'Eh, that were just a joke, Ernest. Can't you take a joke any more?'
'From you, Ma ...'
'But this is deadly serious,' Ma said soberly.
The sun had vanished. Ridiculously, Ernie thought he heard the Moss burp. 'All right.' he said. From the inside pocket of his jacket he brought out some papers bound with a rubber band and swapped his regular specs for his reading glasses. Be public knowledge soon enough, anyroad.
Ernie cleared his throat.
'Seems our lad,' he said, 'was somewhere around his late twenties. Quite tall too, for the time, 'bout five-five or six. Peat preserves a body like vinegar preserves onions. The bones had gone soft, but the skin was tanned to perfection. Even the hair, as we know, remained. Anyroad, medical tests indicate no reason to think he wasn't in good shape. Generally speaking.'
'Get to t'point,' Ma said irritably.
'Well, he was killed. In no uncertain manner. That's to say, they made sure of the job. Blunt instrument, first of all. Back of the head. Then, er ... strangulation. Garotte.'
'Eh?'
'Garotte? Well . . He wondered if she ever had nightmares. Probably wouldn't be the usual kind if she did.
Little Benjie, Ma's grandson, had wandered across the forecourt with that big dog of his. 'Hey.' Ernie scooped a hand at him. 'Go away.'
He lowered his voice. 'They probably put a cord - leather string, sinew - around his neck and ... inserted a stick in the back of the cord and, as it were ... twisted it, the stick. Thus tightening the sinew around his ... that is, fragments of the cord have been found actually embedded. In his neck.'
Ma Wagstaff didn't react like a normal old woman. Didn't recoil or even wince. 'Well?' she said.
'Well what?' said Ernie.
'Anythin' else?'
Ernie went cold. How could she know there was more to it? He looked over her head at the bloodied sky. 'Well, seems they ... they'd have pulled his head back ...'
His throat was suddenly dry. He'd read this report four times, quite dispassionately at first and then with a growing excitement. But an academic excitement. Which was all right. Emotionally he'd remained unmoved. It had, after all, happened a good two thousand years ago - almost in prehistory.
'So the head'd be sort of pulled back ... with the ... the garotte.'
When they'd brought the bogman out, a little crowd had assembled on the edge of the Moss. Ernie had decided it would be all right to take a few of the older children to witness this historic event. There'd been no big ceremony about it; the archaeologists had simply cut out a big chunk of peat with the body in the middle, quite small, half his legs missing and his face all scrunched up like a big rubber doll that'd been run over. Not very distressing; more like a fossil than a corpse.
They'd wrapped him in clingfilm and put him in a wooden box.
Ernie was staring into Ma Wagstaff's eyes, those large brown orbs glowing amber out of that prune of a face, and he was seeing it for the first time, the real horror of it, the death of a young man two thousand years ago.
'He'd be helpless,' Ernie said. 'Semi-concussed by the blow, and he couldn't move, couldn't draw breath because of the garotte ...'
Ma nodded.
'That was when they cut his throat,' Ernie said hoarsely.
Ma nodded again. Behind her, out on the pub forecourt, a huge cheer suddenly went up. The new landlord must have appeared.
'You knew,' Ernie said. He could feel the blood draining out of his face. 'You knew ...'
'It were the custom,' Ma Wagstaff said, voice very drab. Three times dead. See, Ernest, I were holding out the hope as this'd be just a body ... some poor devil as lost his way and died out on t'Moss.' She sighed, looking very old. 'I knew really. I knew it was goin' t'be what it is.'
'A sacrifice?' It was growing dark.
'Not just any sacrifice, We're in trouble, Ernest.'
Sometimes Shaw wanted to say, I feel like just being with you is illegal.
Some mornings he'd be thinking, I've got to get out of this. I'll be arrested. I'll be ruined.
But then, all through the day, the longing would be growing. And as he changed to go out, as he looked in the mirror at his thin, pale face, his receding hairline and his equally receding jawline, he saw why he could never get out ... not as long as there was anything she wanted from him. Not as long as he continued to change.
They drove to a country pub and parked the Saab very noticeably under a window at the front, being careful to lock it and check the doors. He wondered how exactly she'd stolen it and obtained the keys, but he knew that if he asked her she would simply laugh at him.
In the pub, as usual, he couldn't prise his hungry eyes from her. She sat opposite him, wearing an old fox fur coat, demurely fastened to the neck. Shaw wondered if, underneath the coat, above (and inside) her black tights, she was naked.
With that thought, he felt his desire could lift their heavy, glass-topped, cast-iron table a good two inches from the floor.
'You could arouse the dead,' he said, almost without breath.
'Would you like to?' Therese's lips smiled around her glass of port.
'Pardon?'
'Arouse the dead?'
He laughed uncomfortably. Quite often she would say things, the meaning of which, in due course, would become devastatingly apparent.
Later, two miles out of Macclesfield town, Shaw driving again, she said, 'All right, let's deal with this, shall we?'
'What?'
But she was already unzipping his trousers, nuzzling her head into his lap. He braked hard, in shock, panic and uncontainable excitement. 'Yes, Shaw,' she said, voice muffled, 'you can stop the car.'
'Somebody ... somebody might see us ... you know, somebody walking past.'
'Well,' Therese said, burrowing, 'I suppose somebody might see you ...'
Five minutes later, while he was still shivering, she said, 'Now let's get rid of the car.' She had the interior light on, re-applying lipstick, using the vanity mirror. Her fur coat was still fastened. He would never know if she was naked underneath it.
'How are we going to get home?'
'Taxi. There's a phone box across the road. I'll ring up for one while you're dispensing with the car.'
A shaft of fear punctured his moment of relief. 'Disp ... ? How?'
'I seem to remember there's a bus shelter along here. What ... about a quarter of a mile ... ? Just take it and ram it into that.'