by Phil Rickman
Liz Horridge turned away from him and walked to the other window, the one with the view of Bridelow, which summer would soon obscure. She could see the humped but still sprightly figure of Mrs Wagstaff in the distance, lugging a shopping basket across the cobbles to Gus Bibby's General Stores.
Her breast heaved and she felt tears pumping behind her eyes.
Arthur ... it's not my fault.
Mrs Wagstaff stopped in the middle of the street and - although it was too far away for Liz to be certain - seemed to stare up through the trees at the Hall ... at this very window.
As though the old girl had overheard Liz's thoughts. As though she could feel the agony.
When Liz turned around, wet-eyed, she found she was alone; Shaw had quietly left the room.
Although he'll be cool enough when the Press and the radio and TV reporters interview him in a few hours' time, the County Highways foreman is so shaken up right now that he has to be revived with whisky from the JCB driver's secret flask.
What he's discovered will come to be known as the Bridelow Bogman. Or the Man in the Moss. Important people are going to travel hundreds of miles to gaze with reverence upon its ancient face.
'And what was your reaction when you found it?' asks one of the reporters. 'What did you think it was?'
'Thought it were a sack o' spuds or summat,' the foreman says, quotably. His moment of glory. But out of his hands soon enough - so old and so exciting to the experts, like one of them Egyptian mummies, that nobody else seems to find it upsetting or horrifying, not like a real body.
But, though he'll never admit it, the foreman reckons he's never going to forget that first moment.
'And what did you think when you realised what it was?'
'Dunno, really ... thought it were maybe an owd tramp or summat.'
'Were you shocked?'
'Nah. You find all sorts in this job.'
But that night the foreman will dream about it and awake with a whimper, reaching for his warm missus. And then fall asleep and wake again, his sweat all over both of them and his mind bulging with the moment he bent down and found his hand was gripping its cold and twisted face, his thumb between what might have been its teeth.
Part Two
black glow
From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:
The first-time visitor to Bridelow is strongly urged to approach it from the west, from which direction a most dramatic view of the village is attained.
From a distance of a mile or two, Bridelow appears almost as a craggy island when viewed from the narrow road which is virtually a causeway across Bridelow Moss.
A number of legends are attached to the Moss, some of which will be discussed later in this book.
CHAPTER I
In early summer, Bridelow hopefully dolls herself up, puts on a bit of make-up and an obliging smile for the sun. But the sun doesn't linger. On warm, cloudless evenings like this it saves its final pyrotechnics for the moor.
Sunset lures hues from the moor that you see at no other time - sensual pinks and melodramatic mauves which turn its stiff and spiky surface into velvet
... a delusion, thought Joel Beard, soon to leave theological college. A red light tenderizing the face of an old whore.
He had his back to the sinking sun. To him, it seemed agitated tonight, throwing out its farewell flames in a long, dying scream. As well it might.
Most of the lonely village was below the moor, and the sun's flailing rays were missing it. The stone houses hanging from the hill were in shadow and so was the body of the church on its summit. Only the spikes of the church tower were dusted with red and gold.
Joel dismounted from his motorbike.
In the centre of the tower was a palely shining disc. Like a rising full moon, it sent sneering signals to the sun: as you fade, it promised gleefully, I'll grow ever brighter.
Joel glared at the village across the sullen, scabby surface of the Moss. He imagined Bridelow under moonlight, stark and white as crow-picked bones.
Its true self.
The disc at the centre of the tower was actually an illuminated clock face, from which the hands had long ago fallen.
Often said to be a friendly face which turned the church into a lighthouse at night, across the black ocean of the Moss.
... you see, at one time, Mr Beard, very few people dared to cross the Moss ... except those for whom the Devil lit the way - have you heard that legend?
It was no legend. On a dark night, all you would see of the village would be this silver disc, Bridelow's own, permanent full moon.
Was this how the Devil lit the path? Was this the Devil's light, shining from the top of the stairs in God's house, a false beacon for the weak, the uncertain and the disturbed?
Joel's black leathers straightened him, like armour, and the hard white collar lifted his eyes above the village to the luminous moor. Its lurid colours too would soon grow dull under the night. Like a harlot's cheap dress.
From the village, across the barren Moss, he heard voices raised, a shriek of laughter.
The village would be alive tonight. A new landlord had installed himself at the decrepit local inn. The Man I'th Moss, thus saving it from closure, a side-effect of the widely condemned sale of the Bridelow brewery.
Joel waited, astride his motorbike, his charger, until the moor no longer glowed and the illusion of beauty was gone.
Everyone saw shadows in the blackened cities, those obvious pits of filth and fornication, where EVIL was scrawled in neon and the homeless slept with the rats. And yet the source of it was up here, where city-dwellers surged at weekends to stroll through the springy heather, picnic among the gorse ... young couples, families, children queuing at the roadside ice-cream vans, pensioners in small cars with their flasks of tea.
It's all around you, Mr Beard ... once you know what you're looking for. Look at the church, look at the pub, look at the people ... you'll see the signs everywhere.
Beneath him, the bike lurched into life, his strong, gauntleted hands making the engine roar and crackle, spitting holy fire.
He rode away from the village, back into the hills.
'Shades,' Ma Wagstaff would say later that night. 'Them's what's kept this place the way it is. Shades of things.'
Of all Ma's famous sayings, these were the words that would keep coming back at Ernie Dawber during the short, anxious days and the long, chill nights of the declining year.
And when, as local historian, he tried to find the beginning (as in, What exactly started the First World War? What caused the first spark that set off the Great Fire of London?), he'd keep coming back to this particular evening. A vivid evening at the end of May. The evening he'd blithely and thoughtlessly told Ma Wagstaff what he'd learned about the death of the bogman ... and Ma had made a fateful prediction.
But it started well enough, with a big turn-out for the official reopening of The Man, under its new proprietor. The two bars couldn't hold all those come to welcome him home. So several dozen folk, including Ernie Dawber - best suit, waistcoat, watch-chain - were out on the cobbled forecourt, having a pint or two and watching the sun go down over the big hills beyond the Moss.
A vivid evening at the end of May. Laughter in the streets. Hope for the future. Most enmities sheathed and worries left at home under the settee cushions.
A real old Bridelow night That was how it ought to have been enshrined in his memory. All those familiar faces.
A schoolteacher all his working life, Ernie Dawber had known at least three-quarters of this lot since they were five-year-olds at the front of the school hall: eager little faces, timid little faces ... few belligerent ones too - always reckoned he could spot a future troublemaker in its pram.
He remembered Young Frank Manifold in the pram, throttling his panda.
'Well, well...' Twenty-odd years on. Young Frank strolling up to his boss, all jutting chin and pint mug clenched like a big glass knuckle-duster. 'It's Mr Horridge.'
S
haw said nothing.
'What's that you're drinking, Mr Horridge?' Sneering down at Shaw's slim glass.
Shaw's smile faltered. But he won't reply, Ernie thought, because if he does he'll start stuttering and he knows it.
There'd been a half-smile on Shaw's face as he stood alone on the cobbles. A nervous, forced-looking smile but a smile none the less. Ernie had to admire the lad, summoning the nerve to show himself tonight, not a month since Andy Hodgson died.
Especially with more than a few resentful brewery employees about.
'Looks like vodka.' Frank observed 'That what it is, Mr Horridge? Vodka?' A few people starting to look warily at Frank and Shaw, a couple of men guiding their wives away.
''Course, I forgot. Bloody Gannons make vodka on t'side. Gannons will make owt as'll sell. That Gannons vodka? That what it is ... Mr Horridge?'
Shaw sipped his drink, not looking at Frank. This could be nerves. Or it could be an insult, Shaw pointedly pretending that Young Frank was not there.
Whichever, Ernie decided he ought to break this up before it started to spoil the atmosphere. But somebody better equipped than him got there first.
'Where's your dad, Frank?' Milly Gill demanded, putting herself firmly between him and Shaw, like a thick, flowery bush sprouting between two trees.
'Be around somewhere.' Frank staring over the postmistress's head at Shaw, who was staring back now. Frank's knuckles whitening around the handle of his beer mug.
'I think you'd better find him, Frank,' Milly said briskly. 'See he doesn't drink too much with that diabetes.'
Frank ignored her, too tanked-up to know his place. 'Fancy new car. I see ... Mr Horridge. Porsche, int it? Andy Hodgson just got 'isself a new car, day before he fell. Well, I'm saying "new" - Austin Maestro, don't even make um no more. He were chuffed wi' it. Easily pleased, Andy, weren't he, Milly?'
'It was an accident,' Milly said tightly. 'As you well know.'
'Aye, sure it were, I'm not accusing Mr Horridge of murder.
Only, why don't you ask him why Andy were suddenly ordered to reconnect a bloody old clapped-out pulley system for winching malt-sacks up to a storeroom right at top of t'building as isn't even used no more except by owls. You ask this bastard that, Milly.'
'We've had the inquest,' Milly said. 'Go and see to your dad.'
'Inquest? Fucking whitewash. I'll tell you why Andy were sent up. On account of place were being tarted up to look all quaint and old-fashioned for a visit from t'Gannons directors. Right, Mr Horridge?'
'Wasn't c ... Not quite like that,' said Shaw quietly.
'Oh aye. How were it different? Lad dies for a bit of fucking cosmetic. You're all shit, you. Shit.'
The air between them fizzed. Shaw was silent. He'd been an expert at being silent during the three years Ernie had taught him before the lad was sent to prep school. And still an expert when he came back from University, poor bugger.
'And this Porsche.' Young Frank popped out the word with a few beery bubbles. 'How many jobs Gannons gonna axe to buy you that, eh?'
'Frank,' Milly Gill told him very firmly, big floral bosom swelling, 'I'll not tell you again!'
Careful, lass, Ernie thought. Don't do owt.
'You're a jammy little twat,' Frank spat. 'Don't give a shit. You never was a proper Horridge.'
A widening circle around them, conversations trailing off.
'Right.' Milly's eyes went still. 'That's enough. I'll not have this occasion spoiled. Am I getting through?'
'Now, Millicent,' Ernie said, knowing from experience what might happen if she got riled. But Shaw Horridge startled them all. 'It's quite all right, Miss Gill.'
He smiled icily at Young Frank. 'Yes, it is a per-Porsche.' Held up his glass. 'Yes, it is vodka. Yes, it's mer-made in Sheffield by a s-subsidiary of Gannons Ales.'
He straightened up, taller than Frank now, his voice gaining in strength. 'Gannons Ales. Without whom, yes, I wouldn't have a Porsche."
And, stepping around Millie, he poked Young Frank in the chest with a thin but rigid forefinger. 'And without whom you wouldn't have a job ... Mr Manifold.'
Ernie saw several men tense, ready to hold Young Frank back, but Frank didn't move. His eyes widened and his grip on the tankard slackened. Lad's as astonished as me, Ernie thought, at Shaw Horridge coming out with half a dozen almost fully coherent sentences one after the other.
The red sun shone into Shaw's eyes; he didn't blink.
The selling of the brewery was probably the worst thing that had happened to Bridelow this century. But not, apparently, the worst thing that had happened to Shaw Horridge.
He lowered his forefinger. 'Just remember that, please,' he said.
Looking rather commanding, where he used to look shyly hunched. And this remarkable confidence, as though somebody had turned his lights on. Letting them all see him - smiling and relaxed - after perpetrating the sale of the brewery, Bridelow's crime of the century. And indirectly causing a death.
Took some nerve, this did, from stuttering Shaw.
Arthur's lad at last. Maybe.
'Excuse me,' Shaw said dismissively. 'I have to meet someone.'
He turned his back on Young Frank Manifold and walked away, no quicker than he needed to, the sun turning the bald spot on the crown of his head into a bright golden coin.
'By 'eck,' Ernie Dawber said, but he noticed that Milly Gill was looking worried.
And she wasn't alone.
'Now then, Ernest. Wha's tha make of that, then?'
He hadn't noticed her edging up behind him, although he'd known she must be here somewhere. She was a Presence.
Just a little old woman in a pale blue woollen beret, an old grey cardigan and a lumpy brown woollen skirt.
'Well,' Ernie Dawber said, 'Arthur might have been mortified at what he's done with the brewery, but I think he'd be quite gratified at the way he stood up for himself there. Don't you?'
'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff grimly. 'I'm sure his father'd be right pleased.'
Ernie looked curiously into the rubbery old features. Anybody who thought this was just a little old woman hadn't been long in Bridelow. He took a modest swallow from his half of Black. 'What's wrong then, Ma?'
'Everything.' Ma sighed. 'All coming apart.'
'Oh?' said Ernie. 'Nice night, though. Look at that sun.'
'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff pessimistically. 'Going down, int it?'
'Well, yes.' Ernie straightened his glasses. 'It usually does this time of night.'
Ma Wagstaff nodded at his glass. 'What's that ale like now it's Gannons?'
'Nowt wrong with it as I can taste.' This wasn't true; it didn't seem to have quite the same brackish bite - or was that his imagination?
Ma looked up and speared him with her fierce little eyes. 'Got summat to tell me, Ernest Dawber?'
Ernie coughed. 'Not as I can think of.' She was making him uneasy.
'Anythin' in the post today?'
'This and that, Ma, this and that.'
'Like one of them big squashy envelopes, for instance?'
'A jiffy-bag, you mean?'
'Aye,' said Ma Wagstaff. 'Wi' British Museum stamped on it.'
Ernie fumed. You couldn't keep anything bloody private in this place. 'Time that Millicent kept her damn nose out!'
'Never mind that, lad, what's it say?'
'Now, look ...' Ernie backed away, pulling at his waistcoat. 'In my capacity as local historian, I was able to provide Dr Hall and the British Museum with a considerable amount
of information relating to the Moss, and as a result, following their examination of the body, they've kindly given me a preview of their findings, which ...'
'Thought that'd be it.' Ma Wagstaff nodded, satisfied.
'... which will be published in due course. Until which time, I'm not allowed ...'
'If you know, why shouldn't we know?'
'It's not allowed, Ma. It's what's called an embargo.'
'Oh.' Ma's eyes narrowed. 'That's w
hat it's called, is it?' Means educated fellers like you get to know what's what and us common folk ...'
Common folk? Ma Wagstaff? Ernie kept backing off, looking around for friendly faces. 'Please, Ma ... don't push me on this. You'll find out soon enough.'
But the nearest person was a good ten yards away, and when his back hit the wall of the pub's outside lavatory block, he realised she'd got him into a corner in more ways than one.
'Now then,' Ma said kindly. 'How's that prostate of yours these days?'
'Nowt wrong with my prostate,' Ernie replied huffily.
Ma Wagstaff's eyes glinted. 'Not yet there int.'
CHAPTER II
'This is mer-madness,' Shaw said.
'No,' said Therese, 'it's exciting.'
'You're exciting,' he mumbled. That's all.' He pushed a hand through her sleek hair, and she smiled at him, tongue gliding out between her small, ice-white teeth. He was almost crying; she had him on the edge again. He pushed his back into the car's unfamiliar upholstery and clenched both hands on the wheel.
'Shall we go, then?'
'I can't.'
'I promise you,' Therese said, 'you'll feel so much better afterwards.'
And he would, he knew this from experience. Once, not long after they'd met, she'd made him go into a chemist and steal a bottle of Chanel perfume for her. I'll buy it for you, he'd almost shrieked. But that wasn't good enough. He was rich ... buying her perfume - what would that demonstrate?
So he'd done it. Stolen it. Slipped it into the pocket of his sheepskin jacket and then bought himself two bottles of the shop's most expensive aftershave as an awkward sort of atonement.
But the awkwardness had just been a phase. He remembered lying awake all that night, convinced someone had seen him and the police would be at the door. Don't worry, she'd said, it'll get easier.
