The Moon Tunnel

by The Moon Tunnel

  ‘Richard Dadd. A Moonlight Vision. There’s a sketch for the work in the Ashmolean at Oxford.’

  ‘And that would have been worth…?’

  Tobias shrugged: ‘The sketch is worth £600,000 today. We could be talking twice that – perhaps a lot more. The work was unsigned – but then so was the sketch, and most of Dadd’s output in his later life. There would be no doubt about the authenticity. His style and technique are unique – in the true sense of the word.’

  ‘Insurance?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Many private collectors took the view that their pictures were irreplaceable and to the confident Victorians insurance was often seen as expensive. I suspect it was a decision they regretted. Anyway, when Sir Robyn picked up the Dadd it was practically worthless – Dadd was in many ways a futuristic painter. Closer to our tastes today, in my view.’

  ‘Did the burglars get away with anything else?’

  Tobias shrugged: ‘Frankly, I’m not an expert. You could try one of the guides.’

  ‘And the Dadd was part of the collection because of the moonlight subject?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. There’s another theory – my theory, actually – that Sir Robyn’s purchase was double-edged. The Victorians loved moonlight for the romantic effect, of course, but also there was its association with madness, another obsession of the time. Richard Dadd died in Broadmoor Hospital in 1886. He’d spent most of his life in asylums. He killed his father with a kitchen knife. He was a lunatic.’

  Dryden glanced out of one of the tall, elegant Long Gallery windows and saw the moon rising over the box hedge. He wandered aimlessly through the rest of the house. Celia Johnson was by the exit, a bouncer in tweed.

  ‘I do hope you enjoyed your visit,’ she said.

  ‘The wartime burglary here – does anyone remember the details? What else was taken besides the pictures – that kind of thing?’

  She clutched at the silk scarf at her throat: ‘No. No, not at all. I think everyone has gone – Miss Hilgay, perhaps?’

  Outside the sun had set, but the waxing moon had risen now, and floated in the moat like a drowned face.

  12

  Humph’s cab flew back towards Ely and at precisely 6.00pm they saw the Octagon Tower on the distant cathedral light up, the silver-white halogen floodlights picking it out clearly on the horizon. The smog had seeped away from the town streets along with the warmth of the day and now the darkness of the Fens crowded in, pushing the light back into shop doorways or into amber pools at the base of lampposts. It was one of the things that Dryden loved about the place: the way that, unlike the big cities, the night brought a relief from the intrusion of light as shadows filled the alleyways of the old town.

  Humph dropped Dryden outside The Crow and set off for one of his regular weekly runs – ferrying a nightclub bouncer from Prickwillow out to his job in Newmarket. The Crow was closed but Dryden used his key to enter by the back door. The newsroom brought its familiar feeling of claustrophobia: you could have played five-aside football in his old office at the News – home to more than 100 journalists. The Crow’s version could just about accommodate a game of table tennis. He felt a pang of loss for a once-glamorous career, closely followed by a rush of guilt when he considered what the crash had done to Laura’s life; at least he could still hold a Biro.

  He logged on to his PC, secured an internet connection and browsed the local council site. He called up the electors’ roll and punched Hilgay into the search box. Four names appeared: three in one household out on the Fen in a nearby village and one in an address on the Jubilee Estate. If this was the last living member of the family which had once owned Osmington Hall then they’d certainly fallen on the hardest times of all. The Jubilee gobbled up about 80 per cent of the county’s social services budget in the city and about 75 per cent of police time – benefits for which the residents were less than appreciative.

  He switched to Google and typed in ‘Richard Dadd’. From artcyclopedia he found a link to artprice.com and found a Dadd auctioned in New York in 2003 – a canvas ten inches by six, it had fetched $2.6m. Dryden looked at his ruler, whistled, and searched for the website of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. There he found that many of its works were reproduced online. Dryden tapped in ‘Dadd’ and ‘moonlight’.

  A picture appeared and Dryden felt a sudden cold-ness: the sketch showed a moon rising through the leaves of a forest, an adolescent boy in rustic smock was watching it rise, as if witnessing a vision. The scene was dreamlike, and the nearby woods hid half-seen faces of elves and fairies. The picture held a spell, and Dryden understood why someone might have killed to get it. He hit the printout button, pocketed the A4 reproduction and closed down the PC.

  He walked to The Tower thinking about the moon, and lunatics. It was a gibbous moon, just four days from full, a bulging lantern of cold white light directly overhead. The town was silent, in that unnatural lull between the shops closing and the pubs getting into full swing. Somewhere, in the trees of the cathedral park, he heard an owl’s call followed by the tiny shriek of something being killed.

  As soon as he opened Laura’s door he knew she was awake. The COMPASS machine clattered into life.

  ‘SHOULDERS.’

  Dryden knew it was unreasonable but the peremptory tone of the COMPASS tickertape always irritated him. He knew the missing question mark was in his wife’s mind, but its absence made her request into an order, and he felt the familiar guilty urge to be free of his role as dutiful visitor.

  He put his head beside the PC screen hoping her eyes would be able to see him with peripheral vision but, oddly dry, they stared past him.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, sitting on the bedside and insinuating an arm behind her so that he could lift her forward, laying her head on his shoulder. He began to massage the muscles at the base of her neck, feeling the knots which caused her so much pain. He felt the familiar onrush of tenderness, and began to widen the movements of his hand in a sensuous and sinuous series of circles.

  As he worked he talked, feeling the warmth of her body raise his spirits, so that he found it easier than he’d expected to tell her about his visit to Buskeybay and his decision to sell off his mother’s belongings.

  He laid Laura’s head gently back on the pillow, then used a brush to arrange her hair. Then he uncorked the wine bottle beside the bed and poured himself a glass, lighting up the single Greek cigarette.

  There was silence and Dryden was irritated again, irritated that she didn’t respond in some way. She’d known his mother too, and could have shared the memory.

  He forced himself to talk. ‘I’m sorry you wasted time on the PoW – nobody ever escaped, I know. The curator at the museum, I’ve mentioned him before…’

  The COMPASS burst into life with a rapid: XXXXXXXX, part of their code, a signal that she wanted to butt in.

  ‘SEE 15.’

  On the PC’s desktop various folders held documents Laura would work on when she was conscious and alone. Dryden moved the cursor over to document 15 and double clicked, sitting up beside her on the raised pillow so that he could read the screen.

  There was a single line of text, the spelling mauled by Laura’s botched attempts to control the COMPASS. He reminded himself of the effort required for her to type out a single letter.

  MOD EMAIL SEE INBOX. NO POWS OUT. BUT SEE REOLY ITALIAN ASOC ALSO EMAIL AND MOD 2.

  Dryden swung the cursor into Laura’s e-mail inbox and retrieved the reply from the MoD’s information desk.

  Dear Ms Dryden,

  Thank you for your enquiry. As I understand your e-mail you wish to know if we have records of PoWs who escaped during the last war. Particularly from the camp at Ely, Cambridgeshire. I can confirm that no records exist of any escapes, or indeed attempted escapes from that camp, between 1940 and 1945. There were, by contrast, two from Walpole Camp, thirty miles to the north. Yours sincerely,

  Matthew Lumby

  Senior Information Officer

  M
inistry of Defence

  PS. Our research officers tell me that the National Association of Italian Ex-Servicemen, based in Manchester, has remarkably complete records on PoWs. You could e-mail them via the link below if you wish to trace any individual. www.naie.org.uk

  Dryden fished out the return e-mail from Manchester.

  Dear Ms Dryden,

  Thank you for contacting our association and for the attached copies of your e-mail to the MoD and their reply. They are correct in saying that none of the Italian servicemen imprisoned at Ely in the camp known as California ever escaped. However, we can tell you that post 1943 all Italian PoWs were reclassified following the surrender of the Italian government. As non-combatants, and foreign nationals, they were released and assigned to internment camps, as I am sure you will know. The Ely area was administered from Cambridge and their records show that one former PoW did go missing in this period – in October 1944. His name was Serafino Amatista. He was billeted on a series of farms in the Ely area, although he had to report to the internment camp set up at the nearby RAF base at Witchford. We took the liberty of attempting to trace Amatista’s history from our files in order to provide you with all the information at our disposal. We have to tell you that no one of that name was ever conscripted into any of the Italian armed forces, or indeed listed as a volunteer. There are two possible explanations for this inconsistency. Either Serafino was missed out from the lists of those under arms due to an administrative error (a common problem in Italy once war had broken out) or he gave a false name on being captured. In our experience captured Italian servicemen found without papers or ID who gave false names, of which there were several thousand, were often deserters who feared retribution from their compatriots who had fought bravely for their country.

  Please do e-mail again if we can help further. Our website contains further information about the thriving Italian communities in the UK.

  Yours sincerely,

  G. P. Ronchetti

  Vice President

  National Association of Italian Ex-Servicemen

  Dryden dipped back into the inbox for the second reply from the MoD.

  Dear Ms Dryden,

  I am glad the National Association was helpful. We have traced our records of Serafino Amatista and he is recorded as being captured in September 1942 by a British Army patrol which broke up a food riot in the outskirts of occupied Bari, southern Italy. He was one of a group of about 200 Italian servicemen who had sailed home from Parga, western Greece, shortly before the port fell to the Allies. A converted troop ship took all the prisoners to Southampton and Amatista arrived in Ely at the PoW camp in early October 1942.

  I hope this helps.

  Matthew Lumby

  ‘Right,’ said Dryden. ‘So Serafino Amatista escaped in 1944, but according to the official records he didn’t exist.’ Laura remained impassive, the COMPASS silent. Was the corpse in the tunnel Serafino Amatista? And why, if it was, had he tried to get back into the camp?

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Dryden, knowing he was being ungrateful for the work she’d done.

  He poured more wine. ‘There’s something else. The stuff they found in the tunnel with the body looks like loot to me – pearls, and the candlestick. There was a robbery, and a murder, in ’44 at Osmington Hall – remember the place? We went there with Mum, years ago. It may have got into the papers at the time – although I doubt it. Some of the nationals may have it online, and there’s an archive in Cambridge of the local papers. If you e-mail this guy he’ll let you on.’

  Dryden tapped a name on the end of document 15. The county archives were now stored in a fireproof facility at the central library following a blaze which had threatened to destroy two centuries’ worth of data. At the same time stored back-copies of newspapers were photographed and put online.

  ‘The Crow may have done something on it – and there may be some background. See what you can find.’

  The COMPASS jumped into life: ‘I TRIED.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Dryden, suddenly aware how ungrateful he had been. He tore off the tickertape paper and lay on the bed beside his wife, cradling her head against his chest. Turned away from the COMPASS she couldn’t talk, but he knew she enjoyed these enforced silences. He held her tight, and imagined that none of it had ever happened, not the crash, not the coma: life without the COMPASS.

  When he finally got back to the cab Humph could tell by his eyes he’d been crying. He offered Dryden another bottle of single malt and fired the Capri into life.

  ‘Home?’ said Humph, regretting the word.

  By the time they’d parked up at Barham’s Dock the boat, in battleship grey, was bathed in moonlight. Dryden listened as the Capri drove off towards the distant main road, its progress marked by the clatter of its loose exhaust. Then there was silence, pointed up by the trickling of the water along the river bank and the plash of the boat’s bilge pumps.

  PK 129 was a former naval inshore patrol boat. Steel in construction, it had lumpy, industrial lines and the paraphernalia of a real working boat. Dryden had always despised the glossy white sleekness of the gin palaces which crowded the river in high summer. In the wheelhouse was a simple plaque which read ‘Dunkirk: 1940’, a romantic touch which had instantly sealed her purchase, financed by the sale of their London flat. He felt tethered here to reality, but with an avenue of escape always open along the river.

  He opened up the cockpit tarpaulin and stepped in, pressing a button to fire the generator into life. The floodlight mounted on the deck blazed into the night, revealing 200 yards of riverside footpath. Dryden imagined the beam picking out the flailing arms of survivors in the water on that night in 1940 at Dunkirk, the sea calmed by the glistening oil spilt from the smoking wrecks of the rescue boats. Something caught his eye mid-river, but it was only a gliding black swan, its red beak catching the moonlight.

  He fetched a glass, sloshed in an inch of Talisker and returned to the deck. Looking up at the moon he thought of its light falling through the green skylight onto the floor of the Italians’ makeshift theatre. In the shadows he placed Serafino Amatista, the face still unseen, the deserter’s eyes watching always, scared of discovery. Who had been his friends, and who his enemies? Who had lain in wait for him in the tunnel under the old camp? And what had made a coward of him in the summer heat of wartime Greece?

  Even on the day of the reprisal Siegfried had never believed it would happen until he said the word itself. Then came the echo, amongst the cacophony of rifle shots, in the deep ravine beyond the village. He remembered so little of that day but so much of that moment: the pungent scent of the Greek oregano on his fingers, the tobacco on the breeze, and the shuffle of the firing squad’s boots in the silence.

  There was only one image from before that moment, before the gunshots made the crows rise: the old man, his father’s age, being dragged from the house where they’d found the guns, and where the girl in the blue dress played on the step. The old man clutching a wooden puppet to his chest; taking it like a talisman to the site of the execution. Then, defiant, he’d smoked the cigarette Siegfried had given him.

  In the end he’d shouted the order because he felt if he waited longer, allowed the minutes of the old man’s life to lengthen any further, he’d buckle and never finish the job. The man’s life was the length of a cigarette, smoked with a shaking hand.

  He’d given him sixty seconds more, after the butt fell to the earth. The tension he knew was unbearable and unfair, but he’d promised, and he could see the old man’s lips moving in prayer, the puppet – a crudely made doll – still held. There was no rope, no post, no need. The old man stood.

  With five seconds left he heard the running feet. If he stopped now he knew the man would live. And then what of Siegfried? How could he live with such shame? So he counted on, hearing the footsteps, and as he shouted ‘Fire!’ the flash of the blue dress fell into the old man’s arms. His men, petrified by killing, fired blindly.

  The
old man was no longer there, superseded by an image, like a clip of newsreel: a bundle of obscenely flexible limbs, tumbling into the grave Siegfried’s men had already dug. But the girl lay in her dress, the blue swamped with red.

  ‘A single volley,’ he’d said, knowing the villagers would have heard. He scanned the rocks above, had he heard a stone fall? A goat, perhaps.

  He had wished many times that it had not been him standing in that noonday sun, his shadow crowding in around his boots. He had killed often in that war, and while he pitied them all he remembered only the old man in the ravine with his puppet, and the girl who had run to him. They’d buried her later, on the high pass, and he’d marked the spot with a cairn, knowing he’d never return. After the war, he’d told his men, he’d lead the family to the grave. They’d marched on, never looking back.

  He’d rehearsed then, as they crossed the snowline, the arguments he would use to salve his conscience: that they’d found the guns in the old man’s house; that they’d made him do it, the villagers of Agios Gallini, killing the guard he had selected for them from the occupying civilian authorities. Serafino, a gentle man, an Italian for God’s sake! But they’d killed Serafino, taken his body into the hills, leaving only his bloodied rifle. Siegfried had to respond, to impose the authority which it was his responsibility to hold. The young men had gone, into the mountains or the factories of the cities. Only the old man remained, with the women and the children. The old man with his puppet, and the guns hidden in the grain store. And then the running footsteps of the granddaughter, the accident which no one would believe.

  And now, perhaps, his own death lay at the end of this endless railway journey.

  The carriage, fetid and shrouded by padlocked blinds, trundled on. Outside, unseen, was England. He’d liked England, and liked the English, and he’d wept with the others as the landing craft had taken them off the Normandy beaches, out to the prison ship, through the floating bodies of the victorious.