Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'You have your job to do,' Lottie Castle said. She seemed weary, strained, nervy. Still looking good, though, he'd not been wrong about that. Tragedy suited some women. Something about recent widows, murder victims' wives especially; stripped of all need for pretend-glamour, they acquired this harsh unadorned quality, the real woman showing through.

Sometimes this excited him.

Must be getting warped, price of thirty years in the job.

'I had the feeling yesterday,' he said, 'that you thought we might have found something.'

She said, 'Wouldn't have surprised me either way. The bog body, wasn't it?'

'Somebody told you.' He wondered why she should make him think of murder victims' wives.

'Call it intuition,' Lottie said. 'What you having?'

'Pint of Black?'

'You'll be the only one,' she said.

When he raised an inquiring eyebrow she told him another bunch of jobs had gone, working men replaced by men in white coats brought in from Across the Moss. Rumours that Gannons might even close the brewery altogether, transferring all production of Bridelow Black to their new plant outside Matlock.

'Never,' said Ashton. 'How can you brew Bridelow Black in Matlock?'

'How can you brew German lager in Bradford?' said Lottie.

'People don't care any more. They've got the name, that's all that matters.'

'Thought the lads here were looking a bit cheesed.' Ashton nodded at the customers.

Lottie said, 'Gannons have apparently got tests showing the local spring water doesn't meet European standards of purity. Cost a substantial amount to decontaminate it. Added to which the equipment's antiquated. Where's the business sense in preserving some scruffy little dead-end village brewery on the wrong side of a bog?'

'Bloody tragic,' Ashton said, and meant it. 'Just about finish Bridelow, I reckon.'

'People've got to have work,' Lottie said. They'll move out. School'll shut. Church'll be operating every fourth Sunday. Still want this?

'Better make it a bottle of Newcastle,' Ashton said. 'I wouldn't like to cause an incident.'

'The rot's already set in, I'm afraid,' Lottie said, pulling a bottle from under the bar. 'General store closed last week. Chip shop's on its last legs. How long the Post Office'll keep a sub-office here is anybody's guess.'

'Not good for you either. Dozen customers on a Sunday?

'Be a few hikers in later,' Lottie said listlessly.

'I was told,' Ashton said smoothly, raising his voice a little, that some folk reckon all the bad luck that's befallen this village is due to that bogman being removed from the bog.'

Behind him, conversation slowed to a trickle.

'That's stupid,' Lottie said.

'You see, that's why we thought somebody might've had the idea of bringing it back to Bridelow. And where better to put it than at the bottom of an existing grave? Done it before, apparently, according to my source.'

'And who might that be?' asked Frank Manifold Snr from behind his half of draught Bass.

Ashton didn't turn round. 'Surprising as it may seem, Mrs Castle, I can understand it, the way people might be feeling. Problem is, we're talking about a prize specimen here. Experts from all over the world made plans to come and see it. It's almost unique. Invaluable. And so, you see, the police are under quite enormous pressure to get it back.'

There was no reaction from Lottie Castle. He was pretty sure now that she knew nothing.

'Well…' Ashton sucked some of the creamy froth from his Brown Ale. 'I suspect we're going to have to disrupt people's lives something terrible if we don't find it soon.'

By this time, the silence behind him sounded thick enough to sit on.

'Of course,' he said, 'if the bogman was in Bridelow or, say, back in the Moss… and somebody was to tell us, anonymously, precisely where… Then, personally, I can't see us taking it any further.'

Ashton felt that if he fell off his stool the silence would probably support him.

'Now, another piece of information that's come my way, Mrs Castle,' he went on, 'is that a certain gentleman has agreed to provide sufficient money to create a permanent exhibition centre for the bogman. And that this centre might well be established here in Bridelow, thus ensuring that the bogman remains in his old home. And that the hundreds of tourists who come to see him will spend a few bob in the village and perhaps have a drink or two in this very pub. Perfect solution, you ask me. What's your own feeling, Mrs Castle?'

'My feeling?' Lottie began to breathe hard. She started to straighten glasses. To steady her hands he thought.

'Yes,' he said. 'Your feeling.'

Lottie didn't look at Ashton, nor past him at the other customers, just at the glasses.

'I hope you never find it,' she said in a voice like cardboard.

He said nothing.

'Caused enough upset.' She started to set up a line of upturned glasses on the bar top. 'And, you know… I don't really think I care what happens to this village. I'll tell you… Mr Ashton… Anybody wants this pub, they can have it. For a song. You fancy a pub? Supplement your police pension? Bit of country air?'

He could see tears in her eyes, hard as contact lenses.

'Views?' she said. 'Lovely views?'

'Mrs Castle,' he said. 'Please. I'm sorry.'

'Peat?' she shrieked, slicing a hand through the line of glasses so that the last two instantly smashed against the beer- pumps. 'You want peat? Peat, peat and more fucking peat?' Cassock wind-whipped around his ankles, Joel stood looking down the village street, his back to the church notice board, his face soaked by rain and by sweat. The sweat of rage and humiliation.

He shouldn't have struck her. It was unpremeditated, but it was wrong. And yet, because the woman was an incarnation of evil, it was also rather unsatisfactory.

… shall not suffer a witch to live. Until the arrival of the sound-drenching rain and wind, he'd contemplated delivering his sermon from the middle of the street, denouncing the denizens of Bridelow to their own front doors.

What a damning indictment of Hans Gruber this was. Hans who packed the church at least twice on Sundays, a stranger who had been accepted by the villagers as one of their own.

One of their own!

Hans turning a blind eye to the lone, black-clad figure in the churchyard before the funeral – the hooded figure clearly exuding not respect, nor monastic piety, but a heathen arrogance.

And Gruber, the quisling, screaming at him, Joel, 'Put it back!' as he snatched the bottle from the coffin.

Joel looked down the street towards Mrs Wagstaff's cottage. Its curtains were drawn, upstairs and down. This was another deliberate insult: I'll come to church for Hans Gruber's services, but I'll not even leave my bed for yours.'

He began to shake with rage. Obviously, after the incident at the well, the harridan had poisoned his name in Bridelow.

The street was deserted. He strode to the telephone kiosk in front of the Post Office. The answer was clear. If, as a Christian, he had been rejected by the resident congregation, then he must summon his own. Just get me out of here, get me across those hills and you can break down,' she said. 'Or do what the fuck you like.'

She had this sore throat now.

Cathy had been talking about some kind of Taiwanese flu. Whatever the hell that was, it sounded like the BMW had it too.

'I get across these hills,' Moira told the car, 'I'm gonny book you into a garage and me into a hotel that looks sufficiently anonymous, and then I think I'm gonny die quietly.'

Out of the corner of an eye – the BMW making noises like Kenny Savage in the lavatory the morning after – she'd seen the dead tree on the Moss again. It didn't move but it didn't look so obviously dead any more, a white light shining like a gemstone in its dragon's eye.