‘I know nothing of this.’
‘The pearls they found – they come from the same house from which the painting was taken.’
Mann brought his hands together, an English gentleman subtly signalling that his guest should leave.
‘Did you know the tunnel was there?’ asked Dryden.
‘No. Tunnels are for escape. No one had escaped from California – we knew that. So why would we look for a tunnel?’
‘Did you not want to escape yourselves?’
‘Of course. But time was short. By 1944 we knew the war was almost over. It was clear that Hitler, and those who had supported him politically, were doomed. There were many tensions within the camp. Why escape? All we had to do was wait.’
‘You were not a member of the Nazi Party?’
Mann shook his head briskly.
‘Did you ever meet Amatista?’
Mann laughed. ‘Certainly not.’ Dryden heard the lie in the silence that followed.
‘Why did you buy this house?’
Mann put down his coffee. ‘Let me show you something.’
He led the way upstairs. The hall was wide on the first floor and bedroom doors stood closed. But a large window looked down on the garden at the back of the house. An overgrown lawn and flower beds led to the edge of a pine wood. Mist drifted across the tree tops, and beyond stretched the Black Fen.
‘My wife kept the gardens, you see,’ he said. ‘I have less interest.’
Dryden nodded, wondering why they had climbed for the view.
‘The camp is there.’ And Dryden saw it, the standing caravan that had been Azeglio’s office, the cleared site where the huts had stood, just glimpsed through the misty tree-tops.
‘I used to look at the house from within the wire – the pine woods were not there then, of course. Perhaps you do not understand, Mr Dryden, what we felt – those army officers who became PoWs here in England.’
Dryden let him go on. ‘We had been told – by the Party, and by their friends – that we would be tortured here. Executed. But things were very different. We came to value our time here, to recognize the kindnesses and the civilized way in which we were treated. I used to look at this house, it was empty then and in ruins, and think that – maybe – one day, I would own it. It was derelict after the war. I came to Cambridge – the university – and bought a house in the city. Then one day we came to Ely and, I was astonished, the house still stood, the price was low, so we bought. That was 1985.’
They went down and out into the garden. The drive was lined with trees, many unusual, few the same, all overgrown and unkempt, dim shadows in the drifting mist. Dryden felt the moisture gathering again in his hair and on his eyelids.
‘The trees? Did you plant them?’ said Dryden.
‘My wife, as I said. Did you know that there is a kind of code held within the choice of trees in a garden such as this?’
Mann walked through the mist to the first tree by the drive. ‘This is a beech – for prosperity. And next, the Black Poplar – for courage. Did you know this?’
Dryden shook his head. In the centre of the lawn stood a tree he did not recognize. ‘And this?’
‘The cinnamon tree: forgiveness,’ said Mann.
‘What do you think happened to Serafino Amatista?’ said Dryden. ‘Could he still be alive? After all, he’d faked his death once before.’
Mann shivered and seemed not to hear. ‘I hope not. I wished him dead many times. If we had met I would have done it myself. It was not to be.’ He turned back without a further word, the mist closing in to fill the space where he had been.
29
Sunrise bathed Ten Mile Bank in a cool green light, like the reflection of water on a swimming pool ceiling. The mist shrank from the sun, lying thick and white in the geometric dykes and drains which hemmed in the village. Dryden got out of Humph’s cab and rested a takeaway coffee on the Capri’s roof. The sky was cloudless and the light thin, as if the colour had been stretched to meet the distant horizons. He sipped, thinking about the depths hidden in any family story: the small uncorrected lies, the accepted hatreds, the unspoken loves. He thought about Marco Valgimigli and his three sons, and the moon tunnel. He imagined crawling forward, the wooden packing crate walls crowding in, and even here, beneath an amphitheatre sky, he felt his heart race from claustrophobia.
Il Giardino was silent, but the neon sign flickered, and the white blinds were up on the restaurant windows. From a chimney pot on the flat roof a thin trickle of smoke rose, untroubled by a breeze. Dryden checked his watch: 9.14am. He knew by experience that Pepe Roma opened at 7.00am, in time to catch early deliveries to the sugar beet factory, and to provide breakfast for the HGV drivers who bothered to make a diversion off the A10 en route to the ports at Lynn and Boston.