by Phil Rickman
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.