Being Sunday, he could park in the street right outside and wait for some movement.
It was a dull, cold day in Glasgow, and a light gleamed out of the second floor of Kaufmann's scuffed tenement, which indicated Fiona had got it right. 'See, he often works on a Sunday, catching up with his VAT and stuff. But, Mungo, you tell him where you got this from I'm out the door; long as you realise that…'
Lucky he'd kept Fiona's home number. He owed the kid another dinner.
This Sunday morning convinced Macbeth that being a private investigator had to be about the most tedious occupation you could have outside of accountancy. The first hour, the car radio kept him amused with some bizarre soap-style drama about country folks in which nobody got killed, nobody seemed to be balling anyone else's spouse but two guys nearly came to blows in an argument about milk quotas. Only in Britain.
The second hour Macbeth fell to contemplating the futility of his life so far, the hopelessness of his quest, etc.
And then, just after 1 p.m., Malcolm Kaufmann came out of the building and spent some time locking the door behind him.
Kaufmann bad on a long black overcoat over a pink polo shirt. Macbeth followed him to a crowded, chromium pub where Kaufmann ordered chicken sandwiches and, to Macbeth's dismay, sat down to eat them with two other guys he obviously knew.
Macbeth said shit a few times under his breath, ordered up a sandwich and a beer, sat as far away from Kaufmann as he could while still keeping him in view, and began to eat very slowly.
There were many women in the bar. Macbeth passed some time debating which one he'd make a move on if he hadn't been an investigator on a case. There was one in a dark blue velvet top who had to be wasted on the guy she was with; he was drinking too much and talking to other guys, she was on Diet Coke and probably only here to drive him home.
She had long, dark hair. Which, of course, was nothing at all to do with Macbeth picking her out, no way.
He was getting to thinking he would make a move, if only to make the woman's lunchtime more memorable, when Malcolm Kaufmann came swiftly to his feet, said a rapid goodbye to his pals and made an exit, weaving through the crowd with such practised agility that Macbeth almost lost him.
Couldn't be sure Kaufmann wouldn't get into a car or taxi and head off home, so he called after him in the street, and Kaufmann turned at the edge of the sidewalk and raised an eyebrow.
'Mr Macbeth. How very strange to see you.'
'We have to talk, Malcolm,' Macbeth said, trying to sound tough.
'Of course. We must arrange a time.'
'Like, now.'
'Oh, dear,' said Kaufmann. 'This sounds serious. What can the fair Moira have been up to?'
Macbeth walked right up to him. There was a cab idling not ten yards away, and he was taking no chances. 'We need to talk about a man,' he said, 'name of John Peveril Stanage.' Ashton thought he should tell her himself, maybe test the water a bit. Also, he liked a pint around Sunday lunch when he got the time – unable, despite his divorce, to shake himself out of the feeling that Sunday lunchtime was special.
And he couldn't deny he was becoming quite fascinated by this place, a bit of old England only twenty miles from factories and warehouses, muck and grime and petty crime.
He drove Across the Moss in his own vehicle, the Japanese sports car which was his first independent purchase with the bit of money left over after paying off his wife. A gesture.
Ashton realised now that Gillian was probably right, it was bloody pathetic to buy a car like this at his age. Lump of flash tat, and he could never even remember what bloody make it was.
'Oh,' she said, looking up to serve him. it's you.'
No curiosity, he noticed But then, if they had recovered anything from that grave, be all over the village, wouldn't it?
'Just thought I should officially inform you, Mrs Castle,' he said confidentially, across the bar, 'that we didn't find what we were looking for. I'm sorry we had to put you through this.'
There were no more than a dozen customers in The Man. Some had looked up when he came in. Made a change; most pubs, they could smell a copper the same way he could scent illegal odours amidst tobacco smoke. Always somebody in a pub with something to hide, whether they'd been flogging nicked videos or their MOT was overdue.
'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.
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.
The 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.