The Moon Tunnel

by The Moon Tunnel

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. About your friend… I brought this – it’s cold now.’

  He handed Dryden a coffee cup across Humph’s body.

  ‘What do they reckon?’ asked the detective, oblivious to Dryden’s feelings.

  ‘He’ll be fine if he lives out the week,’ said Dryden, equally oblivious.

  Cavendish-Smith didn’t listen to the reply. He checked his notebook. ‘What do you know about Russell Flynn? He says you’re a friend who can vouch for him.’

  Dryden laughed, the coffee freezing his lips. ‘Vouch? Well, yeah – I can vouch for him all right. He’s a small-time crook with one GCSE – in applied housebreaking. What did he do for the nighthawks?’

  ‘I think he was the link – between the digger Atkinson and the network. Small fry, of course, but there’s no deal without him. Anyway, they’re all dropping each other in the brown stuff asap. Not much honour amongst these thieves. The point is – was he ever violent to your knowledge? Ever see a knife, a gun?’

  ‘Russell? No way. That’s probably one of the reasons I liked him. A born coward, our Russ – we stick together.’

  Cavendish-Smith looked through him. ‘Something has come up on Valgimigli’s murder. I can give you some information. I need some in return.’ He gulped, and Dryden guessed the detective was adrift, increasingly unable to see his way clearly in an investigation as nebulous and weaving as the mist on the river. Dryden was sure now that the key to the archaeologist’s murder lay not in stolen artefacts, or wartime reprisals, but in love and hate. He had decided to tell the detective everything, but something in the man’s peremptory tone made him hesitate.

  Humph emitted a series of small snores and began to stir.

  ‘The forensic examination of Valgimigli’s corpse was extensive. We found some traces of saliva on his face and hairs in the wounds. We’ve extracted some DNA material from these deposits and compared them with Valgimigli’s own profile – there’s no match, so we have got something on the killer at least. But there was something unexpected. It’s routine in such cases to cross-check all samples in a case. There is a match between Valgimigli’s DNA and that we extracted from our original victim in the moon tunnel.’

  ‘What kind of match?’ said Dryden.

  ‘The science is tricky. But there’s no doubt – the two are closely related. That’s all we can say at the moment. They’re going to do further tests.’

  ‘How closely?’ said Dryden.

  ‘In return for this information,’ said the detective, cutting him off, ‘I’m clearly going to have to interview the family. They’ve been informed of the DNA results. But I need detail, a family profile. The mother’s alive, apparently. I’ve got someone making a call as we speak.’

  Gina, thought Dryden, The matriarch. Pepe had said she visited Marco’s grave every Thursday at noon. Clockwork. ‘There were three brothers,’ he said, and gave the detective a brief and superficial history of the Roma family and Marco’s errant sons.

  ‘Not interested in the nighthawks any more?’ he added.

  The detective bristled. ‘I guess. It’s family – it has to be.’

  Dryden had decided. He would tell Cavendish-Smith the rest after he’d done his own interviews at Il Giardino – if the detective had not discovered everything himself. In the meantime he would visit Marco’s grave.

  ‘What about the Dadd?’ said Dryden, happy to lay false trails. ‘Perhaps Valgimigli found it – and someone killed him for it? The motives for both killings do not have to be identical. Neither does the identity of the killer.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Cavendish-Smith coldly. ‘But in that case where’s the Dadd? I can’t see our nighthawks involved in murder anyway. One of them’s permanently stoned, Russell’s so scared he’s spent the last six hours in the loo at the nick.’

  ‘Charges?’

  But it looked like the trading of information had ended. Cavendish-Smith rose. ‘Thanks for your help – although I get the impression you have not told me everything. I take exception to that.’

  ‘Ditto,’ said Dryden, standing and looking out across the misty car park. A woman in matt black crossed to a lipstick red Alfa Romeo and got in the driver’s seat.

  ‘When will you tell Louise Beaumont?’ he asked the detective, who was neatly applying a fresh entry to his notebook.

  ‘It’s been done. First thing.’

  Dryden nodded. ‘Any luck with the gun?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ said Cavendish-Smith, standing and leaving without another word.

  Dryden guessed the detective was heading out to Ten Mile Bank. He checked his watch: Thursday, market day, 11.40am.

  In the silence he listened to Humph cough, then retch, the cabbie’s head jerking forward. Dryden held him, one hand behind his friend’s back, as the respirator re-established the rhythm of his breathing. Then there was only one sound, the precarious beep of the heart monitor, each vivid blue peak on the screen threatening to be the last.

  36

  The smog had gone. The town centre wallowed in light. The cathedral’s great tower reached up into a blue sky, where the vapour trails of two airliners had inscribed a colossal crucifix. In the cemetery council workers were mowing the grass, the last cut before winter, although it smelt instead of spring. The Italian community had a plot beyond the Victorian chapel of rest, through a dank archway, and along a sinuous gravel path. The headstones here were opulent, black and grey marbles, with each stone carrying a picture of the dead. Votive lights burned on several, their weak cherry-red glow lost in the sunshine.

  An empty bench stood by Marco Roma’s grave. Then Dryden saw Gina Roma across a field of headstones, placing a vase by a heap of earth, still fresh from the exhumation. In jet-black she drank up the sunlight, her hair drawn back from her olive-brown face to reveal amber eyes. Dryden stood beside her and she stiffened, looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad time. The police have called – yes?’

  She nodded, setting her jaw, and Dryden knew she’d guessed as well.

  ‘I’m glad Marco is dead,’ she said.

  She rearranged the flowers, fussing with the arrangement.

  They walked towards Marco’s grave and Dryden talked. ‘The gardeners used the tunnel on the nights they robbed the houses. I know this now. Marco was careful with his share, wasn’t he, not like the others. He used the moon tunnel to store the things they’d stolen – eking it out over the years to pay for Azeglio and Jerome’s schooling.’

  She didn’t move a muscle. ‘That’s a beautiful brooch,’ he said. It was a Victorian cameo, worn with age. ‘A gift from the tunnel?’

  She raised a hand, unable to stop herself, and the proud chin dipped.

  Dryden considered how many lives had paid for those treasures. ‘When did you guess?’ he asked.

  ‘Today. But perhaps earlier. Their voices were so alike and Azeglio was so proud, when they were children, that he could fool me. I see now – that is why he kept away – so that the voice became Jerome’s. But I did not want to see the truth. I wanted to believe that Jerome was somewhere, that one day there would be a family, grandchildren. When I think of what Azeglio did to us I am glad he is dead. My own son.’

  She covered her face in the cloth she had brought to wipe the marble headstone.

  ‘Marco told them – the boys – about the tunnel?’

  She nodded. ‘But not Pepe.’

  Dryden, so used to the jigsaw puzzle of this family’s past, slipped two pieces together in his mind. ‘So when he was about to die Marco told Azeglio and Jerome about the tunnel – and that there was something left? A painting perhaps? The pearls?’

  ‘Not Pepe. Not us.’

  ‘A painting?’ asked Dryden again, pushing.

  She swept the cloth over the laminated picture of her husband, the features so clearly the template for Azeglio and Pepe.

  ‘So Azeglio killed Jerome? For money, or for love?’ asked Dryden, un
able to suppress the image of the damp dark tunnel and the bones emerging from the earth.

  She shook her head. ‘Azeglio. He was a jealous boy, always.’

  ‘He came back. He tried to see you?’

  She turned away from the graveside and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Yes. I did not want to see him. I think his motives were clouded. I think he suspected I might have guessed. I am glad I did not see him. Now, I am glad he is dead. This is my tragedy, Mr Dryden. And Pepe knows now, so it is our tragedy.’

  ‘And you know who killed Azeglio for his crimes?’ asked Dryden, seeing again the cloven head in the moonlight. She crossed herself and left, a retreating figure in black, dogged by a long black shadow.

  37

  Gaetano was waiting outside the cemetery gates. He’d been into town to hire a car. It was mustard yellow, a Fiat, and he was revving the engine as Dryden got in.

  ‘Why don’t you spend more time with your daughter?’ said Dryden unkindly. ‘Talk about it.’

  His father-in-law slipped the car into gear and pulled off with a screech of tyres. Dryden ostentatiously checked that his seat-belt was secure.

  ‘She is angry still. She wants me to tell Mamma. This I cannot do, Philip.’

  They sped onto the main road, Gaetano oblivious to traffic approaching from the right. Dryden felt a pang of loss for the monosyllabic Humph.

  ‘I will go back later. Some wine, perhaps. I will try again.’ He knocked out an Italian cigarette expertly from the pack on the dashboard and lit up: ‘So – where to?’ he asked, eager to be free of his own problems.

  Dryden, irritated by his father-in-law’s solicitousness, let him wait for an answer. He needed space to think, time to decide if he could be wrong. But The Crow’s deadline was pressing. The clear skies meant the town’s mini-smog was over, so he needed to check out the town dump first.

  ‘Dunkirk,’ said Dryden, enjoying Gaetano’s confusion. ‘Take the next right, the farm drove, then left at the T-junction. You can see it on the horizon – there.’ He pointed east to where the dump now stood out clearly, a plateau of household waste, trailing only the slimmest wraith of white smoke. ‘Then you can leave me – please. I don’t need a chauffeur.’

  He rang the hospital on his mobile and got put through to the nurse on station at intensive care. No news. Condition stable.

  Then Dryden rang The Crow, briefly filling Charlie in on his movements and promising to be in the office by 1.00pm.

  ‘Would you fight, Philip?’ asked his father-in-law, picking at the scab of his guilt. ‘If there was a war – perhaps one in which you did not believe.’

  Their relationship had always been marked by honesty, and Dryden did not see any reason to alter the terms of engagement now. ‘So – we’re a conscientious objector now? I thought you ran away because your friend was killed beside you. I think that’s a good enough reason, Gaetano – stick to it. Especially with Laura, she has a nose for cant.’

  Gaetano was silent, a very bad sign, and the Fiat’s speed increased.

  Long before they got to the gates of the dump they’d passed half a dozen cars speeding back to town, still clearly crammed with the waste they had failed to jettison on Ma Trunch’s artificial mountain. At the gates one of Ma’s former employees in a fluorescent jacket stood guard.

  Gaetano parked up, but the jobsworth was soon tapping on the window.

  ‘Can’t park here. Dump’s closed.’

  Dryden got out. ‘Where’s Ma?’ He reckoned that by now the police would have released her on bail.

  The guard nodded towards Little Castles. A police squad car was outside, and a large van, into which uniformed officers appeared to be hauling Ma’s treasured museum cabinets.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Dryden.

  ‘No idea. Don’t work for her no more,’ said the guard. He brandished a card – METROPOLITAN RECYCLING. FOR A CLEANER FUTURE. – and pressed it into Dryden’s hand. ‘New owners.’

  ‘Blaze out?’ asked Dryden. Inside the gates a fire tender was parked up, but there seemed to be little activity. Liquid gurgled somewhere, but the smoke that did rise from the top of the dump was now a thin blue zephyr, a smudge against the cobalt blue sky.

  ‘There’s a number on the card – press enquiries. Ring ’em yourself.’

  ‘Wait here,’ said Dryden to Gaetano, slamming the passenger door.

  Cavendish-Smith was standing on the cast-iron bridge over the dyke which fronted Little Castles. He was tapping notes into a personal organizer and talking into a mobile earphone.

  ‘Ma in?’ said Dryden, cutting in.

  The detective finished his call before turning to Dryden. ‘Not for long,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘She’s collecting her personal effects and has been charged. The matter is now sub judice. Understand?’

  ‘What charges?’ said Dryden.

  ‘Conspiracy. Theft. Receiving stolen goods.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Dryden. The conspiracy charge was the killer. If they could prove she’d effectively enticed the nighthawks to lift the Anglo-Saxon sword she faced a long prison sentence.

  They watched as four PCs struggled past with a mahogany brown cabinet.

  ‘Get much out at Il Giardino?’

  Cavendish-Smith glared. ‘Plenty,’ he said, lying.

  Dryden guessed he’d been stonewalled by Pepe, and now wasn’t the time to help the detective out, he had a story to file.

  ‘You know she was a genuine collector?’ said Dryden, switching tack. ‘She’s got a degree in it and everything. She’s not a petty thief.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said the detective, squinting at the horizon.

  ‘Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dump’s sold. The fire’s out – a decent story. I just need to check the details. You said yourself she’s been charged – I can’t write anything about the nighthawks.’ Cavendish-Smith waved his hand, dismissing him.

  He found Ma in the kitchen, a towel laid out on the surface held a toothbrush, soap dish, and a hairbrush inlaid with silver. The various facets of her face had congealed: she looked older, beaten. She held Boudicca by the muzzle, the lead snaking over the floor.

  She ran a hand through her greying hair when she saw Dryden, revealing white roots. In the back room one of the cabinets crashed into the door jamb, then creaked as it was pulled through. Ma winced visibly. ‘Idiots,’ she said, and the dog growled.

  ‘I need help,’ she said.

  Dryden shrugged: ‘I can get you a lawyer – but they should…’

  ‘Not that kind of help. The business is sold but I retain the liabilities for the old business. The council’s suing over the loss of amenity, and the environment agency to recover clean-up costs. There may be charges as well – a civil action certainly, possibly criminal negligence.’

  ‘Jesus! But what…’

  Ma held up her massive butcher’s hand. ‘They think this stuff is all stolen. The Regional Crime Squad are going to crawl all over it, then they’re going to make an example of me. But the stuff is all mine – and I’ve got the documents to prove it. I want you to ask Dr Mann – at the museum – if he’ll take the collection. A gift. I don’t want it back here – especially if I’m not here to make sure it’s safe. And I don’t want any lawyers thinking they can have it sold off to meet damages. Will you ask him for me?’

  Dryden nodded, although he doubted Ma’s donation would protect the assets from the lawyers. ‘And something else. While I’m with them, it may be some time. I need someone to look after Boudicca.’

  Dryden felt his intestines shiver. ‘Eh?… What about the guys at the dump…?’

  Ma stood, spat expertly out of the open window. ‘Scum.’

  She finished wrapping the towel. ‘Will you? Just for a few days… then, well, a kennel. The guard dogs have gone already. I’ll send money. Please.’ She stood there, pathetically, holding out the leash.

  Cavendish-Smith appeared at the doo
r jiggling a set of car keys. ‘OK. Two minutes, Ms Trunch.’

  Dryden couldn’t believe that his arm was rising up to take the lead. ‘Sure,’ he heard someone say. Boudicca looked at him the same way she looked at a bowl of chopped liver.

  ‘One word – please,’ said Dryden, aware he had some control over his witness. ‘The nighthawks got you the sword but did they ever mention anything else, Ma – a picture, a canvas?’

  ‘Never.’ She slung the bag over her shoulder. She held Boudicca’s head in her hand and pressed it against her cheek, then walked out of the room.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Dryden quickly, his voice trembling just enough to signal the fear he felt. Boudicca nuzzled his crotch indecently and then sank to the tiled floor, showing her teeth.

  38

  Gaetano was waiting for him at the gates of the dump. Dryden said nothing, loading the greyhound in through the Fiat’s hatchback and climbing into the passenger seat. Boudicca growled, whined once – possibly for Ma – and then put her chin on Dryden’s shoulder. The wet nose touched his neck, leaving a trail like a slug’s along his hairline.

  ‘I like dogs,’ said Gaetano, who had made much of a youth spent hunting wild boar in the hills. But he’d made much of his heroics in the Italian army as well, so his endorsement was subdued.

  ‘The Crow,’ said Dryden. Gaetano dropped him in Market Street and said he would go on to The Tower. Dryden wished him luck, pitying him the encounter with Laura. ‘Just tell her the truth,’ he said, knowing it was advice he religiously flouted himself.

  Dryden climbed the stairs to the newsroom dogged by the skitter of Boudicca’s paws.

  ‘Thank Christ,’ said Charlie Bracken, his face shining with sweat. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  ‘And good afternoon to you,’ said Dryden. ‘This is Boudicca. She bites, so I’d let her do anything she likes. I am not her owner and take no responsibility for her actions.’ The entire staff of The Crow viewed the dog in silence. Boudicca eyed Splash, the office cat, who had been sleeping on a shelf and now sat up, her ears raised like an Egyptian god’s.