The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman Read Free Book Online

he'd ever done and all over in a couple of
weeks. All over before anyone in the village knew about it. Fait accompli.
                '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