‘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.
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.
37
Gaetano was waiting outside the cemetery gates. He’d been into town to hire a car. It was mustard yellow, a Fiat, and he was revving the engine as Dryden got in.
‘Why don’t you spend more time with your daughter?’ said Dryden unkindly. ‘Talk about it.’
His father-in-law slipped the car into gear and pulled off with a screech of tyres. Dryden ostentatiously checked that his seat-belt was secure.
‘She is angry still. She wants me to tell Mamma. This I cannot do, Philip.’
They sped onto the main road, Gaetano oblivious to traffic approaching from the right. Dryden felt a pang of loss for the monosyllabic Humph.
‘I will go back later. Some wine, perhaps. I will try again.’ He knocked out an Italian cigarette expertly from the pack on the dashboard and lit up: ‘So – where to?’ he asked, eager to be free of his own problems.
Dryden, irritated by his father-in-law’s solicitousness, let him wait for an answer. He needed space to think, time to decide if he could be wrong. But The Crow’s deadline was pressing. The clear skies meant the town’s mini-smog was over, so he needed to check out the town dump first.
‘Dunkirk,’ said Dryden, enjoying Gaetano’s confusion. ‘Take the next right, the farm drove, then left at the T-junction. You can see it on the horizon – there.’ He pointed east to where the dump now stood out clearly, a plateau of household waste, trailing only the slimmest wraith of white smoke. ‘Then you can leave me – please. I don’t need a chauffeur.’
He rang the hospital on his mobile and got put through to the nurse on station at intensive care. No news. Condition stable.
Then Dryden rang The Crow, briefly filling Charlie in on his movements and promising to be in the office by 1.00pm.
‘Would you fight, Philip?’ asked his father-in-law, picking at the scab of his guilt. ‘If there was a war – perhaps one in which you did not believe.’
Their relationship had always been marked by honesty, and Dryden did not see any reason to alter the terms of engagement now. ‘So – we’re a conscientious objector now? I thought you ran away because your friend was killed beside you. I think that’s a good enough reason, Gaetano – stick to it. Especially with Laura, she has a nose for cant.’
Gaetano was silent, a very bad sign, and the Fiat’s speed increased.
Long before they got to the gates of the dump they’d passed half a dozen cars speeding back to town, still clearly crammed with the waste they had failed to jettison on Ma Trunch’s artificial mountain. At the gates one of Ma’s former employees in a fluorescent jacket stood guard.