The Moon Tunnel

by The Moon Tunnel

  ‘And?’ said Mann.

  ‘This was Serafino’s.’ He held the button up, but Mann was trying to look beyond to the garden.

  ‘I think you removed everything from his clothes before the body was buried. Then, later, you added them to the collection at the museum, never thinking any could be traced.’

  ‘This is entertaining, Mr Dryden. But it is not proof.’

  ‘No. But it might be enough to prompt the police to look a little harder for Serafino’s body.’

  Dryden surveyed the garden, knowing that to close his eyes would bring sleep instantly. Mann went inside and brought out the coffee pot, refilling the mugs.

  ‘What is it that you want, Mr Dryden?’

  Dryden placed the button on Mann’s side of the table and the curator took it quickly and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Just before Serafino died the gardeners did their last job. A country house…’

  ‘Ah yes. The Dadd, I presume?’ Dryden let him go on. ‘I’m afraid our discussion was about other things.’

  Dryden noted the disguised confession. ‘There was a girl… she went missing?’ It was a guess, but he sensed it struck to the heart of Mann’s guilt and explained, in part, what he’d done with the rest of his life.

  ‘Blackmail?’ said Dryden, and knew he was right. ‘What did he see?’

  Mann drank his coffee. ‘The girl’s death was an accident. But it is not what he said he saw.’

  Dryden smelt the dew rising from the garden, and it lifted his spirits. ‘Where did you kill him? You bought the house – my guess is here.’

  Mann smiled, standing. ‘You need rest. You should go home.’

  He led the way down the steps into the garden, around the house towards the pines. Here, in the yard, stood a large old tree, its trunk gnarled and scarred.

  ‘This one’s been here a while,’ said Dryden.

  Mann smiled again and ran his hand over the rough bark. ‘In spring, the scent is memorable,’ he said. Dryden picked up a fallen leaf and examined it. ‘It looks familiar. What’s the tree?’

  ‘The great white cherry,’ said Mann.

  ‘And does it mean anything – in the language of the garden?’

  Mann smiled. ‘Yes. It is a most fitting tree. Perhaps in all the garden. The cherry is for deception.’

  They shook hands and, although the tree was bare, Dryden was suddenly overwhelmed by the fragrance of gorse.

  42

  The Fiat stood at the gates of Vintry House. Dryden was pleased to see his father-in-law in the driver’s seat, but delighted to see Boudicca’s sleek head resting on the back of the passenger headrest. The greyhound’s left front leg was bandaged and across its back butterfly stitches had been applied to a gash which still showed dull cherry-red through the grey, close fur. Dryden reached into the back and rested a hand on the dog’s skull, feeling the ridges of the cranium beneath. ‘Ma will be pleased,’ he said.

  He turned to Gaetano. His father-in-law’s top lip was cut deeply and stitched, and across his cheeks serried lines of scratches led to a wound on his neck which was covered with a dressing.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks for trying.’

  ‘The dog is the hero,’ said Gaetano. ‘He come get me in the car. Mad thing’ The old man shook his head, smiling, glancing into the rear-view mirror.

  He gave his son-in-law a note, scrawled on lined paper torn from an exercise book. ‘This was in the postbox at the boat. We checked first thing…’

  It was a message from Russell Flynn. An appointment Dryden should keep. As they drove Dryden flipped his mobile open and retrieved a text message. It was from Humph and read simply: ‘Chips’.

  They swung into Market Square, the Fiat clattering over the edge of the pedestrianized zone and pulling up under a tree. The auction was held once a month in a function room at the back of The White Hart Hotel. The room was crowded already, about 120 people seated, others standing against the peeling wallpaper. The smell was of people mixed with mothballs and polish. Russell was by the door, the look of relief on his face when he saw Dryden profound.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, levering his T-shirt clear of his neck to let some air cool his flushed skin where the tattoo dragon rose towards his hairline. ‘Just in time.’

  He took Dryden by the elbow and steered him towards the side of the room where there was a gap to stand by an old print of racehorses being led into the ring at Newmarket.

  ‘What’s this about, Russ?’ said Dryden. One batch of lots was just finishing, each one ferried in from a neon-lit storage room to the rear of the auctioneer’s stand.

  Russell leant in too close. ‘It’s your stuff from Buskeybay Farm. The best stuff, anyway. It’s been on show since yesterday, out the back. I keep an eye on the auction, move some stuff sometimes.’ He smiled, immensely pleased with himself.

  ‘Fine. How nice. But why am I here – and more to the point why the fuck are you? You should be in gaol.’

  Russell shrugged. ‘Bail. Not interested in murder any more anyway – know why?’ It was a genuine question.

  Dryden nodded. ‘You’ll find out. Where’s Vee?’

  ‘In the home. She’s OK, you know. It’ll kill her, but not this year. So Josh and me, we had time to talk, there’s something we wanted you to see.’

  The auctioneer was younger than his grey hair, his voice a practised monotone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we move on now please. Thank you.’ The room fell silent, the traffic in Market Square a distant hum. ‘Lot 668. Nice piece this, exotic wood, inlaid with ivory. Edwardian writing box. What do I hear – £100?’

  Dryden recognized the piece. Not his mother’s – his uncle’s father’s – it had stood on the landing table at Buskeybay. The auction room crowd stirred, a brief competition pushing the price up to £180.

  Dryden jumped as the auctioneer’s gavel crashed down, his nerves still shredded by the night’s ordeal. ‘Look,’ he said, turning to Russ, ‘I just wanna go home. To the boat. Can’t this wait…?’

  But Russell wasn’t listening. He was watching a porter in brown overalls set a heavy-framed picture on an artist’s easel. The colours were muted, a shepherd watching a moon slip from behind a mackerel sky, while between the trees of the forest the faces of imps and fairies watched. Dryden felt sick with recognition, remembering the image on the website of the Ashmolean Musuem and, clearer than that, a pool of blood in the Long Gallery of Osmington Hall, and the neat puncture hole in the skull of Jerome Roma. Two men had died looking at this picture: Richard Dadd’s A Moonlight Vision.

  ‘Bid,’ said Russell: ‘For Christ’s sake, bid.’

  ‘Yes – here we are,’ said the auctioneer. ‘Unsigned, possibly early Victorian, I think. Not to every one’s taste, I know – but one day, who knows? Nice frame as well – gold leaf on cedar. It must be worth £50 alone. What do I hear then… £80? Who’ll start me off at £80…£75?’

  A hand went up from the seats in the front row. Dryden’s pulse picked up, the fear of not being seen making his hand jerk up above his head.

  ‘Eighty, sir? Thank you. Eighty pounds from the gentleman to this side.’

  Dryden hissed at Russ. ‘Why am I bidding for my own painting?’

  ‘Just bid. And win. It’s a money-go-round – you can’t lose. But don’t overdo it – they’ll know.’

  By the time they got to £400 there were three bidders.

  Dryden, transfixed by the auctioneer’s hammer, grabbed Russell’s arm until he knew it would hurt. ‘Why don’t I just stop the auction – tell ’em it’s a big mistake?’

  ‘What can you prove? The auction’s begun – you can’t stop now. Once it’s sold it’d take years to get it back. You reckon Vee’s got years?’

  By the time they got to £1,000 they were back to the original two bidders. For a smalltown back-room auction this was sensational money and all the eyes in the room turned to Dryden each time he raised the bid. At £1,600 there was a long pause.
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  ‘One thousand six hundred from the gentlemen to the side; do I hear any more? One seven – thank you, sir. In the front row we have one thousand seven hundred.’

  Dryden raised again, quickly, in contrast to his competitor’s caution.

  As the auctioneer counted out £1,800 for the first, second and third times Dryden had an almost overwhelming urge to outbid himself. The man in the front row, who’d bet on instinct, was shaking his head. Sweat stood out on Dryden’s forehead and he felt dizzy, elated, as the seconds dragged out in silence.

  ‘Sold!’ A scattering of applause circled the room.

  ‘Let’s get it,’ said Dryden, stumbling forward. ‘Then it’s explanation time. It’d better be good.’

  They queued with the other buyers before a desk in the midst of the chaotic storeroom. Dryden paid £1,800 by credit card, plus the auction room fee of 10 per cent and VAT, his signature a spidery stressed-out scrawl.

  Gaetano was parked off the rank under an autumnal plane tree. A large yellow leaf, the last, fell to the windscreen and the Italian swished it away with the wipers. Dryden slipped the brown paper off the picture and set it on the bonnet. There was no doubt: Richard Dadd’s A Moonlight Vision, value in excess of £1m. He lifted the canvas and smelt it. There was still a hint of the original oils, but overwhelmed by another odour which made him shiver: damp earth.

  Russell was light on his feet, dancing, keen to exit.

  ‘What am I supposed to believe?’ said Dryden.

  The teenager beamed. ‘Simple, I guess. The Italians worked at Buskeybay in the war, yeah? This bloke in the tunnel – Amatista – my guess is he stashed the picture in your uncle’s barn for safekeeping until he could get it out on the market. He never got to collect.’ He shrugged again. ‘So, here’s the picture. It’s just been sold legit – tax paid and everything. Now you can give it back to Vee – no complications, no questions? Yeah?’

  Dryden smelt the canvas again. ‘A few questions. What if there’s a different story? What if it’s spent the last sixty-odd years buried under the old PoW camp? What if someone took it, robbed a grave, robbed Vee Hilgay a second time?’

  But Russell was ready for that. ‘Vee needs the money now, right? She’s in the home, you should visit. A warehouse for the dying – she says that a lot. She ain’t gonna be there long either way…’

  Dryden nodded, folding the paper carefully over the moonlit scene. ‘Josh took it. Took it that morning when he uncovered the bones.’ Russ looked at his feet, suddenly still. ‘Why wasn’t it picked up in the raid on the flat?’ asked Dryden.

  Russell ran a finger along the gilt-edged frame. ‘He ain’t that clever, Josh – nor the rest. He knew the pearls were fakes but couldn’t get a clear sight of the picture. When he did he said it was rubbish too. Victorian crap, bric-à-brac, a granny picture. So they let me take it home.’

  ‘Home?’ said Dryden, seeing the burnt-out cars, the eviscerated sofas on the Jubilee Estate.

  ‘Then you came round and saw Vee and said about the Dadd… No way we could flog it then, eh? Too hot, much too hot. But Vee needs the money. So we found a way. You told Josh about the Italians at Buskeybay. We were gonna stash it out there – let it turn up. Then I spotted the clearance coming up at auction. We got an old frame for it: perfect, so we took our chance.’

  Dryden, laughing at last, pictured the scene in the Flynn family home. The Formica kitchen table, the three-inch pile shaggy purple carpet, and Richard Dadd’s £im masterpiece hanging opposite a flight of plaster ducks.

  43

  The lounge of Cedarwood Retirement Home was decorated in baby blue, clashing horribly with the floral upholstery on the dozen upright armchairs. Vee Hilgay was by the window, some papers on her lap, her hand holding back the net curtain so that she could see out into the gardens. Beside her on a plastic tray lay her evening meal, untouched, the gravy congealing over pre-sliced pork. Her trademark Tony Benn mug was on the floor beside her.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ said Dryden.

  Vee turned. ‘There you are. Russ said you’d come,’ she said, brushing a hand across the milky, moonlike eye.

  Then she saw the package. Dryden had had it reframed that afternoon in simple pine. She ripped off the brown paper, letting it fall to the floor, then she stood, setting the picture up in the high-backed chair.

  ‘The experts say it’s worth a million,’ said Dryden, laughing.

  She didn’t take her eyes off it. ‘It’s worth much more than that,’ she said.

  The bell rang for bedtime, but she ignored it.

  ‘Champagne,’ she said, walking towards the door. ‘Where can we drink champagne?’

  Postscript

  Vee Hilgay sold the Dadd to the National Gallery for £1.3m. It is now on loan at Osmington Hall, on the wall in the Long Gallery from which Serafino Amatista plucked it more than sixty years earlier. The police accepted Dryden’s explanation that the picture had lain unnoticed amongst the clutter at Buskeybay. Vee runs a charity dedicated to reducing deaths due to hypothermia, and lives over the premises in a one-room flat.

  Humph enjoyed his first delivery of chips from Dryden and recovered quickly, discharging himself after forty-eight hours. The heart attack he suffered was a wake-up call he studiously ignored, except for the precaution of reducing his intake of fried bacon by one rasher a day and introducing a daily enforced walk – three circuits of the Capri.

  Russell Flynn and Josh Atkinson appeared at Cambridge Crown Court jointly on charges of theft and conspiracy to defraud. Russ got two years and four years to run concurrently, suspended for five years. Josh Atkinson was not so lucky. He refused to give information about the nighthawks network, or their London market contacts. He was sentenced to seven years, and is currently at Bedford Gaol.

  Ma Trunch’s case was heard subsequently, and separately. She was charged with conspiracy. The prosecution alleged it was the demands of private, unscrupulous collectors which fuelled the illegal trade in artefacts. She was found guilty and sentenced to eight years, reduced to five on appeal. In absentia she was declared bankrupt at East Cambs County Court. She is currently at Ford Open Prison, where she works in the library, and is a volunteer digger with the West Sussex Archaeological Trust.

  The completion of these successful prosecutions secured DS Bob Cavendish-Smith his longed-for transfer to the Metropolitan Police.

  The site at California was closed, secured by a newly appointed private firm, and reopened six months later to a team from Durham University. They found that while the nighthawks had taken the Anglo-Saxon sword they had left most of the chariot burial intact. The chariot itself, richly decorated with semiprecious stones, was later removed from the site and is now on show at the British Museum, alongside Ma Trunch’s sword. Before leaving the site, to make way for the building of executive homes, the team laid small explosive charges along the moon tunnel. It was completely destroyed.

  Speedwing and thirty-six other demonstrators appeared at Ely Magistrates Court on charges of breach of the peace and criminal damage. Speedwing was happy to be martyred as the ringleader and was rewarded with a two-month prison sentence, as were four of his comrades. The rest were fined £100 each and bound over to keep the peace for eighteen months. Six weeks into his sentence Speedwing made a successful application, on religious grounds, to be allowed into the prison yard at night to witness a partial eclipse of the moon.

  Dr Siegfried Mann still lives in Vintry House. The body of Serafino Amatista has never been found. The assistant curator paid £2,000 from his own pocket for the construction of a new gallery at the town museum to display Ma Trunch’s donated collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts. Dryden covered the opening and sent her the cutting.

  The bodies of Azeglio Valgimigli and Louise Beaumont were buried side by side in Ely cemetery. Their estate, valued at £740,000, is still embroiled in a lengthy series of judicial proceedings in Italy and the UK However, the court-appointed trustees did honour the cheque made
out to Pepe by Louise Beaumont on the last day of her life. It was for £100,000. Il Giardino was refurbished, and a new function room added. Business is brisk. The cash for Marco’s memorial was raised entirely by public subscription. The gravestone of Jerome Roma bears still the inscription: Free at Last.

  Dryden raised £3,200 from the auction – apart from the sale of the Dadd. The money was used to install the necessary medical equipment for Laura in her parents’ retirement home above Lucca. Gaetano told his wife and sons the truth about his wartime service, and while his lies are not forgotten, they are forgiven.

  Tonight, Philip and Laura arrive at the villa for their first visit since Gaetano’s return home, a private ambulance taking them from the airport at Pisa. Under the same moon which shines on them Humph sits in the Capri on the riverside, struggling with the first tape in his latest language course: Serbo-Croat. Boudicca sleeps soundly on the back seat. And under the slimmest of crescent moons, Etterley dances alone on the riverside.