‘Fascinating. How delightful that you have found this man, Mr Dryden – but who shot him, eh? Can you tell us that?’ Dryden noted that Valgimigli’s agitation had disappeared, the hands, relaxed now, snaked around his wife’s waist. ‘And why crawling back into the camp? That is bizarre too – no?’
‘Thieves fall out,’ said Dryden. ‘And perhaps another reason… Serafino was a deserter. He left his post, guarding a village in occupied Greece. The German authorities were led to believe he had been killed by the villagers. There was a reprisal. He had good reasons to try and protect his identity. But someone at the camp – one of the Germans who replaced the Italians at California – recognized him. Perhaps they met?’
He could have told them more; that the burglars had killed someone that night in 1944. And that the most valuable item taken from Osmington Hall was still missing: the priceless Dadd. All this he kept to himself, distrusting Valgimigli and guarding his story.
The archaeologist laughed and slipped his gloves on, finally ending the hand-to-hand shuffle. Dryden watched them talking as they walked away, arm-in-arm, towards the cemetery gates. Despite the way they held on to each other, the rest of their bodies never touched.
Thomas Alder, funeral director, raised a black top hat to the mourners as they left. He made an exception for Dryden.
‘Can you arrange a house clearance?’ asked Dryden. ‘The stuff has been moved once – to an old barn. There’s several generations of it, I’m afraid – but little of any worth.’
Alder nodded, sensing that the animosity which had existed between them had lessened. ‘We usually recommend the auction rooms – at least for the best furniture. You have removed anything of sentimental value?’
‘There’s very little,’ said Dryden. ‘Some photographs, perhaps, one or two pieces of furniture which have been in the family since before the Great War, and some pictures. I’m afraid I’m no expert. And neither…’
‘Indeed,’ said Alder emphatically. He handed Dryden a card. ‘Let me know when the items are ready for collection.’
A polished hearse drew up smartly to ferry the funeral director away. Dryden examined his own reflection in the black mirror of the paintwork: a lonely figure, standing amongst gravestones.
Cavendish-Smith appeared at his side. The detective was a rarity in the police force – a public-school boy with an all-year tan and an expensive haircut, his chin held arrogantly high. Dryden had interviewed him when he’d got the job in Ely and been appointed to head a task force charged with stopping an outbreak of town-centre graffiti: a poisoned chalice no doubt designed to derail his glittering career. Publication of the interview had resulted in an aerosol insult on a white wall in Market Square which Dryden had long treasured: POSH COP WON’T CATCH US.
But the posh cop did. He picked up likely kids in a late-night swoop and had traces of spray paint on their hands analysed and matched to fresh graffiti on the walls. It wouldn’t have stood up in court, but then it didn’t have to. The threat of a heavy fine made sure the parents delivered the punishment. Infuriatingly the story was leaked to one of the nationals – inevitably the Daily Mail. Dryden suspected Cavendish-Smith.
The detective had one other obvious public-school trait: an obsession with regular and appropriate food, a vivid contrast with Dryden’s own Bohemian diet.
‘Dryden,’ the accent was neutral, no trace of his native Newcastle. ‘I hope I will not be reading any surprises in tomorrow’s paper?’
Dryden extracted a piece of pork pie crust from his overcoat pocket and brushed some sand off it carefully. Cavendish-Smith looked horrified but checked his watch, clearly pining for lunch.
‘Bob,’ said Dryden, revelling in the discomfort this familiarity produced in the DS.
‘I’ve found out a few things. I don’t mind sharing that information – but I’d appreciate it staying between us until the Express is out.’
The detective nodded: not quite a deal, but it was the best Dryden would get. Cavendish-Smith did not court the press, and even Dryden’s mildly puffy interview had failed to win a single favour. He told the detective about the missing PoW Serafino Amatista, and the link with Osmington Hall, pretty sure he’d got that far himself using police records.
Cavendish-Smith didn’t say thanks. ‘Right. Well, he’s dead and buried now.’
‘But you’ll still date the bone sample?’
‘I don’t expect any surprises. Do you?’ he said, walking off. ‘We may never be able to prove it’s him anyway – if he was a deserter it’d take years to get a match.’
Dryden fell in beside him. ‘I’d appreciate a call – when the data is through. It would be a big help…’
Cavendish-Smith looked at him. ‘I bet it would.’
Dryden doubted he’d even remember his name.
17
The Frog Hall stood on a bleak concrete wharf known locally as The Hythe, half a mile from the town’s popular riverside tourist haunts. As public houses went it could claim, justifiably, to be ‘much sought after’ – owing to the fact it was almost impossible to find. Built at the turn of the nineteenth century to cater for the bands of navvies who had dug the New Cut, a straight stretch of river designed to bypass the wayward meanders of the ancient water course, it had been left high and dry by subsequent economic booms. The last late burst of riverside transport, the importation of bricks for the new suburbs built by the Victorians, had been its last hurrah. Now the dock was obsolete, an outlier forgotten by almost all of Ely’s inhabitants, a fantasy of red brick and tiles which no one sober ever saw.
The burial of Serafino Amatista had left Dryden confused and depressed. Who had killed him in that nightmarish tunnel sixty years ago? Had he really met his accuser, the German officer who had revealed his shameful past? Or did his death lie tangled amongst the unanswered questions which still surrounded the burglary at Osmington Hall? And where was the missing Dadd – the masterpiece which would save Vee Hilgay from a pauper’s old age? Had it been taken when Serafino died? Or could it have lain, untouched with the candlestick and pearls, until more recent times? Had Serafino’s tomb been robbed?
The Frog Hall lay encircled in the poisonous river fog, like some eccentric folly at sea. Tiles on the outside covered the brickwork to the first-floor windows in dull, dirty cream. The façade resembled an exuberant public lavatory, a fact many of its regulars were happy to take advantage of on a Saturday night. Its patrons were almost as eccentric as the building. It had a reputation for flexible opening hours, good beer and illegal substances. The police knew what went on but were prepared to turn a blind eye in the interests of higher-profile operations. Amongst its most devoted customers were Azeglio Valgimigli’s band of diggers.
Humph dropped Dryden outside and executed an effortless nine-point turn in the Capri, considering The Hythe and its environs unsafe and unsavoury. His supper would be purchased from a chip shop, consumed in a lay-by, and briskly followed up with a two-hour kip. Dryden’s plans were more professionaclass="underline" he’d picked up regular stories from the diggers over the summer months, for which he rewarded them with the odd round of free beer. Today his questions would be more specific.
The interior of The Frog Hall continued the lava-torial theme with no visible sense of irony. A long tiled corridor led into a back bar, and accommodated a speak-your-weight machine which accepted pre-decimal coinage. The bar itself was tiled again, but this time in glorious Victorian green and purple, topped off with cherrywood panels and a decorated ceiling which could have graced the town hall. Memorabilia clung to the walls like barnacles, from tin adverts for Capstan Full Strength, Hovis and Three Nuns pipe tobacco to an 1888 railway timetable for the Hunstanton line, long since axed by Dr Beeching.