Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

She screamed.

'Christ's sake, shut up!'

'Dic. My hair!'

Voices. Lights.

'Moira, run! Take the lamp.' Thrusting it into her hands, heavy, wet metal. 'Don't use it till you're away from here.'

Running footsteps.

'My hair's gone!'

He pushed her hard in the back and then she heard him take off in the opposite direction, shoes skidding on the saturated ground.

'Dic?'

'Run!' He was almost howling. 'Just run! Don't lose that lamp!'

'Dic. what have they done to my hair? Where have they taken my fucking hair?'

Surprising how vulnerable you felt in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car up here on a night like this. Ashton took it steady.

He wondered: how much water can a peat bog take before it turns into something the consistency of beef broth?

Not his manor, the natural world. The unnatural world was more like it. A number of the people with whom Ashton conversed at length – usually across a little grey room with a microphone in the wall – were creatures of the unnatural world.

As for the supernatural world…

I don't know why, Ashton told himself as he drove towards Bridelow Moss, but in a perverse sort of way this is almost invigorating. To be faced with something you can't arrest, matters which in no way can ever be taken down and used in evidence.

Completely out of your depth. He looked down at the Moss. There was an area of Manchester called Moss Side, in which the police also sometimes felt out of their depth, so choked was it with drugs and violent crime. Did the name imply that once, centuries ago, it had been on the edge of somewhere like this?

And, if so, how much had changed?

Not the kind of thing policemen tended to think about.

Gary Ashton, facing retirement in a year or two, spent an increasing amount of time trying to think about things policemen did not tend to think about. Intent on not becoming just a retired copper' working as consultant to some flash security firm and tending people who couldn't give a shit with his personal analysis of the criminal mind and endless stories about Collars I Have Felt.

Just lately, Ashton had been trying to talk to people as people, knowing that in a very short time he would be one of them.

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.'