The Moon Tunnel

14

A rusted iron bridge joined Ma Trunch’s bungalow to the rest of the world, over a drain clogged with Day-Glo green water weeds just visible through the thick white gauze of the fog. The horizon of the Black Fen was a distant memory, the grey outline of the town dump just discernible half a mile to the east, climbing up towards the billowing polluted cloud which drifted from its summit. For a second Dryden saw the top, a silent tractor moving suddenly against the sky. Then the mist folded over itself and all was gone. The acid in the air made Dryden’s throat ache and his eyes water, blurring a landscape already swimming in moisture.

He paused on the bridge, the ironwork creaking ominously. He checked his watch: 10.30am. He wanted to get an update on the pollution story for the next day’s paper and he had time to kill before joining the Italian ex-PoWs for lunch at Il Giardino. Vee Hilgay had confirmed the link between Serafino Amatista and the robbery at Osmington. Who had killed Amatista? Why had he died crawling back into the PoW camp with the loot from Osmington? And, most importantly for the living, where was Richard Dadd’s A Moonlight Vision? Dryden clearly needed to know more about California’s energetic gardeners, and there was only one place to find that out: Pepe Roma’s restaurant.

Dryden walked on in the smog until Little Castles, Ma Trunch’s bastion, came into view ten yards beyond the bridge. The house was stuccoed in grey, and a large plastic butterfly by the front door emphasized the lack of colour elsewhere. The door and window frames had once been a dark blue, but had peeled in the relentless Fen sun to reveal a mottled grey pine, dripping now in the mist. The house’s most eccentric touch were the fake battlements, two bricks high, which framed the flat roof, and a quartet of miniature corner turrets with fairy-tale lancet windows.

Ma Trunch could have walked out of a fairy tale, thought Dryden, making his way up the path, but she wouldn’t have been the princess, she’d have been the thing that made the princess scream. Which reminded Dryden of another reason why he wanted to call on Ma Trunch. The menace that she radiated was not due entirely to her stature. She seemed to have more than a passing interest in Ely’s Anglo-Saxon treasures. And the guard dogs from California had been found in the dump. Dryden wondered how much she knew about the nighthawks.

The downside was the dogs. In the litany of Dryden’s fears dogs loomed like hounds in the mist. His guts shivered with the certainty he was about to meet Ma’s infamous troop of canine guards. As he approached he heard skittering on floor tiles and the sound of a large animal thudding against the front door.

‘Boudicca!’ Ma’s voice effortlessly carried from the back of the house. The dog whimpered, but didn’t retreat. Dryden could hear it breathing loudly through the letterbox.

Ma appeared round the side of the house, hoving into view like a galleon out of a sea mist. She didn’t look overjoyed to see him. ‘Come round. I’m working,’ she said, disappearing again.

To the side of Little Castles she’d created a dog pen. Dryden counted six Alsatians padding the wire, but there might have been more in the fog beyond. None of them barked, a canine idiosyncrasy which only intensified Dryden’s anxiety.

The bungalow’s rear french windows were open and Ma was working at a rough deal table in her outdoor clothes. Dryden guessed that central heating was not one of her chosen luxuries. The table was strewn with documents, maps and letters spilling from a toppled box file.

She fetched a mug and slopped some tea into it from a shiny aluminium pot, adding Carnation milk and sugar without asking. The resulting brew was orange and vaguely translucent.

‘They’re threatening to close me down for six months,’ she said, two of the slabs of flesh in her face colliding to produce a central frown. ‘They want to dig out the combustible layer – stop the fire.’

Dryden nodded. ‘What do they think it is? I can see it’s still burning.’

She searched amongst the papers, found a single sheet headed with the Department for the Environment’s logo. ‘According to this their so-called experts think the sulphur dioxide is produced from subterranean incineration. From the estimates of the depth of the seat of the fire it’s stuff laid down in the early sixties.’

She glanced at the fireplace, which had a dull puce tiled surround and a heavy mahogany mantelpiece. There was one picture: a large black and white shot of a man in overalls standing proudly in front of Little Castles. The face was thinner than Ma’s but the lineage was unmistakable.

‘Father’s time. They didn’t know any better. My guess is they dumped plastic household bottles – detergent, solvents, that kind of thing. It’s a chemical sump, and the contents have reacted. I’m not a chemist,’ she added, as though Dryden had expected her to be.

He produced a notebook as casually as he was able and slurped his tea. ‘What will you do? The rest…’ he tipped his head west towards the dump. ‘Will they lose their jobs?’

‘Well, I’m not paying them to sit on their arses am I?’ She’d raised her voice and a fifties cabinet full of dusty cut-glass rattled slightly. ‘It’s not over yet. I’ve got lawyers too. The council could fight the fire and keep the tip open on this side.’ Even she didn’t look like she believed such a scenario was feasible.

‘If not, we’ll hunker down for six months – no choice. We’ll get through.’ Dryden wondered who constituted ‘we’ – and guessed the dogs. Boudicca pushed open the door and ambled in, flopping down at Ma’s feet. The greyhound carried its head low, its bony back high. The dog’s mouth flopped open to reveal gums the colour and consistency of slug skin.

The door stayed open and Dryden could see through into the next room. It was dark, the light slatted as through shutters, but he could see what looked like a row of polished cabinets.

Ma caught the glance. ‘Come and see,’ she said, hauling herself up.

She’d covered the cabinet tops with rough hessian but when she pulled the first one back the glass was fingerprintless. Below it there glinted gold, silver and metalwork caught in the light of small halogen bulbs mounted inside the wooden cases. There were three such cabinets, about eight feet long and two foot deep.

‘You’ve got these insured, Ma?’ said Dryden, leaning in.

She laughed, the sound lost somewhere deep inside her body.

‘The dogs,’ she said simply. She probably let the pack loose at night, thought Dryden. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t replace the best stuff,’ she added.

Dryden concentrated on the items set out on the green baize in the first cabinet. He recognized two rein rings like the ones found by Azeglio Valgimigli.

‘A chariot burial?’ he asked.

Ma retrieved some reading glasses from her hair and set a felt-mounted magnifying glass on the cabinet top. ‘Take a closer look.’

The rings were gold, set with opals, and the leather straps of the reins were still attached through eyelets.

‘How much?’ said Dryden.

She shrugged. ‘Treasure trove. I found them with the detector at Manea back in the eighties. Don’t worry, it’s all above board. I’ve got the documents,’ she said, noting Dryden’s surprise.

‘And the rest?’

‘This cabinet is all finds,’ she said, standing back so he could see the items more clearly.

Most of it was the dreaded pottery shards, but there were some gold and silver pins, a dagger blade, and some scraps of leather which Dryden presumed were the remains of shoes and belts.

‘Why didn’t you press on after Oxford – pursue a career? You studied archaeology?’

She nodded, the great head staying down. ‘Business to run,’ she answered, too loudly. ‘Father was on his own by then, and Mum had made him let me go in the first place.’ Dryden noted the subtle difference in parental categorization. ‘She’d missed out too – on an education. Bright as a button. Spent her life in this house.’

A gust of light wind thudded an unlatched gate closed somewhere out on the fen. Outside a gull glided into view in the whiteness, and then was gone.

‘Frustrating, then?’ said Dryden, and he saw the slabs of flesh ride over each other as she tried to disguise something worse than frustration. Ma turned and tore the second hessian sheet back with force; this cabinet, like the first, was largely full of pottery: ‘Anglo-Saxon,’ she said. ‘My period. These are all local.’

‘But you can’t find these with a metal detector.’

‘You walk the fields. The stuff just turns up, ploughing does it, and soil churning – it’s natural.’

‘And this?’ asked Dryden, laying his hand on the final cabinet.

When revealed, the final cabinet glittered under the interior light. ‘Purchases,’ said Ma.

One item caught Dryden’s attention, a tiny bone brooch inlaid with silver, lying beside a bone comb with delicate cochineal-red spiral designs.

‘They’re beautiful,’ said Dryden sincerely, taking the magnifying glass and positioning it over the brooch. ‘How d’you afford this stuff?’

‘The business makes money. This represents thirty years of the profits. I don’t have anything else. Family.’ As she said the word she leaned in, peering at one of the brooches, the tip of a red tongue running along her thin lips.

She stood in silence and Boudicca skittered through to nuzzle her hand.

‘Will you have to sell anything to cover costs if the dump’s closed?’

‘I can stretch to six months. I’ll lay off the men; it’s not a charity.’

Dryden nodded. ‘The smog’s corrosive, isn’t it? I’ve noticed the damage on cars in town – corrosion, like a bubbling.’

She hauled open her eyes so that Dryden could see both clearly, two dark grey pebbles. ‘The site is insured, Dryden. And we’re covered by the council’s insurance as well. So – all enquiries to the town hall, OK?’

She smiled but the visit was over. She carefully replaced the hessian screens. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention the collection at all. It’s not something I share.’

Dryden sensed she regretted showing him. ‘Sure,’ he said, meaning it.

She took him back through the house. There was a threadbare hall carpet and a ticking grandmother clock. By the door an array of Wellington boots, all the same size, stood beneath a Victorian hatstand.

‘One last question,’ said Dryden, savouring his favourite line. ‘Did anyone ever suspect there was anything under the PoW camp? Ever been on the site yourself?’

Ma already had the door half closed. ‘Most authorities agree the Anglo-Saxon settlement stretched to the west of the city, so there was always interest. I knew the farmer out there, I had a look round with the detector – but that would be the late eighties, perhaps earlier.’

‘Find anything?’

Ma edged the door shut. ‘Junk. From the camp mainly. Billy cans, some coins.’

Dryden had his foot, literally, in the closing door. ‘The detectors are that good, are they? Pick up a coin?’

The gap in the still-open door framed Ma’s face. ‘Sure.’

‘How about a silver candlestick?’ he asked, but the door was closed.