The Man in the Moss (79 page)

           
A well-controlled tremor in her voice.
'Inspector Ashton, I'm extremely sorry to
bother you at this time of night, but you did say if anything else disturbing
occurred, I should let you know immediately.'

           
Yes, yes, Mrs Castle, but I meant in the nature of a
break-in. Unless a crime has been committed or is likely to be, I'm sorry but
this is not really something the police can do anything about.

           
Except, he hadn't said any of that.

           
What he'd said was, 'Yes, I'll come, but as long as you
understand I won't be corning as a policeman.' Turning off the telly in his
frugally furnished divorced person's apartment, reacting to a peculiar note of
unhysterical desperation in a woman's voice and getting into practice for doing
things
not
as a policeman.

           
Surprising how vulnerable you felt not being a policeman
on a very nasty night proceeding in an easterly direction across a waterlogged
peatbog in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car to see a woman about a ghost.

'Well,' Ernie Dawber said
finally. 'I think it must be obvious to all of us where they are.'

           
Willie said, 'Macbeth wasn't fooled, you know. He knew we
was keeping summat back.'

           
'Let's hope Catherine keeps him out of our way. Come on,
Willie, there's nobody but us going to see to this.'

           
Milly Gill was hugging Bob and Jim and looking, Ernie
thought, a bit like his mother had looked when she'd switched off the radio
after the formal declaration of World War Two.

           
'What are you going to do?'

           
'Well, I know we're only men, Millicent, but we're going
to have to stop this thing. Don't know how, mind. Have to see when we get
there.'

           
Ernie put on his hat.
           
'Where?'

           
'The Hall. The brewery. By 'eck, I wish I'd listened to
my feelings. So used to them coming to nowt, see, that's the problem. I
remember examining the list of Gannons directors - last summer, this was, just
after the takeover was mooted.'

           
'I know,' Willie said. 'J. S. Lucas. Occurred to me too,
just momentarily, like, but I thought I were being paranoid.'

           
Milly looked blank.

           
'Lucas were t'name of Jack's father. Not many folk'd know
that.'

           
Ernie watched Willie struggling into his old donkey
jacket with the vinyl patch across the shoulders. Not seen that for some years.
Lad had put on a few pounds in the meantime.

           
Milly Gill slid the cats from her knee. 'Well, all I can
say is you seem determined, Mr Dawber, that one way or t'other, you'll not see
tomorrow's sun.'

           
'Time comes, Millicent, when being an observer is no
longer sufficient.'

           
'And what about you, Willie? Feller who liked to pride
himself on his cowardice.'

           
'True,' Willie said. 'But this is family.'
           
'I'm just praying,' Ernie
said, 'as they've not done owt to Liz Horridge.'

           
Willie grinned. 'Always had a bit of a thing for Liz,
dint you, Mr Dawber?'

           
'She could've done no better than Arthur Horridge,' Ernie
said generously.

           
'And might've done a good deal worse, eh?' Willie was
over by the window. 'Not slackening off at all, bloody rain. Moss'll be
treacherous for weeks.'

           
'We're not going to the Moss,' said Ernie. 'We're not
going anywhere near the Moss.'

           
He was still thinking furiously about what young
Catherine had said about obsession. That he himself had been trapped just as
surely as Matt Castle and Dr Hall. That there was indeed something powerfully
emotionally disruptive about the bogman.

           
Ernie glanced at Milly Gill, who was not, he reassured
himself, in Ma's league. Not yet.

           
Determined that one
way or t'other you'll not see tomorrow's sun.
           
Aye, well, Ernie Dawber
thought, we'll have to see about that.

The tapping on the study
door was firm but polite.

           
Cathy opened it. They were corning out anyway, though
without much direction. At some point, Macbeth had suggested they simply call
the cops, but Cathy said the cops must already be looking into Moira's death;
how were they supposed credibly to plant the idea that the accident was in some
way unnatural?

           
Chris stood in the doorway. 'We've come to a decision,'
he said. 'Thank you for your hospitality, but we want to go back.'
           
'Back?' Cathy said.
           
'To the church.'

           
'Oh,' Cathy said. 'But you can't.'

           
Chris smoothed his beard, 'We're deeply ashamed, Cathy.
We had no faith. We watched Joel struggling with the demon, and we thought he'd
gone mad.'

           
'He has,' Cathy said tautly.

           
'And now this attack on Chantal. She was the only one of
us whose belief in Joel was sustained when the chips were down. She went back
and she was physically and spiritually attacked. Could have been killed. We let
that happen.'

           
'Open up, did she?'

           
Chris stared at her in horror.

           
'I mean to you,' Cathy said irritably. 'Did she tell you
exactly what happened to her?'

           
'Come on, Chris,' a woman's voice called from behind.
'It's only half an hour to midnight.'

           
'I'm sorry,' Chris said. 'God protect you. God protect
you both.'

           
Cathy flung the door wide. There was a whole crowd of
them gathered behind Chris.

           
'Let me spell it out for you. All of you. You've all been
used. Joel was used. Somebody wanted to break down the church's defences -
these are defences built up over centuries.'

           
'Yes,' said Chris. 'We were the last line of defence.'
Not understanding, unlikely to be
capable
of understanding. 'And we were afraid. We lost faith in our brother, Joel. We
deserted him when he most needed us, and it took the violation of our sister
...'

           
'Sister?' Macbeth said. 'She's your goddamn wife!'

           
'And Joel was right too ...' Chris backed away, 'about
this
man. Turn him out, Cathy. Turn him
out and come with us.'

           
'Of course I'm not going to bloody turn him out! He's got
good reason to be angry; a friend of his died tonight.'

           
Chris didn't blink.

           
'Come
on
,
Chris. In God's name,' the woman behind him cried.

           
'I'm coming.'

           
Cathy grabbed his arm. 'What I'm saying to you, Chris, is
that it's not safe for you to go back in that church. Any of you. You won't do
yourselves any good and you'll probably do us all a lot of harm.'

           
Chris said pityingly, 'Our trust is in Almighty God. In
whom, to our shame, we temporarily lost our faith. And for that we have much to
make up. Whatever happens in there will be His will.'

           
'He gave you a brain, Chris. To think with, you know?
Have you given up thinking for yourselves? Letting Him do all your thinking
now, is it?'

           
Chris pulled his arm away, eyes full of drifting cloud.
'Pray for us, Cathy.'

           
'Yes,' said Cathy when they'd gone. 'But who am I
supposed to pray
to
?'

Because he was used to
making a recce before venturing in, Ashton drove once up the village street,
turned around on the parking area by the church and drove slowly back towards
the pub.

           
Just as well he was driving slowly. Twice, people hurried
across the street, two men together and two women individually, flapping like
chickens in the blinding rain.

           
There were lights in most front rooms, lights in the chip
shop but a 'closed' sign on the door. Water gushed down the sides of the road,
down the hill. Where did it all go? Into the Moss?

           
Ashton followed the water as far as the pub, where the
only light was the hanging lantern over the front porch, illuminating the sign,
The Man I'th Moss
. No picture. What
would it have shown? Why had they given the pub that name, possibly a couple of
hundred years ago, when nobody could have guessed there was an ancient body in
the bog?

           
Or could they?

           
Ashton pulled on to the forecourt and dashed for the
door. Lottie Castle. He could spot a liar in seconds. He could also tell when
people were deluded. And he could, of course, spot people who were daft or
innocent enough to be led up the garden path.

           
But this Lottie Castle.

           
Now, here's a cool, intelligent woman who is definitely
not lying; a woman you could, with confidence, put in a witness box in front of
George bloody Carman QC.

           
And here's a woman claiming to be haunted. You know why I
half believe this? Ashton still quizzing himself as he huddled on the doorstep
in his trench coat, ill-fitting slates in the porch letting water trickle down
his collar.

           
Because this is s woman who sincerely
doesn't want
to believe it.

           
And it also, yes, an attractive widow. Well, what's wrong
with that?

           
The woman who answered the door, however, was not Lottie
Castle. But if Ashton the human being was disappointed, Ashton the copper was
back on duty the second he identified her.

           
'Miss … er …White.'

           
'Chrissie.'

           
'Aye,' he said. 'Chrissie. And is Dr hall here too?'

           
'Not exactly
here,
Gary
… is it Gary tonight?'

           
'Hard to say,' Ashton said, stepping inside. 'Hard to
say, now.'

Her won smooth, smoky voice
taunting her as she struggled through the dripping wood, booming out from the
old, disused recording studio in her head, the voice sneering,

                                   
Never let them cut your hair

                                   
Or tell you
where

                                   
You've been,
or where

                                   
You're going
to

                                   
from here …

           
Everything leaking out now
from that slashed and razored head, raw thoughts exposed at birth to the cold
and spitting night.

           
For a bad long time she'd stood alone among some trees
and wept and sobbed and cursed and refused to believe it.
They can put it back, can't they? Christ's sake, they can sew people's
arms
back these days.

           
First the horror, then the
anguish. And the horror and anguish and the rage, all shaken up, this wild,
combustible cocktail.

           
'Who? she screamed to the invisible sky.
'Who?'

           
Them.

           
Dic had headed them off. They'd gone after Dic and she
was alone in the filthy night, everything rushing back with nerve-searing
intensity, the savage rain smashing it into her naked head along with the
insistent bump, bump, bump of the taunting mental Walkman.

           
And the things Dic said.