The Moon Tunnel

29

Sunrise bathed Ten Mile Bank in a cool green light, like the reflection of water on a swimming pool ceiling. The mist shrank from the sun, lying thick and white in the geometric dykes and drains which hemmed in the village. Dryden got out of Humph’s cab and rested a takeaway coffee on the Capri’s roof. The sky was cloudless and the light thin, as if the colour had been stretched to meet the distant horizons. He sipped, thinking about the depths hidden in any family story: the small uncorrected lies, the accepted hatreds, the unspoken loves. He thought about Marco Valgimigli and his three sons, and the moon tunnel. He imagined crawling forward, the wooden packing crate walls crowding in, and even here, beneath an amphitheatre sky, he felt his heart race from claustrophobia.

Il Giardino was silent, but the neon sign flickered, and the white blinds were up on the restaurant windows. From a chimney pot on the flat roof a thin trickle of smoke rose, untroubled by a breeze. Dryden checked his watch: 9.14am. He knew by experience that Pepe Roma opened at 7.00am, in time to catch early deliveries to the sugar beet factory, and to provide breakfast for the HGV drivers who bothered to make a diversion off the A10 en route to the ports at Lynn and Boston.

Humph swung his left leg into the spare space Dryden had recently vacated, stretching out the limb with an audible creak.

‘You stay there,’ said Dryden, knowing Humph was immune to sarcasm.

He found Pepe in the yard at the rear of Il Giardino, already in his white apron, drawing deeply on a cigarette. He looked older than he must be – his black slicked-back hair thinning to reveal a hint of the skull beneath.

‘Hi,’ said Dryden, making him jump. ‘Sorry. It’s a bad time.’

‘You’re early,’ said Pepe, grinding the cigarette butt into the leaf litter of the yard where hundreds of others were rotting. ‘Coffee?’

Inside a distant radio played and Dryden reminded himself that this was home for Pepe, and the elderly matriarch of the Valgimiglis. Somewhere he could hear heavy footsteps, and briefly something else – the sound of weeping?

‘Mum’s upset,’ said Pepe, twisting the chrome scoops full of ground coffee into the espresso machine. He opened the slatted door behind the counter and shouted something rapidly in Italian.

‘Do you always talk in Italian at home?’

He shrugged. ‘At home – mostly. That was how we were brought up. English at school – so why not two languages? And Mum never gave it up – a badge of honour. The schizophrenic family – we change our names to blend in better, and then jabber on in Italian at home.’

Dryden pulled up a chair by the counter. ‘Which is why I didn’t know Azeglio Valgimigli was your brother.’

Pepe’s back stiffened, and he didn’t say anything as he finished making the coffee. Eventually he sat and eyed Dryden coolly. ‘Every family has its black sheep,’ he said. ‘We had two.’

They laughed, and Dryden let him carry on. ‘My brother,’ he said, savouring the word. ‘He left in 1985, nearly two years after Dad died. The café was left to Mum so there was nothing else for him to hang around for – he’s clever. Sorry, was clever. Did you see… was it you who…?’

‘I found his body, yes. The details, you don’t want to know. The police…’

‘They talked to Mum… She was upset, of course, but she’s used to her sons providing the pain in her life. She always said he was too good for us. That was Dad’s fault – the private schools. Spoilt – a very English vice. In Italy all children are spoilt – so they don’t stand out. No chance of that in my case.’ He laughed, lighting up a fresh cigarette and letting the nicotine go the long way round his lungs.

‘Bitter?’ asked Dryden.

‘Not particularly. I’m just not very proud of my brothers – sorry, I know this is bad, un-English perhaps. Azeglio is dead. But he was no better than Jerome, who lives a life apart from his family and thinks a call at Christmas is good enough for Mamma.’

‘Jerome? How long has it been – since he left?’

‘Jerome? I couldn’t forget that. It was the day after Dad’s funeral. He and Azeglio had planned everything. There was some secret which they never told anyone, so it was all done in whispers. But we knew Jerome was going home – to Mestre – to try and raise some capital for the business. He flew that day – the day after we buried Dad. Didn’t say goodbye, not even to Mum. There was a letter, some cards. Then later the calls. It is all she has of him, and it destroyed her.’ He ground the cigarette down into the ashtray and lit a third.

Dryden hatched a suspicion as corrosive as a lie. The moon tunnel’s victim had disappeared between 1970 and 1990. Jerome Roma had left home in early 1984 and become a disembodied voice, living a life reported only by the brother he resembled so much.

‘And Azeglio?’

‘He went too, but he took his time. He had a university education to complete, an education Mum paid for despite the debts. It was a dreadful three years. Azeglio got his degree and went to Italy as well – to Padua, then Lucca. Jerome had moved to Milan, a business opportunity. There was a woman too, but no marriage. Azeglio said he was happy. Both sent money; Mum always sent it back.’ He tossed a matchbox on to the Formica tabletop. ‘My brothers,’ he said, raising his coffee cup.

‘Azeglio didn’t bother with us. A letter sometimes, bragging about their home in the mountains, the flat by the university, the holidays. There are no children, so they live their lives. Mamma says she doesn’t care. But we can all hear the tears, yes?’

They listened to the silence, suspiciously deep. ‘Still in debt?’ said Dryden, breaking the spell.

‘We’re going bust very, very slowly. With a bit of luck she’ll be dead before we have to sell up,’ he said, tipping his chin upwards towards the ceiling. ‘She’s looking forward to death. To be with Dad. Every week she goes to the grave, every market day at noon, and tells him it won’t be long. That’s what Azeglio and Jerome did for her, Dryden, they gave her a life that wasn’t worth living.’

Dryden let that hang in the air. ‘I understand you had an argument with Azeglio – at California.’

Pepe looked through the window to where the rising sun was remorselessly flattening the Fen landscape. ‘He came back here. To see Mamma. I don’t think he had that right. We’re OK – this is my home now. He’d abandoned us…’

‘It seems a bit extreme. He’d left home; many sons do…’

Pepe pushed his chair back from the table, its legs grating on the tiled floor. ‘It’s more complicated than that. Bad blood is what we do well in Italy. But let us have some secrets left. Just a few.’

They heard the hydraulic brakes of an HGV hiss and a large Euro-container pulled up outside, blocking out half the eastern sky and taking away their sunlight.

‘First customer,’ said Pepe with too much enthusiasm.

Dryden ordered a breakfast for Humph and took it out to the Capri. He drank another coffee, using the cab roof as a table, and brought the empty plate back in. Pepe had just served up two all-day-breakfasts for the lorry driver and a teenage hitchhiker.

‘You won’t know this,’ said Dryden, realizing there was only one way to recapture Pepe’s co-operation. ‘The body in the tunnel. It isn’t Serafino Amatista – unless he lived on for up to half a century after he disappeared. The bones date to sometime between 1970 and 1990.’

Dryden thought of all that had happened to Pepe’s family in those two sorrow-filled decades. Pepe held Dryden’s eyes for a moment, and then the china handle of his cup broke, the black gritty coffee pooling on the worn Formica.

As he swept the spillage away with a cloth Dryden carried on. ‘Which means someone was using the gardeners’ tunnel long after the war had ended, long after the gardeners had started their new lives as model citizens. Why would someone do that?’

Pepe swabbed the table in a sudden burst of manic energy. ‘Dad always said the tunnel had been filled in by the British when they switched the Germans into the camp. That they’d ripped the huts apart, to make sure there was nothing there.’

Dryden nodded, ignoring him, but beginning to see what had been hidden for so long. He thought about the private education, the bills and the struggling post-war restaurant in the Fens. Where had Marco Roma kept his treasures? What better place than the old tunnel?

‘Did Azeglio bring his wife with him when he visited?’ asked Dryden, setting his plate on the counter.

‘No. No, she didn’t come. But she knew us well enough.’

‘Of course – I’d forgotten. She was at the university with Azeglio. So you’ve known her many years…’

Pepe laughed, standing. ‘Beautiful girl,’ he said, setting down the mug he was drying. ‘Very beautiful.’ He smiled, and looked ten years younger. ‘Everyone loved Louise.’