The Moon Tunnel Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Moon Tunnel

  Praise for Jim Kelly

  ‘Kelly is fast gaining a reputation for his literate, atmospheric novels’ Daily Mail

  ‘A significant new talent’ Sunday Times

  ‘The sense of place is terrific: the fens really brood. Dryden, the central character, is satisfyingly complicated… a good, atmospheric read’ Observer

  ‘A masterful stylist, Kelly crafts sharp, crisp sentences so pure, so true, they qualify as modern poetry’ Publishing News

  ‘A sparkling star newly risen in the crime fiction firmament’ Colin Dexter

  ‘Superb… Kelly has produced another story rich in plot and character, with a bit of history as well’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘Kelly is clearly a name to watch… a compelling read’ Crime Time

  ‘Beautifully written… The climax is chilling. Sometimes a book takes up residence inside my head and just won’t leave. The Water Clock did just that’ Val McDermid

  ‘An atmospheric, intriguing mystery with a tense denouement’ Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Excellent no-frills thriller with a real bite. 4 stars’ FHM

  ‘A story that continuously quickens the pulse… makes every nerve tingle. The suspense here is tight and controlled and each character is made to count in a story that engulfs you while it unravels’ Punch

  ‘Kelly’s evocation of the bleak and watery landscapes provide a powerful backdrop to a wonderful cast of characters’ Good Book Guide

  ‘A thriller debut of genuine distinction. Kelly is a name to watch and this is a compelling read’ Crime Time

  ‘The Water Clock’s praise is well deserved… highly recommended’ Washington Post

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jim Kelly is a journalist. He lives in Ely with the biographer Midge Gillies and their young daughter. The Moon Tunnel is his third novel, following The Water Clock, which was short-listed for the CWA John Creasey Award 2002, and The Fire Baby, chosen by Booklist magazine as one of the top ten crime novels of 2003. His new novel, The Coldest Blood, is now available in hardback from Michael Joseph.

  The Moon Tunnel

  JIM KELLY

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Michael Joseph 2005

  Published in Penguin Books 2006

  6

  Copyright © Jim Kelly, 2005

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194524-8

  For Rosa

  Who taught me always to look for the moon

  Acknowledgements

  There is one cast of characters that should be introduced to the reader before Philip Dryden and the rest: the long list of those who have helped in the writing of The Moon Tunnel. The possibility of missing someone out restricts the list to the main players. Beverley Cousins, my editor, and Faith Evans, my agent, have continued to be a class double act. Trevor Horwood, my copy-editor, was as eagle-eyed as any author could wish.

  Special thanks go to David Palmer for introducing me to the nuances of the auction room and the work of Richard Dadd. Gloria and Jason Street gave valuable advice on Italian names. James Macleod and his family showed me round Harperley PoW Camp, County Durham, and I wish them well in their battle to preserve this historic monument. Inspiration also came from Leslie Oakey’s pamphlet ‘Ely Goes To War’. I must also thank Bill Amos, Reader in Evolutionary Genetics at Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology, for advice on the plausibility of using DNA analysis of bones to pin-point individuals. I am again grateful to the help provided by the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability at Putney, London, and happy to point out that donations can be made via www.rhn.org.uk Jenny Burgoyne cast an expert eye over both the manuscript and the proofs. Lastly, I must thank my wife Midge Gillies. She has got me out of so many plot jams by clear-headed intervention that I am in danger of taking her for granted.

  One of the problems of living, and writing, in a city the size of a small town in the middle of nowhere is that everyone seems convinced the stories of Philip Dryden are somehow based in fact. They are not. If anyone recognizes themselves in The Moon Tunnel they are being more creative than I. All the characters – especially those descended from the prisoners once held in Ely’s PoW camp – are entirely fictitious. And a note on geography: I hope all those who love the Fens recognize the landscape, but I have played freely with place names and topography in order to help the plot and enrich the language.

  The man in the moon tunnel stops and listens to the night above, shivering despite the sweat which trickles into his ears, making the drums flutter like the beat of pigeons’ wings. He stops crawling forward, bringing relief to the agony in his elbows and knees, and places his torch ahead, resting his forehead on his hands, shielding his face from the damp clay floor. The ring on his finger glitters by his eye and he thinks of her, feels her skin and traces, in his imagination, the S-curve of her waist and thigh. He holds the image like a talisman, pushing back the panic which makes him choke, feeling the mass of the suffocating earth above his head. His heartbeat fills the narrow space and he tries to conjure up the image of the sky above.

  At that moment, as he lies paralysed below, the shadow of the night cloud begins to drift across the moon. Over the Fens life freezes as the shadow falls on the land, bringing darkness to the soaking fields and the silent river. Rats float with the sluggish stream on the Forty Foot; and pike in the Old West, moonbathing, slip to the safety of the banks. Eels, thrashing through the long grass to forage on the rotting carcass of a sheep, turn instantly to stone. Finally, the newly shrouded moon is gone, and the world below lies still and waiting.

  He must go on, or die here. So he feels for the wooden panels in the tunnel side and counts on: 185, 186, 187. He focuses only on the numbers, blocking out the reality of what he is doing, of where he is, and what is above. The camp sleeps inside its flesh-tearing wire. A village of shadows, more substantial than the men themselves had ever been, diminished by their exile. The dreams of prisoners still pushing that night at the double-locked wooden shutters.

  ‘Buried alive,’ he thinks, and the fear makes him cry out despite himself.

  He counts again, trying to ignore the panic that constricts his throat: 230, 231, 232, 233. He stops and curls hi
s body so that he can play the torchlight on the wood. There it is: emblazoned on the single pine board in faded stencil: RED CROSS.

  He slips the jimmy from his belt and between the panel edges, easing the wood out from the earth behind. A neat chamber beyond, panelled, like a subterranean letterbox. Inside a tall waxed, oilskin pouch. He grasps it, like a tomb robber, knowing his face will be ugly with the greed that had driven him there.

  He lays the torch down again and taking his penknife cuts the twine so that the pouch falls open. The candlestick catches the light, the silver tarnished. Judging its worth he sets it aside. Only the rolled canvas remains, and so his anger mixes with disappointment: is this really all? He cuts a second thread and the picture unfolds: sepia clouds, a visionary shepherd looking up, and the half-obscured disc of the full moon, and lying on the picture the pearls, as white as teeth, making him smile.

  ‘Beautiful?’ asks a voice, but not his own.

  He fumbles with the torch but is too slow to see his killer. The flash of gunshot lights the tunnel ahead like the arcing lightning that marks the passage of the night train. Deafened, he never hears the sound that kills him. But he feels the hand, clawing at his fingers and the ring, before the panels above his head, splintered by the percussion of the blast, begin to twist and the earth first trickles, then falls. And, as the weight of the clay crushes his ribs, he hears a scream, and knows it isn’t his.

  The gunshot, heard above, breaks the spell. A cloud of lapwing rises like smoke over the river and a starburst of light touches the upmost edge of the darkened moon, and time begins again for almost everyone.

  Thursday, 21 October

  1

  Humphrey H. Holt’s licensed mini-cab stood on Ely market square in the dense, damp heart of an early morning smog. Humph cleaned a fresh circular porthole in the steamed-up windscreen and peered out: nothing; he could have been shrouded on an ice floe in an Antarctic mist. Shivering, he realized he could just see the outlines of the nearest buildings, the old Corn Exchange and the cinema, and a single postbox like a hunched figure, just on the edge of sight. Beyond them the vast bulk of the cathedral loomed, but only in the memory. A duck stood on one leg on the glistening red bricks of the square, its head tucked under a damp wing, while a cat tiptoed by and was gone.

  An autumn leaf fell from an invisible sycamore and settled on the windscreen of his beloved Ford Capri. The cabbie considered it morosely before swishing it aside with the wipers. The smog had enveloped the town for three days now, a suffocating blanket which left an acrid taste on the tongue and made Humph’s small, baby-blue eyes water. He rubbed them, and thought about a nap, but decided the effort was too great this early in the day. Instead he turned up the aged cab’s heating system, and gently wriggled his body until every one of his sixteen stones was comfortably arranged. He was not so much sitting in his cab as wedged into it.

  He punched the ‘on’ button of the tape deck with a nimble, lean finger. The first instalment of his latest language course flooded the cab with sound: conversational Polish for beginners. As he repeated Justina’s greeting to the old village lamplighter he looked east himself, down Fore Hill, towards the Black Fen below. The mist buckled briefly, like a giant duvet being aired, and through the gap he glimpsed the blue smudged horizon as distant and flat as any on the great plains of eastern Europe.

  Philip Dryden, chief reporter on The Crow, slapped his hand on the cab roof, pulled open the passenger side door and crashed into the seat. At six foot two inches his angular frame had to be folded to fit into Humph’s cab – the knees up, and the neck slightly bent. He wore a heavy black overcoat which was spangled with droplets of mist.

  ‘Well, that was highly entertaining,’ he said by way of greeting.

  He tossed his notebook into the glove compartment, swapping it for one of the miniature bottles of liquor Humph collected on his regular trips to Stansted Airport. Dryden snapped off the bottle top and took a swig of Talisker, single malt. Humph, sensing a sociable moment in their otherwise adversarial relationship, helped himself to a small crème de menthe.

  Dryden closed his eyes and threw his head back. His face was Early Norman, a medieval arrangement of sombre, geometric features which could have graced the back of any coin from the Conquest to Henry V: a straight brow, jutting cheekbones, and deep-set green eyes, while the black hair was thick and short. His age was thirty-something, and would be for a decade yet.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been injected with concrete. I was so bored I nearly passed out,’ said Dryden. ‘Two people did.’

  Humph laughed inaudibly, emitting a vaguely suspicious odour of cabbage and curry. Dryden lowered the window despite the damp, and took a second swig. One of the shops on the square had just reopened after a decade of stately dilapidation and now specialized in camping, climbing gear and outdoor pursuits. A mildly famous Alpine climber had been drafted in to cut the red tape. Dryden had been there to find a story.

  ‘The Fens’ own mountaineering supply shop. Brilliant. That’s really going to bring ’em in,’ said Dryden.

  ‘It might take off,’ said Humph, firing the Capri into life and pulling away.

  Dryden considered his friend. Humph might be at conversational level in eight obscure European languages but his conversational English was as underdeveloped as the East Anglian Mountain Rescue Service.

  ‘That’s quite a recommendation from the owner of the only two-door taxi-cab in Ely. That’s your unique selling point, is it?’ said Dryden, enjoying himself. ‘You have a hackney carriage accessible to only half the population. And only half of those who can get in, can get out again.’

  ‘It’s good for tips,’ said Humph defensively.

  ‘I bet it’s good for bloody tips!’ said Dryden.

  Humph allowed his rippling torso to settle slightly, indicating an end to the subject. He scratched his nails across the nylon chest of his Ipswich Town FC replica shirt and brought the cab to a sharp halt in a lay-by in the cathedral close, realizing they were going nowhere. The mist, suddenly thickening, caressed a buttress of the cathedral down which the damp was running in rivers.

  ‘Where next?’ said Humph, by way of a challenge.

  Dryden was in no hurry, and indeed had not been in a hurry for several years. He turned to the cabbie. ‘So. What did the doctor say?’

  Humph’s physical deterioration had been almost completely masked by the fact that he never got out of his cab. But a recent bout of breathlessness had prompted a surgery visit that morning.

  ‘Well?’ Dryden foraged in his overcoat pocket and, discovering a slightly bruised sausage roll, began to munch it with the Talisker.

  ‘He said I should lose three stone – quickly. He gave me a diet sheet. No chips.’

  Dryden nodded. ‘What you gonna do?’

  ‘Get a second opinion. So, where next, then?’

  It was a good question, and one which would have haunted Dryden if he had allowed it to. Humph, a divorcee who pined for his daughters, was stalked by the same ghost. They shared an aimless life punctuated by the relief of regular movement. Today, tomorrow, for the rest of my life, thought Dryden: where next?

  There was no copy in the shop opening. The Crow’s deadline was just a few hours away. The mountaineer was strictly C-list celebrity status. Dryden couldn’t remember what he’d said if he tried. He’d taken a shorthand note, but like all his shorthand notes, it was unreadable. In fact, come to think of it, he’d forgotten the bloke’s name.

  ‘Let’s check the dig,’ he said, running a hand back through his close-cropped black hair. Humph swung the cab out into the traffic, its headlights scything through the gloom. The dig. Dryden had picked up a series of decent tales that summer from a team of archaeologists working in a field on the western edge of town. The onward march of the Barratt Homes generation threatened the site – indeed the whole western side of the town.

  ‘The invasion of the little boxes,’ said Dryden as they swept past the latest outcrop of executi
ve homes, their carriage lamps dull orange in the gloom.

  ‘You’re an executive,’ said Dryden, turning to Humph. ‘An executive operator in the rapid transit sector.’

  Humph burped. The Capri turned off the tarmac road onto a gravel drive and trundled forward, mistwrapped pine trees just visible on either side. As they crawled forward Dryden felt they were leaving the world behind: the world of shop-openings, deadlines and doctor’s appointments. Ahead lay the past, buried for more than a thousand years in the sticky clay of the Isle of Ely, and around them the trees dripped rhythmically, like clocks.

  2

  The cab edged its way forward, lifting and separating the folds of smog like some ghostly snowplough, its lights dim replicas of the invisible sun. Dryden, his head back on the passenger headrest, closed his eyes and thought about his new nightmare, which had woken him now each morning for a month. The one it had replaced was hardly a Freudian mystery. For the last five years his wife, Laura, had been in a coma following a car crash. They’d both been in the car, forced off a lonely Fen road at night-time by a drunken driver. It had plunged into Harrimere Drain, one of the placid pebble-black sheets of water which criss-crossed the marshlands. Dryden had been pulled clear by the drunk, unconscious, and came to outside the hospital, abandoned in a wheelchair. Laura had been left, trapped in a diminishing pocket of air in the total darkness of the submerged car. When they got her out she was in the coma, locked away from a world which had deserted her. Locked away from him.

  The nightmare had been brutally graphic. A river of blood in black and white, with Laura floating by, her outstretched hand always, always, just beyond his reaching fingertips.