The Man in the Moss

From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

The first-time visitor to Bridelow is strongly urged to approach it from the west, from which direction a most dramatic view of the village is attained.

From a distance of a mile or two, Bridelow appears almost as a craggy island when viewed from the narrow road which is virtually a causeway across Bridelow Moss.

A number of legends are attached to the Moss, some of which will be discussed later in this book.

CHAPTER I

In early summer, Bridelow hopefully dolls herself up, puts on a bit of make-up and an obliging smile for the sun. But the sun doesn't linger. On warm, cloudless evenings like this it saves its final pyrotechnics for the moor.

Sunset lures hues from the moor that you see at no other time - sensual pinks and melodramatic mauves which turn its stiff and spiky surface into velvet

... a delusion, thought Joel Beard, soon to leave theological college. A red light tenderizing the face of an old whore.

He had his back to the sinking sun. To him, it seemed agitated tonight, throwing out its farewell flames in a long, dying scream. As well it might.

Most of the lonely village was below the moor, and the sun's flailing rays were missing it. The stone houses hanging from the hill were in shadow and so was the body of the church on its summit. Only the spikes of the church tower were dusted with red and gold.

Joel dismounted from his motorbike.

In the centre of the tower was a palely shining disc. Like a rising full moon, it sent sneering signals to the sun: as you fade, it promised gleefully, I'll grow ever brighter.

Joel glared at the village across the sullen, scabby surface of the Moss. He imagined Bridelow under moonlight, stark and white as crow-picked bones.

Its true self.

The disc at the centre of the tower was actually an illuminated clock face, from which the hands had long ago fallen.

Often said to be a friendly face which turned the church into a lighthouse at night, across the black ocean of the Moss.

... you see, at one time, Mr Beard, very few people dared to cross the Moss ... except those for whom the Devil lit the way - have you heard that legend?

It was no legend. On a dark night, all you would see of the village would be this silver disc, Bridelow's own, permanent full moon.

Was this how the Devil lit the path? Was this the Devil's light, shining from the top of the stairs in God's house, a false beacon for the weak, the uncertain and the disturbed?

Joel's black leathers straightened him, like armour, and the hard white collar lifted his eyes above the village to the luminous moor. Its lurid colours too would soon grow dull under the night. Like a harlot's cheap dress.

From the village, across the barren Moss, he heard voices raised, a shriek of laughter.

The village would be alive tonight. A new landlord had installed himself at the decrepit local inn. The Man I'th Moss, thus saving it from closure, a side-effect of the widely condemned sale of the Bridelow brewery.

Joel waited, astride his motorbike, his charger, until the moor no longer glowed and the illusion of beauty was gone.

Everyone saw shadows in the blackened cities, those obvious pits of filth and fornication, where EVIL was scrawled in neon and the homeless slept with the rats. And yet the source of it was up here, where city-dwellers surged at weekends to stroll through the springy heather, picnic among the gorse ... young couples, families, children queuing at the roadside ice-cream vans, pensioners in small cars with their flasks of tea.

It's all around you, Mr Beard ... once you know what you're looking for. Look at the church, look at the pub, look at the people ... you'll see the signs everywhere.

Beneath him, the bike lurched into life, his strong, gauntleted hands making the engine roar and crackle, spitting holy fire.

He rode away from the village, back into the hills.

'Shades,' Ma Wagstaff would say later that night. 'Them's what's kept this place the way it is. Shades of things.'

Of all Ma's famous sayings, these were the words that would keep coming back at Ernie Dawber during the short, anxious days and the long, chill nights of the declining year.

And when, as local historian, he tried to find the beginning (as in, What exactly started the First World War? What caused the first spark that set off the Great Fire of London?), he'd keep coming back to this particular evening. A vivid evening at the end of May. The evening he'd blithely and thoughtlessly told Ma Wagstaff what he'd learned about the death of the bogman ... and Ma had made a fateful prediction.

But it started well enough, with a big turn-out for the official reopening of The Man, under its new proprietor. The two bars couldn't hold all those come to welcome him home. So several dozen folk, including Ernie Dawber - best suit, waistcoat, watch-chain - were out on the cobbled forecourt, having a pint or two and watching the sun go down over the big hills beyond the Moss.

A vivid evening at the end of May. Laughter in the streets. Hope for the future. Most enmities sheathed and worries left at home under the settee cushions.

A real old Bridelow night That was how it ought to have been enshrined in his memory. All those familiar faces.

A schoolteacher all his working life, Ernie Dawber had known at least three-quarters of this lot since they were five-year-olds at the front of the school hall: eager little faces, timid little faces ... few belligerent ones too - always reckoned he could spot a future troublemaker in its pram.

He remembered Young Frank Manifold in the pram, throttling his panda.

'Well, well...' Twenty-odd years on. Young Frank strolling up to his boss, all jutting chin and pint mug clenched like a big glass knuckle-duster. 'It's Mr Horridge.'

Shaw said nothing.

'What's that you're drinking, Mr Horridge?' Sneering down at Shaw's slim glass.

Shaw's smile faltered. But he won't reply, Ernie thought, because if he does he'll start stuttering and he knows it.

There'd been a half-smile on Shaw's face as he stood alone on the cobbles. A nervous, forced-looking smile but a smile none the less. Ernie had to admire the lad, summoning the nerve to show himself tonight, not a month since Andy Hodgson died.

Especially with more than a few resentful brewery employees about.

'Looks like vodka.' Frank observed 'That what it is, Mr Horridge? Vodka?' A few people starting to look warily at Frank and Shaw, a couple of men guiding their wives away.

''Course, I forgot. Bloody Gannons make vodka on t'side. Gannons will make owt as'll sell. That Gannons vodka? That what it is ... Mr Horridge?'

Shaw sipped his drink, not looking at Frank. This could be nerves. Or it could be an insult, Shaw pointedly pretending that Young Frank was not there.

Whichever, Ernie decided he ought to break this up before it started to spoil the atmosphere. But somebody better equipped than him got there first.

'Where's your dad, Frank?' Milly Gill demanded, putting herself firmly between him and Shaw, like a thick, flowery bush sprouting between two trees.

'Be around somewhere.' Frank staring over the postmistress's head at Shaw, who was staring back now. Frank's knuckles whitening around the handle of his beer mug.

'I think you'd better find him, Frank,' Milly said briskly. 'See he doesn't drink too much with that diabetes.'

Frank ignored her, too tanked-up to know his place. 'Fancy new car. I see ... Mr Horridge. Porsche, int it? Andy Hodgson just got 'isself a new car, day before he fell. Well, I'm saying "new" - Austin Maestro, don't even make um no more. He were chuffed wi' it. Easily pleased, Andy, weren't he, Milly?'

'It was an accident,' Milly said tightly. 'As you well know.'

'Aye, sure it were, I'm not accusing Mr Horridge of murder.

Only, why don't you ask him why Andy were suddenly ordered to reconnect a bloody old clapped-out pulley system for winching malt-sacks up to a storeroom right at top of t'building as isn't even used no more except by owls. You ask this bastard that, Milly.'

'We've had the inquest,' Milly said. 'Go and see to your dad.'

'Inquest? Fucking whitewash. I'll tell you why Andy were sent up. On account of place were being tarted up to look all quaint and old-fashioned for a visit from t'Gannons directors. Right, Mr Horridge?'

'Wasn't c ... Not quite like that,' said Shaw quietly.

'Oh aye. How were it different? Lad dies for a bit of fucking cosmetic. You're all shit, you. Shit.'

The air between them fizzed. Shaw was silent. He'd been an expert at being silent during the three years Ernie had taught him before the lad was sent to prep school. And still an expert when he came back from University, poor bugger.

'And this Porsche.' Young Frank popped out the word with a few beery bubbles. 'How many jobs Gannons gonna axe to buy you that, eh?'

'Frank,' Milly Gill told him very firmly, big floral bosom swelling, 'I'll not tell you again!'

Careful, lass, Ernie thought. Don't do owt.

'You're a jammy little twat,' Frank spat. 'Don't give a shit. You never was a proper Horridge.'

A widening circle around them, conversations trailing off.

'Right.' Milly's eyes went still. 'That's enough. I'll not have this occasion spoiled. Am I getting through?'

'Now, Millicent,' Ernie said, knowing from experience what might happen if she got riled. But Shaw Horridge startled them all. 'It's quite all right, Miss Gill.'

He smiled icily at Young Frank. 'Yes, it is a per-Porsche.' Held up his glass. 'Yes, it is vodka. Yes, it's mer-made in Sheffield by a s-subsidiary of Gannons Ales.'

He straightened up, taller than Frank now, his voice gaining in strength. 'Gannons Ales. Without whom, yes, I wouldn't have a Porsche."

And, stepping around Millie, he poked Young Frank in the chest with a thin but rigid forefinger. 'And without whom you wouldn't have a job ... Mr Manifold.'

Ernie saw several men tense, ready to hold Young Frank back, but Frank didn't move. His eyes widened and his grip on the tankard slackened. Lad's as astonished as me, Ernie thought, at Shaw Horridge coming out with half a dozen almost fully coherent sentences one after the other.

The red sun shone into Shaw's eyes; he didn't blink.

The selling of the brewery was probably the worst thing that had happened to Bridelow this century. But not, apparently, the worst thing that had happened to Shaw Horridge.

He lowered his forefinger. 'Just remember that, please,' he said.

Looking rather commanding, where he used to look shyly hunched. And this remarkable confidence, as though somebody had turned his lights on. Letting them all see him - smiling and relaxed - after perpetrating the sale of the brewery, Bridelow's crime of the century. And indirectly causing a death.

Took some nerve, this did, from stuttering Shaw.

Arthur's lad at last. Maybe.

'Excuse me,' Shaw said dismissively. 'I have to meet someone.'

He turned his back on Young Frank Manifold and walked away, no quicker than he needed to, the sun turning the bald spot on the crown of his head into a bright golden coin.

'By 'eck,' Ernie Dawber said, but he noticed that Milly Gill was looking worried.

And she wasn't alone.

'Now then, Ernest. Wha's tha make of that, then?'

He hadn't noticed her edging up behind him, although he'd known she must be here somewhere. She was a Presence.

Just a little old woman in a pale blue woollen beret, an old grey cardigan and a lumpy brown woollen skirt.

'Well,' Ernie Dawber said, 'Arthur might have been mortified at what he's done with the brewery, but I think he'd be quite gratified at the way he stood up for himself there. Don't you?'

'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff grimly. 'I'm sure his father'd be right pleased.'

Ernie looked curiously into the rubbery old features. Anybody who thought this was just a little old woman hadn't been long in Bridelow. He took a modest swallow from his half of Black. 'What's wrong then, Ma?'

'Everything.' Ma sighed. 'All coming apart.'

'Oh?' said Ernie. 'Nice night, though. Look at that sun.'

'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff pessimistically. 'Going down, int it?'

'Well, yes.' Ernie straightened his glasses. 'It usually does this time of night.'

Ma Wagstaff nodded at his glass. 'What's that ale like now it's Gannons?'

'Nowt wrong with it as I can taste.' This wasn't true; it didn't seem to have quite the same brackish bite - or was that his imagination?

Ma looked up and speared him with her fierce little eyes. 'Got summat to tell me, Ernest Dawber?'

Ernie coughed. 'Not as I can think of.' She was making him uneasy.

'Anythin' in the post today?'

'This and that, Ma, this and that.'

'Like one of them big squashy envelopes, for instance?'

'A jiffy-bag, you mean?'

'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff. 'Wi' British Museum stamped on it.'

Ernie fumed. You couldn't keep anything bloody private in this place. 'Time that Millicent kept her damn nose out!'

'Never mind that, lad, what's it say?'

'Now, look ...' Ernie backed away, pulling at his waistcoat. 'In my capacity as local historian, I was able to provide Dr Hall and the British Museum with a considerable amount

of information relating to the Moss, and as a result, following their examination of the body, they've kindly given me a preview of their findings, which ...'

'Thought that'd be it.' Ma Wagstaff nodded, satisfied.

'... which will be published in due course. Until which time, I'm not allowed ...'

'If you know, why shouldn't we know?'

'It's not allowed, Ma. It's what's called an embargo.'

'Oh.' Ma's eyes narrowed. 'That's what it's called, is it?' Means educated fellers like you get to know what's what and us common folk ...'

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.'

'A sacrifice?' It was growing dark.

'Not just any sacrifice, We're in trouble, Ernest.'

Sometimes Shaw wanted to say, I feel like just being with you is illegal.

Some mornings he'd be thinking, I've got to get out of this. I'll be arrested. I'll be ruined.

But then, all through the day, the longing would be growing. And as he changed to go out, as he looked in the mirror at his thin, pale face, his receding hairline and his equally receding jawline, he saw why he could never get out ... not as long as there was anything she wanted from him. Not as long as he continued to change.

They drove to a country pub and parked the Saab very noticeably under a window at the front, being careful to lock it and check the doors. He wondered how exactly she'd stolen it and obtained the keys, but he knew that if he asked her she would simply laugh at him.

In the pub, as usual, he couldn't prise his hungry eyes from her. She sat opposite him, wearing an old fox fur coat, demurely fastened to the neck. Shaw wondered if, underneath the coat, above (and inside) her black tights, she was naked.

With that thought, he felt his desire could lift their heavy, glass-topped, cast-iron table a good two inches from the floor.

'You could arouse the dead,' he said, almost without breath.

'Would you like to?' Therese's lips smiled around her glass of port.

'Pardon?'

'Arouse the dead?'

He laughed uncomfortably. Quite often she would say things, the meaning of which, in due course, would become devastatingly apparent.

Later, two miles out of Macclesfield town, Shaw driving again, she said, 'All right, let's deal with this, shall we?'

'What?'

But she was already unzipping his trousers, nuzzling her head into his lap. He braked hard, in shock, panic and uncontainable excitement. 'Yes, Shaw,' she said, voice muffled, 'you can stop the car.'

'Somebody ... somebody might see us ... you know, somebody walking past.'

'Well,' Therese said, burrowing, 'I suppose somebody might see you ...'

Five minutes later, while he was still shivering, she said, 'Now let's get rid of the car.' She had the interior light on, re-applying lipstick, using the vanity mirror. Her fur coat was still fastened. He would never know if she was naked underneath it.

'How are we going to get home?'

'Taxi. There's a phone box across the road. I'll ring up for one while you're dispensing with the car.'

A shaft of fear punctured his moment of relief. 'Disp ... ? How?'

'I seem to remember there's a bus shelter along here. What ... about a quarter of a mile ... ? Just take it and ram it into that.'

He just stared at her. Through the windscreen he could see high, evergreen, suburban hedges, sitting-room lights glimmering here and there through the foliage.

Shaw said weakly, 'Why don't we just leave it somewhere?

'Parked, you know ...'

'Discreetly,' Therese said. 'Under a tree. With the keys in.'

'Yes,' he said inadequately.

She opened her door to the pavement, looked scornfully back at him. 'Because it wouldn't do anything for you. Your whole life's been tidy and discreet. I'm trying to help you, Shaw.'

His fingers felt numb as he turned the key in the ignition.

A car slowed behind them.

'What if there's somebody in the bus shelter?'

Therese shrugged, got out, slammed the car door. Shaw dug into his jacket pocket, pulled out a handful of tissues and began feverishly to scrub at the steering-wheel and the gear-lever and the door-handle and anything else he might have touched.

He'd been doing this for a couple of minutes when a wetness oozing between his fingers told him he was now using the tissue he'd employed to clean himself up after Therese had finished with him. And they could trace you through your semen now, couldn't they, DNA tests... genetic fingerprinting ... oh, no ... Banging his forehead against the steering-wheel... . no ...no ...no ...

The passenger door clicked gently open.

The police. The police had been surreptitiously following them for miles. That car going slowly, creeping up ... He'd be destroyed.

Shaw reacted instinctively. He flung open his door, threw his weight against it, hurling himself out into the middle of the road, a heavy lorry grinding past less than a couple of feet away.

Across the roof of the Saab he looked not into a police uniform but into Therese's dark, calm eyes.

'I'll be listening out,' she whispered, 'for the sound of breaking glass.'

CHAPTER III

Matt Castle was standing on the pub steps with an arm around the shoulders of Lottie, his wife. Looked a bit awkward, Ernie noticed, on account of Lottie was very nearly as tall as Matt.

Lottie Castle. Long time since he'd seen her. By 'eck, still a stunner, hair strikingly red, although some of that probably came out of a bottle nowadays. Aye, that's it, lad, Ernie encouraged himself. Think about sex, what you can remember. Nowt like it for refocusing the mind after a shock.

How had she known? Was the bogman part of the Bridelow tradition? Was that it? By 'eck, it needed some thinking about, did this.

But not now.

'I'll stand here.' Matt Castle was smiling so hard he could hardly get the words between his teeth. 'So's you can all hear me, inside and out. Can you all hear me?'

'What's he say?' somebody bleated, to merry laughter, from about three yards in front of Matt. Ernie noted, rather disapprovingly, that some of this lot were half-pissed already.

'Yes, we can,' Ernie called helpfully from the edge of the forecourt.

'Thank you, Mr Dawber.'

Ernie smiled. All his ex-pupils, from no matter how far back, insisted on calling him Mr Dawber. When they'd first met, he was a baby-faced twenty-one and Matt Castle was eleven, in the top class. So he'd be fifty-six or seven now. Talk about time flying ...

'I just want to say,' said the new licensee, shock-haired and stocky, 'that... well... it's bloody great to be back!'

And of course a huge cheer went up on both sides of the door. Matt Castle, Bridelow-born, had returned in triumph, like the home team bringing back the cup.

Except this was more important to the community than a bit of local glory. 'Looks well, doesn't he?' Ernie whispered to Ma Wagstaff, who didn't reply.

'Always wanted a pub of me own,' Matt told everybody. 'Never dared to dream it'd be this pub.'

The Man I'th Moss hung around him like a great black overcoat many sizes too big. Ernie hoped to God it was all going to work out. Draughty old pile, too many rooms ... cellars, attics ... take a bit of upkeep, absorb all the contents of your bank account by osmosis.

'To me, like to everybody else, I suppose, this was always Bridelow Brewery's pub.' Matt was dressed up tonight, suit and tie. 'We thought it always would be.'

At which point, quite a few people turned to look for Shaw Horridge, who'd long gone.

'But everything changes,' Matt said. 'Fortunes rise and fall, and this village owes the Horridge family too much not to make the effort to understand why, in the end, they were forced to part with the pub ...and, of course, the brewery.'

We've all made the effort, Ernie thought, as others murmured. And we still don't understand why.

'Eeeh,' Matt said, his accent getting broader the more he spoke. 'Eeeh, I wish I were rich. Rich enough to buy the bloody lot. But at least I could put together enough for this place. Couldn't stand seeing it turned into a Berni Inn or summat.'

No, lad, Ernie thought. Left to rot.

'But ... we got ourselves a bit of a bank loan. And we managed it.' Lottie Castle's fixed smile never wavering, Ernie noted, when Matt switched from 'I' to 'we' covering the money aspect.

Matt went on about how he didn't know much about running a pub, but what he did know was music. They could expect plenty of that in The Man I'th Moss.

Matt grinned. 'I know there's a few of you out there can sing a bit. And I remember, when I was a lad, there used to be a troupe of morris dancers. Where'd they go to?'

'Orthopaedic hospital,' somebody said.

'Bugger off,' said Matt. There's to be no more cynicism in this pub, all right? Anyroad, this is open house from now on for dancers and singers and instrumentalists. If there aren't enough in Bridelow, we'll ship them in from outside ... big names too. And we'll build up a following, a regular audience from the towns ... and, brewery or no brewery, we'll make The Man I'th Moss into a going concern again.'

At which point, somebody asked, as somebody was bound to, whether Matt and his old band would get together in Bridelow.

'Good point,' Matt accepted. 'Well, me old mucker Willie's here, Eric's not far off. And I'm working on a bit of a project which might just interest... well, somebody we used to work with ... eeeh, must be fifteen years ago. Late 'seventies.'

Everybody listening now, not a chink of bottle on glass or the striking of a match. Outside, the sun was just a rosy memory.

Matt broke off. 'Hey up. For them as can't see, Lottie's giving me a warning look, she thinks I should shut up about this until we know one way or t'other ...'

Lottie smiled wryly. Ernie Dawber was thinking, What the 'eck was her name, the girl who used to sing with Matt's band and then went off on her own? Very popular, she used to be, or so he'd heard.

'But, what the hell,' Matt said. 'If I'm going to do this right, I'll need your help. Fact is ... it was this business of the bogman got me going. Lottie reckons I've become a bit obsessed. He laughed self-consciously. 'But the thing is ... here we are, literally face to face with one of our forefathers. And it's my belief there's a lot he can teach us ...'

Ernie Dawber felt Ma Wagstaff go still and watchful by his side.

'I mean about ourselves. About this village. How we relate to it and each other, and how we've progressed. There's summat special about this place, I've always known that.'

Moira Cairns, Ernie remembered. That was her name. Scottish. Very beautiful. Long, black hair.

'Right.' Matt bawled back over his shoulder, into the bar. 'Let's have a few lights on. Like a flamin' mausoleum in there.'

Ma Wagstaff stiffened and plucked at Ernie's jacket.

The sun wasn't ever going to get out of that low cloud, he thought. Won't know till tomorrow if it's made it to the hills or if the Moss has got it.

'By 'eck,' he said ruefully, as if his fanciful thoughts were printed on the misting, mackerel sky where Ma Wagstaff could read them, 'I'm ...'

'Getting a bit whimsy?'

Ernie laughed through his discomfort. She made it sound like a digestive problem.

'Not before time,' Ma said. 'Never any talking to you when you was headmaster. Jumped-up little devil. Knew it all - what teacher ever don't? Still ... better late than not. Now then, Ernest Dawber, I'll try and teach thee summat.'

He let Ma Wagstaff lead him away to the edge of the forecourt, from where terraced stone cottages plodded up to the high-towered church, a noble sentinel over the Moss.

'What do you see?'

'This a trick question, Ma?'

Now, with the sun gone, all the houses had merged. You couldn't tell any more which ones had fresh paintwork, which had climbing roses or new porches. Only a few front steps

stood out, the ones which had been recently donkey-stoned so they shone bright as morning.

'To be honest, Ma, I can't see that much. Can't even see colours.'

'What can you see, then?'

'It's not light,' Ernie said, half-closing his eyes, "and it's not dark. Everything's melting together.

'Go on.'

'I can't see the individual houses. I suppose I can only see the people who live in them. Young Frank and Susan and the little lad. Alf Beckett. Millicent Gill at the Post Office ...Gus Bibby, Maurice and Dee at the chip shop. And I suppose ... if I look a bit harder ...'

'Aye, you do that.'

'If I look harder I can see the people who lived in the house before ...The Swains - Arthur Swain and his pigeons. Alf Beckett's mother, forty-odd years a widow. I can bring them

all back when I've a mind. Specially at this time of day. But that's the danger, as you get older, seeing things as they were, not as they are.'

'The trick' said Ma, 'is to see it all at same time. As it was and as it is. And when I says "as it was" I don't just mean in your lifetime or even my lifetime. I mean as far back as yon bogman's time.'

Ernie felt himself shiver. He pushed the British Museum papers deeper into his inside pocket. Whatever secret knowledge of the bogman Ma possessed, he didn't want to know any more.

Ma said, 'You stand here long enough, you can see it all the way back, and you won't see no colours, you won't see no hard edges. Now when you're out on t'Moss, Brid'lo don't look that welcoming, does it? All cold stone. You know that, you've written about it enough. But it's not cold to us, is it? Not when we're inside. No hard edges, no bright colours, never owt like that.'

'No.'

'Only shades. Ma said, almost dreamily. 'Them's what's kept this place the way it is. Shades of things '

'Shades?'

'Old colours all run together. No clashes. Know what I'm telling you, Ernest?'

'Harmony?' Ernie said. 'Is that it? Which is not to say there's no bickering, or bits of bad feeling. But, fundamentally, I s'pose, Bridelow's one of those places where most of us are happy to be. Home. And there's no defining that. Not everybody's found it. We're lucky. We've been lucky.'

'Luck?' Something was kindling behind Ma's eyes. Eighty-five if she was a day and still didn't need glasses. 'Luck? You don't see owt, do you?' Ernie'd had glasses full-time since he was thirty-five. 'What's it got to do wi' luck?'

'Just a figure of speech, Ma.'

'Balls,' said Ma. 'Luck! What this is, it's a balancing act. Very complicated for t'likes of us. Comes natural to nature.'

Ernie smiled. 'As it would.'

'Don't you mock me, Ernest Dawber.

'I'm sorry, Ma.' She was just a shade herself now, even her blue beret faded to grey.

'Beware of bright, glaring colours,' she said. 'But most of all, beware of black. And beware of white.'

'I don't know what you mean...'

'You will,' said the little old woman. 'You're a teacher.' She put a hand on his arm. 'Ernest, I'm giving you a task.

'Oh 'eck '

'You've to think of it as the most important task you've ever had in your life. You're a man of learning, Ernest. Man wi' authority.'

'Used to be, Ma. I'm just a pensioner now ...' Like you, he was going to say, then he noticed how sad and serious she was looking.

'Get that man back.'

'Who?' But he knew. 'How?' he said, aghast.

'Like I said, Ernest. Tha's got authority.'

'Not that kind of authority, for God's sake.'

Nobody there. He swallowed. Nobody. Not in or near the bus shelter.

It was on his nearside, which was no good, he might get hurt, so he drove further along the road, reversing into someone's drive, heading back slowly until he could see the glass-sided shelter, an advertisement for Martini on the end panel, lit up like a cinema screen in the headlights: a handsome man with wavy hair leaning over a girl on a sofa, topping up her glass.

He was mentally measuring the distance.

What am I doing! What am I bloody doing?

I could park it just here. Leave it. Walk away. Too far, anyway, for her to hear the impact.

In his mind he saw Therese standing by the telephone kiosk, about to phone for a taxi. In his mind she stopped. She was frowning. She'd be thinking what a miserable, frightened little sod he was.

He could say there had been somebody in the bus shelter, two people. Get angry. Was he supposed to kill them? Was he supposed to do that?

But she would know.

He stopped the car, the engine idling. The bus shelter had five glass panels in a concrete frame. The glass would be fortified. He would have to take a run at it, from about sixty yards.

If he didn't she would know.

He remembered the occasions she'd lost her temper with him. He shivered, stabbed at the accelerator with the car in neutral, making it roar, clutching the handbrake, a slippery grip. Too much to lose. Gritting his teeth until his gums hurt.

Too much to lose.

And you'll feel better afterwards.

Took his foot off. Closed his eyes, breathed rapidly, in and out. The road was quiet now, the hedges high on either side, high as a railway embankment.

Shaw backed up twenty or thirty yards, pulled into the middle of the road. Felt his jaw trembling and, to stiffen it, retracted his lips into a vicious snarl.

He threw the Saab into first gear. Realised, as the stolen car spurted under him, that he was screaming aloud.

On the side of the bus shelter, the handsome man leaned over the smiling girl on the sofa, topping up her glass from the bottle. In the instant before the crash, the dark, beautiful girl held out the glass in a toast to Shaw before bringing it to her lips and biting deeply into it, and when she smiled again, her smile was full of blood.

You'll feel... better.

The big lights came on in the bar and were sluiced into the forecourt through the open door where Matt Castle stood grinning broadly, with his tall red-haired wife. Behind them was the boy - big lad now, early twenties, must be. Not one of Ernie's old pupils, however; Dic had been educated in and around Manchester while his dad's band was manhandling its gear around the pubs and clubs.

'Happen he will bring a bit of new life,' Ernie said. 'He's a good man.'

'Goodness in most of us,' Ma Wagstaff said, 'is a fragile thing, as you'll have learned, Ernest.'

Ernie Dawber adjusted his glasses, looked down curiously at Ma. As the mother of Little Willie Wagstaff, long-time percussionist in Matt Castle's Band, the old girl could be expected to be at least a bit enthusiastic about Matt's plans.

Ma said, 'Look at him. See owt about him, Ernest?'

Matt Castle had wandered down the steps and was still shaking hands with people and laughing a lot. He looked, to Ernie, like a very happy man indeed, a man putting substance into a dream.

Lottie Castle had remained on the step, half inside the doorway, half her face in shadow.

'She knows,' Ma Wagstaff said.

'Eh?'

'I doubt as she can see it, but she knows, anyroad.'

'Ma ... ?'

'Look at him. Look hard. Look like you looked at t'street.'

Matt Castle grinning, accepting a pint. Local hero.

I don't understand,1 said Ernie Dawber. He was beginning to think he'd become incapable of understanding. Forty-odd years a teacher and he'd been reduced to little-lad level by an woman who'd most likely left school at fourteen.

Ma Wagstaff said, 'He's got the black glow, Ernest.'

'What?'

On top of everything else she'd come out with tonight, this jolted Ernie Dawber so hard he feared for his heart. It was just the way she said it, like picking out a bad apple at the greengrocer's. A little old woman in a lumpy woollen skirt and shapeless old cardigan.

'What are you on about?' Ernie forcing joviality. Bloody hell, he thought, and it had all started so well. A real old Bridelow night.

'Moira?' Matt Castle was saying. 'Aye, I do think she'll come. If only for old times' sake.' People patting him on the shoulder. He looked fit and he looked happy. He looked like a man who could achieve.

The black glow?' Ernie whispered. 'The black glow?

What had been banished from his mind started to flicker - the images of the piper on the Moss over a period of fifteen, to twenty years. Echoes of the pipes: gentle and plaintive on good days, but sometimes sour and sometimes savage.

Black glow?' his voice sounding miles away.

Ma Wagstaff looked up at him. 'I'm buggered if I'm spelling it for thee.'