He shuffled the papers again, sipped a glass of water and carried on. ‘We can now say that the man found in the tunnel died between 1970 and 1990. The conditions in the soil, particularly the encasement of the body in the tunnel, had greatly accelerated the deterioration of the bones, particularly from the action of water and parasites. This clearly alters the nature of the investigation and I have applied to the Home Office for permission to undertake an exhumation to obtain DNA samples. While it is unlikely further evidence is available, I do not think, in the light of the brutal murder of Professor Valgimigli, that we can leave any stone unturned.’
Dryden’s mind raced; his hand went up.
Cavendish-Smith glanced at his superior and both stood. ‘As Sir Douglas has said, we are determined to make an arrest soon. I’m afraid that at this time we can take no more questions. Thank you.’
Everyone else was on their feet, the room a minor riot of jostling camera crews. But Dryden sat, stunned. Where was Serafino Amatista? Whose body had the archaeologist uncovered? Had the PoW ID disc been planted to lead the police astray? The corpse had been found with some of the loot from Osmington Hall, and so was clearly linked to the ‘gardeners’ of California. But why were the gardeners still using the tunnel more than twenty-five years after the end of the war? The heart of the mystery must lay with the Roma family, and at Il Giardino. But first Dryden needed to move quickly, for Dr Siegfried Viktor Mann had a story to tell as well.
28
Vintry House was an Edwardian villa, complete with a covered verandah which ran around three sides of the two-storey house, with neo-Gothic dormer windows dotting the high tiled roof. Dryden could imagine the whole façade swinging open on hinges to reveal a life-sized doll’s house. A brick wall encircled the property, topped with black iron spiked railings, while the garden within was thick with rhododendron, laurel, and magnolia.
He walked up the overgrown driveway, the unpruned laurels weeping on his head in the dense chill mist which seemed to sandbag all sounds except that of a radio playing dimly in the depths of the house, Classic FM perhaps, or Radio Three, a voice breaking a short silence to introduce the next selection. It was Vaughan Williams, and the volume rose. Dryden climbed the verandah steps and was thankful to be under cover. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and squeezed out the droplets of water.
The door opened before he could knock: Dr Mann stood, a coffee cup in his hand, and despite the ordeal of his arrest the china was steady. The white shirt was still immaculate, the bow-tie neat and high at the base of his tanned throat. Stepping into what light there was threw his face into relief, the lines of age etched deep, perhaps by something more than the passage of time. For the first time Dryden could see that this face had been built from some private agony, a face haunted by life.
‘Mr Dryden, an early bird?’ He could hear it now, of course, the slight edge of the Bavarian accent which clipped the vowels, and the over-punctilious syllables. But the voice was still light, the breezy tone that of a confident English academic. Mann nodded, and Dryden, seeing signs everywhere, thought the mannerism oddly military, the kind of practised movement which could dismiss a subordinate.
‘I can’t think of any good reason why you should speak to me,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s about Serafino Amatista.’
Dryden stepped back from the threshold. It was a trick he had used many times and with surprising success. The offered retreat, the winning lack of pushy Fleet Street tactics.
Dr Mann shivered as a skein of mist wrapped itself around the verandah, and the faltering light seemed to dim further. ‘In the past you have been kind,’ he said. ‘So, please. Coffee, perhaps, but I told the police everything.’
The house gave few clues to Mann’s early life, but what was there was plain to see. As coffee was fetched Dryden was invited to look round. The villa had been fashionably restored to its Edwardian dignity: stripped pine floors reflected the wall lights and an oak sideboard carried a china fruit bowl. Over the smouldering fire hung an enlarged photograph of Mann seated in what looked like a village square, a group of children at his feet, all of them shaded by an almond tree. An old man sat with him, worry beads clasped in the hand that also held a walking stick. The scene was lit by the fierce glare of the Mediterranean sun which bleached out the edges of the photograph.
On the sideboard a gilt frame held a picture of an elderly couple, the father with pince-nez, the mother’s hair in a tight grey bun. The elaborate dark wood of the chairs on which they sat was delicately carved, and behind them on a whitewashed wall hung a crucifix. A smaller snapshot had been more recently framed in modernistic chrome, showing a young Mann in uniform, jet black hair tucked beneath an infantryman’s forage cap.
Mann returned with coffees and threw a split log on the fire. They stood in awkward silence as the wood crackled and the world outside faded away in the thickening fog. The light level dropped, and when Mann lit a cigarette the match head blazed, throwing the lines of his face into even sharper relief.
‘Why did the police arrest you?’ asked Dryden.
Mann shrugged. ‘They had suspicions, understandably I think – but an arrest was unwarranted.’
‘Suspicions? That you had killed Professor Valgimigli?’
‘Azeglio?’ He laughed at that. ‘Perhaps they did think so. But why would I kill Azeglio Valgimigli? I had been his tutor, he was a fine student, he became my friend. I helped, I think, in a small way to get him his post here at the dig. It was something he wanted very much. No – I did not kill Azeglio. The police accused me of another murder – the man in the tunnel. They thought it was Amatista, but now…’
Dryden saw his chance. ‘Serafino Amatista was the village guard of Agios Gallini, a village you know…’
Mann held up his hand: ‘Please. All these matters were dealt with in 1947, Mr Dryden. The police have these records too. My position was always clear, and was corroborated by eyewitnesses. The action we took followed the discovery of a significant threat to the Wehrmacht and, indeed, the Italian civil authorities. I was an officer, the senior officer in this case, and I was compelled to observe the regulations set down in such cases. The tribunal in Salonika ruled that our actions could not constitute a war crime of any kind.’ But Mann’s smile was uncertain, and flickered out.
‘Though you do regret this… incident?’
Mann’s jaw jerked oddly to one side and Dryden saw the anger in his eyes. ‘The occupation of Greece was a brutal period. I have spent much of my life trying to help repair the damage that was done,’ he said, glancing at the picture over the fire. ‘For the rest of the war – until my capture by the British in 1944 – I was in charge of the garrison on Aegina. My time there is without blemish. Quite the opposite. Please consult the records if you wish.’
Dryden held up his hands. ‘No need. You were a prisoner? Here?’
Mann nodded, turning over the logs with a fire iron, the handle of which was fashioned into a cherub.
‘This man, Amatista, did you know he had preceded you at California?’ asked Dryden.
Mann paused. ‘Yes. I informed the authorities – in 1945 – that he was a deserter.’
‘How did you know he’d been in the camp?’
‘I found his picture. Family effects were left in the huts, I was detailed to organize their collection to a central point where we boxed everything up and informed the British they could take them away. They never did – at least not before our repatriation. As I say, this… man’s picture was amongst the others. A snapshot with a sweetheart, I think, sharing a bicycle ride. It was not a face I will ever forget.’
Mann threw another log on the fire and continued. ‘But it is not Serafino in the tunnel. So I am a free man again, Mr Dryden. What can I tell you?’
Dryden felt the tables expertly turned. ‘Amatista was a member of a group in the camp called the gardeners. They dug the tunnel and used it to carry out night-time burglaries on properties they cased while doing farm work. There is
a picture, a painting, that I would like to recover for its rightful owner.’
‘I know nothing of this.’
‘The pearls they found – they come from the same house from which the painting was taken.’
Mann brought his hands together, an English gentleman subtly signalling that his guest should leave.
‘Did you know the tunnel was there?’ asked Dryden.
‘No. Tunnels are for escape. No one had escaped from California – we knew that. So why would we look for a tunnel?’
‘Did you not want to escape yourselves?’
‘Of course. But time was short. By 1944 we knew the war was almost over. It was clear that Hitler, and those who had supported him politically, were doomed. There were many tensions within the camp. Why escape? All we had to do was wait.’
‘You were not a member of the Nazi Party?’
Mann shook his head briskly.
‘Did you ever meet Amatista?’
Mann laughed. ‘Certainly not.’ Dryden heard the lie in the silence that followed.
‘Why did you buy this house?’
Mann put down his coffee. ‘Let me show you something.’
He led the way upstairs. The hall was wide on the first floor and bedroom doors stood closed. But a large window looked down on the garden at the back of the house. An overgrown lawn and flower beds led to the edge of a pine wood. Mist drifted across the tree tops, and beyond stretched the Black Fen.
‘My wife kept the gardens, you see,’ he said. ‘I have less interest.’
Dryden nodded, wondering why they had climbed for the view.
‘The camp is there.’ And Dryden saw it, the standing caravan that had been Azeglio’s office, the cleared site where the huts had stood, just glimpsed through the misty tree-tops.
‘I used to look at the house from within the wire – the pine woods were not there then, of course. Perhaps you do not understand, Mr Dryden, what we felt – those army officers who became PoWs here in England.’
Dryden let him go on. ‘We had been told – by the Party, and by their friends – that we would be tortured here. Executed. But things were very different. We came to value our time here, to recognize the kindnesses and the civilized way in which we were treated. I used to look at this house, it was empty then and in ruins, and think that – maybe – one day, I would own it. It was derelict after the war. I came to Cambridge – the university – and bought a house in the city. Then one day we came to Ely and, I was astonished, the house still stood, the price was low, so we bought. That was 1985.’
They went down and out into the garden. The drive was lined with trees, many unusual, few the same, all overgrown and unkempt, dim shadows in the drifting mist. Dryden felt the moisture gathering again in his hair and on his eyelids.
‘The trees? Did you plant them?’ said Dryden.
‘My wife, as I said. Did you know that there is a kind of code held within the choice of trees in a garden such as this?’
Mann walked through the mist to the first tree by the drive. ‘This is a beech – for prosperity. And next, the Black Poplar – for courage. Did you know this?’
Dryden shook his head. In the centre of the lawn stood a tree he did not recognize. ‘And this?’
‘The cinnamon tree: forgiveness,’ said Mann.
‘What do you think happened to Serafino Amatista?’ said Dryden. ‘Could he still be alive? After all, he’d faked his death once before.’
Mann shivered and seemed not to hear. ‘I hope not. I wished him dead many times. If we had met I would have done it myself. It was not to be.’ He turned back without a further word, the mist closing in to fill the space where he had been.
29
Sunrise bathed Ten Mile Bank in a cool green light, like the reflection of water on a swimming pool ceiling. The mist shrank from the sun, lying thick and white in the geometric dykes and drains which hemmed in the village. Dryden got out of Humph’s cab and rested a takeaway coffee on the Capri’s roof. The sky was cloudless and the light thin, as if the colour had been stretched to meet the distant horizons. He sipped, thinking about the depths hidden in any family story: the small uncorrected lies, the accepted hatreds, the unspoken loves. He thought about Marco Valgimigli and his three sons, and the moon tunnel. He imagined crawling forward, the wooden packing crate walls crowding in, and even here, beneath an amphitheatre sky, he felt his heart race from claustrophobia.
Il Giardino was silent, but the neon sign flickered, and the white blinds were up on the restaurant windows. From a chimney pot on the flat roof a thin trickle of smoke rose, untroubled by a breeze. Dryden checked his watch: 9.14am. He knew by experience that Pepe Roma opened at 7.00am, in time to catch early deliveries to the sugar beet factory, and to provide breakfast for the HGV drivers who bothered to make a diversion off the A10 en route to the ports at Lynn and Boston.
Humph swung his left leg into the spare space Dryden had recently vacated, stretching out the limb with an audible creak.
‘You stay there,’ said Dryden, knowing Humph was immune to sarcasm.
He found Pepe in the yard at the rear of Il Giardino, already in his white apron, drawing deeply on a cigarette. He looked older than he must be – his black slicked-back hair thinning to reveal a hint of the skull beneath.
‘Hi,’ said Dryden, making him jump. ‘Sorry. It’s a bad time.’
‘You’re early,’ said Pepe, grinding the cigarette butt into the leaf litter of the yard where hundreds of others were rotting. ‘Coffee?’
Inside a distant radio played and Dryden reminded himself that this was home for Pepe, and the elderly matriarch of the Valgimiglis. Somewhere he could hear heavy footsteps, and briefly something else – the sound of weeping?
‘Mum’s upset,’ said Pepe, twisting the chrome scoops full of ground coffee into the espresso machine. He opened the slatted door behind the counter and shouted something rapidly in Italian.
‘Do you always talk in Italian at home?’
He shrugged. ‘At home – mostly. That was how we were brought up. English at school – so why not two languages? And Mum never gave it up – a badge of honour. The schizophrenic family – we change our names to blend in better, and then jabber on in Italian at home.’
Dryden pulled up a chair by the counter. ‘Which is why I didn’t know Azeglio Valgimigli was your brother.’
Pepe’s back stiffened, and he didn’t say anything as he finished making the coffee. Eventually he sat and eyed Dryden coolly. ‘Every family has its black sheep,’ he said. ‘We had two.’
They laughed, and Dryden let him carry on. ‘My brother,’ he said, savouring the word. ‘He left in 1985, nearly two years after Dad died. The café was left to Mum so there was nothing else for him to hang around for – he’s clever. Sorry, was clever. Did you see… was it you who…?’
‘I found his body, yes. The details, you don’t want to know. The police…’
‘They talked to Mum… She was upset, of course, but she’s used to her sons providing the pain in her life. She always said he was too good for us. That was Dad’s fault – the private schools. Spoilt – a very English vice. In Italy all children are spoilt – so they don’t stand out. No chance of that in my case.’ He laughed, lighting up a fresh cigarette and letting the nicotine go the long way round his lungs.
‘Bitter?’ asked Dryden.
‘Not particularly. I’m just not very proud of my brothers – sorry, I know this is bad, un-English perhaps. Azeglio is dead. But he was no better than Jerome, who lives a life apart from his family and thinks a call at Christmas is good enough for Mamma.’
‘Jerome? How long has it been – since he left?’
‘Jerome? I couldn’t forget that. It was the day after Dad’s funeral. He and Azeglio had planned everything. There was some secret which they never told anyone, so it was all done in whispers. But we knew Jerome was going home – to Mestre – to try and raise some capital for the business. He flew that day – the day after we bur
ied Dad. Didn’t say goodbye, not even to Mum. There was a letter, some cards. Then later the calls. It is all she has of him, and it destroyed her.’ He ground the cigarette down into the ashtray and lit a third.
Dryden hatched a suspicion as corrosive as a lie. The moon tunnel’s victim had disappeared between 1970 and 1990. Jerome Roma had left home in early 1984 and become a disembodied voice, living a life reported only by the brother he resembled so much.
‘And Azeglio?’
‘He went too, but he took his time. He had a university education to complete, an education Mum paid for despite the debts. It was a dreadful three years. Azeglio got his degree and went to Italy as well – to Padua, then Lucca. Jerome had moved to Milan, a business opportunity. There was a woman too, but no marriage. Azeglio said he was happy. Both sent money; Mum always sent it back.’ He tossed a matchbox on to the Formica tabletop. ‘My brothers,’ he said, raising his coffee cup.
‘Azeglio didn’t bother with us. A letter sometimes, bragging about their home in the mountains, the flat by the university, the holidays. There are no children, so they live their lives. Mamma says she doesn’t care. But we can all hear the tears, yes?’
They listened to the silence, suspiciously deep. ‘Still in debt?’ said Dryden, breaking the spell.
‘We’re going bust very, very slowly. With a bit of luck she’ll be dead before we have to sell up,’ he said, tipping his chin upwards towards the ceiling. ‘She’s looking forward to death. To be with Dad. Every week she goes to the grave, every market day at noon, and tells him it won’t be long. That’s what Azeglio and Jerome did for her, Dryden, they gave her a life that wasn’t worth living.’
Dryden let that hang in the air. ‘I understand you had an argument with Azeglio – at California.’
Pepe looked through the window to where the rising sun was remorselessly flattening the Fen landscape. ‘He came back here. To see Mamma. I don’t think he had that right. We’re OK – this is my home now. He’d abandoned us…’
The Moon Tunnel Page 19