The Man in the Moss (6 page)

           
Common folk? Ma Wagstaff? Ernie kept backing off, looking
around for friendly faces. 'Please, Ma ... don't push me on this. You'll find
out soon enough.'

           
But the nearest person was a good ten yards away, and
when his back hit the wall of the pub's outside lavatory block, he realised
she'd got him into a corner in more ways than one.

           
'Now then,' Ma said kindly. 'How's that prostate of yours
these days?'

           
'Nowt wrong with my prostate,' Ernie replied huffily.
           
Ma Wagstaff's eyes glinted.
'Not yet there int.'

CHAPTER
II

'This is mer-madness,' Shaw
said.

           
 
'No,' said
Therese, 'it's exciting.'
           
'You're exciting,' he mumbled.
That's all.' He pushed a hand through her sleek hair, and she smiled at him,
tongue gliding out between her small, ice-white teeth. He was almost crying;
she had him on the edge again. He pushed his back into the car's unfamiliar
upholstery and clenched both hands on the wheel.
           
'Shall we go, then?'
           
'I can't.'

           
'I promise you,' Therese said, 'you'll feel so much
better afterwards.'

           
And he would, he knew this from experience. Once, not
long after they'd met, she'd made him go into a chemist and steal a bottle of
Chanel perfume for her.
I'll buy it for
you
, he'd almost shrieked. But that wasn't good enough. He was rich ...
buying her perfume - what would that demonstrate?

           
So he'd done it. Stolen it. Slipped it into the pocket of
his sheepskin jacket and then bought himself two bottles of the shop's most
expensive aftershave as an awkward sort of atonement.

           
But the awkwardness had just been a phase. He remembered
lying awake all that night, convinced someone had seen him and the police would
be at the door. Don't worry, she'd said,
it'll
get easier
.

           
Jewellery next. Antique jewellery from a showcase, while
Therese had distracted the manager.

           
You'll feel better
,
she'd say.

           
She was right. For the first time ever he was getting
whole sentences out without stammering. Although his mother hadn't said
anything, it was obvious she'd noticed. And been impressed. He'd felt quite
wonderful, couldn't wait to see Therese again to tell her.

           
His confidence had increased daily. Soon he'd found he
could speak openly to groups of men in the brewery like his father used to do,
instead of slinking into his office and only communicating with the workers
through the manager.

           
And when Gannons had made their approach, he'd found it
surprisingly easy to make his decision - with a little help from Therese.

           
'Do you want really to stay in Bridelow all your life?
Couldn't bear it, myself. Couldn't live here for a
week
.'

           
And he knew it was true. She wouldn't spend any time
here. If they went for a walk, it had to be up on the moors. If they went for a
drink, it had to be at some pub or club in Manchester or somewhere.

           
He wanted desperately to show her off, to show that
stuttering Shaw Horridge could get himself a really beautiful girlfriend. But
she seemed to find Bridelow beneath her.

           
'Dismal little place,' she said. 'Don't you think? I like
lights and noise and people.'

           
So it hadn't been difficult, the decision to let Gannons
have the brewery. Biggest thing he'd ever done and all over in a couple of
weeks. All over before anyone in the village knew about it.
Fait accompli.

           
'You'll feel better,' she said. And he had. He always
did.

           
Sometimes the terror of what was happening would still
flare and, for a moment, it would blind him. He'd freeze, become quite rigid.
Like tonight, facing the oaf Manifold, who'd wanted to fight, wanted to take on
stuttering Shaw, beat him publicly to the ground. Make a point in front of all
his mates.

           
And Shaw had thought of Therese and felt his eyes grow
hard, watched the effect of this on the thug Manifold.

           
'Start the car, Shaw,' Therese said softly.

           
Shaw laughed nervously, started the engine.

           
'Good,' she said. 'Now pull away gently. We don't want
any screeching of tyres.'

           
It was a Saab Turbo. A black one. She'd blown the horn
once and he'd known it was her.

           
It was a different car, but he wasn't unduly surprised;
she'd often turn up in quite expensive ones. Her brother's, she'd say.
           
Or her father's. Tonight she'd
stopped the Saab in a lay-by the other side of the Moss, saying, 'I feel tired;
you drive.'

           
'Would I be insured?'

           
Therese laughed a lot at that.

           
'Who owns it exactly?'

           
'How should I know? I stole it.'

'Interferin' devils.' Be
unfair, perhaps, to say the old girl was xenophobic about Southerners, but ...
No, on second thoughts, it wouldn't be unfair; Ma was suspicious of everybody
south of Matlock.

           
'Aye,' Ernie said, 'I know you don't think he should have
been taken to London, but this was a find of enormous national, nay,
international significance, and they
are
the experts after
all.'

           
He chuckled, 'By 'eck, they've had him - or bits of him,
anyroad - all over the place for examination ... Wembley, Harwell. And this
report ... well, it really is rather sensational, if you ask me. Going to cause
quite a stir. You see, what they did ...'

           
Putting on his precise, headmasterly tone, Ernie
explained how the boffins had conducted a complete post-mortem examination,
submitting the corpse to the kind of specialized forensic tests normally
carried out only in cases of suspicious death.

           
'So they now know, for example, what he had for dinner on
the day he died. Some sort of black bread, as it happened.'

           
Ma Wagstaff sniffed, obviously disapproving of this
invasion of the bogman's intestinal privacy.

           
'Fascinating, though, isn't it,' Ernie said, 'that they've
managed to conduct a proper autopsy on a chap who probably was killed back when
Christ was a lad ...?'
           
He stopped. 'What's up, owd
lass?'
           
Ma Wagstaff had gone stiff as
a pillar-box.
           
'Killed,' she said starkly.

           
'Aye. Ritual sacrifice, Ma. So they reckon. But it was
all a long time ago.'

           
Ma Wagstaff came quite dramatically to life. Eyes
urgently flicking from side to side, she grabbed hold of the bottom of Ernie's
tweed jacket and dragged him well out of everybody's earshot, into a deserted
corner of the forecourt. Into the deepest shadows.

           
'Tell us,' she urged.

           
The weakening sun had become snagged in tendrils of low
cloud and looked for a minute as if it might not make it into the hills but
plummet to the Moss. From where, Ernie thought, in sudden irrational panic, it
might never rise again.

           
He took a few breaths, pulling himself together,
straightening his jacket.

           
'This is not idle curiosity, Ernest.'

           
'I could tell that, Ma, when you were threatening to
bugger up my prostate.' How much of a coincidence had it been that he'd shortly
afterwards felt an urgent need to relieve himself which seemed to dissipate as
soon as he stood at the urinal?

           
'Eh, that were just a joke, Ernest. Can't you take a joke
any more
?'

           
'From you, Ma ...'

           
'But this is deadly serious,' Ma said soberly.

           
The sun had vanished. Ridiculously, Ernie thought he
heard the Moss burp. 'All right.' he said. From the inside pocket of his jacket
he brought out some papers bound with a rubber band and swapped his regular
specs for his reading glasses. Be public knowledge soon enough, anyroad.

Ernie cleared his throat.

           
'Seems our lad,' he said, 'was somewhere around his late
twenties. Quite tall too, for the time, 'bout five-five or six. Peat preserves
a body like vinegar preserves onions. The bones had gone soft, but the skin was
tanned to perfection. Even the hair, as we know, remained. Anyroad, medical
tests indicate no reason to think he wasn't in good shape. Generally speaking.'

           
'Get to t'point,' Ma said irritably.

           
'Well, he was killed. In no uncertain manner. That's to
say, they made sure of the job. Blunt instrument, first of all. Back of the
head. Then, er ... strangulation. Garotte.'

           
'Eh?'

           
'Garotte? Well . .
  
He wondered if she ever had nightmares. Probably wouldn't be the usual
kind if she did.

           
Little Benjie, Ma's grandson, had wandered across the
forecourt with that big dog of his. 'Hey.' Ernie scooped a hand at him. 'Go
away.'

           
He lowered his voice. 'They probably put a cord - leather
string, sinew - around his neck and ... inserted a stick in the back of the
cord and, as it were ... twisted it, the stick. Thus tightening the sinew
around his ... that is, fragments of the cord have been found actually
embedded. In his neck.'

           
Ma Wagstaff didn't react like a normal old woman. Didn't
recoil or even wince. 'Well?' she said.

           
'Well what?' said Ernie.

           
'Anythin' else?'

           
Ernie went cold. How could she know there was more to it?
He looked over her head at the bloodied sky. 'Well, seems they ... they'd have
pulled his head back ...'

           
His throat was suddenly dry. He'd read this report four
times, quite dispassionately at first and then with a growing excitement. But
an
academic
excitement. Which was all
right. Emotionally he'd remained unmoved. It had, after all, happened a good two
thousand years ago - almost in prehistory.

           
'So the head'd be sort of pulled back ... with the ...
the garotte.'

           
When they'd brought the bogman out, a little crowd had
assembled on the edge of the Moss. Ernie had decided it would be all right to
take a few of the older children to witness this historic event. There'd been
no big ceremony about it; the archaeologists had simply cut out a big chunk of
peat with the body in the middle, quite small, half his legs missing and his
face all scrunched up like a big rubber doll that'd been run over. Not very
distressing; more like a fossil than a corpse.
           
They'd wrapped him in
clingfilm and put him in a wooden box.

           
Ernie was staring into Ma Wagstaff's eyes, those large
brown orbs glowing amber out of that prune of a face, and he was seeing it for
the first time, the real horror of it, the death of a young man two thousand
years ago.

           
'He'd be helpless,' Ernie said. 'Semi-concussed by the
blow, and he couldn't move, couldn't draw breath because of the garotte ...'

           
Ma nodded.

           
'That was when they cut his throat,' Ernie said hoarsely.

           
Ma nodded again. Behind her, out on the pub forecourt, a
huge cheer suddenly went up. The new landlord must have appeared.

           
'You knew,' Ernie said. He could feel the blood draining
out of his face. 'You knew ...'

           
'It were the custom,' Ma Wagstaff said, voice very drab.
Three times dead. See, Ernest, I were holding out the hope as this'd be just a
body ... some poor devil as lost his way and died out on t'Moss.' She sighed,
looking very old. 'I knew really. I knew it was goin' t'be what it is.'