The Moon Tunnel

31

The Valgimigli brothers had fought over a woman, a beautiful woman. Dryden could see why – even though twenty years had passed. She emerged from the pale blue water of the therapy pool in a black one-piece swimsuit and stood in the light which streamed in through the 1930s latticework windows. Water trickled from her body, which was still slim at the waist, her breasts full and firm, her neck tanned and sleek. She stood soaking up the warmth from the wraparound towel, a sybarite alone.

There had been no answer from the flat, so he’d wandered the grounds thinking about the enigma that was Louise Beaumont – a woman who had been engaged as a lovestruck teenager, abandoned by her lover and then wooed by his brother. He felt, almost passionately, that she was at the crossroads – where the stories of the moon tunnel and Azeglio Valgimigli met. The place where Azeglio Valgimigli had died.

As twilight approached he had become lost amongst the hospital buildings. Beyond the main block the old RAF wards, now mothballed, ran in a graceful arc around playing fields. Towards the perimeter fence, in the same 1930s style as the main buildings, stood the pool – refurbished for use by the occupational therapists who worked with patients referred to the convalescent unit. The lights within showed that someone was swimming.

Now he skirted the windows, keeping out of the setting sun, and found a door. He heard another door open and shut within and, intuitively, stepped quickly to one side and behind a buttress wall. He heard the outside door open and then footsteps moving quickly away along the gravel path. The figure dissolved quickly in the last shreds of the day’s mist but he knew the outline well: Pepe Roma. Why was Azeglio Valgimigli’s brother visiting his widow?

Inside Dryden was enveloped by the warm, moist air. The sound of a swimmer, languidly making lengths, played like a mantra. She continued with the lengths, backstroke, for ten minutes, her style relaxed and unhurried, and he took one of the white plastic seats and pulled it to the edge of the pool. Her measured pace gave him time to think, to try and recall the first time he’d spoken to Louise Beaumont in the cemetery just hours before her husband’s ritual murder. She’d lied, he knew that then, when she’d said her husband had told her about the moon tunnel. And, he remembered now, he’d told her about the desertion of Serafino Amatista, and the execution at Agios Gallini.

Finally she stopped swimming, climbing the ladder with practised ease, the muscles on her arms flexing in the light.

She saw him quickly, but there was no reaction, and she continued drying herself before fetching a robe and a plastic chair which she placed six feet from his: the perfectly judged distance, a professional distance.

‘A coincidence? Hardly,’ she said, retrieving a bottle of mineral water from the pocket of her robe.

‘A perk?’ said Dryden, looking round the empty pool.

‘Yes. Not mine – I’m breaking the rules.’

‘And Pepe?’

She drank from the bottle. ‘Visiting. He’s been kind.’

Dryden was getting nowhere. He needed to ruffle that polished surface. ‘Forgive me. Who owns Il Giardino?’

She laughed then, considering whether to say more. ‘Look. When Marco died he left the business to Gina. When she dies – I suppose – technically it would have gone to Aze unless she has made other provisions. Can you imagine? The business is Pepe’s – I told him that. I also – and this is none of your business – gave him some money. Aze would have wanted it.’

Dryden felt things were going much better. Why had she told him about the money? She was trying to use the interview, trying to lead him somewhere.

‘Sorry. I’ll be brief. I’m interested in what has… what has happened at California – not for the paper. The man found in the tunnel may have had a canvas with him – a painting. It’s worth a lot of money, and it belongs to a friend of mine. Did your husband find it?’

She narrowed her eyes and Dryden knew she was going to lie again. ‘Perhaps. The police think that is maybe why he died. I can’t help…’ she began to fold the robe around her legs.

‘One last question?’

But she stood.

‘Jerome Roma. I understand you were engaged? Have you heard from him since he went to Italy?’

She tried smiling again, failed, and sat instead. ‘Who told you that?’ she asked, adding before he could reply, ‘No matter. I am eternally grateful for his absence from our lives. He sent me his engagement ring as a memento – I threw it in the Cam. I haven’t thought about him since. I haven’t spoken to him since. Is that clear?’

‘But you married his brother. I’m told they were much alike.’

There was a splash of colour on her throat now, a vivid flush even through the tan. ‘On that point your information is woefully inaccurate. Yes, superficially. The eyes, the voice, from a distance the way they stood…’ Her eyes slipped from his and watched the water lapping at the pool side. ‘But my life with Azeglio was very different from the one I might have imagined with his brother.’

It was a curiously ambivalent statement. Dryden noticed how she had avoided Jerome’s name.

‘A happy life?’ he asked.

She clutched the robe to her, seemingly unable to answer such a direct question.

‘Azeglio and I enjoyed our lives. We have our careers, which have been highly successful. We have supported each other in our work. This is very important in a marriage, Mr Dryden, do you understand this?’

Her voice had risen too far, and they listened to the echo.

‘Busy careers. But you were close? No secrets?’

‘We were partners. Partners in many ways. I’m proud of what we achieved. My husband didn’t waste his life, Mr Dryden. I won’t waste mine.’

‘But Jerome did?’

She shrugged, and Dryden sensed she knew now she’d gone too far.

‘But you had no children?’ he asked, knowing it was a question she could bite on.

She looked at him, the level of suppressed anger in her eyes making him lean back. ‘How dare you! That is our business, our decision.’ She covered her eyes and Dryden wondered if that was a lie too.

She swept past heading for the changing rooms and as Dryden watched he recalled something else about that first meeting, the way she’d clung to her husband’s arm while the rest of their bodies never touched, despite the sinuous weave of her hips. He considered the unruffled surface of the pool, and imagined the gold engagement ring dropping into the Cam, and the sluggish circular wavelets, radiating out.