Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Sam Davis watched the big blond man flexing his lips, baring his teeth, steaming at the mouth in the cold air. It was all Esther's fault, this, making him drag the Church into it.

'Look, Mr Beard…'

'Joel…'

'Aye. Thing is, I don't want to turn this into some big bloody crusade. All I want is these buggers off me property. Know what I mean?'

The Reverend Beard stopped in his tracks. 'Sam, have you ever had foot-and-mouth disease on your land?'

'God. Be all I need.'

'Swine fever? Fowl pest? Sheep scab?'

'Give us a chance, I've only been farming two year.'

'The point I'm making,' Joel Beard said patiently, moving on, as the bracken came to an end and the ground levelled out, 'is that when a farmer's land is infected by a contagious disease, it's not simply a question of getting rid of the afflicted livestock. There are well-established procedures. For the purpose of, shall we say, decontamination.'

'Aye, but… let's get down to some basic facts, Joel. Who exactly are these fellers? Your mate, the Vicar… now he reckoned it's just kids, right?'

… could probably tuck a couple under each arm…

'Kids?' said Joel Beard.

'For kicks,' Sam said. 'Like drink. Drugs. Shoplifting. Kicks.'

'Hans Gruber said that?'

Sam shrugged. 'Summat like that. Right, this is it.'

'I beg your pardon…'

'The main circle. You're in t'middle of it, Joel. Told you it weren't much.'

Around them, sunk into tufts of dry, yellow grace, were these seven small stones, stained with mosses and lichens, none more than a couple of feet high, in a circle about fifteen feet in diameter. Sam found it hard to credit them being here, in this formation, for about four thousand years.

'Don't know much about these things meself,' Sam said. 'Some folk reckon they was primitive astronomical observatories. You could stand in um and see where t'sun were risin'. Or summat.'

Personally, he didn't give a shit. By his left boot were two flat stone slabs, pushed together. The ground had clearly been disturbed. There were blackened twigs and ashes on the slabs.

'… but what that's got to do wi' bloody sacrifices is…'

'Sam!'

The Reverend Joel Beard shot up, like a charge of electricity had gone through him, and then, yelling 'Get back!', seized Sam Davis by the shoulders and shoved him out of the circle.

'What the…?' Sam struggled out of Joel's grip, stumbled back into the bracken.

Joel was still in the circle, swaying like a drunk, swallowing big, hollow breaths through his mouth. His body bent into a fighting stance, hands clawed, eyes blinking.

Sam Davis stared at him. He was going to kill Esther for landing him with this big tosser.

'There's evil here,' Joel said.

Stupid sod looked ready for war. All that bothered Sam was how close the battlefield was to his kids. Down below, half a mile away, his farmhouse and its barns and buildings looked rickety and pathetic, like matchstick models he could kick over with the tip of his welly.

Joel Beard had closed his eyes. The sun, shuffling about behind weak clouds, had actually given him a faint halo.

For getting on ten minutes, Joel didn't move, except, at one point, to lift up both hands, on outstretched arms, as if he was waiting, Sam thought, for somebody to pass him a sack of coal. Then he spoke.

'I give you notice, Satan,' Joel said in a powerful voice, 'to depart from this place.' He'd unzipped his jacket to reveal a metal cross you could have used to shoe a horse.

Then he raised his hands so that they were parallel to his body and began to push at the air like this mime artist Sam had once seen on telly, pretending he was behind a pane of plate glass.

'Bloody Nora,' Sam muttered to himself, crouching down among the ferns, unnerved by the whole thing but determined not to show it, even to himself. 'Got a right fuckin' nutter 'ere.' Shaw Horridge watched them through binoculars from the Range Rover. It was parked on a moorland plateau about half a mile away. The binoculars, being Shaw's own, were very good ones.

The Range Rover belonged to a squat, greasy little man who lived in Sheffield and was unemployed. He called himself Asmodeus or something stupid out of The Omen.

'They're moving on, I think,' Shaw said.

Asmodeus had a beard so sparse you could count the hairs. He had the seat pushed back and his feet on the dashboard. 'Good,' he said, as if he didn't really care.

Shaw lowered his binoculars. 'What would you do if they came up here with spades and things?'

'I'd be very annoyed indeed,' Asmodeus said in his flat, drawly voice. 'I'd be absolutely furious. So would Therese, wouldn't you, darling?'

Therese was stretched out on the rear seat, painting her fingernails black. Shaw scowled. He didn't like Asmodeus calling her darling. He didn't at all like Asmodeus, who was unemployed and yet could afford a newish Range Rover.

And yet he was still in awe of him, having seen him by night, this little slob with putrid breath and a pot-belly, not yet out of his twenties and yet able to change things.

And he was excited.

'But what would you do?'

Asmodeus grinned at him through the open window. 'You're a little devil, aren't you, Shaw? What would you do?'

Shaw said, because Therese was there, 'Kill them.'

'Whaaay! You hear that, Therese? Shaw thinks he'd kill them.'

Therese lifted newly painted nails into the light. 'Well,' she said, 'we might need the priest, but I must say that little farmer's beginning to get on my nerves.'

Shaw tensed.

'Tell you what, Shaw,' Asmodeus said. 'We'll give you an easier one. How about that?' They sat at one end of a refectory table, near an Aga-type kitchen stove, their reflections warped in the shiny sides of its hot-plate covers. Moira kind of jumpy inside, but Lottie pouring tea with steady hands, businesslike, in control.

And this was less than twenty-four hours after the set-to at Matt's graveside, Lottie laying into Willie and Willie's Ma and the other crones, while the minister was helped away into the vibrating night.

Over fifteen years since they'd been face to face. Lottie's hair was shorter. Her face was harder, more closed-up. Out on the forecourt, it had been, 'Hello, Moira', very nonchalant, like their meetings were still everyday events – no fuss, no tears, no embrace, no surprise.

No doubt Dic had told her Moira was around.

She sipped her tea and said Lottie was looking well, in spite of…

'You too,' Lottie said, flat-voiced. 'I always knew you'd become beautiful when you got past thirty. Listen… thanks.'

'For what?'

'For not coming when he wrote to you.'

'I was tied up.'

'Sure,' Lottie said. 'But thanks anyway. Things were complicated enough. Better this way.'

'This way?'

'His music,' Lottie said. 'His project. His beloved bogman. Now stolen, I believe.'

'Lottie, maybe I'm stupid, but I'm not with you.'

'It was on the radio this morning. Thieves broke into the University Field Centre out near Congleton and lifted the Man in the Moss. I find it quite amusing, but Matt would've been devastated. Like somebody kidnapping his father.'

'Somebody stole the bogman? Just like that?'

Lottie almost smiled. 'Hardly matters now, though, does it? Listen, I'll take you down in a bit, show you his music room. He left some stuff for you.'

'For me?'

'Tapes. Listen, I'm not pushing, Moira, but I think you should do it.'

'Do it?' She was starting to feel very foolish.

'Get together with Willie and Eric and Dic and record his bogman music. I don't know if it's any good or not, I haven't heard much of it, but Matt saw it as his personal… summit? His big thing? Life's work?'

Moira looked hard at her, this austere, handsome woman, fifty-odd years old. Looked for the old indomitable spark in the eyes. Truth was, she was still indomitable, but the eyes… the eyes had died a little. This was not the old Lottie, this was a sad and bitter woman playing the part of the old Lottie.