The interior of The Frog Hall continued the lava-torial theme with no visible sense of irony. A long tiled corridor led into a back bar, and accommodated a speak-your-weight machine which accepted pre-decimal coinage. The bar itself was tiled again, but this time in glorious Victorian green and purple, topped off with cherrywood panels and a decorated ceiling which could have graced the town hall. Memorabilia clung to the walls like barnacles, from tin adverts for Capstan Full Strength, Hovis and Three Nuns pipe tobacco to an 1888 railway timetable for the Hunstanton line, long since axed by Dr Beeching.
There was only one thing wrong, Dryden noted, coughing loudly: there was no barman. In the silence he heard a train on the main line to Lynn, a seagull screeching on the chimney pots above and, intermittently, the sound of someone snoring close by. Years of attention to inconsequential detail told him something particular about the snoring: it was the outward sign of an inward hangover. Peering over the bartop Dryden found the snorer, asleep on a low bench below the barrels from which beer was directly dispensed to The Frog Hall’s discerning clientele. Dryden tinkled a delicate brass bell placed on the bar for that purpose. The barman uncurled himself and rose, attempting no explanation. He gloomily poured Dryden a pint without asking him what he wanted.
‘Busy lunchtime?’ asked Dryden.
‘Belter,’ said the barman, revealing a rich Ulster accent.
‘Diggers?’
The barman consulted a railway station clock about five feet in diameter which hung on the far wall.
‘Does that say 6.30?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes and producing a slightly gritty sound. Dryden nodded. ‘Any time now, then. Clockwork.’
Dryden let this remark hang in the air. He drank his beer while the barman emptied ashtrays and, with bucket and corks, began to clean the pipes. Less than a minute later they heard the front door open and a gaggle of excited voices filled the outer corridor. The digging team arrived, led by Jayne, the girl with the sensational hips. Dryden judged the moment and bought a round, securing a place in the circle at one of the heavy iron-legged tables. Josh, the digger who had found the body in the tunnel, sat next to the leggy blonde and wrapped an arm round her waist. The group broke open a collective packet of Golden Virginia, but Dryden could smell that on site they might have had different tastes – the aroma of cannabis clung to them.
Josh sported a Save the Whales badge on a T-shirt emblazoned Glastonbury 2003 across his wide chest. The girl slumped in his arms, her breasts wandering under a loose-fitting hand-dyed top. Dryden liked misfits but this lot were annoyingly co-ordinated in their eccentricity: a troop of lost souls from a less materialistic decade who spent their days unearthing an even more distant past – a time before money existed.
Josh was, Dryden had long ago decided, the nominal leader. His height, the obvious good looks, the carefully tousled hayrick of hair, all helped buttress a sense of power.
‘It’s about the body in the tunnel,’ said Dryden. ‘I just wanted to do a follow-up feature, now it looks as though we know who chummy was.’
‘There’s a name?’ said Jayne.
‘Yes. We think it’s the body of an Italian PoW – Serafino Amatista. But he didn’t try to escape when he was in the camp. He was going in – as we saw.’ Dryden swallowed a couple of inches of beer but noticed the rest had nearly drained their glasses. He bought refills and threw the barman in the round for luck.
He returned and sat next to Josh, the rest of the diggers now lost in a conversation about Anglo-Saxon ritual. ‘Anyway, it’s clear this Amatista was going into the camp. By the end of the war the Italians were given a lot more freedom, as internees, replaced behind the wire by the Germans. The Italians were moved out on the land – to some of the larger farms which could organize the labour. There was one at Buskeybay – on the Lark – my family still talk about them. They were popular, friendly, good workers. Some of them stayed.’
Josh nodded, playing with Jayne’s ear. ‘Look,’ said Dryden. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened that morning – the day you found him.’
The digger took his time making a roll-up. ‘Well, I’d been working on that stretch of the trench – the east lane we call it, running off the central crossroads out towards the old camp perimeter and the pine trees. I was walking the bounds – that’s like checking the edge of my area of excavation. You have to make sure nothing has contaminated the site – animals overnight, water damage, whatever. The dogs had gone, Valgimigli was worried, so we all had to check the site. The fog was really bad so I had to get right up close to the edge of the trench, and that’s when I found the tunnel.’