March 30, 1984. The day of his father’s funeral. They’d met in the old woodstore behind Il Giardino, agreed then that Jerome would go down to check what was left in the tunnel, swearing never to tell the story, so that the knowledge would die with Marco. And then Jerome would go to Italy, as he had always wanted, and try to raise cash from the family. He would go quickly, telling no one, especially Mamma, who would tell him not to beg. That they had promised, and that was where Azeglio had been deceived. Jerome had told someone: his first and only love.
Azeglio stood now before her, confused by the drugs, feeling a childlike acquiescence, the result of the scopolamine, but feeling no pain because of the morphine. He’d laughed when she accused him, and so she struck him with the butt of the pistol. His pistol, the one that Marco had left. So he said it out loud then, to hurt her, really hurt her, as she was hurting him.
‘I killed him. Right here. I loved you, so I killed him.’
The trap had been exquisite. She’d told him over the wine that she would return with him to the site, sleep with him in the makeshift office. She’d touched his face, a moment of exquisite happiness after the years of cold denial, years in which he had only to touch her to know that he had failed: failed to be who she really wanted – his brother. He’d let her drive, tossing the keys to her as they left the flat. She’d reminisced as they made their way to California, scenes from the life they once had in the handful of years after their marriage. Years in which they’d tried for the child which had been denied them. But now, perhaps, a new beginning.
Until she asked the question: ‘Why did you kill him?’
He sank to his knees, finally unable to keep the muscles taut. She watched his pupils dilate, and his speech began to weave between the octaves, searching for a note. The scopolamine, unstitching his inhibitions, inflated his sense of security, and he let the ghost of a smile cross his lips. So she hit him hard with the pistol again, and he went down and lay there crying. She led him to the end of the trench, to the moon tunnel, to a place of execution, his knees collapsing at every other step, until she could go no further. There was little light, but the halogen blue just touched his hair, like a halo.
‘So why kill him?’ she asked again.
He looked up and into the gun. ‘Because he loved you. Because even if he went to Italy he’d come back. Because you loved him, and I’d seen you together, and I couldn’t live after that.’ He cried, humiliated by confession.
There was a jigsaw now, and she knew the picture. The telephone calls to Gina were such a simple lie, for Azeglio’s voice had so many times made her feel she was holding Jerome. She could admit that now: that she’d married him to remind her of the past she’d lost, the future she’d lost. And the ring: returned by post with the flowers – no note, not a word.
‘You planted the ID disc,’ she said, and he smiled, pleased with the deception.
That made her angry enough, so she lifted the gun. And he stood, briefly, waiting for what would happen to him next.
‘I’m going to kill you for this, for robbing us of the life we had, and for sentencing me to the one I had with you.’
His eyes sharpened feebly with fear, then swam again. He begged for his life, knowing that it would provoke her to end it. He never heard the shot, the force of it breaking his neck as it ripped through his cheekbone and skull. But as his head lolled forward, and the last second of his life congealed, he thought of the twenty-five years he had stolen from them, and it thrilled him.
40
When Dryden came to he thought the nightmare was over, but it had only begun. He could smell the sweat, and the iron in the soil, like blood. How long had he been unconscious? His ribs creaked, supporting the earth above. He shook his legs, the panic making his muscles spasm, and heard the splintering of wood, making him freeze. He had to free them, but how? Forward, he must go forward. He clawed at the earth, dragged himself inch by inch, clear of the fall. He felt water from the clay trickling over his face and then the cool play of air on his skin. Opening his eyes wide he searched for light, but found none. Somewhere, deep in the earth above, he heard a groan as the pressure shifted, but the panels above his head held, creaking as they twisted.
He shuffled forward another foot and let his eyes widen again. But all was black: he was buried. His eardrums fluttered violently as they dealt with the sudden rise in his blood pressure. And then there it was, the barely perceptible long slow curve of the tunnel, unfurling ahead of him. A light, somewhere ahead. He didn’t think, didn’t remember where he was, only where he was going; didn’t remember what was above, the dense earth, waiting to fall. He thought about daylight, and a wide Fen sky, and it calmed his heartbeat. Behind him he thought he heard a sound, but ahead of him he definitely knew there was a light, and it saved his life, just when he would have twisted in his panic, bringing down the earth he feared.
Only the dim beam of the light showed itself, striking the outside wall of the curve, its source still hidden beyond. He scrambled on, his knees locking under the strain, until the light became a sharp rectangle, the glare obscuring any detail beyond. As he moved agonizingly slowly towards it, he knew he would be free of the tunnel soon, free of the nightmare that he would be buried alive, forced to drink in the soil when his lungs screamed for air. He lunged for the light, unable to stop himself, until his muscles went into cramp and he had to stop, crying out as the pain built, and then passed. Behind him he thought he heard the sound again, the clash, perhaps, of splintered pine panels and the rasp of metal on wood. But ahead there was silence: silence and light.
He fell into the room head first, tumbling forward, the sudden freedom bringing exquisite relief to his tortured joints. He sat up, blinded by the light from a single unshaded bulb which swung from a cellar roof. He held up a hand to protect his eyes, looking round at the roughly plastered walls. The room had a single door at the top of a short flight of stone steps. He forced his eyes shut, trying to restore normal vision, but the bright rectangle of the light he had crawled towards impinged on everything, alternately electric red and Day-Glo blue.
He held his head in his hands and waited, listening, crouched down on his knees. There was a sound, a scuffling, sticky noise close at hand. When he opened his eyes at last he saw books: hundreds of books in an assortment of old bookshelves covering three walls of the spacious cellar. Along the fourth stood filing cabinets, industrial size, each with a neat printed card in the slot provided on the face of each drawer. A threadbare carpet, mock Persian, almost covered the concrete floor.
Set at an angle in the centre of the room was a desk, in an exotic hardwood inlaid with dust, and behind it, in a captain’s chair, sat Dr Louise Beaumont. She brushed loose earth from her hair and returned to cleaning the pistol she held, working her fingers along the metal, easing out the grey-green clay of the moon tunnel.