‘How closely?’ said Dryden.
‘In return for this information,’ said the detective, cutting him off, ‘I’m clearly going to have to interview the family. They’ve been informed of the DNA results. But I need detail, a family profile. The mother’s alive, apparently. I’ve got someone making a call as we speak.’
Gina, thought Dryden, The matriarch. Pepe had said she visited Marco’s grave every Thursday at noon. Clockwork. ‘There were three brothers,’ he said, and gave the detective a brief and superficial history of the Roma family and Marco’s errant sons.
‘Not interested in the nighthawks any more?’ he added.
The detective bristled. ‘I guess. It’s family – it has to be.’
Dryden had decided. He would tell Cavendish-Smith the rest after he’d done his own interviews at Il Giardino – if the detective had not discovered everything himself. In the meantime he would visit Marco’s grave.
‘What about the Dadd?’ said Dryden, happy to lay false trails. ‘Perhaps Valgimigli found it – and someone killed him for it? The motives for both killings do not have to be identical. Neither does the identity of the killer.’
‘Thanks for that,’ said Cavendish-Smith coldly. ‘But in that case where’s the Dadd? I can’t see our nighthawks involved in murder anyway. One of them’s permanently stoned, Russell’s so scared he’s spent the last six hours in the loo at the nick.’
‘Charges?’
But it looked like the trading of information had ended. Cavendish-Smith rose. ‘Thanks for your help – although I get the impression you have not told me everything. I take exception to that.’
‘Ditto,’ said Dryden, standing and looking out across the misty car park. A woman in matt black crossed to a lipstick red Alfa Romeo and got in the driver’s seat.
‘When will you tell Louise Beaumont?’ he asked the detective, who was neatly applying a fresh entry to his notebook.
‘It’s been done. First thing.’
Dryden nodded. ‘Any luck with the gun?’
‘That’s my business,’ said Cavendish-Smith, standing and leaving without another word.
Dryden guessed the detective was heading out to Ten Mile Bank. He checked his watch: Thursday, market day, 11.40am.
In the silence he listened to Humph cough, then retch, the cabbie’s head jerking forward. Dryden held him, one hand behind his friend’s back, as the respirator re-established the rhythm of his breathing. Then there was only one sound, the precarious beep of the heart monitor, each vivid blue peak on the screen threatening to be the last.
36
The smog had gone. The town centre wallowed in light. The cathedral’s great tower reached up into a blue sky, where the vapour trails of two airliners had inscribed a colossal crucifix. In the cemetery council workers were mowing the grass, the last cut before winter, although it smelt instead of spring. The Italian community had a plot beyond the Victorian chapel of rest, through a dank archway, and along a sinuous gravel path. The headstones here were opulent, black and grey marbles, with each stone carrying a picture of the dead. Votive lights burned on several, their weak cherry-red glow lost in the sunshine.
An empty bench stood by Marco Roma’s grave. Then Dryden saw Gina Roma across a field of headstones, placing a vase by a heap of earth, still fresh from the exhumation. In jet-black she drank up the sunlight, her hair drawn back from her olive-brown face to reveal amber eyes. Dryden stood beside her and she stiffened, looked away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad time. The police have called – yes?’
She nodded, setting her jaw, and Dryden knew she’d guessed as well.
‘I’m glad Marco is dead,’ she said.
She rearranged the flowers, fussing with the arrangement.
They walked towards Marco’s grave and Dryden talked. ‘The gardeners used the tunnel on the nights they robbed the houses. I know this now. Marco was careful with his share, wasn’t he, not like the others. He used the moon tunnel to store the things they’d stolen – eking it out over the years to pay for Azeglio and Jerome’s schooling.’
She didn’t move a muscle. ‘That’s a beautiful brooch,’ he said. It was a Victorian cameo, worn with age. ‘A gift from the tunnel?’
She raised a hand, unable to stop herself, and the proud chin dipped.
Dryden considered how many lives had paid for those treasures. ‘When did you guess?’ he asked.
‘Today. But perhaps earlier. Their voices were so alike and Azeglio was so proud, when they were children, that he could fool me. I see now – that is why he kept away – so that the voice became Jerome’s. But I did not want to see the truth. I wanted to believe that Jerome was somewhere, that one day there would be a family, grandchildren. When I think of what Azeglio did to us I am glad he is dead. My own son.’