She went on. ‘They used the tunnel to get in and out of the camp at night, and provide themselves with the perfect alibi. Once they were billeted out on the farms they stopped: their alibi was gone, you see. And Amatista disappeared, of course, so perhaps they lost their nerve as well.’
‘The moon tunnel?’ asked Dryden again.
‘Romantic, isn’t it? Typical, really. The only danger was that they’d get caught outside the wire. So they always chose properties they knew – usually because they’d worked on them during the day. Most were country houses with home farms attached. They’d bide their time until the full moon, that way they could move across country without lights. They’d be out and back and no one ever suspected it could be them.’
‘And your husband told you all this?’
She hesitated, and Dryden knew she was about to lie. ‘Yes. All the family knew, and most of the Italian community, I think. Certainly by the time Marco died. Time had passed. At first they were worried that the police might make an effort to get the money back – I don’t know, repossess the restaurant or something. But now… they’re all dead.’
‘So when the war ended they were rich?’
‘I don’t think so – ask Pepe. Certainly not the Romas. But I think it paid the school fees at least.’
Dryden winced as the sweet liquid made one of his teeth hum. He set the cup down and stood. ‘I’m sorry – this really is the last question. My paper doesn’t give the title of doctor to those outside the medical profession. You said, I think, that you were a family doctor? Presumably the practice is in Italy – Lucca?’
‘My practice is in Lucca, Mr Dryden. But I’m not a GP. I’m a psychiatrist.’
Dr Haydon showed him the door. Outside, enveloped in the stench of the disinfectant in the stairwell, he flipped open his notebook and wrote the word ‘lunatic’ in shorthand, savouring the outline, feeling the moon tunnel pressing in from all sides.
24
‘Sleep,’ said Dryden getting in the cab, throwing his head back against the passenger headrest. The mist had thickened towards noon, stifling the light, and the Capri now lay marooned on the damp, glistening tarmac of the hospital car park. He rang Jean on the mobile and put over two paragraphs of quotes from Louise Beaumont for the Express’s splash.
Then he closed his eyes and said it again. ‘Sleep.’
‘Here or home?’ asked Humph, literal to the last.
‘Home,’ said Dryden, hating the word. He closed his eyes but saw only Valgimigli’s head, the exposed arteries running red. ‘Sleep,’ he said again, and felt its welcoming onrush.
Then, as Humph pulled the Capri in a long lazy circle towards the exit, Dryden’s mobile rang. It was Charlie, the stress apparent in The Crow’s lightly soused news editor. Septimus Kew, the paper’s usually silent editor, had been reading the early page proofs for the inside pages of that week’s edition of The Crow and didn’t like Dryden’s inside filler on the expected demonstration to mark the eclipse at California on Thursday night. The site was now the scene of a murder. Would they really go ahead? Wasn’t this just free publicity for a bunch of New Age nutters? The editor wanted the story backed up – and a judgement made on whether the demo would ever happen. Dryden had an hour to allay the editor’s fears, otherwise the story would be spiked and replaced by a report on Littleport Autumn Fayre.
Dryden killed the mobile and swore. He was doubly annoyed because Henry was right. ‘The riverside – Padnal Fen,’ he said, fishing in his pocket for food. Humph flipped down the glove compartment and found two bottles of malt whisky. Dryden sipped as he ate a sausage roll, feeling his spirits rise as they dropped down off the Isle of Ely onto the open fen by the river, where the mist thickened, bringing a premature dusk.
Speedwing, the radical druid, lived on the river in a narrow boat called The Prancing Pony. At water level the Ely smog was less poisonous, but thick enough to obscure the far bank where the watermeadows normally stretched to the horizon and the city’s nearest neighbouring ‘island’ of Stuntney. Today just the far bank was visible, and as Dryden watched a river rat slipped out of the grass and into the black water with an oily, audible plop.
The Prancing Pony smelt of damp despite the acrid smoke pouring from a tin chimney. Various scenes from Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings had been expertly recreated along its wooden cabin panels. On the roof two bikes were chained, alongside a herb garden contained in various terracotta pots. A plump white cat sat amongst them: its fur shivering with the imposition of the water droplets deposited by the mist. It saw Dryden with its pale pink eyes but declined to move.