‘Ma,’ said Dryden. ‘Something for the collection?’
She looked utterly lost. ‘I sold the business,’ she said flatly, ‘for this.’
Dryden saw them then, two figures in a distant conversation, standing in the groundmist of the night, circled by Boudicca. Ma touched the blade with a delicate finger. A uniformed officer opened the driver’s door and showed Ma a set of handcuffs.
‘Can I hold it?’ she asked Dryden, ignoring the policeman.
The officer slipped in beside her, nodding. Ma took up the sword and held it up, the blade close to her lips, feeling the weight, feeling the past. Then she replaced it delicately, and folded the green material over it as lovingly as she would have buried a child.
Dryden left them and went back into the garden. Josh Atkinson now sat on a disused coal-bunker, smoking a cigarette, watched by the woman DC, his hands cuffed. The necklace of another set of cuffs joined one ankle to a cast-iron bolt on the coal bunker.
Josh smiled when he saw Dryden. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘What a fuck-up.’
‘Indeed,’ said Dryden. ‘What did you tell ’em?’ he asked, nodding to the policewoman.
Josh stubbed out the cigarette. ‘They made me do it.’
Dryden sat next to him. ‘I guess we’re gonna hear that quite a bit. What did they pay you?’
‘I think that’s enough…’ The constable stood. ‘The sergeant will be with him soon.’
Then they heard a woman’s sob, deep and guttural, and the officer who had handcuffed Ma Trunch appeared at the back gate: ‘Joan – can you help? She’s pretty upset…’
The detective reluctantly left Dryden alone with her prisoner, checking the handcuffs first. They heard her trying to comfort Ma as they edged her towards a police van which was parked at the end of the alley.
Dryden took out the Greek cigarettes he saved for his visits to The Tower and offered Josh one, placing it between the pale lips, which trembled slightly.
‘So you got the stuff out of the ground,’ said Dryden. ‘But who shifted it? Who found the buyers?’
Josh tried a cold stare but his eyes swam from the impact of too much nicotine. They listened to the officers overturning the flat.
‘I thought it was Alder – the funeral director,’ said Dryden. ‘But why did I think that? Because a lowlife petty thief called Russell Flynn told me. A mutual friend, I think? You might like to know that the police may well be interviewing Russell – right now. My advice – get your retaliation in first.’
Josh tried to calculate an answer but his brain had been derailed. ‘I’ll phone a lawyer,’ he said.
‘Get a good one,’ said Dryden. ‘My guess is you got the sword out – and took Russell with you. The big question is when. And did Azeglio Valgimigli catch you at it – which is why he’s dead?’
Clearly this configuration had not occurred to Valgimigli’s digger. His face slumped, the heavy features briefly arranged as they would be in ten years’ time. ‘Jesus. They can’t think that.’
‘Really? I’d practise your story if I were you. These guys aren’t jumping like this because of a few pottery shards and an Anglo-Saxon sword. This is a murder investigation, and you’re a suspect.’
Josh was suddenly babbling. ‘Russ said there’d be nobody there. He was right. We never saw Valgimigli. We just got the sword and got out.’ His hands shook violently as he raised the cigarette for another drag.
Dryden nodded. ‘I’d work on that,’ he said, believing him.
34
‘Fun?’ said Humph as Dryden got back in the Capri. He’d texted the cabbie to pick him up at the end of Gladstone Gardens.
‘Laugh a minute. You OK?’
Humph was an odd colour, a tinge of green overlaying the usual baby-pink. Sweat twinkled on his brow under the interior light.
‘Something I ate,’ said the cabbie.
‘That hardly narrows things down, does it?’ said Dryden, rummaging in the glove compartment where he selected a dark rum. ‘The Tower please, pronto.’
The nurse at reception looked up as Dryden strode through. ‘Your wife has a visitor – her father.’
Dryden’s pulse raced: it must be bad news.
Gaetano was in the corridor, cradling a coffee in a paper cup. They embraced wordlessly, and then Dryden held him at arm’s length. ‘What’s wrong – Rosa?’
Gaetano shook his head. He was barrel-chested, with no neck but a bull’s head. But the eyes were soft and brown like his daughter’s, and retirement had made him less bowed by the burden of work.
‘She is well, Philip. She sends her love. I, I… this…’ he said, showing Dryden a printout from a computer. It was an e-mail from Laura: Come immediately if you can. Come alone.