by Alex Connor
‘Never. You make a copy of the original skull, then use the copy for the reconstruction. That way you can poke about the replica without doing damage to the original.’
‘Go on.’
‘First you work out the landmark sights.’
‘Which means?’
‘The tissue and muscle depths,’ Francis replied, shrugging, delighted to have an audience. ‘Going on the shape of the skull, this man was a Caucasian, so from that I can work out the angle of the planes of the face.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I gradually work out the outline of the bones, add muscle tissue, and try to reconstruct the forehead angle and the eyes. Of course the tip of the nose, the ears, eye and hair colour are always guesswork. We can only ever be sure of the bones we have, not the colouring or the skin texture of the subject.’
Patiently, Ben folded his arms. ‘What about the Madrid skull?’
‘Quite straightforward. Of course the age of the head had to be taken into consideration. And the fact that there were some parts of the skull missing.’
‘I saw that,’ Ben agreed. ‘A few rough holes. You know what caused them?’
‘Could be just wear and tear—’
‘Were they peri- or post-mortem?’
‘Post.’
‘Could they be a result of violence?’
‘Like what?’
‘Blows to the head?’
‘Doubt it. They were jagged. Uneven. Looks more like burial damage, animal attack.’ Francis shrugged. ‘I’ve done a lot of reconstructions for archaeologists and I’ve seen damage like this before on old skulls.’
‘What about getting the pathologist to look at it?’
‘I’ve already done that and he didn’t know much more than I did. Although he did say that the marks could have been caused by rubbing or by persistent scuffing.’ Francis paused. ‘Which sounded macabre – until I remembered that case about the kids in Liverpool using a skull as a football. When they found it it was filthy and they couldn’t make out what it was – just this grubby round object, so they kicked it around for a while. Boys will be boys!’
‘Especially in Liverpool.’
Putting on his glasses, Francis picked up some papers next to him, reading aloud. ‘The results have come through for the isotope and carbon dating. Having discovered what our man ate, it is consistent with Spanish grains from around the Madrid area, and the carbon dating puts him bang smack in the middle of your time period.’
‘So?’
‘Dates are accurate. Looks good so far.’
Unable to suppress his enthusiasm any longer, Francis snatched the cloth off the reconstructed Madrid head. Caught in full daylight, it seemed eerily realistic, the glass eyes gazing darkly into the laboratory, the chin flaccid, the outline of the cheeks slightly concave to represent the fact that they would have dropped a little with age. But the high forehead, the heavy mouth and the eye shape were disturbingly familiar.
A shiver of recognition, followed by unease, slid down Ben’s spine. He knew this man almost as well as a member of his own family. A face which had gazed out of books and down from cheap calendars throughout his childhood. A face that belonged to the man Detita had talked of repeatedly, slipping him into the brothers’ early life, into that hazy Spanish heat of their youth.
It was, without doubt, the face of the Goldings’ long-dead neighbour in Spain. Francisco Goya.
‘Jesus …’
‘So,’ Francis prompted him. ‘What d’you think?’
Staring at the reconstruction, Ben hesitated. And felt – for an instant – not triumph for his brother, but fear.
‘So,’ Francis repeated. ‘What d’you think?’
‘I think we’re looking at an old man. An old man who was arguably the greatest painter Spain ever produced.’
17
Madrid
The heatwave had finally broken, a storm marking the end of the freak weather, persistent rain making the weathercock rotate madly over the decrepit stables of the Madrid house. Inside, Leon drew the curtains and locked the windows, rechecking the back and front doors. He hadn’t shaved and his clothes smelled of stale sweat as he moved back into his study. After his last visit to the Prado he had avoided the gallery, even been tempted to go back on his medication. But gradually his panic subsided. How could he stop when the answer was finally in his hands? All he had to do now was to write his theory up, put it down on paper, then – when it was completed – turn it over to the world.
He knew how the art world worked. How critics, writers and collectors all vied for the top slot. Men searched for decades to uncover something unknown, some detail previously unexplained, some nuance gone unnoticed. But the Black Paintings were in another league. No one had ever known their true meaning. Theories mushroomed but dwindled into supposition. A hundred explanations had been offered, but never proved, never fulfilling the hunger for the truth about the most macabre pictures ever painted.
So it followed that the man who solved the enigma would become famous. The man who cracked the cipher would be the envy of the art world. He would become an authority no one could question. Respected, revered, admired.
Locking the door of his study, Leon checked his mobile, hearing the messages from Ben. For a moment he was tempted to call his brother, but found himself uncertain, chewing at the side of his index fingernail. The piece of paper Jimmy Shaw had given him had no name written on it, just a mobile number. Tucking the edge of the note under his desk lamp so that he could read the digits without needing to touch it, Leon wiped his hands.
To his surprise he felt sympathy for the man. Obviously dying, Shaw had managed to elicit some compassion in Leon – and an unwelcome guilt. But it was his skull! Leon thought desperately. No one else’s. And now everyone was after it. And after him. People had no right to be following him, questioning him. As for Gabino Ortega – what made him think he could demand details? He had been impertinently high-handed, almost imperious, although he was little more than a thug, challenging Leon outside the Prado. On his turf, talking to him as though he was a lackey!
Of course he had lied! What else could he do? Leon asked himself. He was hardly going to admit that he had Goya’s skull … Slumping into his seat, Leon felt an overwhelming desire to kick out. All his life he had longed for an opportunity to dazzle everyone. To finally put to rest the rumours about his mental instability. No one could deny him respect when he had the Goya skull. That, together with his explanation of the Black Paintings, would silence everyone.
Calming himself, he reached for his papers and began to read. A buzzing sounded in his ears as he read about Goya’s first major illness. About how the artist had been temporarily paralysed, his head full of noises. Normal speech and communication over … Sighing, Leon leaned back in his chair, placing the cut-outs he had made of each painting in the order in which they had been hung in the Quinta del Sordo. Soon he had the complete floor plans – upstairs and downstairs – in front of him, reading the paintings in the order they had been viewed.
Ground floor – Deaf Man, with the dead man talking to him:
The Pilgrimage:
Judith and Holofernes, the woman killing her rival:
Saturn eating one his children:
The Witches’ Sabbath:
and lastly, Leocardia leaning on a burial mound:
Six of the fourteen Black Paintings which had been an enigma for centuries … Leon glanced at his notes, excitement rising. So it begins. The first painting, Deaf Man, was Goya himself. Goya had entered the Quinta del Sordo as an old, deaf man. The weird figure next to him, whispering into his deaf ear, was Death itself. He had come to the country house to die. But why? Leon looked at the next painting. Here began Goya’s testimony of his country, The Pilgrimage – a series of deranged people walking blindly in the semi-darkness. The Spanish people, driven insane by war and brutality, no longer human, walking into the abyss.
Then he turned to the third painting – Judith and Holof
ernes. Throughout art history it had represented the story of the Jewish queen who had seduced and then decapitated her lover and conqueror. But Leon knew this was no historical reference – Goya had not been depicting Judith, but Leocardia, his lover at the Quinta del Sordo … Excitement building, he scribbled down his thoughts, his hands moving rapidly. It was as though something had unlocked his brain and body; as though he had an open channel through which the information was pouring.
God, if only he had the skull! Leon thought desperately. What wouldn’t it tell him? What inspiration wouldn’t it magic on to the page? He thought of Gina and the medium, then Detita – and smiled to himself. His triumph was close. Close, breathable, touchable. If he kept working … His eyes moved on to another painting – the same queasy colours, background darkness swampy with malevolence. This time it was The Witchy Brew.
But now there was no Biblical prophet, only an aged female, grinning maniacally, and next to her the same half-human, half-dead figure, leaning – always leaning – towards what still lived.
Leon blinked as a searing thought occurred to him, then moved forward to study the right-hand figure. He stared into blank eyes, his heart rate speeding up as an idea came to him. Was that what Goya was painting? Swallowing, he tried to control his emotions as he looked back at the picture. Had the artist made dangerous enemies? Had he risked his own safety? Was it true what Detita had said so many years earlier – that Goya had been cursed, made ill and deafened deliberately, not by witches but by someone altogether more human?
Goya had become Court Painter and won the admiration of Spain, but he hadn’t kept it. What followed was his fall from grace, his questioning by the Inquisition, the Royals’ favourite out of favour because of their fall … Leon stared at the paintings intently, thinking of Goya. Who knew more about the caprices of fate? Who else had painted so much depravity and madness? The pictures were hardly finished – rough works, painted hurriedly as though the artist was in a frenzy.
Avidly, his gaze moved from one painting to another. He saw the Jewish queen cutting off her seducer’s head in Judith and Holofernes; he saw Saturn devouring the head of one of his own offspring, and the solitary, struggling dog, its head sticking above the quicksand, its body already sucked underneath into some gobbling, inescapable mass. So many decapitations, so many disembodied heads. Cut from their bodies. Stolen – just like Goya’s own.
Jesus! Leon thought desperately. Was the answer that obvious? He looked around, afraid that someone could overhear his thoughts. Was that the truth? he asked himself, his heart rate increasing, blood fizzing in his ears. Saturn … He knew! Christ! Leon thought. Was it that? Was this the evidence?
Was Goya – in that remote, secluded house – leaving a testimony behind? He was ill, old, beaten down by tragedy and cynicism. Did he dream of the Inquisition coming back to his door? Asking questions about him and Leocardia? Reeling, Leon leaned back in his seat, putting some distance between himself and the illustrations. He could suddenly picture the deaf world Goya lived in. A candle-lit, silent place, hermetically closed, the old man casting his long shadow on the walls.
He rubbed his temples. He was too tired to work but too tired to stop. He had to write it down – and then hide it. Along with the skull he would secrete the riddle of the Black Paintings. He would write it down, spell it out. On paper it would serve as a testament. And perhaps, once written down, it would loosen its grip.
In his excitement a cry escaped his lips. Sweating, he found himself light-headed, a queasy giddiness about to overwhelm him. Bartolomé Ortega would be so jealous … Leon laughed to himself, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. All the Ortega money wouldn’t be enough. In the end it would come down to insight – Leon’s insight. The solving of the Black Paintings was simple for him. After all, it was only one madman talking to another.
One madman talking to another … Leon repeated the words in his head, disturbed by the thought. Getting to his feet he felt the room shift around him and knew he had pushed himself too far and gambled with his stability. Staggering to the door, he clasped the handle. He would go for a walk – get out of the house, away from the reproductions which were calling out to him from the desk.
But no longer from the desk.
Now they were all around him. Panicked, Leon turned, staring frantically at the hallucinations which filled the room. Witches were turning into goats, men’s faces were grinning without eyes and whispering without voices. He could hear the paintings talking, whispering, making catcalls in the dimness, as behind him the sound of unfolding wings beat like thunder against his skin.
His heart was pumping in his ears, his mouth open, gasping for air. The paintings vibrated in front of him, first becoming larger, swelling towards him, then retracting into murky black slivers of pure malice. And then he saw the painting of La Leocadia, Goya’s mistress, dressed in widow’s black, leaning on the huge dark mound of the artist’s grave. But as Leon looked, the paint peeled away and under the earth was not Goya, but himself. Still alive but deaf, blind and mute, clawing under the weight of earth. And the mourner wasn’t Leocadia but Detita, pressing Leon further and further into the suffocating earth.
In uncovering the secret of The Black Paintings Leon Golding had gone too far. Not only was he risking his sanity, but his life.
18
New York
Roberta Feldenchrist got out of the car, her chauffeur holding the door open for her. The warm air felt oily as she moved into the air-conditioned lobby of the apartment block. All her life Roberta – known to everyone as Bobbie – had lived on Park Avenue. All her life she had been surrounded by money, and when her parents divorced she stayed on with her father in the penthouse apartment, although the family actually owned three floors of the block. Her mother remarried but they had little in common and Bobbie rarely visited in France, even after Harwood Feldenchrist died.
Being an only child, it was not surprising that Bobbie inherited the Feldenchrist fortune and had full control. She left the property and banking interests to the board of directors her father had set up, but the running of the Feldenchrist art collection was entrusted to her. A lifelong chauvinist, Harwood had made it clear that although Bobbie wasn’t a boy, she had been as near a son as he would ever get. She had often wondered if that was why her father shortened her name to Bobbie.
Walking into the apartment she paused, glanced at her mail and then moved into the drawing room overlooking the park and the view beyond. The view spoke of privilege. Here she was above the streets, up with the gods – spoiled, preserved, chosen. Just like the paintings on the walls which surrounded her. The picture closest to her was Fragonard. Her father had loved French art and so had she, only later being introduced to the Spaniards and finally revelling in Goya. Something about the darkness had appealed to her, the bullfights and carnivals showing a side of life that was cruel as well as celebratory.
Her gaze travelled across the wall, finally coming to rest on a small, dark-toned painting. Idly, Bobbie flicked on the overhead picture light to study the most controversial work in her late father’s collection: a painting by Goya of two old men reading. There had been an argument over the piece for years, some experts denying it was by Goya, others pointing out that it was a perfect – if much smaller – facsimile of the Old Men Reading which had been at the Quinta del Sordo. No one could prove it was genuine, but then again, no one could prove it was a fake.
Bobbie studied the work thoughtfully. People might think she was a spoilt woman in her thirties with two failed marriages behind her and nothing between her ears, but they were wrong. Bobbie Feldenchrist had longed to settled down, have a family, and continue to build the collection in her spare time. She dreamed of a Ralph Lauren life – all fawn sofas and honey-haired children, all polished New York winters and summers in the Hamptons. She would be one of the old school Swans, the American ideal of the rich life … Dully, she shook her head and turned away, walking back to the window to look at the
familiar view and smiling bitterly to herself.
Half an hour earlier she had been told that the adoption had fallen through. Apparently the mother of the child Bobbie was about to adopt had changed her mind and no amount of money could change it back … Bobbie stared ahead blindly, remembering another shock. In the very same room, two years previously, she had been told that she was sterile. Her breast cancer had been cured, the specialist reassured her, but the chemotherapy had made her barren. Bobbie had gone to the ladies’ room and stared at her reflection in the mirror: a tall, slender, elegant woman dressed immaculately, her face made up skilfully. But inside the pristine form of honed skin and tailored muscle, the body had been corrupted by disease. Inside the perfection sickness had eaten into Bobbie Feldenchrist and the therapy had burned away the cancer. She might look perfect, but her womb wasn’t going to carry a child and her breasts were never going to fill with milk. Bobbie had the Feldenchrist power and money, but she was the last of the Feldenchrists.
For a long time she had stood staring at her reflection, fighting a desire to smash the glass, to scream with frustration. But the Feldenchrists never behaved that way. It wasn’t classy to be vulgar. If you could control your feelings, you could control your life … Bobbie had smiled with bitterness. Her father had been wrong about that. Some things no one could control, not even a Feldenchrist. Not even with Feldenchrist money.
Taking in a slow, measured breath, Bobbie’s thoughts came back to the present. The baby wasn’t coming. She wasn’t going to be a mother after all, even an adoptive one. As for the party, the celebration party she had planned for the weekend, she would have to cancel it. It was to have been her triumph – the moment when she introduced her one-month-old adopted son to the world. But now there was no baby. No triumph.
She could imagine how everyone would talk. How they would commiserate with her to her face but mock her behind her back. God, she couldn’t even buy a baby – what kind of failure did that make her? Chilled, Bobbie moved around the apartment. She had been beaten by a slum girl – some Puerto Rican tart had cheated her. Tears stung her eyes, but she drove them back. She would put a brave face on it, would tell her friends that there had been a legal difficulty in the adoption. Better still, she would imply that the child had been ill in some way, perhaps mentally retarded … Anything other than admit that the Feldenchrist finances had been of no to use to her at all. For a woman who had always taken money for granted, it came as a chilling realisation that its power was not absolute.
