Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'You'll feel better,' she said. And he had. He always did.

Sometimes the terror of what was happening would still flare and, for a moment, it would blind him. He'd freeze, become quite rigid. Like tonight, facing the oaf Manifold, who'd wanted to fight, wanted to take on stuttering Shaw, beat him publicly to the ground. Make a point in front of all his mates.

And Shaw had thought of Therese and felt his eyes grow hard, watched the effect of this on the thug Manifold.

'Start the car, Shaw,' Therese said softly.

Shaw laughed nervously, started the engine.

'Good,' she said. 'Now pull away gently. We don't want any screeching of tyres.'

It was a Saab Turbo. A black one. She'd blown the horn once and he'd known it was her.

It was a different car, but he wasn't unduly surprised; she'd often turn up in quite expensive ones. Her brother's, she'd say.

Or her father's. Tonight she'd stopped the Saab in a lay-by the other side of the Moss, saying, 'I feel tired; you drive.'

'Would I be insured?'

Therese laughed a lot at that.

'Who owns it exactly?'

'How should I know? I stole it.' 'Interferin' devils.' Be unfair, perhaps, to say the old girl was xenophobic about Southerners, but… No, on second thoughts, it wouldn't be unfair; Ma was suspicious of everybody south of Matlock.

'Aye,' Ernie said, 'I know you don't think he should have been taken to London, but this was a find of enormous national, nay, international significance, and they are the experts after all.'

He chuckled, 'By 'eck, they've had him – or bits of him, anyroad – all over the place for examination… Wembley, Harwell. And this report… well, it really is rather sensational, if you ask me. Going to cause quite a stir. You see, what they did…'

Putting on his precise, headmasterly tone, Ernie explained how the boffins had conducted a complete post-mortem examination, submitting the corpse to the kind of specialized forensic tests normally carried out only in cases of suspicious death.

'So they now know, for example, what he had for dinner on the day he died. Some sort of black bread, as it happened.'

Ma Wagstaff sniffed, obviously disapproving of this invasion of the bogman's intestinal privacy.

'Fascinating, though, isn't it,' Ernie said, 'that they've managed to conduct a proper autopsy on a chap who probably was killed back when Christ was a lad…?'

He stopped. 'What's up, owd lass?'

Ma Wagstaff had gone stiff as a pillar-box.

'Killed,' she said starkly.

'Aye. Ritual sacrifice, Ma. So they reckon. But it was all a long time ago.'

Ma Wagstaff came quite dramatically to life. Eyes urgently flicking from side to side, she grabbed hold of the bottom of Ernie's tweed jacket and dragged him well out of everybody's earshot, into a deserted corner of the forecourt. Into the deepest shadows.

'Tell us,' she urged.

The weakening sun had become snagged in tendrils of low cloud and looked for a minute as if it might not make it into the hills but plummet to the Moss. From where, Ernie thought, in sudden irrational panic, it might never rise again.

He took a few breaths, pulling himself together, straightening his jacket.

'This is not idle curiosity, Ernest.'

'I could tell that, Ma, when you were threatening to bugger up my prostate.' How much of a coincidence had it been that he'd shortly afterwards felt an urgent need to relieve himself which seemed to dissipate as soon as he stood at the urinal?

'Eh, that were just a joke, Ernest. Can't you take a joke any more?'

'From you, Ma…'

'But this is deadly serious,' Ma said soberly.

The sun had vanished. Ridiculously, Ernie thought he heard the Moss burp. 'All right.' he said. From the inside pocket of his jacket he brought out some papers bound with a rubber band and swapped his regular specs for his reading glasses. Be public knowledge soon enough, anyroad. Ernie cleared his throat.

'Seems our lad,' he said, 'was somewhere around his late twenties. Quite tall too, for the time, 'bout five-five or six. Peat preserves a body like vinegar preserves onions. The bones had gone soft, but the skin was tanned to perfection. Even the hair, as we know, remained. Anyroad, medical tests indicate no reason to think he wasn't in good shape. Generally speaking.'

'Get to t'point,' Ma said irritably.

'Well, he was killed. In no uncertain manner. That's to say, they made sure of the job. Blunt instrument, first of all. Back of the head. Then, er… strangulation. Garotte.'

'Eh?'

'Garotte? Well.. He wondered if she ever had nightmares. Probably wouldn't be the usual kind if she did.

Little Benjie, Ma's grandson, had wandered across the forecourt with that big dog of his. 'Hey.' Ernie scooped a hand at him. 'Go away.'

He lowered his voice. 'They probably put a cord – leather string, sinew – around his neck and… inserted a stick in the back of the cord and, as it were… twisted it, the stick. Thus tightening the sinew around his… that is, fragments of the cord have been found actually embedded. In his neck.'

Ma Wagstaff didn't react like a normal old woman. Didn't recoil or even wince. 'Well?' she said.

'Well what?' said Ernie.

'Anythin' else?'

Ernie went cold. How could she know there was more to it? He looked over her head at the bloodied sky. 'Well, seems they… they'd have pulled his head back…'

His throat was suddenly dry. He'd read this report four times, quite dispassionately at first and then with a growing excitement. But an academic excitement. Which was all right. Emotionally he'd remained unmoved. It had, after all, happened a good two thousand years ago – almost in prehistory.

'So the head'd be sort of pulled back… with the… the garotte.'

When they'd brought the bogman out, a little crowd had assembled on the edge of the Moss. Ernie had decided it would be all right to take a few of the older children to witness this historic event. There'd been no big ceremony about it; the archaeologists had simply cut out a big chunk of peat with the body in the middle, quite small, half his legs missing and his face all scrunched up like a big rubber doll that'd been run over. Not very distressing; more like a fossil than a corpse.

They'd wrapped him in clingfilm and put him in a wooden box.

Ernie was staring into Ma Wagstaff's eyes, those large brown orbs glowing amber out of that prune of a face, and he was seeing it for the first time, the real horror of it, the death of a young man two thousand years ago.

'He'd be helpless,' Ernie said. 'Semi-concussed by the blow, and he couldn't move, couldn't draw breath because of the garotte…'

Ma nodded.

'That was when they cut his throat,' Ernie said hoarsely.

Ma nodded again. Behind her, out on the pub forecourt, a huge cheer suddenly went up. The new landlord must have appeared.

'You knew,' Ernie said. He could feel the blood draining out of his face. 'You knew…'

'It were the custom,' Ma Wagstaff said, voice very drab. Three times dead. See, Ernest, I were holding out the hope as this'd be just a body… some poor devil as lost his way and died out on t'Moss.' She sighed, looking very old. 'I knew really. I knew it was goin' t'be what it is.'

'A sacrifice?' It was growing dark.

'Not just any sacrifice, We're in trouble, Ernest.' Sometimes Shaw wanted to say, I feel like just being with you is illegal.

Some mornings he'd be thinking, I've got to get out of this. I'll be arrested. I'll be ruined.

But then, all through the day, the longing would be growing. And as he changed to go out, as he looked in the mirror at his thin, pale face, his receding hairline and his equally receding jawline, he saw why he could never get out… not as long as there was anything she wanted from him. Not as long as he continued to change.