The Moon Tunnel

Thursday, 28 October

35

They were small breaths for a big man. Dryden had listened to them all night, the respirator wheezing to help Humph fill his lungs. The green-blue tinge to his lips and fingernails had faded, and now a pinker shade gave back life to his skin. A stroke, the first doctor had guessed; the second told the more brutal reality: heart attack.

‘How old is your friend, Mr Dryden?’ The answer: twenty years too young for a heart attack.

Dryden dozed briefly, falling effortlessly into the familiar nightmare, waking each time the sand creaked and fell, suddenly blocking out the light. At 6.45 am he fetched coffee from a machine in the corridor. Humph slept soundly, the respirator rhythmic and comforting. Outside he heard the rest of the hospital waking up, cleaners chatting outside, breakfast trolleys crashing through ward doors, so unlike the wealthy hush of The Tower.

Out of the window the red rim of the sun showed through the river mist, which seemed thin and insubstantial, showing little sign of the familiar smog. Somewhere just beyond the ghostly hospital outbuildings Dr Louise Beaumont was no doubt swimming her languid lengths, the water flowing smoothly from her skin-tight black costume.

He slept again, but this time when he woke it was mid-morning, there was unfamiliar sunlight on the bed, and sitting opposite was DS Cavendish-Smith.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. About your friend… I brought this – it’s cold now.’

He handed Dryden a coffee cup across Humph’s body.

‘What do they reckon?’ asked the detective, oblivious to Dryden’s feelings.

‘He’ll be fine if he lives out the week,’ said Dryden, equally oblivious.

Cavendish-Smith didn’t listen to the reply. He checked his notebook. ‘What do you know about Russell Flynn? He says you’re a friend who can vouch for him.’

Dryden laughed, the coffee freezing his lips. ‘Vouch? Well, yeah – I can vouch for him all right. He’s a small-time crook with one GCSE – in applied housebreaking. What did he do for the nighthawks?’

‘I think he was the link – between the digger Atkinson and the network. Small fry, of course, but there’s no deal without him. Anyway, they’re all dropping each other in the brown stuff asap. Not much honour amongst these thieves. The point is – was he ever violent to your knowledge? Ever see a knife, a gun?’

‘Russell? No way. That’s probably one of the reasons I liked him. A born coward, our Russ – we stick together.’

Cavendish-Smith looked through him. ‘Something has come up on Valgimigli’s murder. I can give you some information. I need some in return.’ He gulped, and Dryden guessed the detective was adrift, increasingly unable to see his way clearly in an investigation as nebulous and weaving as the mist on the river. Dryden was sure now that the key to the archaeologist’s murder lay not in stolen artefacts, or wartime reprisals, but in love and hate. He had decided to tell the detective everything, but something in the man’s peremptory tone made him hesitate.

Humph emitted a series of small snores and began to stir.

‘The forensic examination of Valgimigli’s corpse was extensive. We found some traces of saliva on his face and hairs in the wounds. We’ve extracted some DNA material from these deposits and compared them with Valgimigli’s own profile – there’s no match, so we have got something on the killer at least. But there was something unexpected. It’s routine in such cases to cross-check all samples in a case. There is a match between Valgimigli’s DNA and that we extracted from our original victim in the moon tunnel.’

‘What kind of match?’ said Dryden.

‘The science is tricky. But there’s no doubt – the two are closely related. That’s all we can say at the moment. They’re going to do further tests.’

‘How closely?’ said Dryden.

‘In return for this information,’ said the detective, cutting him off, ‘I’m clearly going to have to interview the family. They’ve been informed of the DNA results. But I need detail, a family profile. The mother’s alive, apparently. I’ve got someone making a call as we speak.’

Gina, thought Dryden, The matriarch. Pepe had said she visited Marco’s grave every Thursday at noon. Clockwork. ‘There were three brothers,’ he said, and gave the detective a brief and superficial history of the Roma family and Marco’s errant sons.

‘Not interested in the nighthawks any more?’ he added.

The detective bristled. ‘I guess. It’s family – it has to be.’

Dryden had decided. He would tell Cavendish-Smith the rest after he’d done his own interviews at Il Giardino – if the detective had not discovered everything himself. In the meantime he would visit Marco’s grave.

‘What about the Dadd?’ said Dryden, happy to lay false trails. ‘Perhaps Valgimigli found it – and someone killed him for it? The motives for both killings do not have to be identical. Neither does the identity of the killer.’

‘Thanks for that,’ said Cavendish-Smith coldly. ‘But in that case where’s the Dadd? I can’t see our nighthawks involved in murder anyway. One of them’s permanently stoned, Russell’s so scared he’s spent the last six hours in the loo at the nick.’

‘Charges?’

But it looked like the trading of information had ended. Cavendish-Smith rose. ‘Thanks for your help – although I get the impression you have not told me everything. I take exception to that.’

‘Ditto,’ said Dryden, standing and looking out across the misty car park. A woman in matt black crossed to a lipstick red Alfa Romeo and got in the driver’s seat.

‘When will you tell Louise Beaumont?’ he asked the detective, who was neatly applying a fresh entry to his notebook.

‘It’s been done. First thing.’

Dryden nodded. ‘Any luck with the gun?’

‘That’s my business,’ said Cavendish-Smith, standing and leaving without another word.

Dryden guessed the detective was heading out to Ten Mile Bank. He checked his watch: Thursday, market day, 11.40am.

In the silence he listened to Humph cough, then retch, the cabbie’s head jerking forward. Dryden held him, one hand behind his friend’s back, as the respirator re-established the rhythm of his breathing. Then there was only one sound, the precarious beep of the heart monitor, each vivid blue peak on the screen threatening to be the last.