Dryden nodded, and they refilled his glass.
‘I write about lots of things. You know about the body found at the old camp?’
That took ten degrees off the conviviality scale. Someone coughed by the door and the accordion music fluctuated violently, then stopped.
Dryden checked his notebook. ‘Serafino Amatista. The only Italian PoW to go missing. It may be him. What was he like?’
A tall man with a bent spine who had said little leant forward, spat on the floor and leant back with a final flourish of crossed arms.
‘Popular?’ said Dryden, and raised a laugh.
Casartelli came to the rescue. ‘Mr Dryden.’ He shrugged. ‘It is a long time ago.’
‘But not forgotten, that’s what all this is about, yes? The association, Marco Roma, the war. It’s important – no?’
Dryden, subconsciously, was using one of the good reporter’s best tricks – mimicking the speech patterns of those from whom information must be gathered.
Casartelli smiled, the wine glasses were refilled, and the accordion began again.
‘Serafino we remember. He was billeted on a farming family when he disappeared.’
‘Where?’ asked Dryden.
‘Buskeybay.’
Dryden batted his eyelids, trying to dispel an instant image of the moonlit theatre. ‘That’s a good memory after sixty years.’
‘I was billeted with him,’ said Casartelli, drinking his wine.
‘You played with Roger,’ said Dryden. ‘My uncle.’
There was a murmur of recognition, and the warmth began to return.
‘Many of us worked there, Mr Dryden – we were rotated regularly so that the authorities could keep check on us – to make sure we did not, as they said, “get our feet under the table”. We were meant to work, and they made us work. But Buskeybay was better than the rest – Roger’s parents were good to us. It was more than forced labour. For this we remember them.’ He raised his glass and the toast embraced everyone. Dryden noticed Pepe, ferrying out plates of antipasti.
‘Our friends,’ proposed another one of the aged PoWs, and down went another round of Chianti.
What a piss up, thought Dryden, drinking too. More bottles appeared, and Casartelli swayed, finding himself a chairback to lean on.
Dryden heard more corks being pulled as the audience drew around him. There was only one conversation now, and it was his to take wherever he wished.
‘Did Serafino say why he was going – or where he might go? Did you know he wasn’t coming back?’
‘We did not know why he left when he did, but later, we guessed – perhaps,’ said Casartelli. ‘The police came – the military police – and the officials from the Italian legation after the end of the war in Italy. They said that Serafino was not who he had said he was.’
‘Serafino Amatista does not exist,’ said Dryden. ‘No records at all of the name exist before his capture in Greece 1943.’
Several heads nodded, and wine slurped.
‘So.’ Casartelli bridged his plump-knuckled fingers. ‘They told us he was a deserter. Worse. He had been in Greece, part of the force sent in to provide civilian occupation. The Germans were the military governors, of course, and they told Serafino to guard a village. He was the resident guard there, and the villagers looked after him well as they always did. The name of the village we forget now, but the villagers will never forget his: Serafino Ricci. He betrayed them.’
‘How?’ said Dryden, ploughing on, sensing they wanted him to know.
‘Serafino left. He faked his death – leaving behind the bloodied rifle the Germans had given him. The assumption was clear – the villagers had murdered their guard – or the partisans in the hills had done it for them. There was a proclamation then, notorious even now. Reprisals were part of the justice system – for Serafino’s life they had to take another.’
Dryden felt his throat go dry. ‘So, they just shot someone? Because Serafino was dead?’
‘Yes. A shameful day – yes?’
Dryden nodded. ‘I don’t understand. How did the British authorities know who Serafino was if he had never given them his name?’
Casartelli brushed the sweat on his forehead away with the back of his hand. ‘The witness who had identified Serafino was a German officer – one of the prisoners who had taken his place in the camp. We do not know how this happened, we learned only later. But we think Serafino knew, before his disappearance, that he had been recognized. Perhaps he was trying to get into the camp, Mr Dryden. Blackmail? Murder? Now we will never know.’
‘And he would have known about the tunnel?’