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
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 facade 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 professional: 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.
There was only one thing wrong, Dryden noted, coughing loudly: there was no barman. In the silence he heard a train on the main line to Lynn, a seagull screeching on the chimney pots above and, intermittently, the sound of someone snoring close by. Years of attention to inconsequential detail told him something particular about the snoring: it was the outward sign of an inward hangover. Peering over the bartop Dryden found the snorer, asleep on a low bench below the barrels from which beer was directly dispensed to The Frog Hall’s discerning clientele. Dryden tinkled a delicate brass bell placed on the bar for that purpose. The barman uncurled himself and rose, attempting no explanation. He gloomily poured Dryden a pint without asking him what he wanted.
‘Busy lunchtime?’ asked Dryden.
‘Belter,’ said the barman, revealing a rich Ulster accent.
‘Diggers?’
The barman consulted a railway station clock about five feet in diameter which hung on the far wall.
‘Does that say 6.30?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes and producing a slightly gritty sound. Dryden nodded. ‘Any time now, then. Clockwork.’
Dryden let this remark hang in the air. He drank his beer while the barman emptied ashtrays and, with bucket and corks, began to clean the pipes. Less than a minute later they heard the front door open and a gaggle of excited voices filled the outer corridor. The digging team arrived, led by Jayne, the girl with the sensational hips. Dryden judged the moment and bought a round, securing a place in the circle at one of the heavy iron-legged tables. Josh, the digger who had found the body in the tunnel, sat next to the leggy blonde and wrapped an arm round her waist. The group broke open a collective packet of Golden Virginia, but Dryden could smell that on site they might have had different tastes – the aroma of cannabis clung to them.
Josh sported a Save the Whales badge on a T-shirt emblazoned Glastonbury 2003 across his wide chest. The girl slumped in his arms, her breasts wandering under a loose-fitting hand-dyed top. Dryden liked misfits but this lot were annoyingly co-ordinated in their eccentricity: a troop of lost souls from a less materialistic decade who spent their days unearthing an even more distant past – a time before money existed.
Josh was, Dryden had long ago decided, the nominal leader. His height, the obvious good looks, the carefully
