The same question: ‘Is there nothing left?’
It was Jerome. It was always Jerome. Footloose Jerome, keen to leave his family and strut in the world beyond the fen.
‘Little,’ Marco said, coughing in his throat and bringing up bitter blood.
‘Some silver, jewellery. Pearls. I’m not sure, but we thought they were fake. We wrapped them in a canvas – one we tore from the frames.’
‘They’re from the hall – where the man died?’ It was Azeglio this time, always turning the knife. ‘We shouldn’t touch it. If they can trace them back, it’s murder.’
Marco was not ashamed of what he’d done. None of them had been burdened by guilt – except, perhaps, for that one night when the fool Serafino had panicked. Sometimes Marco slept badly, the pool of blood from the servant’s head spreading across the polished floor of his dream. But that had been Serafino. For the rest they had simply robbed the indolent rich, the rich too powerful to fight for their own country.
They had enjoyed their joke, slipping back in along the tunnel at night while the police, depleted by conscription and stretched by the bombing raids on the ports and rail yards, had been powerless to gather the necessary evidence. Besides, they had the perfect alibi. Prisoners, every one, behind the barbed wire of the camp.
For most of the gardeners the good times had been brief. They’d salted their shares onto the black market and spent the proceeds. But Marco had been cleverer. He knew the prices would rise and the risks would fall if he waited. So he found the perfect hiding place, and bided his time until he could spend the money on the family he longed for. His sons. He sometimes wondered where they imagined he’d hidden the stuff all these years. They knew he went out at night, with the van, and they knew he set off for the city on the horizon. Had they ever followed? He doubted it now, now that he could see the greed, and the disappointment.
The snow fell in a sudden flurry and the cathedral disappeared.
‘We shouldn’t touch it,’ said Pepe, standing at the window. ‘We can get through.’ He stood, wringing a cloth between his hands. He looked at his brothers, making a decision. He knew too much already, the rest he would leave to them.
‘There’s work to do,’ he said, and they listened to the weary steps descending and then the violent hiss of the scalding urn below.
‘We can get through,’ said Marco, echoing his youngest son.
Jerome tossed the solicitor’s letters on the bed. ‘That’s not what they say. We owe ?56,000 – we can only just afford the interest payments. We should sell.’ His father lifted a leg, dislodging the papers, letting them slip to the floor.
It was brutal – even for Jerome – but he knew it would work, for Il Giardino was his father’s monument, his memorial.
Marco considered the two eldest boys and thought how much they were alike: the voice, the profile, the natural arrogance their educations had given them. He felt he liked them less as death approached, felt them to be strangers in his house. ‘One of you will have to go down,’ he said, elbowing himself up on the pillows.
It was the first clue he’d ever given them and he could see Azeglio and Jerome computing: ‘Down?’
The boys edged their seats to the bedside. ‘I need paper. You’ll need a torch, clothes, it’ll be dirty. Mamma knows where my stuff is. I hope you’re brave.’
They fetched some paper, and a tray to lean on.
‘It’s a tunnel,’ he said. ‘We called it the moon tunnel.’
Tuesday, 26 October
20
The Capri still stood under the pine trees, the mist tangled round its wheels like candyfloss. The interior light was on and the windows fogged by Humph’s capacious breathing. Dryden’s was shallow, the sleep into which he had fallen troubled and broken.
He woke, covering his eyes, trying to dislodge the images of the night. ‘Malt,’ he said.
Humph flipped open the glove compartment, found a bottle of Bowmore and, after cracking the top off, emptied the miniature into the Bakelite cup from his coffee flask.
‘There’s posh,’ said Dryden, taking the short in one, the golden liquid searing his throat and reaching down into a stomach chilled by a vivid vision of death. He reached out a finger to hit the on button for the radio, his arm jerking still, the nerve ends raw.
Radio Four: the Today programme. 6.45 am. He pressed the button again, restoring silence. Somewhere a seagull yelled, circling the pine trees above.
Press day, but too early for the office, too late to sleep. Humph, burdened with the knowledge of what Dryden had found, fussed with the cab’s heater.
Dryden kicked out his feet, claustrophobia making him sweat despite the frost. He wanted air, needed a conversation about the real world, a world where you didn’t stumble on a mutilated corpse by moonlight.
He took Thomas Alder’s business card from his top pocket: ‘Buskeybay,’ he said. ‘You can take your time.’ He found another Bowmore, feeling better for the first.
Out of town the mist was confined to the ground, a thick frosty sheet stretched over the black earth. The sky was stretched green and blue, with a pink stain where the sun would appear. Out in a field two figures stood, a long-legged dog circling. Dryden got Humph to pull up in a lay-by where a mobile tea bar was still shuttered. Under the trees a BMW stood parked, its opulent black paintwork drinking in the light.
‘That’s Ma,’ said Dryden, winding down the passenger side window. Boudicca, the greyhound, searched the
