Surprising how vulnerable you felt in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car up here on a night like this. Ashton took it steady.
He wondered: how much water can a peat bog take before it turns into something the consistency of beef broth?
Not his manor, the natural world. The unnatural world was more like it. A number of the people with whom Ashton conversed at length – usually across a little grey room with a microphone in the wall – were creatures of the unnatural world.
As for the supernatural world…
I don't know why, Ashton told himself as he drove towards Bridelow Moss, but in a perverse sort of way this is almost invigorating. To be faced with something you can't arrest, matters which in no way can ever be taken down and used in evidence.
Completely out of your depth. He looked down at the Moss. There was an area of Manchester called Moss Side, in which the police also sometimes felt out of their depth, so choked was it with drugs and violent crime. Did the name imply that once, centuries ago, it had been on the edge of somewhere like this?
And, if so, how much had changed?
Not the kind of thing policemen tended to think about.
Gary Ashton, facing retirement in a year or two, spent an increasing amount of time trying to think about things policemen did not tend to think about. Intent on not becoming just a retired copper' working as consultant to some flash security firm and tending people who couldn't give a shit with his personal analysis of the criminal mind and endless stories about Collars I Have Felt.
Just lately, Ashton had been trying to talk to people as people, knowing that in a very short time he would be one of them.
A well-controlled tremor in her voice. 'Inspector Ashton, I'm extremely sorry to bother you at this time of night, but you did say if anything else disturbing occurred, I should let you know immediately.'
Yes, yes, Mrs Castle, but I meant in the nature of a break-in. Unless a crime has been committed or is likely to be, I'm sorry but this is not really something the police can do anything about.
Except, he hadn't said any of that.
What he'd said was, 'Yes, I'll come, but as long as you understand I won't be corning as a policeman.' Turning off the telly in his frugally furnished divorced person's apartment, reacting to a peculiar note of unhysterical desperation in a woman's voice and getting into practice for doing things not as a policeman.
Surprising how vulnerable you felt not being a policeman on a very nasty night proceeding in an easterly direction across a waterlogged peatbog in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car to see a woman about a ghost. 'Well,' Ernie Dawber said finally. 'I think it must be obvious to all of us where they are.'
Willie said, 'Macbeth wasn't fooled, you know. He knew we was keeping summat back.'
'Let's hope Catherine keeps him out of our way. Come on, Willie, there's nobody but us going to see to this.'
Milly Gill was hugging Bob and Jim and looking, Ernie thought, a bit like his mother had looked when she'd switched off the radio after the formal declaration of World War Two.
'What are you going to do?'
'Well, I know we're only men, Millicent, but we're going to have to stop this thing. Don't know how, mind. Have to see when we get there.'
Ernie put on his hat.
'Where?'
'The Hall. The brewery. By 'eck, I wish I'd listened to my feelings. So used to them coming to nowt, see, that's the problem. I remember examining the list of Gannons directors – last summer, this was, just after the takeover was mooted.'
'I know,' Willie said. 'J. S. Lucas. Occurred to me too, just momentarily, like, but I thought I were being paranoid.'
Milly looked blank.
'Lucas were t'name of Jack's father. Not many folk'd know that.'
Ernie watched Willie struggling into his old donkey jacket with the vinyl patch across the shoulders. Not seen that for some years. Lad had put on a few pounds in the meantime.
Milly Gill slid the cats from her knee. 'Well, all I can say is you seem determined, Mr Dawber, that one way or t'other, you'll not see tomorrow's sun.'
'Time comes, Millicent, when being an observer is no longer sufficient.'
'And what about you, Willie? Feller who liked to pride himself on his cowardice.'
'True,' Willie said. 'But this is family.'
'I'm just praying,' Ernie said, 'as they've not done owt to Liz Horridge.'
Willie grinned. 'Always had a bit of a thing for Liz, dint you, Mr Dawber?'
'She could've done no better than Arthur Horridge,' Ernie said generously.
'And might've done a good deal worse, eh?' Willie was over by the window. 'Not slackening off at all, bloody rain. Moss'll be treacherous for weeks.'
'We're not going to the Moss,' said Ernie. 'We're not going anywhere near the Moss.'
He was still thinking furiously about what young Catherine had said about obsession. That he himself had been trapped just as surely as Matt Castle and Dr Hall. That there was indeed something powerfully emotionally disruptive about the bogman.
Ernie glanced at Milly Gill, who was not, he reassured himself, in Ma's league. Not yet.
Determined that one way or t'other you'll not see tomorrow's sun.
Aye, well, Ernie Dawber thought, we'll have to see about that. The tapping on the study door was firm but polite.
Cathy opened it. They were corning out anyway, though without much direction. At some point, Macbeth had suggested they simply call the cops, but Cathy said the cops must already be looking into Moira's death; how were they supposed credibly to plant the idea that the accident was in some way unnatural?
Chris stood in the doorway. 'We've come to a decision,' he said. 'Thank you for your hospitality, but we want to go back.'
'Back?' Cathy said.
'To the church.'
'Oh,' Cathy said. 'But you can't.'
Chris smoothed his beard, 'We're deeply ashamed, Cathy. We had no faith. We watched Joel struggling with the demon, and we thought he'd gone mad.'
'He has,' Cathy said tautly.
'And now this attack on Chantal. She was the only one of us whose belief in Joel was sustained when the chips were down. She went back and she was physically and spiritually attacked. Could have been killed. We let that happen.'
'Open up, did she?'
Chris stared at her in horror.
'I mean to you,' Cathy said irritably. 'Did she tell you exactly what happened to her?'
'Come on, Chris,' a woman's voice called from behind. 'It's only half an hour to midnight.'
'I'm sorry,' Chris said. 'God protect you. God protect you both.'
Cathy flung the door wide. There was a whole crowd of them gathered behind Chris.
'Let me spell it out for you. All of you. You've all been used. Joel was used. Somebody wanted to break down the church's defences – these are defences built up over centuries.'
'Yes,' said Chris. 'We were the last line of defence.' Not understanding, unlikely to be capable of understanding. 'And we were afraid. We lost faith in our brother, Joel. We deserted him when he most needed us, and it took the violation of our sister…'
'Sister?' Macbeth said. 'She's your goddamn wife!'
'And Joel was right too…' Chris backed away, 'about this man. Turn him out, Cathy. Turn him out and come with us.'
'Of course I'm not going to bloody turn him out! He's got good reason to be angry; a friend of his died tonight.'
Chris didn't blink.
'Come on, Chris. In God's name,' the woman behind him cried.
'I'm coming.'
Cathy grabbed his arm. 'What I'm saying to you, Chris, is that it's not safe for you to go back in that church. Any of you. You won't do yourselves any good and you'll probably do us all a lot of harm.'
Chris said pityingly, 'Our trust is in Almighty God. In whom, to our shame, we temporarily lost our faith. And for that we have much to make up. Whatever happens in there will be His will.'
'He gave you a brain, Chris. To think with, you know? Have you given up thinking for yourselves? Letting Him do all your thinking now, is it?'
Chris pulled his arm away, eyes full of drifting cloud. 'Pray for us, Cathy.'
'Yes,' said Cathy when they'd gone. 'But who am I supposed to pray to?' Because he was used to making a recce before venturing in, Ashton drove once up the village street, turned around on the parking area by the church and drove slowly back towards the pub.
Just as well he was driving slowly. Twice, people hurried across the street, two men together and two women individually, flapping like chickens in the blinding rain.
There were lights in most front rooms, lights in the chip shop but a 'closed' sign on the door. Water gushed down the sides of the road, down the hill. Where did it all go? Into the Moss?
Ashton followed the water as far as the pub, where the only light was the hanging lantern over the front porch, illuminating the sign, The Man I'th Moss. No picture. What would it have shown? Why had they given the pub that name, possibly a couple of hundred years ago, when nobody could have guessed there was an ancient body in the bog?
Or could they?
Ashton pulled on to the forecourt and dashed for the door. Lottie Castle. He could spot a liar in seconds. He could also tell when people were deluded. And he could, of course, spot people who were daft or innocent enough to be led up the garden path.
But this Lottie Castle.
Now, here's a cool, intelligent woman who is definitely not lying; a woman you could, with confidence, put in a witness box in front of George bloody Carman QC.
And here's a woman claiming to be haunted. You know why I half believe this? Ashton still quizzing himself as he huddled on the doorstep in his trench coat, ill-fitting slates in the porch letting water trickle down his collar.
Because this is s woman who sincerely doesn't want to believe it.
And it also, yes, an attractive widow. Well, what's wrong with that?
The woman who answered the door, however, was not Lottie Castle. But if Ashton the human being was disappointed, Ashton the copper was back on duty the second he identified her.
'Miss… er…White.'
'Chrissie.'
'Aye,' he said. 'Chrissie. And is Dr hall here too?'
'Not exactly here, Gary… is it Gary tonight?'
'Hard to say,' Ashton said, stepping inside. 'Hard to say, now.' Her won smooth, smoky voice taunting her as she struggled through the dripping wood, booming out from the old, disused recording studio in her head, the voice sneering,
Never let them cut your hair
Or tell you where
You've been, or where
You're going to from here…
Everything leaking out now from that slashed and razored head, raw thoughts exposed at birth to the cold and spitting night.
For a bad long time she'd stood alone among some trees and wept and sobbed and cursed and refused to believe it. They can put it back, can't they? Christ's sake, they can sew people's arms back these days.
First the horror, then the anguish. And the horror and anguish and the rage, all shaken up, this wild, combustible cocktail.
'Who? she screamed to the invisible sky. 'Who?'
Them.
Dic had headed them off. They'd gone after Dic and she was alone in the filthy night, everything rushing back with nerve-searing intensity, the savage rain smashing it into her naked head along with the insistent bump, bump, bump of the taunting mental Walkman.
And the things Dic said.
Stanage.
Of course, yeah. The Celtic expert. The writer. John Peveril Stanage. Never read his books, too young for me, by the time I'd heard of him.
But I'm going to kill that man. That man is dead.
Memories.
On the plane to Dublin for a gig. Matt holding up a paperback, The Bridestones. 'Should read this. Tell you where I'm coming from.' Moira politely looking up from Joseph Heller or somesuch. Mmm? Sure. Get 'round to it someday.
And then the American, Macbeth at the Earl's Castle. 'This writer – Stanton, Stanhope? Is he mad… this guy's face is white.'
John Peveril Stanage. The pale predator at the castle.
The comb-hunter.
The hair-surgeon.
Moira clung to a tree, its mesh of leafless branches keeping most of the rain off her. But when her head penetrated a jagged tracery of twigs, she could actually feel them graze her scalp.
She screamed in despair.
Last one, OK? Last scream. Last curse. Then you start to think. God, you drift through life listening to your conscience and your instincts and premonitions. all your airy fairy feeling, and you never think.
Moira, listen, they've got my dad propped up in there.
Meaning an effigy? A dummy representing the spirit they wanted to conjure?
Necromancy. The black side of spiritualism. You collect, in the appropriately drawn and consecrated circle, the most intimate possessions of the dead person, those things…
… his clothes. carrying his smell, his sweat. And those things…
… the pipes. he would most hate to leave behind. And those…
… me. Dic. people who were close to him. And…
And you. the things after which he craved.
Moira moved deliberately out from under the tree, stared up into the sky until she was blinded by the rain, and then hung her head and let the night drench her.
They took the comb.
They cut off my hair.
They have me. They have my essence.
They have used these things to summon Matt Castle from the grave.