The Moon Tunnel

28

Vintry House was an Edwardian villa, complete with a covered verandah which ran around three sides of the two-storey house, with neo-Gothic dormer windows dotting the high tiled roof. Dryden could imagine the whole façade swinging open on hinges to reveal a life-sized doll’s house. A brick wall encircled the property, topped with black iron spiked railings, while the garden within was thick with rhododendron, laurel, and magnolia.

He walked up the overgrown driveway, the unpruned laurels weeping on his head in the dense chill mist which seemed to sandbag all sounds except that of a radio playing dimly in the depths of the house, Classic FM perhaps, or Radio Three, a voice breaking a short silence to introduce the next selection. It was Vaughan Williams, and the volume rose. Dryden climbed the verandah steps and was thankful to be under cover. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and squeezed out the droplets of water.

The door opened before he could knock: Dr Mann stood, a coffee cup in his hand, and despite the ordeal of his arrest the china was steady. The white shirt was still immaculate, the bow-tie neat and high at the base of his tanned throat. Stepping into what light there was threw his face into relief, the lines of age etched deep, perhaps by something more than the passage of time. For the first time Dryden could see that this face had been built from some private agony, a face haunted by life.

‘Mr Dryden, an early bird?’ He could hear it now, of course, the slight edge of the Bavarian accent which clipped the vowels, and the over-punctilious syllables. But the voice was still light, the breezy tone that of a confident English academic. Mann nodded, and Dryden, seeing signs everywhere, thought the mannerism oddly military, the kind of practised movement which could dismiss a subordinate.

‘I can’t think of any good reason why you should speak to me,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s about Serafino Amatista.’

Dryden stepped back from the threshold. It was a trick he had used many times and with surprising success. The offered retreat, the winning lack of pushy Fleet Street tactics.

Dr Mann shivered as a skein of mist wrapped itself around the verandah, and the faltering light seemed to dim further. ‘In the past you have been kind,’ he said. ‘So, please. Coffee, perhaps, but I told the police everything.’

The house gave few clues to Mann’s early life, but what was there was plain to see. As coffee was fetched Dryden was invited to look round. The villa had been fashionably restored to its Edwardian dignity: stripped pine floors reflected the wall lights and an oak sideboard carried a china fruit bowl. Over the smouldering fire hung an enlarged photograph of Mann seated in what looked like a village square, a group of children at his feet, all of them shaded by an almond tree. An old man sat with him, worry beads clasped in the hand that also held a walking stick. The scene was lit by the fierce glare of the Mediterranean sun which bleached out the edges of the photograph.

On the sideboard a gilt frame held a picture of an elderly couple, the father with pince-nez, the mother’s hair in a tight grey bun. The elaborate dark wood of the chairs on which they sat was delicately carved, and behind them on a whitewashed wall hung a crucifix. A smaller snapshot had been more recently framed in modernistic chrome, showing a young Mann in uniform, jet black hair tucked beneath an infantryman’s forage cap.

Mann returned with coffees and threw a split log on the fire. They stood in awkward silence as the wood crackled and the world outside faded away in the thickening fog. The light level dropped, and when Mann lit a cigarette the match head blazed, throwing the lines of his face into even sharper relief.

‘Why did the police arrest you?’ asked Dryden.

Mann shrugged. ‘They had suspicions, understandably I think – but an arrest was unwarranted.’

‘Suspicions? That you had killed Professor Valgimigli?’

‘Azeglio?’ He laughed at that. ‘Perhaps they did think so. But why would I kill Azeglio Valgimigli? I had been his tutor, he was a fine student, he became my friend. I helped, I think, in a small way to get him his post here at the dig. It was something he wanted very much. No – I did not kill Azeglio. The police accused me of another murder – the man in the tunnel. They thought it was Amatista, but now…’

Dryden saw his chance. ‘Serafino Amatista was the village guard of Agios Gallini, a village you know…’

Mann held up his hand: ‘Please. All these matters were dealt with in 1947, Mr Dryden. The police have these records too. My position was always clear, and was corroborated by eyewitnesses. The action we took followed the discovery of a significant threat to the Wehrmacht and, indeed, the Italian civil authorities. I was an officer, the senior officer in this case, and I was compelled to observe the regulations set down in such cases. The tribunal in Salonika ruled that our actions could not constitute a war crime of any kind.’ But Mann’s smile was uncertain, and flickered out.

‘Though you do regret this… incident?’

Mann’s jaw jerked oddly to one side and Dryden saw the anger in his eyes. ‘The occupation of Greece was a brutal period. I have spent much of my life trying to help repair the damage that was done,’ he said, glancing at the picture over the fire. ‘For the rest of the war – until my capture by the British in 1944 – I was in charge of the garrison on Aegina. My time there is without blemish. Quite the opposite. Please consult the records if you wish.’

Dryden held up his hands. ‘No need. You were a prisoner? Here?’

Mann nodded, turning over the logs with a fire iron, the handle of which was fashioned into a cherub.

‘This man, Amatista, did you know he had preceded you at California?’ asked Dryden.

Mann paused. ‘Yes. I informed the authorities – in 1945 – that he was a deserter.’

‘How did you know he’d been in the camp?’

‘I found his picture. Family effects were left in the huts, I was detailed to organize their collection to a central point where we boxed everything up and informed the British they could take them away. They never did – at least not before our repatriation. As I say, this… man’s picture was amongst the others. A snapshot with a sweetheart, I think, sharing a bicycle ride. It was not a face I will ever forget.’

Mann threw another log on the fire and continued. ‘But it is not Serafino in the tunnel. So I am a free man again, Mr Dryden. What can I tell you?’

Dryden felt the tables expertly turned. ‘Amatista was a member of a group in the camp called the gardeners. They dug the tunnel and used it to carry out night-time burglaries on properties they cased while doing farm work. There is a picture, a painting, that I would like to recover for its rightful owner.’

‘I know nothing of this.’

‘The pearls they found – they come from the same house from which the painting was taken.’

Mann brought his hands together, an English gentleman subtly signalling that his guest should leave.

‘Did you know the tunnel was there?’ asked Dryden.

‘No. Tunnels are for escape. No one had escaped from California – we knew that. So why would we look for a tunnel?’

‘Did you not want to escape yourselves?’

‘Of course. But time was short. By 1944 we knew the war was almost over. It was clear that Hitler, and those who had supported him politically, were doomed. There were many tensions within the camp. Why escape? All we had to do was wait.’

‘You were not a member of the Nazi Party?’

Mann shook his head briskly.

‘Did you ever meet Amatista?’

Mann laughed. ‘Certainly not.’ Dryden heard the lie in the silence that followed.

‘Why did you buy this house?’

Mann put down his coffee. ‘Let me show you something.’

He led the way upstairs. The hall was wide on the first floor and bedroom doors stood closed. But a large window looked down on the garden at the back of the house. An overgrown lawn and flower beds led to the edge of a pine wood. Mist drifted across the tree tops, and beyond stretched the Black Fen.

‘My wife kept the gardens, you see,’ he said. ‘I have less interest.’

Dryden nodded, wondering why they had climbed for the view.

‘The camp is there.’ And Dryden saw it, the standing caravan that had been Azeglio’s office, the cleared site where the huts had stood, just glimpsed through the misty tree-tops.

‘I used to look at the house from within the wire – the pine woods were not there then, of course. Perhaps you do not understand, Mr Dryden, what we felt – those army officers who became PoWs here in England.’

Dryden let him go on. ‘We had been told – by the Party, and by their friends – that we would be tortured here. Executed. But things were very different. We came to value our time here, to recognize the kindnesses and the civilized way in which we were treated. I used to look at this house, it was empty then and in ruins, and think that – maybe – one day, I would own it. It was derelict after the war. I came to Cambridge – the university – and bought a house in the city. Then one day we came to Ely and, I was astonished, the house still stood, the price was low, so we bought. That was 1985.’

They went down and out into the garden. The drive was lined with trees, many unusual, few the same, all overgrown and unkempt, dim shadows in the drifting mist. Dryden felt the moisture gathering again in his hair and on his eyelids.

‘The trees? Did you plant them?’ said Dryden.

‘My wife, as I said. Did you know that there is a kind of code held within the choice of trees in a garden such as this?’

Mann walked through the mist to the first tree by the drive. ‘This is a beech – for prosperity. And next, the Black Poplar – for courage. Did you know this?’

Dryden shook his head. In the centre of the lawn stood a tree he did not recognize. ‘And this?’

‘The cinnamon tree: forgiveness,’ said Mann.

‘What do you think happened to Serafino Amatista?’ said Dryden. ‘Could he still be alive? After all, he’d faked his death once before.’

Mann shivered and seemed not to hear. ‘I hope not. I wished him dead many times. If we had met I would have done it myself. It was not to be.’ He turned back without a further word, the mist closing in to fill the space where he had been.