by Phil Rickman
'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.
She'd closed her own eye, the eye which was letting in the image of the tree, and this hurt. It was the side of her face Joel Beard had slapped. Maybe the eye had gone black; she couldn't bring herself to look in the mirror.
I can't believe he got away with that. Normally I'd have torn the bastard's balls off.
The BMW retched, like it was about to throw up its oil or something.
'Maybe you didn't understand me.' She gripped the wheel, shaking it. 'Maybe you only understand German. In which case you'll never know that if you don't get me to that hotel ... I'm gonny trade you in, pal ...'
In the driving-mirror, through the rain coming down like sheet metal now, she could see the spikes of St Bride's Church, maybe two miles back across the Moss.
'... and you'll be bought at auction by some loony, tear-arse seventeen-year-old looking for something fast and sleek to smash up and get killed in, yeah?'
Yelling at the car because she didn't want to hear anything else coming at her through the rain and the engine noise.
Didn't want to touch the radio-cassette machine on account of there was a tape inside with the late Matt Castle on it, Matt coming seriously unspooled.
Her head ached and her hair felt heavy and greasy, just awful. She pushed it away from her eyes. The Moss had gone from the mirror, it was all scrubby moorland with dark, unfinished drystone walls like slippery piles of giant sheep-shit. She came to a signpost and hesitated, then pointed the car at the place that sounded biggest and closest.
Buxton. Some kind of inland resort. With hotels. Listen, hen, what you do is you book into the biggest, plushest hotel they have there - like the Buxton Hilton or whatever - and you take several aspirins and you get a night's sleep and then you do some hard thinking. You can still think, OK, you can still function. The comb is merely an artefact invested with symbolism by you and by your mammy and however many other gypsies have had it in their gold-encrusted fists - but to claim it holds part of your spirit, your essence, your living consciousness is just ridiculous sentiment. Right?
Sure.
The Buxton road doubled back round the Moss to the Bridelow moors in a steep, curving climb, with what seemed like a sheer cliff going up on one side and another sheer cliff coming down on the other with just a low drystone wall between
Ms Moira Cairns and a long, long drop into what, being largely invisible through this sheeting rain, might just possibly be Hell.
Come on, come ... on.
T
he BMW was faltering, its engine straining, like the big rubber band that powered it was down to its last strand.
Sweating, she flung the damn thing into third gear and then into second, revving like crazy.
Except the engine didn't.
It stalled.
In the middle of a twisting, narrow road, barely halfway up a hill that looked about three times as steep now the BMW wasn't actually ascending it any more, this bastard stalled.
'Oh, shit' - hauling on the handbrake - 'I'm really screwed this time.' First time any car had broken down on her for maybe ten years.
Also, coincidentally, the first time she'd had flu or whatever the hell it was in maybe five. And worst of all ...
Worst of all the handbrake couldn't hold it.
Now, look - treading hard on the foot brake - it isn't that the cable's snapped or somebody's been messing with it, it's just stretched too far. Garage'll have it fixed in ten minutes.
What you have to do now, assuming you get to the bottom of this hill OK, you have to shove this car into the nearest grass verge then get out and walk through the filthy rain - without, OK, the benefit of a mac or an umbrella - until you come to a phone box or somebody's house.
Malcolm was always on at her to install a car phone. No way, she'd said. Malcolm said, When you want to be incommunicado you can just switch it off. She said. Incommunicado
is my middle name, Malcolm, so where's the point in paying out fifty quid a month? But it's tax-deductible, Moira ...
She wanted to scream with the terminal frustration of it: if she managed by some miracle piece of driving to deposit this magnificent piece of Kraut technology at the bottom of this bottomless hill, that was when her real problems would begin.
She didn't scream; her throat was hurting too much already.
Gently, oh, so bloody gently, she let out the brake and allowed the car to slip backwards down the hill, which now seemed almost fucking vertical ... twisting her neck round over her shoulder to try and track the curves in the streaming wet road. Not much to see anyway but rain and more rain. She was no damn good at this; never been able to master that mirror-image coordination you needed for reversing.
Thing is to stay well into the left, hard against the sheer cliff - OK, steepish hill, that's all it is - the one going up.
And, God, if I can make it to the bottom in one piece I will walk through this filthy, blinding rain for ten miles, hear me?
This roaring in her ears, it had to be the blood, flushed up there by concentration and the flu.
Letting out the brake, going backwards in short bursts, then jamming on, feeling the wheels lock and slide on the rain-filmed road. OK ... easy ... you're OK ...
Just as long as nothing's coming up behind you!
Then, alarmingly, she was going backwards in a sudden spurt, and when she jammed on the brakes it made hardly any difference, and the breath locked in her swollen throat.
Staring, helpless, as the car's rear end suddenly slid out into the middle of the narrow carriageway, skimming over the central white line, the tail end skidding off, aiming itself at the crumbling stones, no more than two feet high, set up between the road and Hell.
'Oh, my... Christ!'
Scared now … like really scared, Moira tried to jam both feet on to the footbrake, straightening her legs out hard, heaving her back into the seat until it creaked, the pressure forcing her head back and around until she was staring out of the front windscreen, the car slipping back all the while.
It was like going up the down escalator in one of those panicking nightmares, only with the thing on at triple speed and a wall on one side and an endless, open liftshaft on the other.
And the brakes were definitely full on ... and gripping while the car was sliding backwards on the rain-slashed road, and Moira's cars were full of this dark turbulence, turning her vision black.
Black, black, black.
Black, it said.
BRIDELOW BLACK
... across the cab of the massive, dripping truck powering down on the BMW like some roaring prehistoric beast.
Oh...
... Christ...
... Get it into first gear ... !
She was starting to scream out loud, plunging the clutch down, grinding the gearstick. But there was nowhere to go, the windscreen full of black, the truck's engine bellowing then scornfully clearing its throat as, with no great effort, it prodded the little car and Moira Cairns through the disintegrating drystone wall and the shimmering curtain of rain and over the road's edge into the endless mist beyond.
CHAPTER VI
The old clergyman across the lounge was deeply asleep in his chair, head back, mouth open,
'Lifetime of begging, you see,' Hans Gruber explained to his daughter. 'He's turned into an offertory box. You go over there, drop a pound coin in his trap and it'll suddenly snap shut. Clack! Another quid for the steeple fund.'
Hans smiled.
Cathy said, 'You're feeling better, then.'
'Until I stand up. And a stroll to the loo is like the London marathon. But it's always better when you get out of hospital. Even coming here.'
The Poplars was a Georgian house with a modern, single-storey extension set amid flat, tidy, rain-daubed fields where Cheshire turned imperceptibly into Shropshire. There were all kinds of trees in the grounds except, Cathy had noted, actual poplars.
'Nearly as exciting as Leighton Buzzard,' Hans said. 'Makes me realise how much I love Bridelow. Its hardness, its drama.'
Cathy said nothing. Right now Bridelow had more drama than Beirut could handle.
Hans leaned forward in the chair, lowered his voice - even though, apart from the Rev. Offertory Box, they were alone in the lounge. 'I'm finished, aren't I, Cathy? I'm out.'
'Bollocks,' Cathy said, with less conviction than the choice of word implied.
Hans shook his head. 'Really wouldn't mind so much if it was going to be anybody but Joel. Thinks he's a New Christian, but he's actually more set in his ways than that poor old sod.'
Cathy squeezed his hand. 'You'll be back in no time.'
'No. I won't. Joel, you see ... he's like one of those chaps in the old Westerns. Come to clean up Bridelow. Vocation. And Simon Fleming sees Joel as his vocation, and as long as he's archdeacon ...'
'Joel might have bitten off more than he can chew, Pop. He put on his first Sunday service this morning, and nobody came.'
'You're not serious.' Cathy watched her father's mouth briefly wrestling with a most unchristian, spontaneous delight.
'Honest to God, Pop. A totally unorganised boycott. You know what Bridelow's like. Sort of communal consciousness. Apparently a few people started to drift along, got as far as the churchyard, realised the usual merry throng was not gathering as usual - and toddled off home. Does your heart good, doesn't it?'
'Certainly not,' said Hans, recovering his gravitas. 'It's actually quite stupid. Just get his back up, and then he'll do something silly. I don't mean go crying to Simon or the bishop or anyone, he's too arrogant. He'll want to sort it out himself. Damn.' Hans looked gloomy. 'That was really quite stupid of them. I can't believe Ma Wagstaff allowed it.'
'Ah.' Cathy lowered her eyes. Hans was wearing tartan bedroom slippers; somebody must have had a battle to get him into those.
'What's wrong?'
'I'm sorry, Pop,' Cathy swallowed. 'Something I haven't told you.'
Hans went very still.
The customers didn't stay long after Lottie had her flare-up. Led by tactful Frank Manifold Snr, they drank up smartish.
'What about you, pal?' Frank said to Inspector Ashton as he deposited his empty glass on the bar top. 'Haven't you got some traffic to direct or summat?'
Lottie said, it's OK, Frank. It's me. I'm overwrought.'
She turned to Ashton. 'Have another. On the house.'
'No, this chap's right,' Ashton said. 'You've enough problems without me.'
'No,' Lottie said, 'I want your advice. I've had ... in
truders.'
Then Joel arrived to take up residence at Bridelow Rectory, and found Alfred Beckett replacing a broken window in the pantry.
He stood over the little man. Perhaps, he ventured sarcastically, some explanation was due.
'Well.' Mr Beckett thumbed a line of putty into the window-frame. 'I would have been theer, like. Never missed a morning service in thirty year. Except in an emergency.'
Like this problem here. Which, as Mr Beard could see, he was at this moment putting right before it started raining again causing everything in the pantry to be soaked through and ruined.
'Mr Beckett,' Joel snarled. 'You are the organist.'
'Aye,' said Mr Beckett uncomfortably. 'That's true, like, but ...'
'But nothing! You knew there would be no congregation. You knew no one would come.'
'Nay,' said Mr Beckett. 'Nobody come? Well, bugger me.'
Joel felt a red haze developing behind his eyes. He wondered briefly if the hypocritical little rat hadn't smashed the Rectory window himself as a lame excuse for his non-appearance.
'Bloody vandals,' Mr Beckett said, expertly sliding in the new pane of glass. 'Never used to get no vandalism in this village, and that's a fact, Mr Beard.'
Joel stared at him.
You're nobbut a thick bloody vandal wi' no more brains than pig shit.
Joel snatched the ball of putty from the window-ledge and sent it with a splat to the pantry floor.
'Mrs Wagstaff,' he said icily. 'Mrs Wagstaff is behind all this.'
'Nay,' said Mr Beckett.
'Why can't any of you people tell the truth?' This devious little man was the only villager who derived a small income from the Church and doubtless could not afford to lose it. 'When I came past her cottage not half an hour ago, Mrs Wagstaff had not yet deigned to draw back her curtains. What, pray, is your interpretation of that?'
Mr Beckett scraped up his ball of putty.
'Cause she's bloody dead,' he said. 'Why d'you think?'
Feeling his holy rage congealing into a hideous mess, Joel walked numbly through the kitchen, down the hall and into Hans Gruber's study.
