Plot reminder: After a brief encounter with Inspector Kubič at the former site of camp 106a, Mary and local historian John Simmonds are now inspecting the painted mural which has been transferred to the village church. One of the case details which emerged in the previous chapter are the shilling coins which have been unearthed in the vicinity of the remains.
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Stooping myself down towards the bottom right corner of the mural, I squinted eyes in close inspection. Unable to locate what I was looking for, I then repeated the manouevre on the lefthand side. Still nothing. No proud capitalised initials or brush-stroked flourish of a name.
"Can't find a signature," I remarked, straightening myself up beside Simmonds once more.
"That's because there isn't one," came the simple reply.
It was his turn now to stoop down a little, a swept hand indicating the bottom-most members of the apostolic semi-circle - three on the left, two on the right. "If you look closely at these figures here, it's quite evident they were painted by a different artist. The colour range isn't quite the same, the details not as sharp." True, I realised, examining things more closely. "The obvious conclusion is that for some reason the original artist wasn't able to complete his work. Someone else - competent, yes, but nearly as skillful - had to take up the baton."
All of which was confirmation of what I'd suspected: at the time of his murder, my father had yet to finish his masterpiece.
I gave a nod. "I heard they moved the men on, replaced them with others. September of '43."
Simmonds observed me curiously, as if surprised I would know this. "As most camps, the National Archives Office doesn't hold any surviving records I'm afraid. But yes, there is anecdotal evidence of a prisoner turnaround at that time."
"Was that normal?" I asked.
He seemed to consider his answer carefully for a moment. "Yes and no. Yes that it was common for the men to be moved on to where their labour was most needed. But round here, even in the winter months, there'd still have been plenty to keep the men busy. Digging and clearing ditches, fencing, bailing, general maintenance, that sort of thing. To move them on in the middle of the harvest meanwhile is certainly most bemusing."
Just as Irene had always said. Abnormal, yes. An anomaly. And perhaps now it was possible to hypothesise why...
"Care to take a pew Miss Rice?"
Grinning at his own pun, Simmonds ushered me towards the backrow bench, the slanted rain whipping a constant rhythm against the stained glass window high to our left. A cleaning lady had materialised from somewhere, her mop busily slapping around the real altar of St Luke's.
Camp 106a, I learnt, had been an overspill site from a much larger camp over towards Stamford. Transport to workplace times, the Geneva Convention had detailed, mustn't exceed those of local workers; it was quite a commute from Stamford to the sugarbeet fields of the Northdyke area. Back then the village had boasted its own railway station; there were several local reports of the sound of marching boots one evening.
"Late-March 1943 we're talking, but if those coins which the scene of crime of scene officers have unearthed came from D'Ambra's own pockets, as seems highly likely, then I'm pretty sure that whatever it was that happened was no earlier than the September of that year. Not before September the 8th, if we're going to be precise, this the date of the Italian armistice. Before then, payment such as it was had been in token form, these spendable only at the mobile shop which paid weekly visits to the camp: cigarettes, basic toiletry items and the like. Only after the armistice would the prisoners have experienced the feel of a shilling coin in their hands."
But I of course had added insight into the matter. It had been just a few days before the men were replaced, Irene had told me. She'd lent my father thirty shillings, money which he'd promised would be used in the 'service of the Lord'. That was as specific as he'd been able to be.
"Might have always borrowed the money from someone," I suggested with an affected toss of the shoulders. "I don't know - one of the guards maybe. Or a... a Land Girl."
If I'd hoped to throw Simmonds and Kubič an investigative tidbit on which to chew, then I was to be disappointed.
"Unlikely I would have thought Miss Rice. As the inspector mentioned, we're talking a fair sum of money for those days. It's much more probable that D'Ambra was amongst the second group of men and that the money was his own personal savings."
Lord it was frustrating, knowing that investigations were based on wrong assumptions but being unable provide that gentle nudge in the right direction.
"Talking of Land Girls," I continued. "What was the prevailing public attitude towards any who might have..." It took me a moment to find a suitably euphemistic way of putting it. "Well, who might have come under one of the prisoner's spells, shall we say?"
This provoked a gentle smirk. "Oh, I'm sure there were a few indiscretions of that kind. Only human nature, after all. In times of war people are forced to find comfort wherever they can. You must remember, back in the 40s very few people had passports. For the vast majority of young British women, abroad was a universe away. Then boom! - suddenly they were confronted by all these swarthy latin lotharios. Well, you know what the Italians are like - like a bit of eulogising, a bit of flowery over-exaggeration. It's not difficult to imagine how a Land Girl or two might have got swept along by it all." The smirk had now faded. "But in answer to your question, such liasons would have been very dimly viewed, both by the general public and most especially by the authorities. I remember reading somewhere that a Home Office circular was sent to all senior camp officers warning of 'rigorous and exemplary' action for any prisoners who attempted to establish amorous relations with local women."
As I reflected on this I extracted notebook from my handbag, feigned at scribbling down a few words. The game Irene and my father had played was a dangerous one, most certainly. My adoptive mother had often recounted to me that the local population would boil with indignant ire at any perceived romantic link between a neighbourhood girl and an American G.I. One could only imagine the disproportionate rage which would therefore greet the discovery of a local beauty who'd been engaged in covert trysts with a prisoner of war. An enemy soldier, for heaven's sake.
"Post armistice," I asked, "how did things change for the men exactly?"
"Well, let's just say they were no longer foes but neither really friends. Officially, Italy never became one of the allies but was classified only as a 'co-belligerent'. Not one thing nor the other. The same strange state of limbo experienced by the hundred and fifty thousand Italian POWs in Britain during that period. Known now as 'collaborators', they were gradually granted certain liberties and concessions not enjoyed by their German counterparts, but to all effects prisoners they remained."
All of which must have been incredibly frustrating, I could only refect. A frustration made even more unbearable by the slow-trickle news feeds from home, the sheer uncertainty of it all. How long the damn war was going to last. What nature of hell's vengeance their former nazi allies might be unleashing upon the bel paese.
"Any chance this was an internal thing you think? An argument between prisoners that got tragically out of hand?"
"Well, it's certainly true that before the armistice the Italian POWs could be divided into two more or less equal camps - those who offered willingly to work and those who didn't. The former were known as cooperators and of course enjoyed slightly more favourable conditions. Whether the non-cooperators - forced anyway to work - acted from deep-seated political conviction or else were simply just afraid that Mussolini would somehow prevail and seek to punish their disloyalty is a matter open for debate. Whichever the case, the cooperators were viewed as traitors, needless to say. So yes, even post-armistice some... shall we say, internal rancour may have still festered away. But there might be a little problem with this scenario Miss Rice." Leaning forward, he unzipped the backpack wedged between his feet, extracted a photocopied sheet from a transparent plastic envelope. "Came across this in the dusty bowels of the parish council building a couple of years ago while I was doing some research for a local history book I'm writing. A plan of the camp." I craned my neck to get a better look. Though somewhat crude, the main elements were all clearly represented: the neat rows of huts, a circle representing the water tower, the large encompassing oval of the perimeter. Beyond, a handful of nearby geographical features were also represented: to the left, the copse of trees; running diagonally beneath, the narrow double line of the road which led to the village; elsewhere, other diagonal lines indicated ditches and borders between neighbouring fields. "Saturday," Simmonds explained, "the day after the discovery. Kubič and I were trying to ascertain the location of the burial site in relation to the camp. The inspector had a young constable pace things out... We'll need to double check much more scientifically of course, but... well, I'm fairly certain the body was buried a little outside the perimeter."
"Outside?"
It seems strange now looking back, but the possibility had never occurred to me before.
"Twenty or thirty metres we estimate."
"Place not exactly escape-proof then."
"We're not talking Colditz, no. There was a perimeter coil of barb of course. A deterrent, let's say. But there was no need for watchtowers and searchlights, that kind of thing. Even before the armistice Italian prisoners were generally considered pretty docile. Escape attempts were rare."
The train of my thoughts was rattling along at full throttle. "But Vincenzo D'Ambra tried. Only, one of the guards spotted him..."
Simmonds nodded grimly. "Wartime, Miss Rice. Anger and hatred were the common currency. All across Europe ordinarily sane men were doing extraordinarily insane things. Were plenty who'd lost a brother or father or son to an Italian bullet in North Africa."
His eyes turned away, gazed off in the direction of the cleaning lady who was now sploshing her way backwards between the pews, would soon be upon us.
I half-squinted my eyelids, visualising.
"So you think...?"
There was a nod, his head swivelling back in my direction.
"I just wonder if we're dealing with a cover up, Miss Rice. A great big stinking one. From orderlies through to corporals and sergeants right up to senior officers of the regimental police. Ten, a dozen men. Every last one of them complicit."
~~~~~