The Man in the Moss (27 page)

           
'Oh, Mum, everybody knows about it.'
           
'No, they don't,' she snapped.

           
'They might not here, but it was all round the Infirmary.
           
Jeff's girlfriend knew, who's
on Admissions in Casualty.'

           
'They've got no damn right to gossip about that kind of
thing!'

           
Dic squirmed.

           
'God, you choose your bloody times, my lad.'
           
'I'm sorry, Mum.'

           
'Not as if she was hurt. She had a shock, that was all.
He didn't know where he was. He was drugged up to the eyeballs. She was a young
nurse, too inexperienced to be on a ward like that, but you know the way
hospitals are now.'

           
'They said he attacked her.'

           
'He
didn't
attack her. God almighty, a dying man, a man literally on his last legs ... ?'

           
Dic said, unwilling to let it go, 'They said he called
her, this nurse, they said he called her ... Moira.'

           
Lottie put her gloved hands on the pine box, about where
Matt's head would be, as if she could smooth his hair through the wood, say,
Look, it's OK, really, I understand.

           
'Leave it, will you, Dic,' she said very quietly. 'Just
leave it.'

           
'She's not corning today, is she? The Cairns woman.'
           
'No,' Lottie said. 'She's
not.'
           
'Good,' said Dic.

Cautious as a field mouse,
little Willie Wagstaff peeped around the door, sniffed the air and then tiptoed
into the dimness of Ma's parlour.

           
The curtains were drawn for Matt, as were the curtains in
nearly all the houses in Bridelow, but at Ma's this was more of a problem, the
place all cluttered up as usual with jars and bottles and big cats called Bob
and Jim.

           
He crept over to the table. In its centre was a large
aspirin bottle, the contents a lot more intriguing and colourful than aspirins.

           
The principal colour was red. In the bottom of the bottle
was a single red berry, most likely from the straggly mountain ash tree by the
back gate. All the berries had vanished from that bugger weeks and weeks ago,
but this one looked as bright and fresh as if it was early September.

           
Also in the bottle was about a yard of red cotton thread,
all scrimped up. One end of the thread had been pulled out of the bottle and
then a fat cork shoved in so that about half an inch of thread hung down the
outside.

           
The bottle had been topped up with water that looked
suspiciously yellowish, the tangle of red cotton soaked through

           
'By the 'ell,' Willie said through his teeth. 'Nothin'
left to chance, eh?'

           
'You put that down! Now!'
           
Willie nearly dropped it. Ma's
eyes had appeared in the doorway, followed by Ma. Too dim to see her properly;
she was in a very long coat and a hat that looked like a plate of black
puddings.

           
'Bloody hell, Ma, scared the life out of me.'

           
'Corning in here wi'out knocking. Messing wi' things as
don't concern you.'

           
'Me messing!' He gestured at the bottle. 'I bet that's
not spring water, neither.'

           
'Used to be!' Ma glared indignantly at him. 'Been through
me now. That strengthens it.'

           
'Oh, aye? I thought you were losing your touch.'

           
Ma stumped across to the table, snatched up the bottle
and carried it over to the ramshackle dresser where her handbag lay, the size
and shape of an old-fashioned doctor's bag. She was about to stow the bottle
away then stopped. 'Who's carrying him, then?'

           
'Me. Eric. Frank Manifold Senior. Maybe young Dic.'

           
'That Lottie,' Ma said. 'She's a fool to herself, that
girl. If she'd let the Mothers' Union give her a hand, we'd all be sleeping
easier.'

           
'Eh?' He watched Ma passing the aspirin bottle from hand
to hand, thoughtfully. 'Oh, now look, Ma . . - just forget it. I am not ...
Anyway, there'll be no chance, Lottie'll be watching us like a bloody hawk.'

           
'Aye, p'raps I'll not ask you,' Ma said, to his relief.
The thought of opening Matt's coffin turned his guts to jelly.
           
'And anyway, why d'you need a
thing like that? I thought it were all sorted out.'

           
'You
thought
'
Ma was contemptuous. 'Who're you to think, Willie Wagstaff?'

           
'Ma, I'm fifty-four years old!' Willie's fingers had
started up a hornpipe on the coins in the hip pocket of his shiny black funeral
pants.

           
'And never grown up,' Ma said.

           
'This is grown-up?'

           
Ma bent and put the bottle down on the edge of the
hearth. The fire was just smoke, no red, all banked up with slack to keep it in
until Ma returned after the funeral.
           
She straightened up, wincing
just a bit - not as sprightly as she was, but what could you expect
 
- and faced him, hands clamped on the coat
around where her bony old hips would be.

           
'It's like damp,' Ma snapped. 'Once you get an inch or
two up your wall, you're in trouble. If your wall's a bit weak, or a bit
rotted, it'll spread all the faster. It'll feed off ... rot and corruption. And
sickness too.'

           
'Ma ...' Willie didn't want to know this. He never had,
she knew that.

           
Ma picked up his thoughts, like they'd dropped neatly in
front of her dustpan and brush. 'Comes a time, Willie Wagstaff, when things
can't be avoided no longer. He were a good man, Matt Castle, but dint know what
he were messing with. Or
who
.'

           
'Probably dint even know he were messing wi' owt.'

           
'And that wife of his, she were on guard day and night,
nobody could get near. He were crying out for help, were Matt, by the end, and
nobody could get near. Well ...'

           
'Matt's dead, Ma,' Willie said warningly.

           
Ma picked up the aspirin bottle. 'And that,' she said,
ramming the bottle deep into the bag, 'is why he needs protection. And not only
him, obviously. This is crucially important, our Willie.'

           
'Oh, bloody hell,' said Willie. It had always been his
way, with Ma, to pretend he didn't believe in any of this. Found it expedient,
as a rule.

           
'A time ago, lad, not long after you left school, we had
some trouble. D'you remember? Wi' a man?'

           
'I do and I don't,' Willie said evasively. Meaning he'd
always found it best not to get involved in what the village traditionally
regarded as woman's work, no matter how close to home.

           
Ma said, 'He were clever. I'll say that for him. Knew his
stuff. Knew what he were after. But he were bad news. Wanted to use us. Had to
be repelled.'

           
Willie did believe, though, at the bottom of him. Most of
them did, despite all the jokes.
           
'What about him?"

           
Ma's lips tightened, then she said, 'They're allus
looking for an opening, and this one stood out a bloody mile. And Matt Castle
dint help, chipping away at it, making it bigger.'

           
'Eh?'

           
'This musical thing he were working on. T' Bogman.'
           
'Oh...aye...'

           
'Another way in, Willie. Weren't doing
that
on his own, were he?'

           
Willie went quiet. He knew Matt had been consulting with
some writer, but the man never came to Bridelow, Matt always went to the man.
Until the final few weeks when he couldn't drive himself any more.

           
He looked at his mother with her big, daft funeral hat
and dared to feel compassion. She didn't need this, her time of life.
           
'Look, don't get me wrong, Ma
...'

           
Ma Wagstaff's fearsome eyes flared, but they couldn't
hold the fire for very long nowadays.

           
'... but you've bin at this for a fair few years now ...'

           
'More than fifty,' Ma said wistfully.

           
'So, like ... like I were saying to Milly ... don't you
ever get to, like .. . retire I mean, is there nobody else can take over?'

           
Ma straightened her hat. 'There is one,' she said
biblically, 'who will come after me.'

           
'But what 'asn't come yet, like,' Willie said, stepping
carefully. You could push it just so far with Ma, and then ...

           
The eyes switched from dipped to full-beam. 'Now, look,
you cheeky little bugger! When I need your advice, that's when they'll be
nailing me up an' all.'

           
Willie held up both hands, backed off towards the door.

           
'Which is not yet! Got that?'

           
'Oh, aye,' said Willie.

           
Outside in the hard, white daylight, he looked across at
the church.

           
'On me way, Matt,' Willie said with a sniff and a sigh,
rubbing his hands in the cold. 'I hope they've nailed you down, me old mate.
Good and tight.'

CHAPTER
III

GLASGOW

Shit, could this be the
right place?
           
Realistically - no.
           
First off, there was no
elevator. The stairway, when he managed to find it, was real narrow, the steps
greasy. He didn't even like to think what that smell was, but if he was
unfortunate enough to be accommodated in this block he'd surely be kicking
somebody's ass to get the goddamn drains checked out.

           
Hardly seemed likely she'd trust her fortunes to a guy
working out of a dump like this. But when he made the third landing, there was
the sign on the door, and the gold lettering said,

THE M. W. KAUFMANN AGENCY.

PLEASE KNOCK AND ENTER.

           
Which he did, and inside it was actually a little better
than he'd guessed it would be. Clean, anyhow, with a deep pink carpet and
wall-to-wall file-cabinets. Also, one of those ancient knee hole desks up
against the window. And the knees in the hole were not, he noticed, in there
because they needed to be concealed.

           
She was about eighteen, with ringlets and big eyes. She
swivelled her chair around and looked at him the way, to his eternal gratitude,
women always had.

           
'I ... uh . . He stood in the doorway for a couple of
seconds, trying to salvage some breath. This guy Kaufmann had to be pretty damn
fit, working here.

           
'Mr Macbeth, is it?'

           
He nodded dumbly.

           
'Do excuse the stairs,' she said. 'Mr Kaufmann represents
quite a number of singers.'

           
'Huh?' Doubtless there was some underlying logic here
concerning singers and breath-control, but he was too bushed to figure it out.
He hung around in the doorway while she went off to consult with M. W. Kaufmann
in his inner sanctum.

           
Thinking, So you did this again, Macbeth. Put on a suit
and tie this time, cancelled your lunch appointment, got busted for speeding by
a cop with an accent so thick it sounded like he hadn't got around to
swallowing his breakfast. You really did all of this. Over a woman. Again.
    
Maybe, he thought, as the kid beckoned him
in, maybe this is what they call a mid-life crisis. Sure. Like all the other
mid-life crises I been having since I turned twenty-nine.