Dryden picked up one of the books and smelt it: a wave of remembrance of stories past coming with the familiar odour of ageing paper.
He opened it. No linguist himself, he could still tell the difference between Italian and German.
‘Why Italian?’ He picked up one of the snapshots which showed a young man, proudly holding what looked like a new bicycle, on a crowded city pavement with the dome of the Vatican caught on the horizon.
‘They occupied the huts for three years – from 1941 to 1944. The Germans were there for only a year.’
‘But surely the Italians took their things with them when they moved out to the farms?’
‘No. No they didn’t. Well… It’s complicated.’
Dryden bristled, acutely aware when he was about to be patronized.
‘The authorities here on the Isle of Ely were concerned that there would be trouble if they told the prisoners they were being put permanently out to work. They were good workers in the fields, but they wanted to come back together at night. They were together at California, and there was a strong community spirit, I think – you only have to talk to those who stayed behind.
‘The train carrying the Germans turned up early – typical War Office cock-up. So the authorities decided to solve both problems in one move – they brought the Germans straight in and billeted the Italians straight out on the farms. They collected most things of value and the prisoners got it all – and new shaving kits, and other things, to sweeten the move. But a lot of stuff just stuck on the walls was left behind. It was a botched job, really – typical of war, I’m afraid, although most of the PoWs carried anything really valuable with them.’
Dryden tried to recall Mann’s academic field: history certainly, modern European perhaps.
‘So all this stuff was stored in the camp?’
‘Yes. The Germans collected the items here and stored them carefully for their eventual return. When they left they took all their personal effects. They were very neat.’
‘Did the two communities ever mix?’
‘No. There’s no record of that at all, although some of the Italians were drafted in to do menial work at the camp. As you can imagine, the Germans despised them for surrendering and for being, in their eyes, third-rate soldiers. The Germans were seen as ideologues, Nazis, and war criminals – a crude caricature but a view widely held.’
‘The tunnel – at the PoW camp. Do you think they dug it – the Germans? Or was it there when they were moved into the camp?’
Mann shrugged. ‘It would help to see it, I think – but so far, the site is still closed.’
‘They sent you the ID disc they found – the police?’
‘Yes.’ He took a folded pouch from his pocket, placed it on the palm of his hand and unfolded it to reveal the disc. ‘Very badly corroded I’m sad to say. Unreadable. But we have others here…’
He opened a cabinet and extracted an ID disc. It had been crudely engraved with a punch mark: FIELD WORKER 478.
‘Field worker?’
‘Yes. When they let the Italians out on the land they gave them these.’
‘Can you trace the number to a name?’
Dr Mann shook his head, replacing the disc with care in the museum cabinet.
‘Do you know Professor Valgimigli?’ asked Dryden.
‘Certainly. I taught him, Mr Dryden – at Cambridge. A fine student. He was here only last week, touring our modest museum. Which is, I think…’
‘Yes. Of course. The body found in the tunnel – well, the bones. It’s been suggested we might put some items in the coffin – something which might be appropriate although we can’t be sure…’
‘Indeed. Your message made it clear so I took the liberty…’ On a deal table he had arranged items taken from the museum stores. Two medals – one Italian, one German, some ammunition, some furled flags and pennants, a tobacco tin, some playing dice, and an assortment of military buttons and buckles.
‘And these,’ said Mann. ‘We recovered these from the site.’ Some small gardening tools, handmade from broom handles and reworked metal. Mann packed them all carefully in a large Red Cross box, adding the cleaned ID disc with the deference of ceremony.
About to leave, Dryden had a sudden afterthought. ‘If the tunnel they found at the dig started in one of the huts – which is probable – where would the entrance have been, do you think?’
Mann surveyed the hut and a smile curled the corner of his thin lips. ‘Under the stove? Difficult, but ideal if you could keep the fire going twenty-four hours day – not many search parties would have gone to the trouble of trying to lift it red-hot. Under a bed? The shower block?’
‘Where was that?’
‘There were four. You can tell they are different – they were built with a special kind of porous brick to stop the damp. The dormitory huts are in concrete, and they had the stoves. There was no heating in the shower blocks.’
A vision of enforced school cross-country runs flashed before Dryden’s eyes and he shivered. ‘Thanks,’ he said, buttoning up his greatcoat and fishing a half-eaten sausage roll out of the folds of one pocket.
Dr Mann helped him carry the Red Cross box to the cab outside. He gave Dryden his card as he left: Dr S. V. Mann. Curator, East Cambridgeshire Museums. It was the home address that caught the reporter’s eye: Vintry House was a Georgian pile on the edge of the town, with fine views over the Black Fen, views recently enhanced by the demolition of the nearby PoW camp huts, separated from the house by a single copse of pine trees.
11
The sun was low in the late-afternoon sky and the mist beyond the city banished, leaving the light to shine across their path as they turned south on the zigzag route to Osmington Hall, the wartime scene of the burglary and murder Roger Stutton had recalled. The light made the freshly harvested peat-fields glimmer a marmalade orange; across them stretched the impossibly long shadows of the roadside poplars. The overarching sky relegated the landscape to a footnote. The sense of space was intoxicating and Dryden felt his mood lift. Humph hummed in tune with his socks as he watched seagulls in his rear-view mirror, trailing the cab like a trawler leaving port. Dryden thought of Dr Mann and the oppressive museum and kicked out his feet, annoyed by the lack of leg room in the rust-jammed passenger seat. He thought of the dead PoW, struggling forward in the nightmare of his escape, encased in clay. He looked up at the sky and drank in the space like an antidote.
Humph pushed his full weight on the accelerator as they passed the last outlying cottages of the town and sped into the wider fen, exploding into the sunshine like a bullet fired from inside the wall of mist they left behind. Dryden checked the map: ‘Head for Southery, then take the back road past the sugar beet factory, then turn back south towards the Lark.’
The PoW had been found with what looked like part of a burglars’ haul. Could he have been part of the gang that raided the house in 1944? But by that time the Italians were billeted out on the farms – so what was he doing in an escape tunnel under the old camp? If he could find any solid link between the body in the tunnel and the burglary it would give him a decent story for the Express. Friday afternoons were otherwise an ocean of lost time he needed to filclass="underline" The Crow published, the next paper days away, and a weekend beckoning unpunctuated by work, measured only by the listless ticking of clocks.