Dryden nodded, folding the paper carefully over the moonlit scene. ‘Josh took it. Took it that morning when he uncovered the bones.’ Russ looked at his feet, suddenly still. ‘Why wasn’t it picked up in the raid on the flat?’ asked Dryden.
Russell ran a finger along the gilt-edged frame. ‘He ain’t that clever, Josh – nor the rest. He knew the pearls were fakes but couldn’t get a clear sight of the picture. When he did he said it was rubbish too. Victorian crap, bric-à-brac, a granny picture. So they let me take it home.’
‘Home?’ said Dryden, seeing the burnt-out cars, the eviscerated sofas on the Jubilee Estate.
‘Then you came round and saw Vee and said about the Dadd… No way we could flog it then, eh? Too hot, much too hot. But Vee needs the money. So we found a way. You told Josh about the Italians at Buskeybay. We were gonna stash it out there – let it turn up. Then I spotted the clearance coming up at auction. We got an old frame for it: perfect, so we took our chance.’
Dryden, laughing at last, pictured the scene in the Flynn family home. The Formica kitchen table, the three-inch pile shaggy purple carpet, and Richard Dadd’s £im masterpiece hanging opposite a flight of plaster ducks.
43
The lounge of Cedarwood Retirement Home was decorated in baby blue, clashing horribly with the floral upholstery on the dozen upright armchairs. Vee Hilgay was by the window, some papers on her lap, her hand holding back the net curtain so that she could see out into the gardens. Beside her on a plastic tray lay her evening meal, untouched, the gravy congealing over pre-sliced pork. Her trademark Tony Benn mug was on the floor beside her.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ said Dryden.
Vee turned. ‘There you are. Russ said you’d come,’ she said, brushing a hand across the milky, moonlike eye.
Then she saw the package. Dryden had had it reframed that afternoon in simple pine. She ripped off the brown paper, letting it fall to the floor, then she stood, setting the picture up in the high-backed chair.
‘The experts say it’s worth a million,’ said Dryden, laughing.
She didn’t take her eyes off it. ‘It’s worth much more than that,’ she said.
The bell rang for bedtime, but she ignored it.
‘Champagne,’ she said, walking towards the door. ‘Where can we drink champagne?’
Postscript
Vee Hilgay sold the Dadd to the National Gallery for £1.3m. It is now on loan at Osmington Hall, on the wall in the Long Gallery from which Serafino Amatista plucked it more than sixty years earlier. The police accepted Dryden’s explanation that the picture had lain unnoticed amongst the clutter at Buskeybay. Vee runs a charity dedicated to reducing deaths due to hypothermia, and lives over the premises in a one-room flat.
Humph enjoyed his first delivery of chips from Dryden and recovered quickly, discharging himself after forty-eight hours. The heart attack he suffered was a wake-up call he studiously ignored, except for the precaution of reducing his intake of fried bacon by one rasher a day and introducing a daily enforced walk – three circuits of the Capri.
Russell Flynn and Josh Atkinson appeared at Cambridge Crown Court jointly on charges of theft and conspiracy to defraud. Russ got two years and four years to run concurrently, suspended for five years. Josh Atkinson was not so lucky. He refused to give information about the nighthawks network, or their London market contacts. He was sentenced to seven years, and is currently at Bedford Gaol.
Ma Trunch’s case was heard subsequently, and separately. She was charged with conspiracy. The prosecution alleged it was the demands of private, unscrupulous collectors which fuelled the illegal trade in artefacts. She was found guilty and sentenced to eight years, reduced to five on appeal. In absentia she was declared bankrupt at East Cambs County Court. She is currently at Ford Open Prison, where she works in the library, and is a volunteer digger with the West Sussex Archaeological Trust.
The completion of these successful prosecutions secured DS Bob Cavendish-Smith his longed-for transfer to the Metropolitan Police.
The site at California was closed, secured by a newly appointed private firm, and reopened six months later to a team from Durham University. They found that while the nighthawks had taken the Anglo-Saxon sword they had left most of the chariot burial intact. The chariot itself, richly decorated with semiprecious stones, was later removed from the site and is now on show at the British Museum, alongside Ma Trunch’s sword. Before leaving the site, to make way for the building of executive homes, the team laid small explosive charges along the moon tunnel. It was completely destroyed.
Speedwing and thirty-six other demonstrators appeared at Ely Magistrates Court on charges of breach of the peace and criminal damage. Speedwing was happy to be martyred as the ringleader and was rewarded with a two-month prison sentence, as were four of his comrades. The rest were fined £100 each and bound over to keep the peace for eighteen months. Six weeks into his sentence Speedwing made a successful application, on religious grounds, to be allowed into the prison yard at night to witness a partial eclipse of the moon.
Dr Siegfried Mann still lives in Vintry House. The body of Serafino Amatista has never been found. The assistant curator paid £2,000 from his own pocket for the construction of a new gallery at the town museum to display Ma Trunch’s donated collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts. Dryden covered the opening and sent her the cutting.
The bodies of Azeglio Valgimigli and Louise Beaumont were buried side by side in Ely cemetery. Their estate, valued at £740,000, is still embroiled in a lengthy series of judicial proceedings in Italy and the UK However, the court-appointed trustees did honour the cheque made out to Pepe by Louise Beaumont on the last day of her life. It was for £100,000. Il Giardino was refurbished, and a new function room added. Business is brisk. The cash for Marco’s memorial was raised entirely by public subscription. The gravestone of Jerome Roma bears still the inscription: Free at Last.
Dryden raised £3,200 from the auction – apart from the sale of the Dadd. The money was used to install the necessary medical equipment for Laura in her parents’ retirement home above Lucca. Gaetano told his wife and sons the truth about his wartime service, and while his lies are not forgotten, they are forgiven.
Tonight, Philip and Laura arrive at the villa for their first visit since Gaetano’s return home, a private ambulance taking them from the airport at Pisa. Under the same moon which shines on them Humph sits in the Capri on the riverside, struggling with the first tape in his latest language course: Serbo-Croat. Boudicca sleeps soundly on the back seat. And under the slimmest of crescent moons, Etterley dances alone on the riverside.