He ran his hand back over the shell case that was his head. ‘Agios Gallini. That was the name. The name of the village Serafino betrayed.’
16
Dryden and Humph sat on one of the cemetery’s benches, together, alone, in the dense pale fog which had settled in their hair. Beside them a child’s grave lay fresh, a bunch of flowers enclosed in cellophane, the condensation within like a stifled breath.
The cabbie took up half the bench, his tiny ballerina’s feet hanging clear of the ground. He wore wraparound reflective sunglasses, apparently worried someone would spot him outside his beloved taxi cab. Dryden hauled in a breath and choked on the hint of sulphur; the fires were still burning out at the town dump, churning out the gases which created the pea-souper. He’d been out twice over the weekend to check the site. The fire brigade were pumping thousands of gallons of foam into the artificial hillside, but with little apparent effect.
Dryden reached inside his overcoat pocket and retrieved an apple and two cocktail sausages. Humph’s eyes settled longingly on the cab parked beyond the cemetery railings: a grey outline in the fog. An unseen bus ground its gears on the distant High Road. At the centre of the cemetery stood a brutal Victorian steeple, open at the base, and Dryden tilted his head to try to see its apex. But the grey image faded quickly to white, and the gently falling mist hung tiny globes of water on his eyelashes.
He checked his watch: still half an hour until Serafino Amatista’s funeral.
‘Thanks for waiting with me,’ he said.
Humph shrugged, retrieving a book from his pocket which Dryden recognized as the text which accompanied his language tape. The cabbie began to memorize the names of nine different Polish pickles.
Dryden decided to get the story of the Italian association’s appeal for funds over to copy, giving it a lot more chance – twenty-four hours ahead of the
Ely’s expatriate Italians are out to raise ?5,000 to erect a memorial to Marco Roma, the man they say held together their community through the poverty and bitterness of the post-war years.
More than 300 Italians live locally, and most of them are in the area because of the large number of PoWs who spent the last years of the war working on local farms.
‘Marco Roma fought to keep alive the traditions of his native Italy,’ said Roman Casartelli, the president of the Italian Ex-Servicemen’s Association of East Cambridgeshire.
‘But he always insisted that, while links should be maintained with our native country, England was now our home. He worked to integrate the community and won the respect of all,’ added Mr Casartelli, a retired railway signalman.
The association decided at a meeting yesterday (Monday) held at the restaurant founded by Mr Roma – Il Giardino at Ten Mile Bank – that a public subscription should be opened to fund a memorial at Ely Cemetery, where many of the former PoWs are buried.
‘We would wish this memorial to express our thanks to Marco – but also to the local English community for the welcome that we received here after the end of the war and the affection we feel for our adopted home,’ said Mr Casartelli.
Donations can be made by cheque payable to Marco Roma Memorial Fund and deposited at Lloyds TSB Bank, High Street, Ely. Donations can also be posted to Mr Casartelli at The Old Signal Box, Queen Adelaide, Ely.
Jean read the story back, Dryden made a couple of changes, and then rang off. The hum of voices, discreetly low, approached through the mist.
‘At last,’ said Dryden, rising and taking up what he hoped was a pious stance.
Thomas Alder, funeral director, appeared from the gloom, pacing out the procession with his ceremonial staff. Dryden considered the man that Russell Flynn claimed was a clandestine criminal fence, able to slip items of interest into the London market. An impassive face went with the job, but Alder had perfected the routine. With white hair and pale skin, he looked like one of the alabaster figures on the richer tombs: pious, watchful, innocent.
Professor Azeglio Valgimigli followed the priest – a woman on his arm. She was striking even from twenty yards – smaller than her husband, with a slim figure expertly clothed in white, which highlighted her glowing tan. She radiated sex like a colour: her breasts were high and full and the blouse she wore was cut to reveal the promise of a deep cleavage. Her hair was blonde, covered in thousands of droplets of mist and gathered up to reveal a sculpted neck. Her eyes were blue, but almost colourless, and her sensuous lips were held in a neat professional bow.
There were about a dozen other mourners, and Dryden briefly reflected on the irony that this unknown PoW should warrant such a congregation. Amongst them Dryden spotted the rest of the archaeological team, and DS Bob Cavendish-Smith, one of the detectives based in Ely, a smart graduate-entry copper. Despite the affected ‘Bob’ he was known at the station, inevitably, as ‘Posh’. Cavendish-Smith had a degree in forensic studies from Lincoln University, a fact he’d made pretty sure everyone knew when he’d first been posted south. The implication was clear: he was just passing through this rural backwater, en route to the Met and eventual promotion to commissioner.
Dryden noted with satisfaction that the mourners carried the coffin with some effort, weighted as it was with the items from the museum and, he presumed, some stone added by Alder’s apprentices. The ceremony itself was swift and necessarily anonymous, the consul from the Italian Embassy reading out a short prayer in his native tongue. Valgimigli carried the wreath from the diggers, his wife, incongruously, one from the German Embassy. The stone Valgimigli had ordered would have to wait six months for erection, so that the grave could settle, the coffin and its contents decaying into the earth. For now a single wooden cross had been provided with the catch-all euphemism: Rest in Peace.
The Valgimiglis looked oddly discomfited. The professor seemed agitated, constantly adjusting the line of his black overcoat and swapping fur-lined gloves from hand to hand. His wife was somewhere else, chin high, staring out over the fen, perhaps searching for the outline of the sun in the all-enveloping mist. A chorus of ‘Amen’ marked the end of proceedings and Dryden deserted Humph and headed for the archaeologist, who seemed eager to quit
