The Moon Tunnel(88)

At 11.36pm precisely the earth’s shadow had clipped the moon. Even Dryden, immune to the romantic nostalgia of the druids, felt the change: the black hair on his neck bristled as the pine woods fell silent. Despite himself he sensed his heartbeat quicken, and the individuals who made up this shimmering crowd began to pulse too, as if to a common beat. But it was the silence which lent credence to the charge of desecration, and seemed to bless the hungry souls who had come to worship. Here they stood, where they felt thousands had stood before, to watch an eclipse plunge the night into blackness.

The police, who had thrown a loose cordon behind the demonstrators, stood back amongst the pine trees. By the gates a single squad car sat silently, only its rotating blue light indicating it was on duty. A walkie-talkie crackled but was hurriedly stifled. The silence, again complete, ushered the hypnotic shadow across the moon and as the pale rose red took the place of the high-voltage white the shadows deepened on earth. The glare of the moon faded, and stars – normally unseen at the moon’s edge – emerged from the black sky. Finally, only a single sliver of the full moon remained, a brilliant shard of white light, exploding at the edge of the red sphere like a sunburst.

Then the eclipse was complete. Speedwing stood on his supporters’ shoulders, a black figure against the site’s halogen floodlights. Above them the moon, in its subtle new radiance, hung for once like a sphere, not a mundane, flattened disc. On its surface the familiar seas and mountains reappeared more clearly, intimate, closer. And still, the impenetrable silence, until Speedwing spoke.

‘The fence!’

The crowd turned and pressed forward, the sound of buckling metal accompanied by the sharp cracks of the thin bands breaking between the reinforced poles. Then came the shot, and the screams. Dryden guessed it was an airgun, and the second shot found its target as one of the floodlights crackled and cut out, followed almost immediately by the others as the circuit was broken.

Dryden blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust, but it was as if the world had become a giant photographer’s darkroom, lit only in infrared. He heard a bark and turned to see Boudicca bounding past the line of white police vans from which uniformed officers in riot gear were being disgorged into the puddles of red light beneath the pine trees, where Gaetano had parked the Fiat. He saw fear in the dog’s eyes, which doubly reflected the red moon, so he grabbed the leash and joined the throng of demonstrators pushing through the gap in the security wire.

Ahead of him, just a few yards ahead, a hooded figure in black moved with the others, fair hair showing at the shoulders. The rest, agitated, cast round for Speedwing’s staff to follow. But the figure in black moved purposefully towards the ladder that led down into the main diggers’ trench, retrieved a torch from a pocket and checked the beam by shining it once into the face beneath the hood. Then, quickly, the figure descended.

Dryden followed, his scalp prickling with fear. At the top of the ladder he paused, holding Boudicca back on the leash, before climbing down, the dog bounding down beside him into the gloom of the ditch. Above him on the edge two demonstrators struggled with a policeman in riot gear, but below the way was clear, the only light the lunar red, and by it, ahead, he saw the figure pause at the central crossroads and turn east towards the moon tunnel.

He walked on, encouraged by Boudicca’s confident tugs, his own knees buckling with fear, as he relived the moment when the flailing figure of the mutilated Azeglio Valgimigli had thrown itself at his feet. He stumbled badly, falling to his knees, but the greyhound returned to snuffle his neck, the fetid breath of the dog on his face, and despite the otherworldly light he could clearly see her white incisors.

He made it to the crossroads and looked east towards the point where the archaeologist’s trench had cut through the moon tunnel. The ditch was empty. A clean sweep of neatly excavated earth. He felt his guts twist, knowing instinctively where his quarry had gone. Boudicca had the scent now and loped forward, still silent, until her head plunged inside the tunnel’s opening. Dryden, catching up, pulled the dog back and clicked on the torch Gaetano had retrieved from the boot of the hired car. The tunnel was clear for about twenty yards, then turned north. The police team had cleared it as best they could, but here and there the thin wooden packing-case panels had buckled, and little avalanches of soil lay across the way forward, lumps of the grey-green clay glistening. Boudicca eyed him, eager, confident in their courage.

Dryden’s life was made up of moments like this. He knew he didn’t have the courage to go on, but knew that he would, more fearful of the verdict that he was a coward. What was in it for him? He thought about what might lay around the slow curve of the tunnel. Had Valgimigli’s killer returned to the place of execution? Was the Dadd buried here? There was, he knew, another item missing from the scene: the gun.