Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

… Chairman's hoping to drop by tonight…

No!

How could I not have seen it? How could I have sat there, pretending to examine Gannon's proposals and estimates and balance sheets, and not see his name?

Because it wasn't there… I swear…

Liz Horridge pumped panicky breath into the still, white air. Not far now. Not fifty yards. She could take it step by step, not looking at houses, not looking at windows.

Someone's door creaked, opened.

'Ta-ra then, luv, look after yourself… You what…?'

Liz scuttled back into a short alleyway, squeezed herself into the wall. Mustn't let anyone see her.

'Yeh, don't worry, our Kenneth'll be up to see to it in t'morning. Yeh, you too. Ta-ra.'

Door closing.

Footsteps.

Liz clung to the wall. She wore an old waxed jacket and a headscarf over the matted moorgrass that used to be chestnut curls.

She emerged from the entry into the empty street, like a rabbit from a hole. Wanting. Needing. Aching.

To sit again at Ma Wagstaff's fireside, a warm, dry old hand on her sweating brow. If he comes… scream. Don't matter what time.

Can't turn back now. If you turn back now you'll surely die. Believe this. 'How are you, Pop?'

He was out of bed, that was a good sign, wasn't it? Cathy found him wearing a dull and worthy hospital dressing gown, sitting at his own bedside in a shabby, vinyl-backed hospital chair. He was in the bottom corner of a ward full of old men.

'Bit tired,' he said. 'They've had me walking about. Physiotherapy. Got to keep moving when you've had a coronary.'

Cathy clutched at the bed rails. 'They never told me that!'

'Had to drag it out of them myself. Soon as they get you in hospital you're officially labelled 'moron'.' His features subsided into that lugubrious boxer-dog expression.

'What's it mean, Pop?'

'Coronary thrombosis? Means a clot in the coronary artery. Means I was lucky not to christen Matt Castle's grave for him. Means I have to rest: Putting on a pompous doctor-voice. '"We have to get ourselves together, as they say, Mr Gruber." Tell me about Joel. Please tell me he didn't sleep under the church.'

Cathy said carefully that she hadn't seen him today. Not a word of what she'd heard about him rampaging around the place in his post-funeral fury, ripping down anything that hinted of paganism. Just that she hadn't actually seen him. And that she didn't know where he'd slept.

'Storm gathering inside that chap,' Hans said. 'Hurricane Joel. Wanted to make sure he was somewhere else when it blew.'

'Don't you think about it, Pop. Get some rest. Let them do their tests, try and endure the hospital food and don't refuse the sleeping pill at night.'

'Cathy…'

'I know, but it's not your problem.'

Hans's head lolled back into the hard vinyl chair. 'I keep the peace. It's taken me years to strike the right balance.'

'Don't worry, they'll sort him out, Ma and the Union. They'll deal with him.'

'But…'

'They sorted you out, didn't they?'

Cathy smiled for him. Trying to look more optimistic than she felt.

Hans said bleakly, 'Cathy, Simon Fleming came to see me. They want me to go to the Poplars "for a few weeks" convalescence'.'

'Where?'

The Church's nursing home in Shropshire. Ghastly dump. Full of played-out parsons mumbling in the shrubbery. Nobody gets out alive.'

Cathy felt desperately sorry for him but couldn't help thinking it might be the best answer, for a while. Let the Mothers handle it. Whatever there was to be handled.

He didn't seem to have heard about the disappearance of the bog body, and she didn't tell him. He had enough to worry about already. 'Look, all you need,' Roger Hall said, 'is an exhumation order. That's not a problem, is it?'

Backs to the doors, the Press people assembled on the other side, Chrissie and Alice looked at each other. Roger playing detective. Didn't suit him. Chrissie wondered idly if Inspector Garry Ashton was married or attached. She thought this business was rather showing up Roger for what he was: pompous, arrogant, humourless – despite the nice crinkles around his eyes.

Ashton said, a little impatiently, 'You were convinced earlier that the body was hidden in Bridelow.'

'Still am,' Roger said smugly.

'Go on,' Ashton said, no longer at all polite. 'Let's hear it.'

Chrissie liked his style. Also the set of his mouth and the way his hair was razor-cut at the sides.

Roger said, 'I attended a funeral in Bridelow yesterday. Matt Castle, the folk musician.'

'So I understand,' Ashton said. 'Mr Castle a friend of yours, was he?'

With a tingle of excitement, Chrissie suddenly knew what Ashton was wondering: did Roger himself have anything to do with the theft? The police must have spoken to the British Museum by now, learned all about Roger's battle to bring the bogman back up North. And why was he so keen to keep pointing the police in other directions?

Gosh, Chrissie thought… And Roger's obsessive attitude! The bogman intruding everywhere. And when the bogman was in a state of, er, emasculation, Roger himself was… unable to function. And complaining of clamminess and peat in the bed and everything. And then suddenly Roger could… with a vengeance! And the bog body had acquired what appeared to be an appendage of its own.

Chrissie felt a kind of hysteria welling up. Stop it! I'm going bloody bonkers. Or somebody is.

Suddenly she didn't want him touching her again.

'Castle?' Roger said. 'Not what you'd call a friend, no. But he was always very interested in the bog body, as many people were. Kept ringing me up, asking what we'd learned so far. And actually turned up here twice, wanting to see the body, which, of course, was not available for public viewing. Although I did allow it the second time.'

'Why'd you do that?'

'Because… because he was with someone I judged to be more reliable.'

He didn't elaborate; Ashton didn't push the point either. Chrissie thought of the writer, Stanage.

'So, anyway,' Roger said, 'it was Castle's funeral yesterday, and I thought I ought to show my face. I only went to the church service. Left before they actually put him into the ground. But I very much wish I'd stayed with it now, seen him buried.'

'I might be thick,' said Ashton, 'but I'm not following this.'

'All right, let's approach it from another angle. We've all been assuming that the break-in took place last night, right?'

'Have we, Dr Hall?'

'Ashton, look – can we stop this fencing? I know you're an experienced policeman and all that, but I've been doing my job for over twenty-five years too.' Angrily, Roger drew his chair from under the desk, scraping the Inspector's legs.

'Look. Because of the funeral and one or two other things, I didn't come in here at all yesterday. And you only found out – about the burglary before me because our normally lazy caretaker just happened to try the doors for a change. Correct?'

Ashton came slowly down from the desk, stood looking down at Roger. Interested.

'But if he'd bothered,' Roger said, 'to check the doors the night before – and if he says he did he's probably lying, I know that man – he'd probably have found them forced then. My strong suspicion is the break-in happened the previous night. And that the body wasn't here at all yesterday.'

'And what does that say to you?'

'What it says to me, Inspector – and I might have to spend a bit of time explaining this to you – but what it says to me is that my bog body is buried in St Bride's churchyard.'

'I see,' Ashton said thoughtfully. 'Or do I?'

'The funeral!' Roger raised his hands. 'The grave – it's a double grave! What I'm saying is, dig up Castle's coffin, you'll find our body lying underneath. Trust me.'