Dryden booted up his PC. ‘I’ve got a story. The murdered archaeologist is related, closely related, to the corpse found in the tunnel. Brothers, perhaps – who knows? There’s a DNA match.’ Dryden had already calculated that he needed to keep the precise relationship vague – given he had yet no proof.
‘Cops are crawling over Valgimigli’s family history. They’re still on the trail of the nighthawks as well. There was a bust last night and three arrests. One of those detained was Ma Trunch – for attempting to buy an Anglo-Saxon sword filched off the site at California.’
Charlie rubbed his hands. ‘Great. Get started.’
‘The smog’s gone,’ said Dryden. ‘Who’s on it?’
Garry was on the phone but waved a Biro by way of answer, briefly interrupting the seamless flow of his thirty-words-a-minute shorthand.
‘The dump’s been sold. Several legal actions have been filed against the original company,’ he told Charlie. ‘I’ll file Garry a coupla pars and a quote from Ma Trunch; he’ll have to weave them into his story.’
Dryden knew he’d have to share the front page with the splash on the town dump – still the most important news for the local readers. He had thirty minutes to deadline and no idea how to tell the story. He tried not to think: relying on nearly fifteen years of experience and a natural ability to keep things simple.
By Philip Dryden
Scotland Yard forensic scientists today made a dramatic breakthrough in the hunt for the killer of the Ely archaeologist shot dead on the site of the town’s former PoW camp.
Detectives said they had found an astonishing link between Prof. Azeglio Valgimigli, the murdered academic, and the corpse his team uncovered on the site a week ago.
The body – previously thought to be that of an Italian PoW – was exhumed yesterday after sunset at the town cemetery and DNA samples taken to double check the victim’s identity.
Det. Sgt Bob Cavendish-Smith, heading the investigation, said, ‘Examination showed that Prof. Valgimigli and the body uncovered in the tunnel were closely related. Very closely related.’
Scientists believe the DNA link is so strong the two must have been close family members. Further tests are underway. The father of Prof. Valgimigli – who comes from a local family – was a PoW in the camp but survived the war, dying in 1984.
The exhumation was prompted by Prof. Valgimigli’s savage killing and the unexpected discovery, based on carbon-dating of the bones, that the original victim died between 1970 and 1990 – not during the war as the police had first assumed.
‘Clearly we need to trace members of Prof. Valgimigli’s family to find out if there is some link between these bizarre and apparently cold-blooded murders,’ said Det. Sgt Cavendish-Smith.
Prof. Valgimigli was the eldest son of Marco Roma, the owner and founder of Il Giardino, a popular family café and restaurant at Ten Mile Bank. Prof. Valgimigli reverted to using the original family name on taking up a post at the University of Lucca in Tuscany.
The murder team is also probing the possibility that Prof. Valgimigli was killed after interrupting a raid by thieves on the site. His wife, Dr Louise Beaumont, has told police the archaeologist discovered the site had been disturbed on the night he was murdered.
An appeal has also been launched for any information which could help the police in their hunt for Prof. Valgimigli’s killer. So far the murder weapon, understood to be a Second World War officer’s pistol, has not been recovered. Detectives have released pictures of similar weapons.
‘Someone, somewhere, owns or knows someone who owns such a weapon. They are relatively rare. We would ask anyone who has any information to contact us. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence,’ said Det. Sgt Cavendish-Smith.
*Yesterday police raided a house in Ely as part of an ongoing Regional Crime Squad investigation into organized theft from sites of archaeological interest by so-called ‘nighthawks’. Several arrests were made and three people have been charged. Details: Pg XX.
Dryden felt Boudicca snake her way under his desk and curl around his feet. He felt an almost uncontrollable urge to run. He edged his foot away from her jaws, where a small rivulet of slobber was spilling onto the floorboards.
‘Nice dog,’ said Garry, fingering his spots. ‘Thought you were scared of ’em?’
The news editor wandered over and tossed some black and white news pictures on Dryden’s desk. ‘Henry likes these – can you do a fat caption – say 200 words? We might use it on three.’
They were Mitch’s pictures of Vee Hilgay’s eviction. He’d caught both her dignity and the pathos of the moment. She sat, chin up, on a chair amongst the misty contents of her home spread out on the lawn. A man in a bright yellow fluorescent jacket, with the word BAILIFF on his back, was offering her a mug of tea.
Dryden was impatient, claustrophobic. He’d withheld information from Cavendish-Smith, but he knew the detective would be catching up fast. Dryden wanted the story, and he wanted the painting for Vee Hilgay.
He created a new document on screen and began to type:
Bailiffs pictured (above) evicting a 70-year-old woman from her council flat in Ely this week said she had to go because of rent arrears, writes Philip Dryden. The county social services department offered Ms Vee Hilgay a place at the Cedarwood Retirement Home. Ms Hilgay, who had lived at her flat in Augustus Road on the Jubilee Estate for 12 years, said, ‘I offered them regular payments to try and clear the debt – which I acknowledge. I am not infirm, or unable to look after myself. This was my home, and I was perfectly capable of running it.’ A spokesman for social services said, ‘We have offered Ms Hilgay alternative accommodation and written off her debts. The council’s housing stock must be managed on a commercial basis to protect the interests of all council tax payers.’ Ms Hillgay is the secretary of the Ely Labour Party and a former charity worker. She was born and raised at Osmington Hall, her family home until debts and death duties forced her mother to sell in 1949. The house is now open to the public and run by the National Trust.
Dryden felt a pang of guilt, imagining Vee in the home she so despised. He wanted to end the search for the Dadd but didn’t know how, so he tapped Cavendish-Smith’s mobile number out on the desk phone.
Engaged. He left a message: ‘Call me. I know more about the family.’
Charlie had his coat on and was heading for the door. ‘Tonight,’ he said, pretending he’d just remembered. ‘I’ve got you and Garry down for the demo at the site. OK? Eclipse is 11.30. Split the time up between yourselves – Mitch’ll be there for the lot. Cheers.’
Garry beamed. ‘We could hit the pub.’
Dryden craved sleep, time to think, and solitude. ‘I’ll see you there at 11.00. You do the first two hours. Don’t turn up drunk.’
Dryden left The Crow with Boudicca yelping and dragging her leash behind her. Inevitably Gaetano was outside, parked up on double-yellow lines.
‘The boat,’ said Dryden. They drove in silence, the sunlight sending shots of pain through his eyeballs. He thought of visiting Laura but remembered his father-in-law had just returned from The Tower: ‘How’d it go?’ he asked.
‘Not good,’ said Gaetano. ‘But we talked.’
They skimmed down the drove road beside Barham’s Farm towards PK 129. The boat’s naval grey hull gleamed silver beyond the reed beds.
‘I’m gonna sleep. I need a lift, later, at 10.45. Can you wake me?’
He took the dog and led her into the cabin where she slipped under the bunk. Dryden collapsed and embraced a, for once, dreamless sleep.
39
The first sight of the blood-red shadow sent a shudder through the crowd which pressed up against the security fence. Dryden stood on the roof-rack of the Fiat and looked towards the halogen lights illuminating the site. Between the car and the fence he judged the crowd at 300 strong, all heads tilted upwards, catching the amber moonlight, their hands raised in salute. Speedwing, sitting on someone’s shoulders,
pointed his staff at the moon and began a chant. The crowd swayed with him, transformed into a congregation, and for the first time a sense of anger and menace emanated from the protesters, good natured high spirits evaporating as the white moonlight died, to be replaced by the shadow of the eclipse.
At 11.36pm precisely the earth’s shadow had clipped the moon. Even Dryden, immune to the romantic nostalgia of the druids, felt the change: the black hair on his neck bristled as the pine woods fell silent. Despite himself he sensed his heartbeat quicken, and the individuals who made up this shimmering crowd began to pulse too, as if to a common beat. But it was the silence which lent credence to the charge of desecration, and seemed to bless the hungry souls who had come to worship. Here they stood, where they felt thousands had stood before, to watch an eclipse plunge the night into blackness.
The police, who had thrown a loose cordon behind the demonstrators, stood back amongst the pine trees. By the gates a single squad car sat silently, only its rotating blue light indicating it was on duty. A walkie-talkie crackled but was hurriedly stifled. The silence, again complete, ushered the hypnotic shadow across the moon and as the pale rose red took the place of the high-voltage white the shadows deepened on earth. The glare of the moon faded, and stars – normally unseen at the moon’s edge – emerged from the black sky. Finally, only a single sliver of the full moon remained, a brilliant shard of white light, exploding at the edge of the red sphere like a sunburst.
Then the eclipse was complete. Speedwing stood on his supporters’ shoulders, a black figure against the site’s halogen floodlights. Above them the moon, in its subtle new radiance, hung for once like a sphere, not a mundane, flattened disc. On its surface the familiar seas and mountains reappeared more clearly, intimate, closer. And still, the impenetrable silence, until Speedwing spoke.
‘The fence!’
The crowd turned and pressed forward, the sound of buckling metal accompanied by the sharp cracks of the thin bands breaking between the reinforced poles. Then came the shot, and the screams. Dryden guessed it was an airgun, and the second shot found its target as one of the floodlights crackled and cut out, followed almost immediately by the others as the circuit was broken.
Dryden blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust, but it was as if the world had become a giant photographer’s darkroom, lit only in infrared. He heard a bark and turned to see Boudicca bounding past the line of white police vans from which uniformed officers in riot gear were being disgorged into the puddles of red light beneath the pine trees, where Gaetano had parked the Fiat. He saw fear in the dog’s eyes, which doubly reflected the red moon, so he grabbed the leash and joined the throng of demonstrators pushing through the gap in the security wire.
Ahead of him, just a few yards ahead, a hooded figure in black moved with the others, fair hair showing at the shoulders. The rest, agitated, cast round for Speedwing’s staff to follow. But the figure in black moved purposefully towards the ladder that led down into the main diggers’ trench, retrieved a torch from a pocket and checked the beam by shining it once into the face beneath the hood. Then, quickly, the figure descended.
Dryden followed, his scalp prickling with fear. At the top of the ladder he paused, holding Boudicca back on the leash, before climbing down, the dog bounding down beside him into the gloom of the ditch. Above him on the edge two demonstrators struggled with a policeman in riot gear, but below the way was clear, the only light the lunar red, and by it, ahead, he saw the figure pause at the central crossroads and turn east towards the moon tunnel.
He walked on, encouraged by Boudicca’s confident tugs, his own knees buckling with fear, as he relived the moment when the flailing figure of the mutilated Azeglio Valgimigli had thrown itself at his feet. He stumbled badly, falling to his knees, but the greyhound returned to snuffle his neck, the fetid breath of the dog on his face, and despite the otherworldly light he could clearly see her white incisors.
He made it to the crossroads and looked east towards the point where the archaeologist’s trench had cut through the moon tunnel. The ditch was empty. A clean sweep of neatly excavated earth. He felt his guts twist, knowing instinctively where his quarry had gone. Boudicca had the scent now and loped forward, still silent, until her head plunged inside the tunnel’s opening. Dryden, catching up, pulled the dog back and clicked on the torch Gaetano had retrieved from the boot of the hired car. The tunnel was clear for about twenty yards, then turned north. The police team had cleared it as best they could, but here and there the thin wooden packing-case panels had buckled, and little avalanches of soil lay across the way forward, lumps of the grey-green clay glistening. Boudicca eyed him, eager, confident in their courage.
Dryden’s life was made up of moments like this. He knew he didn’t have the courage to go on, but knew that he would, more fearful of the verdict that he was a coward. What was in it for him? He thought about what might lay around the slow curve of the tunnel. Had Valgimigli’s killer returned to the place of execution? Was the Dadd buried here? There was, he knew, another item missing from the scene: the gun.
‘Stay here,’ he said to the dog, his voice catching horribly in his throat. Boudicca whined and slumped down like a sphinx.
He tossed the torch into the hole and crawled forward for twenty feet before the first wave of nausea made him stop. He craned his head back over his shoulder and could see the distant rose-tinted square of the tunnel entrance, Boudicca out of sight. A curtain of sweat had dropped from his hairline and trickled into his eye, the salt making his vision blur.
He tried not to think of the earth above, the sand of his dream, waiting to fall like a judgement.
His hand, set against the wooden tunnel wall, left a moist print on the pine. Each wooden panel was a potential hiding place, too numerous for the police to have safely checked them all. He forced himself to look ahead where the tunnel turned to the north still, continuing its long gentle sweep. The claustrophobia which haunted him pressed in, and he found it almost impossible not to kick out with his feet, or press his elbows into the thin panelled walls, craving space and air. He rested his forehead in the dirt, and felt the despair of failure, knowing now that he would turn back. He saw an image of Vee Hilgay, slumped dead in one of the high-sided chairs of the old people’s home, and still he began to edge back, desperate for the sight of the night sky.
He raised himself on one elbow and froze; the sounds from the site were a distant distortion, but much closer was a new sound. Once, twice and then a third time, the clicking of the earth above him fracturing, a fissure opening in the sticky, soaking, Gault clay like a crack in soft cheese. He listened, sensing the movement above, and then the earth fell, dropping onto the roof of the tunnel with a deep, visceral blow. Dryden heard the wood splinter, closed his eyes and waited for the impact to crush him as it did in his nightmare. But it wasn’t the weight that hurt, it was his ears, the changes in pressure tearing at the drums. And then the almost soft caress of the trickling earth. He lay there, encased, his heart audible, waiting to die, as he felt the soil trickling down beside his neck and beginning to clog his lips and nose. A minute passed, and the panic left him unable to move. Each time he breathed he thought it would be his last, each time there was less to breathe.
‘Jesus help me,’ he said.
Detached from the process of his death he waited, his heart rate dropping, the lack of oxygen beginning to lighten his head. Through the debris he inched his hand until it found the torch, and bored it towards his face until its yellow light stemmed the panic. He held it to his eye and thought of Laura, wanting desperately that she should be with him. He buried his face in her hair, the torch beam flickered and died, and he passed out.
Azeglio had done everything his captor had asked but he knew now that he was still going to die, and that it would be here, in the trench, beside the moon tunnel. When he’d asked, long after he was capable of saving his life, she’d told him what had been in the wine: scopolamine and morphine, a mixture she’
d no doubt given many of her patients. He’d felt the rapid heartbeat first, and then the bloom in his cheeks as the blood rushed to the surface, but, stupidly, had assumed it was his excitement, the possibility that she would be his again that night, as she had once been long before.
He looked around now, as though he saw the trench for the first time. He smiled with lips lopsided from the drugs, and ran his tongue, excruciatingly dry, along his immaculate teeth, tasting the blood from the gash. It had taken just two hours to remake his life, re-centre it around those few seconds in the tunnel more than twenty years before, when he’d lain in wait for his brother, killed him for love, not for money, shot away the face that so resembled his own, then reached forward through the earth to reclaim the ring she’d given him.
March 30, 1984. The day of his father’s funeral. They’d met in the old woodstore behind Il Giardino, agreed then that Jerome would go down to check what was left in the tunnel, swearing never to tell the story, so that the knowledge would die with Marco. And then Jerome would go to Italy, as he had always wanted, and try to raise cash from the family. He would go quickly, telling no one, especially Mamma, who would tell him not to beg. That they had promised, and that was where Azeglio had been deceived. Jerome had told someone: his first and only love.
Azeglio stood now before her, confused by the drugs, feeling a childlike acquiescence, the result of the scopolamine, but feeling no pain because of the morphine. He’d laughed when she accused him, and so she struck him with the butt of the pistol. His pistol, the one that Marco had left. So he said it out loud then, to hurt her, really hurt her, as she was hurting him.
‘I killed him. Right here. I loved you, so I killed him.’
The trap had been exquisite. She’d told him over the wine that she would return with him to the site, sleep with him in the makeshift office. She’d touched his face, a moment of exquisite happiness after the years of cold denial, years in which he had only to touch her to know that he had failed: failed to be who she really wanted – his brother. He’d let her drive, tossing the keys to her as they left the flat. She’d reminisced as they made their way to California, scenes from the life they once had in the handful of years after their marriage. Years in which they’d tried for the child which had been denied them. But now, perhaps, a new beginning.
The Moon Tunnel Page 24