Silence.
‘Why did you desert your post, Serafino?’
Mann thought he might run then, now that he knew why he had been called. ‘Why, Serafino? Tell me, please.’
‘Don’t tell them. Please, don’t tell them. Here, my own people will kill me.’
Mann thought he understood. ‘So tell me.’
The Italian laughed then, and for the first time Mann slipped his hand into his tunic and felt the knife he’d made from the stanchion prised from his bunk bed.
‘Those stupid villagers. They said the English were coming soon. That they’d landed – at Kithira, in the south. That they would take me to England, to camps – camps just like the Germans had. At night the partisans came, creeping through the village. They said they’d cut my throat. So at night I did not sleep. And in the day – I decide to go.’
‘You knew the consequences?’ This was the single sentence Mann had practised most. ‘You knew the consequences. What I would have to do?’
Serafino heard the anger then, and stepped back, cornering himself in the ruins.
‘You wanted my help with the tunnel?’
He understood the one word – tunnel. ‘No. No – not the tunnel, Serafino. I shall inform the authorities here tomorrow that you are Serafino Ricci. A deserter. And shall I tell the messenger too?’
Serafino held up his hand to say no, but – fatally – decided to say more. ‘I saw you shoot the girl,’ he said. ‘The girl in the blue dress. Deliberately. Do they know that too? When the war is over, will they know that?’
Mann was only six feet away now. ‘It was an accident, Serafino. You saw the accident.’ A statement, seeking confirmation. It was Serafino’s last chance. The Italian searched in his pockets, quickly, producing a knife – a thin blade, very dark in the moonlight.
‘You tied her up with the man and shot them both. I saw.’
Mann remembered the rockfall above them that day, the skittering pebbles falling down the hillside.
‘I’ll tell them,’ he said, the threat clear.
Mann was very close now and he saw in Serafino’s eyes that he was a coward. That was why he had run. The Italian dropped the knife. ‘Please don’t tell them.’
Mann stepped in so close he could smell the Italian’s breath, and the sweat from his body. He placed one hand on his shoulder and smiled, but in the shadow between them he took out the knife and pressed it skilfully through the rough tunic, where it nicked a bottom rib before he felt it sliding through the stomach wall. Swiftly he drew it across the abdomen, and Serafino’s last breath whistled. There was shock in his eyes, but it swiftly turned to the blank stare of the dying.
Then he knelt down, both hands cradling his stomach, holding his guts in.
He died like that, sitting, holding himself. Mann found a shovel in the outhouse and buried him beside a sapling which grew in the old garden. He took a handful of the blossom and imprinted the gorse-like scent on his memory. Then he went down into the old cellar, to the moon tunnel.
Friday, 29 October
41
They took her body out through the double line of trees that Siegfried Mann and his wife had planted with such care and love. Dryden, sitting at Mann’s writing desk before the open fire, wrote his statement for Cavendish-Smith. Dryden had been told all he needed to know: that Gaetano was recovering fast from his ordeal, pulled out by the police from the wood and earth which had collapsed on him as he tried to follow Boudicca down the tunnel. But there was no sign, as yet, of the dog.
As the sun rose the detective left, the scene-of-crime experts working on in the cellar and the tunnel. Dr Mann made coffee and took it out onto the verandah of the house. They sat, watching the blazing disc inch clear of the tree-line, the mists of dawn burned away.
Dryden had been briefly in shock. The police medic had given him some drugs, but he shivered now, not because of the cold but because he’d lived through the reality of his nightmare.
He clasped the coffee mug in both hands and let the steam leave a film of moisture on his lips.
‘That’s why the police arrested you. Because they’d traced the tunnel to the house?’
Mann nodded, smelling the coffee.
‘And you knew the tunnel was there?’
Mann sipped, watching the sun. Dryden was tired now, and his patience with lying had gone. He fished in his pocket and took out the small mother-of-pearl badge he had retrieved from Jerome Roma’s coffin.
Mann eyed it, but his hands remained around his coffee mug. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, still sipping.
‘A forgivable error on your part. Serafino Amatista was one of the gardeners – there were six. They were very proud of their ingenuity, almost arrogant about their cleverness and courage. In one of the raids they took these buttons – stripped from something bulky, a smoking jacket, perhaps. They wore the buttons as badges: just the six. At Il Giardino they have them in a cabinet. But only five.’
‘And?’ said Mann.
‘This was Serafino’s.’ He held the button up, but Mann was trying to look beyond to the garden.
‘I think you removed everything from his clothes before the body was buried. Then, later, you added them to the collection at the museum, never thinking any could be traced.’
‘This is entertaining, Mr Dryden. But it is not proof.’
‘No. But it might be enough to prompt the police to look a little harder for Serafino’s body.’
Dryden surveyed the garden, knowing that to close his eyes would bring sleep instantly. Mann went inside and brought out the coffee pot, refilling the mugs.
‘What is it that you want, Mr Dryden?’
Dryden placed the button on Mann’s side of the table and the curator took it quickly and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Just before Serafino died the gardeners did their last job. A country house…’
‘Ah yes. The Dadd, I presume?’ Dryden let him go on. ‘I’m afraid our discussion was about other things.’
Dryden noted the disguised confession. ‘There was a girl… she went missing?’ It was a guess, but he sensed it struck to the heart of Mann’s guilt and explained, in part, what he’d done with the rest of his life.
‘Blackmail?’ said Dryden, and knew he was right. ‘What did he see?’
Mann drank his coffee. ‘The girl’s death was an accident. But it is not what he said he saw.’
Dryden smelt the dew rising from the garden, and it lifted his spirits. ‘Where did you kill him? You bought the house – my guess is here.’
Mann smiled, standing. ‘You need rest. You should go home.’
He led the way down the steps into the garden, around the house towards the pines. Here, in the yard, stood a large old tree, its trunk gnarled and scarred.
‘This one’s been here a while,’ said Dryden.
Mann smiled again and ran his hand over the rough bark. ‘In spring, the scent is memorable,’ he said. Dryden picked up a fallen leaf and examined it. ‘It looks familiar. What’s the tree?’
‘The great white cherry,’ said Mann.
‘And does it mean anything – in the language of the garden?’
Mann smiled. ‘Yes. It is a most fitting tree. Perhaps in all the garden. The cherry is for deception.’
They shook hands and, although the tree was bare, Dryden was suddenly overwhelmed by the fragrance of gorse.
42
The Fiat stood at the gates of Vintry House. Dryden was pleased to see his father-in-law in the driver’s seat, but delighted to see Boudicca’s sleek head resting on the back of the passenger headrest. The greyhound’s left front leg was bandaged and across its back butterfly stitches had been applied to a gash which still showed dull cherry-red through the grey, close fur. Dryden reached into the back and rested a hand on the dog’s skull, feeling the ridges of the cranium beneath. ‘Ma will be pleased,’ he said.