The Moon Tunnel

36

The smog had gone. The town centre wallowed in light. The cathedral’s great tower reached up into a blue sky, where the vapour trails of two airliners had inscribed a colossal crucifix. In the cemetery council workers were mowing the grass, the last cut before winter, although it smelt instead of spring. The Italian community had a plot beyond the Victorian chapel of rest, through a dank archway, and along a sinuous gravel path. The headstones here were opulent, black and grey marbles, with each stone carrying a picture of the dead. Votive lights burned on several, their weak cherry-red glow lost in the sunshine.

An empty bench stood by Marco Roma’s grave. Then Dryden saw Gina Roma across a field of headstones, placing a vase by a heap of earth, still fresh from the exhumation. In jet-black she drank up the sunlight, her hair drawn back from her olive-brown face to reveal amber eyes. Dryden stood beside her and she stiffened, looked away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad time. The police have called – yes?’

She nodded, setting her jaw, and Dryden knew she’d guessed as well.

‘I’m glad Marco is dead,’ she said.

She rearranged the flowers, fussing with the arrangement.

They walked towards Marco’s grave and Dryden talked. ‘The gardeners used the tunnel on the nights they robbed the houses. I know this now. Marco was careful with his share, wasn’t he, not like the others. He used the moon tunnel to store the things they’d stolen – eking it out over the years to pay for Azeglio and Jerome’s schooling.’

She didn’t move a muscle. ‘That’s a beautiful brooch,’ he said. It was a Victorian cameo, worn with age. ‘A gift from the tunnel?’

She raised a hand, unable to stop herself, and the proud chin dipped.

Dryden considered how many lives had paid for those treasures. ‘When did you guess?’ he asked.

‘Today. But perhaps earlier. Their voices were so alike and Azeglio was so proud, when they were children, that he could fool me. I see now – that is why he kept away – so that the voice became Jerome’s. But I did not want to see the truth. I wanted to believe that Jerome was somewhere, that one day there would be a family, grandchildren. When I think of what Azeglio did to us I am glad he is dead. My own son.’

She covered her face in the cloth she had brought to wipe the marble headstone.

‘Marco told them – the boys – about the tunnel?’

She nodded. ‘But not Pepe.’

Dryden, so used to the jigsaw puzzle of this family’s past, slipped two pieces together in his mind. ‘So when he was about to die Marco told Azeglio and Jerome about the tunnel – and that there was something left? A painting perhaps? The pearls?’

‘Not Pepe. Not us.’

‘A painting?’ asked Dryden again, pushing.

She swept the cloth over the laminated picture of her husband, the features so clearly the template for Azeglio and Pepe.

‘So Azeglio killed Jerome? For money, or for love?’ asked Dryden, unable to suppress the image of the damp dark tunnel and the bones emerging from the earth.

She shook her head. ‘Azeglio. He was a jealous boy, always.’

‘He came back. He tried to see you?’

She turned away from the graveside and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Yes. I did not want to see him. I think his motives were clouded. I think he suspected I might have guessed. I am glad I did not see him. Now, I am glad he is dead. This is my tragedy, Mr Dryden. And Pepe knows now, so it is our tragedy.’

‘And you know who killed Azeglio for his crimes?’ asked Dryden, seeing again the cloven head in the moonlight. She crossed herself and left, a retreating figure in black, dogged by a long black shadow.