Memory of Bones

by Alex Connor

  His patience strained, Ben stole a quick glance at his brother. ‘You need it, Leon—’

  ‘Yeah, I do now, but in time Gina says I won’t. She knows all these people who practise alternative therapies; they’ve had great results.’

  ‘Perhaps you should talk your doctor about it.’

  He was sharp. ‘I’m not a child!’

  ‘I’m not saying that, Leon. I’m saying that it would be a good idea. You could take Gina with you.’ Sighing, Ben tried to break the tension by changing the subject. ‘I’ll pick up the skull on my next trip—’

  ‘Why can’t you look at it before you leave?’

  ‘You’ve got it?’ Ben asked, surprised.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you tell the authorities?’

  ‘I have done. And I told the Prado that I’d organise its authentication for them. I’m well respected here, they trust me to do the right thing.’ Leon’s voice held a slight tremor of triumph. ‘Gina said I should do what I’ve always wanted to do – to finally write that book about Goya’s Black Paintings. God knows I’ve done enough work on them. I’ve the chance to solve the pictures. Just think of it – a book to coincide with the exhibition and the finding of the skull.’

  ‘But you don’t know if it’s authentic—’

  ‘You don’t know it isn’t!’ Leon’s pale eyes were fixed on his brother. ‘It’ll be the making of me, Ben. I’ll be the only historian who can lecture on Goya and exhibit his skull at the same time. Think of it – people love the macabre.’

  ‘Leon, about the Black Paintings …’ Ben began anxiously. Memories of Detita, of his brother’s instability, shivered inside him. ‘I’ll get the skull checked out for you, see if it’s authentic. I know someone in London who can do that for us. But I don’t want you to do the book.’

  ‘Why not? I’ve been talking about it for years,’ Leon replied, bemused. ‘Why would you want me to pass up on it now?’

  ‘Detita used to say that the Black Paintings were cursed. She said they were bad luck—’

  ‘Since when did you believe in things like that?’

  Ben sighed. ‘All right, but I don’t think it would be good for you.’

  ‘I know more about the Black Paintings than anyone. Anyway, I’ve got a new theory—’

  ‘No one really knows what they mean,’ Ben went on. ‘They don’t make sense.’

  ‘They do!’

  ‘All right, maybe they do. Or maybe they’re simply gibberish. I don’t know if Goya was ill when he painted them, or smoking something. But I know those pictures, Leon, and they’re disturbing. Detita was right about that. They’ve caused so much speculation: crap about codes, hidden messages, even—’

  ‘A link to the occult.’

  ‘Which is unproven,’ Ben said emphatically.

  ‘But suspected by a number of people. After all, Goya didn’t just paint one or two satanic paintings, he undertook dozens. He was consumed with the dark side—’

  ‘And you? Are you consumed? Because if you are, that worries me.’

  Leon blinked slowly, his tone sarcastic. ‘Paintings aren’t dangerous. They can’t harm people …’

  Incredulous, Ben shook his head. Of all the people in the world his brother was the most likely to be harmed by the queasy allure of Goya’s last works.

  ‘They’re beautiful and they mean something.’ Leon continued. ‘They do. Goya was fascinated with satanism—’

  ‘Everyone was at that period in Spain. It was a fucking hobby,’ Ben replied drily. ‘There have always been theories about Goya’s work, but no one can prove any of them.’

  ‘What if I could?’ Leon challenged him. ‘In satanism, they decapitate their victims. When Goya died in France, no one gave a damn about his remains for over seventy years—’

  ‘Which is when the head could have been lost. Or separated from the skeleton when the body was moved.’

  ‘Goya’s head was stolen. Think about it, Ben. Perhaps the head could tell us something. An expert could discover if it had been cut off, or just taken after the body deteriorated.’

  Staggered, Ben stared at his brother.

  ‘Even if it was cut off, that wouldn’t mean anything. Goya was an old man; it was a miracle he lived so long.’ He paused, staring at his brother questioningly. ‘What are you trying to prove? That he was murdered?’

  ‘He could have been! The Duchess of Alba was his mistress and she was poisoned. Goya had already suffered a very bizarre illness in his fifties and then he was sick again in his eighties.’

  ‘He was old!’

  ‘He was afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Leon glanced away. ‘There’s a coherent message in the Black Paintings – something Goya had to communicate. But he couldn’t put it in writing. That would have been too dangerous. He was afraid of Ferdinand, afraid that the Inquisition would come after him again. It’s no coincidence that when he finished the pictures, he went to France.’

  ‘And left a message behind?’

  Nodding, Leon folded his arms, hugging himself. ‘Yes.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. For his peers. For his country. For posterity. I’ve not solved all the paintings but I’m close, really close. I don’t think Goya was mad. He may have wanted people to think that he was, but he knew what he was doing. He was a patriot. He’d seen his country gutted, he’d witnessed numerous atrocities. To see Ferdinand back on the throne after so much bloodshed, to see Spain under the royal boot of a vicious, conniving idiot would have been intolerable for him. And dangerous.’

  Wary, Ben studied his brother: the flushed face, the clammy skin, the intensity which might precipitate an attack. If Leon did solve the mystery of the Black Paintings he would be thrust into the limelight overnight and come under attack, not least from his peers. He would be feted – and berated – for his theory, and bring a welter of jealousy down on his head. The Black Paintings were on a par with discovering the real sitter for the Mona Lisa: an intellectual prize that many had sought. Who in the art world hadn’t wanted to expose their meaning? It was a ticket to instant fame. And notoriety. But it was also an aesthetic cul de sac from which there would be no easy escape.

  Leon’s expression hardened. ‘You think I’m getting too worked up about all of this.’

  ‘I think you might be tilting at windmills—’

  ‘Oh come on! What you really think is that I can’t deal with it.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘OK, you want me to be honest?’ Ben said at last. ‘Maybe I don’t think you can cope. Maybe I’m worried it will all get out of control—’

  ‘And maybe I don’t like being in control all the time!’ Leon retorted, flushed. ‘Maybe, being medicated to the bloody gills, I might miss the craziness. Did you ever think about that?’

  Crazy was one thing, Ben thought, but the fall to earth which followed was always an unnerving affair.

  ‘Just take it easy, will you?’

  ‘Well, thanks for the advice, brother,’ Leon said, hurriedly getting out of the car and then bending down towards the window again. ‘Now, piss off.’

  ‘Before or after I’ve looked at the skull?’

  Bordeaux, France, May 1828

  Closing the door and locking it, the tall man lit another lamp, illuminating a laboratory of sorts. On the walls there were occult symbols, the pentacle and marked-out circles making swimming patterns in the half-light. Against one wall was a bench with a selection of medical tools laid on it, and beside that an oven. On top of the stove was a hotplate and a large stewing pan filled with water, a fire underneath. Rolling up the sleeves of his silk shirt, the tall man moved over to the sink.

  The sack looked benign, with nothing to give away its ghastly contents, but he found himself momentarily unable to touch it. Pausing, he moved back to his desk and opened a ledger, making a few quick notes before returning to the sink. A moment passed and then finally the tal
l man opened the neck of the sack. The smell rose up and sickened him. Gagging, he put a cloth over his nose and mouth and reached into the bag. His fingers closed over a scruff of coarse hair. Then he gripped it firmly and withdrew the head.

  The lamplight flickered, a vast, juddering shadow bouncing against the wall as the head became visible. Its sunken eyelids and rictus grin leered into the dim light as the man moved over to the stove and plunged the head into the warming water of the cooking pan. As he pushed it under, the skin of the face relaxed slightly, one eye opening, the cornea cloudy, staring up at him. Unnerved, the man slammed the lid down on the pan and moved away, rubbing his hands repeatedly to clean them.

  At three o’clock in the morning, the clock chimed the hour sonorously. Now seated at his desk, the man waited. In front of him was a porcelain head, marked out in portions to indicate the parts of the brain which controlled the mind’s workings: intuition, intellect, emotion. A book next to it was marked Phrenology, the new popular science by which men of reason believed they could read the character and ability of a person merely by studying the bumps and indentations on their head. It had become a cult all over Europe, a pseudo-medical curiosity, every adept eager to ‘read’ the skull of a genius to see if there was anything truly remarkable about its configuration.

  Behind him, the man could hear the water simmer, the smell repellent as he lifted the lid off the large pan. Flinching, he could see that the skin was coming away from the bones of the skull, a sudden hissing noise startling him as one of the dead man’s eyes popped out of its socket. Fighting nausea, the man pushed the head further down into the boiling water, the dark hair – ribboned with grey – floating upwards, loose flesh pooling greasily on the surface.

  Slowly the night wore on, the man not daring to leave his watch. Outside, the darkness remained thick, the clock marking out the leaden heartbeat of the house. Exhausted, he fell into a nervous sleep: the cold, queasy sleep of the early hours. The temperature in the room dropped, the night owl stopped hooting, and the only sound came from the hum of the fire and the foul, simmering water.

  Half an hour later the man woke, alarmed, sitting upright and then remembering where he was. Uneasy, he rubbed his eyes – and then stiffened in his seat. From behind came the sound of knocking. A steady, rhythmic knocking which was very close. Terrified, his limbs frozen, he slowly turned his head a little to the right. The sound intensified … Was someone knocking on the door? Did someone know he was there? Had the grave robbers betrayed him? The lamps had all but gone out, the shadows cloying as the man finally staggered to his feet. Moving to the door, he stopped abruptly. The noise was coming from the pan.

  His gaze fixed on the gleaming copper tomb as he heard the steady, rhythmic knocking and watched in horror as the fire suddenly flared up in the stove and the water hissed and bubbled. It boiled so urgently that the knocking speeded up even more: increasing, manic, deafening. Transfixed with shock, the man realised that the noise was the head banging against the lid. Knocking on the lid, trying to get out … Then with one sudden burst of energy, the white-hot water tossed the lid aside, toppling it on to the floor, the skull bobbing to the surface of the searing, stinking liquid.

  No flesh remained, only a few tufts of hair. The black eye sockets – blank and damning – staring directly at him.

  4

  Madrid

  In the Spanish capital they were having a heatwave. It was 96 degrees in the shade, and rising. Even for Spain, that was hot. Outside the Prado a queue formed under the lemon-yellow sun: tourists in their new lightweight clothes, their feet pallid in gaudy sandals, their shoulders peeling and their necks rubbed raw by the sudden heat. Slowly, the front of the queue edged towards the Prado Museum entrance and the welcome shade. At the front, a red-haired man was reading a copy of the English Telegraph. Beside him waited a group of American students, talking in awestruck tones about La Quinta del Sordo. Tell a kid a ghost story and you have him hooked. Tell an old man a ghost story and you make him think of death.

  Sweating, Jimmy Shaw made a path through the queue, a woman automatically pulling her child away from the bloated, unkempt man. Shaw was feverish, overheated, holding his bandaged hand to his chest protectively as fluid seeped through the dressing, a sticky yellow plasma which pre-empted infection. Jesus! Shaw thought. How could the wound be infected so fast? Another thought followed on immediately. Maybe Dwappa had put something on the knife. Or had the white powder – which had momentarily soothed – been poisoned?

  Oh, Christ! Oh, Jesus! Pausing, Shaw breathed in with effort, his jacket slimy with sweat. He had told his cohorts in London and New York about the Goya skull – many had heard rumours already – and promised them a decent fee for stealing it. He explained all he knew – that the skull was in Madrid and in the possession of Leon Golding, although he suspected Golding – a part-time lecturer at the Prado – had already informed the museum and possibly handed the relic over to them for safe keeping. So far, so good. But when Shaw mentioned Emile Dwappa, everyone backed off. One look at his hand told them everything they needed to know. So Shaw had been forced to undertake the task himself. No minions this time, no remote orders – this time Jimmy Shaw was on his own.

  Dwappa’s words came back to him with added resonance – Get the skull. For your own sake … Shaw knew what he meant. He was being poisoned and the longer it took him to find the skull, the less chance he had to survive. His only hope was to find the skull and get back to Dwappa as soon as he could.

  ‘Hey, watch out!’ an American boy shouted at him as Shaw lunged away from the wall. Curious, the lad looked at the obese grey-skinned man. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine …’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’

  ‘I shut it in a car door.’

  The boy’s eyes narrowed, two of his friends coming over and staring at the fat man.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ one said. ‘You look like shit.’

  Grunting, Shaw pushed his way past the boys, following the sign to the Prado staff entrance. His head buzzed with fever and sickness, his tongue felt thick and dry, his skin chafed with heat rash. Before he left London, and then later on his way over to Madrid, he had researched Leon Golding and the Prado. Apparently the staff and affiliates had an exclusive entrance at the rear of the museum, on the left. Well away from the tourists was a door leading to a pristine enclave, nesting among libraries and cool rooms.

  As for Leon Golding, Shaw had found out quite a lot about the man. Apparently Golding was respected, but highly strung. A scandalous Spanish newspaper had reported a suicide attempt a few years earlier, which had been duly denied. There was also an interview about Golding’s longstanding interest in Spanish art and about how he was trying to restore the family house outside Madrid, a rambling farmhouse that had seen better days. Perhaps he would like some money to help with the restoration? Shaw wondered. If experience was anything to go by quite a few of the art world’s intelligentsia could be persuaded to exchange morals for money.

  Taking a press cutting out of his inside pocket, Shaw stared at the photograph of Leon Golding: a handsome if delicate-looking man. Carefully he studied the face. He wanted to make certain he would recognise Golding, a man he was certain he could bully. Or buy off … Suddenly dizzy, Shaw crammed the photograph back into his pocket and moved over to a nearby water fountain. Leaning on the button, he bent down and felt the tepid liquid fill his mouth. In front of him his shadow fell, huge and bloated, as he wiped his lips and headed for the back entrance of the Prado. His plan was blindingly simple – he would seek out Leon Golding and offer to buy the skull. If he refused, he would increase the offer. If Golding still refused, Shaw would steal the skull.

  His hand throbbing, the fat man looked at the stinking bandage and swallowed. Time was in short supply – both to find the skull and to get back to London. Shaw could feel himself getting weaker by the minute, his blood thickening with infection, every breath pumping bacteria through his heart and organs
. Fighting panic, he tried to steady himself. He had been to the hospital in Madrid, but although treated and reassured by the A & E doctor on duty, Shaw didn’t believe that the poison had been controlled, let alone dissipated. Instinct told him that his time was limited. Very limited. He had to get the skull. He had to get the antidote. Whatever it took.

  Leon Golding didn’t stand a chance.

  5

  ‘Abigail?’

  As her voice came down the line, Ben could tell she was smiling. Could imagine the upturn of her mouth, the incline of her head when she was listening. She would be sitting at the table by the window, within sight of the overgrown garden that Ben had promised – every week in summer – to bring to heel. In the end Abigail had hired someone and Ben had come home to a memory, to a reconstruction of the garden he first remembered when he had bought the house seven years earlier. And she had teased him about it. Said it was her only little miracle of surgery.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Thinking about going back to work full time.’

  He was surprised that her confidence allowed her to articulate the thought. How long it would take for the thought it be turned into action he didn’t know.

  ‘At the advertising agency?’

  She paused before answering, but the pause told Ben everything he needed to know. She wasn’t ready. And somehow, to his shame, he was glad.

  ‘I was thinking it was time,’ Abigail went on, feeling her way around the words and then changing the subject. ‘Anyway, I was expecting you to call later tonight. Why are you ringing now?’

  ‘Just to say I miss you.’

  He could hear her smiling again.

  ‘I miss you too. When are you coming home?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m catching the last flight. I’ve got to do something for Leon first …’ Ben paused, found himself waiting for some kind of response. But Leon’s animosity towards Abigail was never reciprocated. ‘You know something?’