taken off his
hat, placed it on the hallstand, where it was still dripping five minutes later
when Shaw Horridge shouted, 'Get out. Get out, Mr Dawber. Get out before I kill
you!'

           
Six months ago Ernie would have had a regretful laugh at
that. Six months ago, Shaw wouldn't have been able to say it without a hell of
a struggle. Now it was quite apparent that Shaw would indeed like to kill him
and certainly could. And it wouldn't be his first time.
           
Feelings. Ernie had ignored
his feelings, his whimsy. They
 
were never specific enough, never quite
accurate
. He was a man and also a
scholar in his own small way, and feelings, in Bridelow, were what women had.
           
And now, when it was probably
too late, he was finding out what feelings were for.

           
He stood by the hallstand. Over his head hung a leaded
lantern in a wrought-iron frame. Tasteful; one of Liz's earliest purchases.

           
'Your mother's no more in Buxton, lad, than we are now.'
           
'She
is
!' Shaw seemed about to stamp his foot. With his folded umbrella
he prodded the air an inch or two from Ernie's eyes.

           
Ernie didn't move. 'Nearest she got to Buxton is a BMW
motorcar at the bottom of a bank. She's in a police mortuary lad. That's where
your mother is.'

           
Known it as soon as he and Willie had found the Cairns
lass. Known it, really, for most of the day. That she was dead..
           
'You're off your head, Mr
Dawber.'
           
'Not yet, lad. Soon, happen.
But not yet.'
           
'I've told you once to get
out. I won't tell you again.' Shaw's eyes glittered like broken glass.
           
'Kill me, eh?'
           
'You think I won't?'
           
'No, I know you would.' Ernie
picked up his wet hat, held it in front of his chest like a breast plate. Took
a big, long breath. Saw before him the little lad in Class I of the infants.
Fair-haired, fair-complexioned, tall but slightly built. Brought to school that
first morning by stocky, swarthy Arthur Horridge, Arthur's dark brown hair
already greying at the temples.

           
Ernie looked into Shaw's pale, malevolent eyes. 'Just
like you killed your granny, eh, lad?'

           
Shaw drew back across the hall. His mouth twisted up and
opened on one side, his face alternating between a sneer and a stare of more
than slightly crazed, vacant incomprehension.

           
'What's this? What's this nonsense? What are you babbling
about? You're an old fool, Mr Dawber.'

           
'Haven't they told you, Shaw? Hasn't your father told
you?'

           
'My father's dead.'

           
'I only wish he were, lad.'

           
'I... You…'

           
'Your father's Jack Lucas. John Peveril Stanage.'

           
'That's ... that's absolute crap.'

           
'You want to hear about this, Shaw?'

           
Shaw had backed up against the flock-papered far wall,
his mouth twisting noiselessly from side to side, both hands over his head,
hovering half an inch above his baldness.

           
'When I was a little lad'
  
Ernie leaned his back against the
hallstand,
 
relaxed - 'there was a bit of
a kerfuffle in Bridelow. Minor scandal, soon hushed up, years before I learned
the details. Anyroad ... Ma Wagstaff ... Iris Morris in those days, young lass,
bit of all right, too.
 
But wild. Nowt
anybody could tell her. Wasn't going to stay in little Bridelow, was she? Off
to the city, our Iris, most weekends. Met a feller, as you'd expect. Educated
smooth-talker, name of Lucas.'