'I'm not over-happy about it. She's a dismal old cow, but ...'
'Relax. Or rather, don't relax. Look, she didn't want to be here. She's really not very sociable these days, is she? Especially where the brewery's concerned.'
He watched Therese's eyes in the mirror. She could always, in any circumstances, make things happen. Yesterday, his mother had been almost hysterical when he said he'd be bringing the Gannons chairman over for drinks. This morning the old girl was missing but Therese - miraculously, shockingly - was in Shaw's bed, and Therese said, 'Oh, I popped in last night, and we had a terrific heart-to-heart, Liz and I. She's become far too insular, you know, losing all her confidence. Anyway, I persuaded her to go to the Palace in Buxton for a couple of days. Packed her case, ordered her a taxi before she could change her mind. Wasn't that clever of me?'
Yes, yes, he'd been so relieved. The old girl would have been suspicious as anything if he'd suggested it. He remembered the Malta idea. Hopeless. But trust Therese to win her confidence.
Trust Therese. Drifting around the house rearranging things; how the house had changed in just a few hours, a museum coming alive.
'What've you got there?'
She'd picked up a black cloth bag from the dressing table, tightened its drawstrings and set it down again.
'Hair.' She turned the word into a long, satisfied breath 'Beautiful, long black hair.'
'Hair?'
'With a single gorgeous strand of white. I had to use a wig for so long. But there's no substitute for the real thing.'
'Can I look?'
'Of course not. Don't you learn anything? If it's taken out now, it loses half its energy. That was why it was important to leave her as long as possible. And it's nicely matted with blood, too, now, which is a bonus.'
'It's all moving too fast for me,' said Shaw. 'That comb ... does that tie in?'
'Well, the comb was a problem at first, actually. It's had to be sort of reconsecrated. We're not touching that either until the moment comes.'
She stretched. Her slim arms - leanly, tautly muscular - emerging from the folds of the black cloak. 'Then I shall uncover the hair and run the comb through it. You know how combing your hair can generate electricity? If you comb it in the dark, looking into a mirror, you can sometimes see blue sparks. Ever done that?'
'With my hair?'
Therese laughed. 'Poor Shaw. One day, perhaps.'
Shaw said, 'I'm sure it must have grown another quarter of an inch since I ... you know, since Ma Wagstaff.'
'There you are, you see. First you simply felt better. Now you even look better. And after tonight ...'
Shaw said, 'I'm not sure I really want to be there. I'll be so scared, I'll probably screw up or something.'
'Nonsense.' Therese lifted the hood of the cloak. 'How do I look?'
Her voice had a husky, slightly Scottish edge.
Shaw shuddered.
CHAPTER III
Mungo Macbeth figured at first, irrationally, that he must have reached the coast.
Came over the hill through rain which was almost equatorial in its intensity, and there was this sensation of bulk water below and beyond his headlights. Too wide for a river - assuming Britain didn't have anything on the scale of the Mississippi in flood.
And there was a lighthouse across the bay. The light was a radiant blue-white and sent a shallow beam over black waves he couldn't see. Only, unlike a lighthouse, it wasn't rotating, which was strange.
Macbeth stopped the car and lit a cigarette. He'd pulled in for gas near Macclesfield, looked up into the hard rain and the lightless hills and abruptly decided, after six years, to take up smoking again. Thus far it was not a decision he'd had cause to repent.
He turned off the wipers and the headlights; the rain spread molecules of blue light all over the windshield.
The sign had said Bridelow, so this had to be it.
Or rather, that had to be it.
The road carried on straight ahead and from here it looked likely to vanish after a few yards under the black water. Which was no way to die.
Macbeth finished his cigarette, slid the car into gear - still not used to gears - and then set off very slowly, headlights full on, thinking of Moira, how mad she was going to be when he showed up. Wondering what her hair would look like in the rain.
Moira Cairns: the One Big Thing.
The later it got, the harder it rained, the more frightened Lottie became of the night and what it might hold.
Not that she was inclined to show this fear. Not to the customers and especially not to herself. Every time she caught sight of her face in the mirror behind the bar, she tightened her lips and pulled them into what was supposed to be a wry smile. In the ghostly light from Matt's lovingly reconstructed gas-mantle, it looked, to her, gaunt and dreadful, corpselike.
Lottie shivered, longed for the meagre comfort of the kitchen stove and its hot-plate covers.
'All right, luv?' Stan Burrows said. 'Want a rest? Want me to take over?'
Big, bluff Stan, who'd been the brewery foreman - first to lose his job under the Gannons regime. If she could afford it, it would be nice to keep the pub, install Sun as full-time manager.
And then clear off.
Lottie shook her head. He must have noticed her agitation. She thought of a rational explanation to satisfy him.
'Stan, it isn't ... dangerous, is it? You know, with all this rain getting absorbed into the Moss. Doesn't flood or anything?'
'Well, I wouldn't go out theer for a midnight stroll.' Stan made a diving motion with stiffened fingers. 'Eight or nine foot deep in places. You might not drown but you'll get mucky. Still, I'm saying that - people have died out theer, but not for a long time. Don't think about it, best way.'
'Hard not to,' Lottie said. 'Living here.'
'Used to be folk,' said a retired farmer called Harold Halsall, 'as could take you across that Moss by night in any conditions. Follow the light, they used say. Beacon of the Moss. All dead now.'
'Fell in, most likely,' said Young Frank Manifold. 'Bloody place this is, eh? Moss on one side, moors on t'other, wi' owd quarries and such. Why do we bloody stay?'
Frank and his mates had spent the afternoon helping in the search for Sam Davis, found dead in a disused quarry just before dusk.
'Bad do, that, Frank.' Harold Halsall had picked up the reference. 'Used to be me brother's farm, that. Never did well out of it, our George - salesman now, cattle feed. Is it right that when they found yon lad's shotgun he'd loosed off both barrels?'