Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Bloody hooligans. Fanatics. You're the police, get um out!'

'Willie, that means she's not dead, you hear me?'

'I'm only one policeman, sir, and I'm off duty.'

'You knew, Willie. You knew, goddamn it.'

'They don't know you're on your own,' Stan said. 'Supposed to be flaming Christians, should've heard the language. Just knock on t'door and tell um t'sling their hooks. What's the problem? We're getting wet.'

Macbeth said, 'Goddamn it, you know… Willie, where is she?

Gary Ashton, annoyed, was out of the car, slamming the door, holding both hands up. 'All right! Quieten down. What's so important?'

Macbeth backed out, looked around the small assembly. 'Cathy know about this?' Willie nodded urgently.

Eight or nine of them now, almost a mob. Macbeth said, 'Gary, there's a bunch of well-meaning but seriously misguided people in there. Take it from me, these guys aren't shitting they need to be got out.'

'And we need to get in,' Stan said soberly. 'Just don't want more trouble than we can handle.'

Ashton stood in the rain pulling on his jaw. 'OK,' he said eventually. 'If I can clear this church out for you, maybe you can do something for me afterwards, all right?'

Stan shrugged, causing his old-fashioned plastic raincoat to crackle. Willie said something about Mr Dawber, looking upset, his fingers compulsively chinking the coins in his pocket.

'And another thing,' Ashton said. 'I'm not a policeman. You've never seen a policeman here tonight. You got that?' Moira pulled on the navy blue duffle coat. 'Jesus, haven't worn one of these in years. This makes me a Mother?'

'Mother, maiden, hag,' Cathy said. 'It's all the same in Bridelow.'

'Just as well,' Moira said. 'I don't qualify as any of the above. Where are we going?'

Milly led her out into the street. 'Not far. Mind you don't drown in the gutter.'

Not far turned out to be Ma Wagstaff's little stone terraced cottage, its step awash but still gleaming white in the beam of the lamp Dic had given to Moira.

'Listen, I'm getting worried about Dic,' she'd said a few minutes earlier to Cathy.

'Me too,' Cathy said. 'But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely?'

'No,' Moira had said dubiously. 'But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?'

Milly unlocked the front door and put on lights. Moira took in a tiny and ancient parlour with more bottles than a pharmacy. Or maybe this was a pharmacy. There was a light of sadness over the room.

'I don't know where to start,' Milly said.

'Well, we don't have much time. Where'd she keep her… you know, recipes and stuff?'

Milly smiled wryly. 'In her head.'

'Oh, shit.' Moira began to open cupboards in the side and found more bottles. There were a few dozen books; maybe there'd be papers stuffed inside one of them. 'What's upstairs?'

'Her bathroom. Her sewing room. Her bed.'

'Are we sure she copied it down?'

'I remember seeing a map, a plan, kind of. I know I did. Keeping Jack out, it wasn't something you went into lightly, you know.'

Moira felt a light breeze on one side of her face. It smelt vaguely of sage.

'Something that hadn't been done for centuries,' Milly said. 'And it had to be exact. I don't know what to say, maybe if…'

Moira turned very casually around and looked back through the doorway into the hall.

Where she saw a little woman in misty shades of grey and sepia, a little woman who might have been formed – had it been daylight, had there been sun – by the coalescence of dustmotes.

The little woman slowly shook her head.

And disappeared.

Moira turned back into the room. 'It's not here,' she said softly. 'Ma Wagstaff had no map.' Chris picked up the pink T-shirt and held it up in front of him and started to laugh.

Across the front of the T-shirt was inscribed, THANK GOD FOR JESUS.

He looked at it for long seconds. It made no sense to him. No sense at all any more. It was gaudy. It was trite. It was meaningless. The girl, who was called Claudette, looked a whole lot better without it, curled up asleep under the pulpit draped in velvet curtains torn down from the vestry.

Nice tits, Chris remembered. Paused. Wasn't that a pretty bloody sinful thing to contemplate in the House of God?

Yeah, well…

She'd be pretty cold, though, Claudette, when she awoke. It was getting bitter in here. Those amber-tinted lights created a completely false impression of warmth, making the pillars seem mellow.

The communion wine had helped a bit. Gerry, the solicitor from Rotherham, had found two bottles in the vestry. Well, why not? It was a so-called pagan place, wasn't it? It wasn't a sin to drink heathen wine.

Sin. Chris shook his head. So trite.

Only problem was, after that wine, he wanted a pee.

'Forget it,' he'd decreed automatically about a quarter of an hour ago. 'Nobody goes out.' Although for the life of him he couldn't remember why nobody should go out. Except that while it might be cold in here it was extremely wet out there. Frankly, Chris reckoned he could probably use a piss, a pint and a bag of chips in that order.

Stupidest thing they'd done had been to let the bloody bus go. That was Joel again, silly sod. Burn your boats, he'd instructed them. Well, it was all right for him, he'd cleared off somewhere. Least he could have done was left his mobile phone around; they could have got Reg Hattersley out of bed and bribed him to fetch his coach back.

Chris surveyed his little band, all forty-seven of them, The Angels of the New Advent. High-flown name, eh, for an assorted bunch of misfits whose sole connecting factor was the conviction that their lives were one course short of a banquet. Only one course, note, they all had their own houses and decent cars and dishwashers, etc.

Some of them were wandering around, rubbing their heads. A couple had lit cigarettes. His watch told him it had gone midnight. This was getting ridiculous.

He remembered the singing breaking up into self-parody and a few of them had torn clothes off, mostly the ones clad in propaganda clobber like this silly T-shirt. And then there'd been isolated outbursts of anger and resentment, mostly towards Joel Beard, who'd brought them to this dump and then abandoned them – but not before going berserk and assaulting Martin, who'd lost a tooth, and Declan, who was convinced he was suffering delayed concussion. And, of course, convincing Chantal she'd been raped by an evil spirit.

'I ask you…' Chris said scornfully, aloud.

When someone started banging on the door, he wandered across, suspicious.

'Whosat?'

'Who am I talking to?' An authoritative kind of voice.

'Yes?' Chris said, equally peremptory.

'This is the police,' the voice said levelly. 'I don't know who you are but I have to inform you that you have no legal right to occupy this building and I'm suggesting you vacate it immediately. If you unbolt this door and everyone comes out without any trouble, I can promise you that no further action is likely to be taken. If, however…'

'Yeah?' Chris said. This really was the police?

A distant voice berated him, his own voice within his chest. He heard it say, Get thee hence, tempter, what he might well have said out loud an hour ago. What a plonker he'd been.

I do strongly advise you, sir, not to play silly-buggers. Open this door, please.'

Chris gazed at the oak door, probably six inches thick, at the iron bolts, four inches wide.

Where is your power? the inner voice bleated pathetically at the policeman. Blow it down, why don't you, with your foul, satanic breath.

Must've been nuts, Chris thought. All of us. Mass hysteria.

'Yeah, all right,' he said resignedly and drew back the bolts.