Dryden let that hang in the air. ‘I understand you had an argument with Azeglio – at California.’
Pepe looked through the window to where the rising sun was remorselessly flattening the Fen landscape. ‘He came back here. To see Mamma. I don’t think he had that right. We’re OK – this is my home now. He’d abandoned us…’
‘It seems a bit extreme. He’d left home; many sons do…’
Pepe pushed his chair back from the table, its legs grating on the tiled floor. ‘It’s more complicated than that. Bad blood is what we do well in Italy. But let us have some secrets left. Just a few.’
They heard the hydraulic brakes of an HGV hiss and a large Euro-container pulled up outside, blocking out half the eastern sky and taking away their sunlight.
‘First customer,’ said Pepe with too much enthusiasm.
Dryden ordered a breakfast for Humph and took it out to the Capri. He drank another coffee, using the cab roof as a table, and brought the empty plate back in. Pepe had just served up two all-day-breakfasts for the lorry driver and a teenage hitchhiker.
‘You won’t know this,’ said Dryden, realizing there was only one way to recapture Pepe’s co-operation. ‘The body in the tunnel. It isn’t Serafino Amatista – unless he lived on for up to half a century after he disappeared. The bones date to sometime between 1970 and 1990.’
Dryden thought of all that had happened to Pepe’s family in those two sorrow-filled decades. Pepe held Dryden’s eyes for a moment, and then the china handle of his cup broke, the black gritty coffee pooling on the worn Formica.
As he swept the spillage away with a cloth Dryden carried on. ‘Which means someone was using the gardeners’ tunnel long after the war had ended, long after the gardeners had started their new lives as model citizens. Why would someone do that?’
Pepe swabbed the table in a sudden burst of manic energy. ‘Dad always said the tunnel had been filled in by the British when they switched the Germans into the camp. That they’d ripped the huts apart, to make sure there was nothing there.’
Dryden nodded, ignoring him, but beginning to see what had been hidden for so long. He thought about the private education, the bills and the struggling post-war restaurant in the Fens. Where had Marco Roma kept his treasures? What better place than the old tunnel?
‘Did Azeglio bring his wife with him when he visited?’ asked Dryden, setting his plate on the counter.
‘No. No, she didn’t come. But she knew us well enough.’
‘Of course – I’d forgotten. She was at the university with Azeglio. So you’ve known her many years…’
Pepe laughed, standing. ‘Beautiful girl,’ he said, setting down the mug he was drying. ‘Very beautiful.’ He smiled, and looked ten years younger. ‘Everyone loved Louise.’
30
Lost in Ely’s spreading smog the tiny village of Queen Adelaide was invisible: reduced to a mysterious series of mechanical sounds, each one a clue to its railway past. Goods trains criss-crossed its four level crossings, and the klaxons which blared as the automatic barriers were raised and lowered were a constant motif. Two mainline routes, a branch line and a great, sweeping loop for the goods trains had given Queen Adelaide its Victorian role as a microscopic Clapham Junction, a village overwhelmed by the railways. By one of the automatic barriers a tethered goat looked constantly startled by the passage of cars making their way out towards the more distant villages of Burnt Fen.
Humph, ignoring the dismal visibility, took the first two crossings at the Capri’s top speed of 53 mph, achieving a satisfying degree of lift-off and percussion on re-entry. This was one of the joys of his life and he was deeply satisfied to hear the exhaust hit the ground on the second attempt – a hollow clang like a Chinese dinner gong – followed by the faint but exotic scrape of the rear bumper touching the tarmac. But the third barrier was flashing red before he got within distance, so he was forced to pull up in the mist and wait. A train clattered past devoid of passengers, rocking the cab slightly as it rolled over uneven sleepers.
‘That was very childish,’ said Dryden, looking pointedly out of the side window at the tethered goat, its eyes a pool of satanic yellow and black. ‘Well done.’
‘Cheers,’ said Humph. ‘Terrific.’ He thrummed his fingers on the furry steering-wheel cover he’d bought in a job lot with a pair of fluffy dice.
Dryden reviewed his conversation with Pepe Roma. He was convinced that the clues to Azeglio Valgimigli’s death lay in his family’s past, and with the body in the moon tunnel. To build on his suspicions he needed to know more: what, for example, was the family secret he couldn’t share? Clearly the brothers had disagreed about the future of their father’s business. But Pepe had made it clear there was another, deeper reason for the bad blood which seemed to have poisoned the family. Dryden knew one man who could help, and it was a man who owed him a favour.