By the time he made it to the front door the corridor beyond was deserted, an interior door leading from it also reduced to splinters. Inside the flat there was further evidence of bad manners: two officers were rapidly ransacking the place while others used hammers and crowbars to rip up the edges of the threadbare carpet. Josh Atkinson was in the living room in an armchair, his head back and his blond hair splayed on the leatherette. He was pinned to it by two officers, who restrained his shoulders. Cavendish-Smith was reading him his rights but Josh wasn’t listening. He looked stoned, the well-black eyes viewing Dryden with amusement.
‘In here, sir.’ It was the archaeological expert from the Regional Crime Squad at the bedroom door. Inside the carpet had been ripped back and three floorboards removed. In the recess below was a long folded sheet which had been turned back to reveal a small procession of stolen artefacts: bone brooches and combs, some gold pins and clasps, some leather scabbards and a curved metal bar, dotted with semiprecious jewels, but of uncertain purpose.
Cavendish-Smith called for the TV crew to follow him in to take a closer look.
Dryden moved through the flat to the back door and down a short garden to the alley. The anonymous, ubiquitous white van was parked across the back gate, its side door open, as two uniformed officers searched the interior. Sitting in one of the passenger seats was Ma Trunch, the mobile wedges of flesh which made up her face set now in stone. It was a cold night, and her face was free of sweat, but Dryden detected a thin line of tears in the folds leading to her mouth. On her lap was a wooden box, made from the same mahogany as her polished museum cabinets at Little Castles. The box was open, and lying on the green baize was a short sword, the blade a perfect silver grey, the handle corded in gold.
‘Ma,’ said Dryden. ‘Something for the collection?’
She looked utterly lost. ‘I sold the business,’ she said flatly, ‘for this.’
Dryden saw them then, two figures in a distant conversation, standing in the groundmist of the night, circled by Boudicca. Ma touched the blade with a delicate finger. A uniformed officer opened the driver’s door and showed Ma a set of handcuffs.
‘Can I hold it?’ she asked Dryden, ignoring the policeman.
The officer slipped in beside her, nodding. Ma took up the sword and held it up, the blade close to her lips, feeling the weight, feeling the past. Then she replaced it delicately, and folded the green material over it as lovingly as she would have buried a child.
Dryden left them and went back into the garden. Josh Atkinson now sat on a disused coal-bunker, smoking a cigarette, watched by the woman DC, his hands cuffed. The necklace of another set of cuffs joined one ankle to a cast-iron bolt on the coal bunker.
Josh smiled when he saw Dryden. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘What a fuck-up.’
‘Indeed,’ said Dryden. ‘What did you tell ’em?’ he asked, nodding to the policewoman.
Josh stubbed out the cigarette. ‘They made me do it.’
Dryden sat next to him. ‘I guess we’re gonna hear that quite a bit. What did they pay you?’
‘I think that’s enough…’ The constable stood. ‘The sergeant will be with him soon.’
Then they heard a woman’s sob, deep and guttural, and the officer who had handcuffed Ma Trunch appeared at the back gate: ‘Joan – can you help? She’s pretty upset…’
The detective reluctantly left Dryden alone with her prisoner, checking the handcuffs first. They heard her trying to comfort Ma as they edged her towards a police van which was parked at the end of the alley.
Dryden took out the Greek cigarettes he saved for his visits to The Tower and offered Josh one, placing it between the pale lips, which trembled slightly.
‘So you got the stuff out of the ground,’ said Dryden. ‘But who shifted it? Who found the buyers?’
Josh tried a cold stare but his eyes swam from the impact of too much nicotine. They listened to the officers overturning the flat.
‘I thought it was Alder – the funeral director,’ said Dryden. ‘But why did I think that? Because a lowlife petty thief called Russell Flynn told me. A mutual friend, I think? You might like to know that the police may well be interviewing Russell – right now. My advice – get your retaliation in first.’
Josh tried to calculate an answer but his brain had been derailed. ‘I’ll phone a lawyer,’ he said.
‘Get a good one,’ said Dryden. ‘My guess is you got the sword out – and took Russell with you. The big question is when. And did Azeglio Valgimigli catch you at it – which is why he’s dead?’
Clearly this configuration had not occurred to Valgimigli’s digger. His face slumped, the heavy features briefly arranged as they would be in ten years’ time. ‘Jesus. They can’t think that.’
‘Really? I’d practise your story if I were you. These guys aren’t jumping like this because of a few pottery shards and an Anglo-Saxon sword. This is a murder investigation, and you’re a suspect.’
Josh was suddenly babbling. ‘Russ said there’d be nobody there. He was right. We never saw Valgimigli. We just got the sword and got out.’ His hands shook violently as he raised the cigarette for another drag.
Dryden nodded. ‘I’d work on that,’ he said, believing him.
34
‘Fun?’ said Humph as Dryden got back in the Capri. He’d texted the cabbie to pick him up at the end of Gladstone Gardens.
‘Laugh a minute. You OK?’
Humph was an odd colour, a tinge of green overlaying the usual baby-pink. Sweat twinkled on his brow under the interior light.
‘Something I ate,’ said the cabbie.
‘That hardly narrows things down, does it?’ said Dryden, rummaging in the glove compartment where he selected a dark rum. ‘The Tower please, pronto.’
The nurse at reception looked up as Dryden strode through. ‘Your wife has a visitor – her father.’
Dryden’s pulse raced: it must be bad news.
Gaetano was in the corridor, cradling a coffee in a paper cup. They embraced wordlessly, and then Dryden held him at arm’s length. ‘What’s wrong – Rosa?’
Gaetano shook his head. He was barrel-chested, with no neck but a bull’s head. But the eyes were soft and brown like his daughter’s, and retirement had made him less bowed by the burden of work.
‘She is well, Philip. She sends her love. I, I… this…’ he said, showing Dryden a printout from a computer. It was an e-mail from Laura: Come immediately if you can. Come alone.
‘But she won’t say anything – I have been here all day. Nothing.’
‘Sometimes it happens,’ said Dryden. ‘The doctors always said it would – sometimes for weeks. We have to be patient.’
‘But there is something on the screen – for you,’ he said, biting his lip.
He was right. Laura always kept a document on screen called MESSAGE BOARD. During the day she added thoughts as they came to her and Dryden could read them when he arrived in the evening.
There was only one new message: P. PRIVATE DOC OPEM. LET HIM READ IT ALONE. LX.
Gaetano was by the window, looking out at the monkey puzzle tree.
‘She wants you to read something.’ Gaetano came to the bedside and Dryden put the cursor on the document, hitting the print button. ‘She wants you to read it alone. I’ll be outside – by the cab.’
He gave his father-in-law the printout and fled. Outside he drank in the air, trying to counteract the lingering effects of sleeplessness. He glanced at the Capri, but Humph was asleep, his head back on the seat rest, his language tape playing. He fingered the button in his pocket and thought of the family secrets he’d uncovered at Il Giardino. Should he tell Cavendish-Smith everything he knew, everything he suspected? He watched the moon, remembering Valgimigli’s butchered head, steaming in the cool night air.
Suddenly Humph’s tape ended, the Capri’s interior light showing that the cabbie was slumped in innocent sleep. The silence was punctuated by the crunch of footsteps on gravel and Gaetano ap
peared from the circle of light surrounding The Tower’s foyer. He sat with Dryden, a piece of paper crunched tightly in one fist. Even by moonlight Dryden could see the pallor of his skin, and his hand trembled slightly as he searched for a cigarette in the breast pocket of his shirt. Dryden took one too, happy to share the moment wordlessly.
‘She said it was my choice,’ said Gaetano, and Dryden could tell he’d been crying. ‘I could show you – or it would be our secret. A family secret. But you are family, and I want you to understand, as she does not.’
He handed Dryden the piece of paper. It was a list of names found on the internet, sheet number 75 out of 87. The list had got to R and Dryden scanned quickly to find what he was meant to find. There, half-way down the page, was Serafino Ricci – the deserter of Agios Gallini. A dozen names above him he saw Gaetano Raffo.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dryden, playing for time. There was only one list upon which Laura would have plausibly found Serafino’s original name: a list of deserters from the Italian army.
Gaetano rested a hand on his son-in-law’s arm. They had never been close, but they had respected each other, and the future had always held the promise that they would be closer.
‘Please, I think we do. This is a list of dishonour, a list of cowards. I have not been honest. Laura is… disappointed in this.’
Laura’s judgements on her father had always been equivocal. She had loved him, and loved him for loving her mother. But he had treated his daughter differently from his sons, even if it was, simply, with a different brand of the overbearing authority he imposed on them. In the appliance of this authority Gaetano’s military past had figured large: he was proud to have fought for his country, and extolled the virtues of the discipline it had taught him. Their north London flat had displayed several pictures from Gaetano’s time in uniform, and in pride of place a list of battle honours for his division, which had taken part in the glorious march into Egypt of 1940.
‘What happened?’ asked Dryden. The reception floodlight clicked out, leaving them in the moonlight, although the Capri’s lamp still flickered.
Gaetano drew on an Italian cigarette, making the tip burn an angry amber. The silence lengthened from a minute to two. Then he took a deep breath.
‘My last day as a soldier was in a trench, in the desert. It was dusk. Yes,’ he said, seeing it. ‘The sun was down. We were looking forward to falling back, perhaps to go home. We were due leave – and the rumour was that the ships would take us, quickly, away from the battle. I was talking to a man from my village, young Biasetti, the son of my father’s best friend. We shared a cigarette like this. We were very happy, the two of us, in our trench.’
He watched the moon. ‘It is true, but I rarely heard a shot in anger in that war till then. I lit his cigarette, there was a high-pitched noise – unlike that of the bullets I had imagined, and his face just… stopped. Still. The eyes without life. Then the blood appeared, from underneath the helmet, like a curtain falling over his face.’
He took another deep breath. ‘I must have screamed. They dragged me away. To a field hospital. I was covered in blood, but it was all his. I deserted that night, just walking back through the lines. No one stopped me at all. On the coast, there was chaos then. The battle had gone badly, there were many wounded. I tried to get on one of the boats for home. I don’t remember much. They took me home though – to gaol. Sometimes I wish they’d shot me then, Philip. In Africa.’
He glanced back at the brooding mass of the old hospital: ‘She thinks I’m a coward for not fighting.’
‘She thinks you’re a coward for not telling her,’ said Dryden, pressing the old man’s hand.
They had another cigarette and Dryden offered to take his father-in-law back to PK 129, to the spare bunk, and a sleepless night. They stood, arm-in-arm, and walked to the cab.
He knew something was wrong when he opened the Capri’s passenger door. Humph’s face lolled towards him, lard white, the sweat on his brow dry, one hand held in a claw at his chest. Dryden was no expert, but as he reached out for his friend’s wrist, he was certain Humph was dead.
Autumnal Tuscan sunshine falls on the city walls of Lucca, and the last tourists of the season linger under the shade of the olive tree perched improbably at the summit of the great tower of the Palazzo dei Guinigi. When they leave, the songbirds will peck at the crumbs of their sandwiches. Below, the shadow of the tower reaches out across the tiled roofs of the city, until it touches the church of St Michele.
Inside, the woman with the grey bunched hair crosses herself, collects her mop, pail and bag, and leaves by the leather-padded northern door into the Via Del Moro. The day has been long and arduous and, although she has struggled to find some joy in it, as the priests said she should, it has been dreary. There was only the little blonde girl who played on the steps, to whom she had given a postcard of the saint. That would be what she would remember of the day, even as she walked to her last job in the cool breeze of the evening.
A child’s smile. It was all she had.
She crossed the Piazza Del Carmine towards the university, trying not to smell the pasta dishes the tourists ate in the shade of the almond trees. They ate so early, these foreigners, while the sun still shone. Her own stomach ached, but it would be another two hours before she was home, and could eat alone.
She followed the steps of a street cat up to the familiar door, punched in the security code and expertly wheeled her pail, mops, and work basket through the door before the alarm was triggered. She punched in the code, thought about her work, and decided instead on a cigarette.
A weekend, the university was empty. But here, it was almost always quiet, although the archaeologists were like their artefacts: always in need of a light dusting. She dragged her things up the stairs to the first office where the nameplate shone: Prof. Azeglio Valgimigli. He was in England, she knew, and here she could have privacy for the small ceremony of the cigarette, the little sin she allowed herself. She opened the window, careful not to lean too far forward in case she might be seen by one of the university officials. Below, by a fountain, two teenagers kissed. She thought of the cemetery, and drew deeply on the cigarette. She would visit tonight, and tell him about her day.
Alone, she thought, with a child’s smile.
On Valgimigli’ss desk stood a gilt-framed picture of the professore with his English wife. She’d often wondered why they were together. She could see that he loved her, held on to her, and in the picture an overprotective hand ran along her shoulder. But she was a disappointed woman, she could see that as well: her eyes avoiding his, her smile simply an arrangement of beautifully white teeth and carefully painted lips.
She liked Valgimigli, liked him for the kind words he gave her each day they met, liked him for the kind words he’d struggled to find when her husband had died. And there’d been the party, to celebrate his professorship. The Valgimiglis’ flat had been coolly opulent, and she’d stood alone in the kitchen wanting to help the people they’d hired to serve the drinks and canapés. But she’d noticed things which seemed to tell a story: the study with baby-blue walls, a line of teddy bears above the skirting board, the two bedrooms, and the ornaments and mementoes arranged like the artefacts in the departmental museum.
A phone rang on the desk, making her jump. There were two: one which the professor used when he was in the office for everyday calls, and another, which she’d never heard ring. They all had two along this corridor, the professors, a perk of the job.
This time it was the phone that never rang.
She listened to the ringing tone and thought of the lonely evening ahead. Perhaps she would go back to St Michele’s to pray, for the little girl with the smile. Then the ringing stopped and the call switched to the answerphone.
But that was odd. Most of the phones had the same message, or a variant, recorded by the woman who was the receptionist for the department. She’d heard it many times, knew it by heart. But this voice she did no
t recognise.
‘This is the telephone of Jerome Roma. He is unavailable to take your call at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone and he will ring you back when he is free. Thank you.’
There was a gap full of static and then the tone.
‘Hi,’ said a voice in English, overloud. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I work for a newspaper in England and I need to talk to you urgently – it’s about Azeglio. I’m sorry if this is a bad time, or a painful time, but it would only take a minute. My mobile is 0796; 4545445 – it can take calls direct from Italy. Thank you. My name is Philip. Philip Dryden.’
Thursday, 28 October
35
They were small breaths for a big man. Dryden had listened to them all night, the respirator wheezing to help Humph fill his lungs. The green-blue tinge to his lips and fingernails had faded, and now a pinker shade gave back life to his skin. A stroke, the first doctor had guessed; the second told the more brutal reality: heart attack.
‘How old is your friend, Mr Dryden?’ The answer: twenty years too young for a heart attack.
Dryden dozed briefly, falling effortlessly into the familiar nightmare, waking each time the sand creaked and fell, suddenly blocking out the light. At 6.45 am he fetched coffee from a machine in the corridor. Humph slept soundly, the respirator rhythmic and comforting. Outside he heard the rest of the hospital waking up, cleaners chatting outside, breakfast trolleys crashing through ward doors, so unlike the wealthy hush of The Tower.
Out of the window the red rim of the sun showed through the river mist, which seemed thin and insubstantial, showing little sign of the familiar smog. Somewhere just beyond the ghostly hospital outbuildings Dr Louise Beaumont was no doubt swimming her languid lengths, the water flowing smoothly from her skin-tight black costume.
He slept again, but this time when he woke it was mid-morning, there was unfamiliar sunlight on the bed, and sitting opposite was DS Cavendish-Smith.
The Moon Tunnel Page 22