The Moon Tunnel

17

The Frog Hall stood on a bleak concrete wharf known locally as The Hythe, half a mile from the town’s popular riverside tourist haunts. As public houses went it could claim, justifiably, to be ‘much sought after’ – owing to the fact it was almost impossible to find. Built at the turn of the nineteenth century to cater for the bands of navvies who had dug the New Cut, a straight stretch of river designed to bypass the wayward meanders of the ancient water course, it had been left high and dry by subsequent economic booms. The last late burst of riverside transport, the importation of bricks for the new suburbs built by the Victorians, had been its last hurrah. Now the dock was obsolete, an outlier forgotten by almost all of Ely’s inhabitants, a fantasy of red brick and tiles which no one sober ever saw.

The burial of Serafino Amatista had left Dryden confused and depressed. Who had killed him in that nightmarish tunnel sixty years ago? Had he really met his accuser, the German officer who had revealed his shameful past? Or did his death lie tangled amongst the unanswered questions which still surrounded the burglary at Osmington Hall? And where was the missing Dadd – the masterpiece which would save Vee Hilgay from a pauper’s old age? Had it been taken when Serafino died? Or could it have lain, untouched with the candlestick and pearls, until more recent times? Had Serafino’s tomb been robbed?

The Frog Hall lay encircled in the poisonous river fog, like some eccentric folly at sea. Tiles on the outside covered the brickwork to the first-floor windows in dull, dirty cream. The façade resembled an exuberant public lavatory, a fact many of its regulars were happy to take advantage of on a Saturday night. Its patrons were almost as eccentric as the building. It had a reputation for flexible opening hours, good beer and illegal substances. The police knew what went on but were prepared to turn a blind eye in the interests of higher-profile operations. Amongst its most devoted customers were Azeglio Valgimigli’s band of diggers.

Humph dropped Dryden outside and executed an effortless nine-point turn in the Capri, considering The Hythe and its environs unsafe and unsavoury. His supper would be purchased from a chip shop, consumed in a lay-by, and briskly followed up with a two-hour kip. Dryden’s plans were more professional: he’d picked up regular stories from the diggers over the summer months, for which he rewarded them with the odd round of free beer. Today his questions would be more specific.

The interior of The Frog Hall continued the lava-torial theme with no visible sense of irony. A long tiled corridor led into a back bar, and accommodated a speak-your-weight machine which accepted pre-decimal coinage. The bar itself was tiled again, but this time in glorious Victorian green and purple, topped off with cherrywood panels and a decorated ceiling which could have graced the town hall. Memorabilia clung to the walls like barnacles, from tin adverts for Capstan Full Strength, Hovis and Three Nuns pipe tobacco to an 1888 railway timetable for the Hunstanton line, long since axed by Dr Beeching.

There was only one thing wrong, Dryden noted, coughing loudly: there was no barman. In the silence he heard a train on the main line to Lynn, a seagull screeching on the chimney pots above and, intermittently, the sound of someone snoring close by. Years of attention to inconsequential detail told him something particular about the snoring: it was the outward sign of an inward hangover. Peering over the bartop Dryden found the snorer, asleep on a low bench below the barrels from which beer was directly dispensed to The Frog Hall’s discerning clientele. Dryden tinkled a delicate brass bell placed on the bar for that purpose. The barman uncurled himself and rose, attempting no explanation. He gloomily poured Dryden a pint without asking him what he wanted.

‘Busy lunchtime?’ asked Dryden.

‘Belter,’ said the barman, revealing a rich Ulster accent.

‘Diggers?’

The barman consulted a railway station clock about five feet in diameter which hung on the far wall.

‘Does that say 6.30?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes and producing a slightly gritty sound. Dryden nodded. ‘Any time now, then. Clockwork.’

Dryden let this remark hang in the air. He drank his beer while the barman emptied ashtrays and, with bucket and corks, began to clean the pipes. Less than a minute later they heard the front door open and a gaggle of excited voices filled the outer corridor. The digging team arrived, led by Jayne, the girl with the sensational hips. Dryden judged the moment and bought a round, securing a place in the circle at one of the heavy iron-legged tables. Josh, the digger who had found the body in the tunnel, sat next to the leggy blonde and wrapped an arm round her waist. The group broke open a collective packet of Golden Virginia, but Dryden could smell that on site they might have had different tastes – the aroma of cannabis clung to them.

Josh sported a Save the Whales badge on a T-shirt emblazoned Glastonbury 2003 across his wide chest. The girl slumped in his arms, her breasts wandering under a loose-fitting hand-dyed top. Dryden liked misfits but this lot were annoyingly co-ordinated in their eccentricity: a troop of lost souls from a less materialistic decade who spent their days unearthing an even more distant past – a time before money existed.

Josh was, Dryden had long ago decided, the nominal leader. His height, the obvious good looks, the carefully tousled hayrick of hair, all helped buttress a sense of power.

‘It’s about the body in the tunnel,’ said Dryden. ‘I just wanted to do a follow-up feature, now it looks as though we know who chummy was.’

‘There’s a name?’ said Jayne.

‘Yes. We think it’s the body of an Italian PoW – Serafino Amatista. But he didn’t try to escape when he was in the camp. He was going in – as we saw.’ Dryden swallowed a couple of inches of beer but noticed the rest had nearly drained their glasses. He bought refills and threw the barman in the round for luck.

He returned and sat next to Josh, the rest of the diggers now lost in a conversation about Anglo-Saxon ritual. ‘Anyway, it’s clear this Amatista was going into the camp. By the end of the war the Italians were given a lot more freedom, as internees, replaced behind the wire by the Germans. The Italians were moved out on the land – to some of the larger farms which could organize the labour. There was one at Buskeybay – on the Lark – my family still talk about them. They were popular, friendly, good workers. Some of them stayed.’

Josh nodded, playing with Jayne’s ear. ‘Look,’ said Dryden. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened that morning – the day you found him.’

The digger took his time making a roll-up. ‘Well, I’d been working on that stretch of the trench – the east lane we call it, running off the central crossroads out towards the old camp perimeter and the pine trees. I was walking the bounds – that’s like checking the edge of my area of excavation. You have to make sure nothing has contaminated the site – animals overnight, water damage, whatever. The dogs had gone, Valgimigli was worried, so we all had to check the site. The fog was really bad so I had to get right up close to the edge of the trench, and that’s when I found the tunnel.’

‘Right where we found the body?’

‘No. Not at first. I found the other side first. We’d cut through the tunnel, so it was in the walls of the trench on both sides. We hadn’t seen it at first because the soil was compacted and the trench was machine dug at that depth and that compresses the clay – like a layer of plaster spread on a rough wall. But overnight I suppose the looser soil had shifted and fallen slightly – so you could see the outline of the tunnel. I pulled at the edges with my fingers and found traces of the clapboard they’d used to shore the thing up when it was built. It was pretty clear to me what it was – especially at that depth. It was like the classic escape story, you know? I worked on that side for a while – five minutes maybe. Then I thought – what about the other side?’

He paused for effect, draining some more beer. The others were listening now, and Dryden saw some looks exchanged. Something was going on, and he wasn’t included.

‘That was very different. The first foot or so was open, the soil had spilled out into the trench. The clay inside was very unstable, clods and pebbles were falling from the roof, which had buckled.’

‘But you went in?’

‘Not far – a few feet. I used the long entrenching spade to work away at the earth. It was creeping all the time, it wasn’t difficult. Then the hand appeared, and the top of the skull. So I got out and went and got Professor Valgimigli – and you arrived.’

Dryden nodded: ‘Do you think someone had been working in the tunnel that morning, or the night before? Had someone been there before you? The dogs had gone that night, hadn’t they – so perhaps the site had been visited? By nighthawks?’

Josh shrugged. Jayne ran her hand up inside his T-shirt. ‘I guess it’s possible. I told the police – they didn’t seem bothered.’

‘It’s possible that the oilskin wallet you found – with the pearls – had once contained a canvas – an oil painting. A very valuable oil painting,’ said Dryden.

‘And you think we’ve got it?’ he said, gripping his pint glass.

‘Actually, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Dryden, drinking.

Josh tried to retrieve the situation. ‘I didn’t poke around. I found out what we were dealing with and then called for help.’

The Frog Hall’s windows were frosted, and the mist crowded out what little light was left in the day. A gull appeared in outline on the sill above their table, the sound of its feet shuffling on the wooden grating.

‘What’s Professor Valgimigli like to work with?’ asked Dryden, switching tack.

Another cat’s cradle of exchanged glances. It was the girl who broke the silence. ‘Too many airs and graces – all that Tuscan disdain. It pisses us off – but he knows his stuff. The rein rings are a big find – if we find a chariot burial we can all use it in our work – I’m doing an MA, it’ll help. He can just be a bit difficult. Haughty.’

They all nodded. ‘Which is laughable,’ added Josh, deciding to put the boot in. ‘When you think where he came from.’

They all smiled in a way which made Dryden’s skin creep, but he took the bait. ‘Tuscany?’ he asked, remembering too late that he’d had a chance to ask Valgimigli himself on the steps of Alder’s funeral parlour.

‘Yeah. But originally. All that Italian sophistication, eh? Try the Fens.’

Dryden looked incredulous. ‘You can’t be serious. The accent. The tan. The career?’

‘His passport’s British – we’ve seen it. We went to Oslo to see a ship burial when the dig started.’

‘Fine. So he’s a Brit.’

‘The Fens,’ said Josh. ‘He told us – later, when he talked us through the history of the site. He said he came here as a kid, from school – to see the huts. He left after university – Cambridge – for Italy.’

‘And he’s still got local connections here in the Fens,’ added Josh.

Dryden’s patience was thinning out rapidly, but he felt that he was getting closer to the heart of the mystery of Serafino Amatista, so he played the game one more time. ‘Really?’

The diggers crowded in and told the story between them, savouring its whiff of scandal, the assumption that somewhere lay a family secret which the unflappable professore wished to remain buried. The scene was vivid and, Dryden suspected, dramatized by the retelling. It had been mid-summer, the main cross-trenches were being dug, and Valgimigli had been working outside on the trestle tables, sifting through the pottery they had unearthed so far. During the day the security firm was off the site, the dogs delivered only at nightfall, and the white van which had quietly slipped through the gap in the perimeter fence had failed to catch their attention.

Voices had been raised immediately, and in the days before the fog had got a grip, they’d had a grandstand view. A man, late thirties, with thinning black hair had got out of the van and confronted the professor, jabbing a finger into his chest repeatedly.

‘Keep away,’ they’d heard from him, but Valgimigli’s replies were muted. He tried to lead the man into the office but had been pushed aside, tripping and falling into the dust. Back on his feet he abandoned his reticence, and stooped to pick up one of the boundary posts used to map out the dig site. He brandished it like a club, and advanced on the van driver screaming: ‘I have every right. I have a right.’

Then came the humiliation. The driver stepped forward, wrenched the wooden post from Azeglio’s weak grip, and tossed it effortlessly fifty yards into the surrounding brush. He slapped Azeglio’s face, a calculated insult, and spat in his eyes. Then he drove away, leaving the archaeologist standing in the drifting cloud of red dust the van had kicked up.

The van had a painted logo, said Josh, wine bottles and a bunch of grapes, and the name in coniferous green on a lemon-yellow backdrop: Il Giardino.