by Alex Connor
Disease …
Ben’s gaze fell on the small pile of books in front of him. All Leon’s books, all well-used, thumb-marked and dog-eared with reading. Slowly he ran his hands over the covers and spines. Goya’s Life, Goya’s Court Paintings, Goya’s Caprichos, Goya’s Disasters of War … every book was so familiar to him. As familiar as if they had been his own. But in a way they had belonged to both brothers. Passed down from their parents, read from by Detita.
Goya’s life had been a parallel existence to theirs. So close, it could have been the memoir of a family member. So well known; their own lives lived within memory of the Quinta del Sordo and the Spaniard’s reach. Every etching, drawing and painting had been looked at by the brothers, every anecdote Detita told them repeated, until Leon’s uneasiness had censored Ben’s teasing. How fitting it had been that the old man’s skull should come into Leon’s hands, because no man would have valued it more.
So much that it had cost him his life.
Deep in thought, Ben flicked through the preparatory tapestry drawings and the paintings which followed on. This was the youthful Goya, seducing women and climbing the precipice to the top of the Spanish court. This was the dark man who had made love to a nun, and had painted nudes so daring the Inquisition had come after him. This was the young, lusty Francisco, with his dowdy wife and his bed full of majas. This was the court painter who, although not well born, could insult the royals obliquely with his satire, could flatter a doomed duchess, and who was wily enough to keep his balance on the political tightrope of Spain.
Closing the book, Ben opened another, feeling a closeness to his brother, almost hearing Leon talking behind him.
Look at this, Ben – just look at this. No one could paint fabrics like Goya …
His hands moved over the colour prints, over the painting of Mariano, the son of Goya’s only surviving child, Javier. There had been rumours that Javier had created the Black Paintings, but it was unsubstantiated. Thoughtful, Ben opened one of Leon’s last notepads. His words were written loosely, some in shorthand, others down the margin, vertically, as the ideas hit him. Just looking at his handwriting brought back the clever flightiness of Leon’s brain, coupled with his intense – and haunting – perception.
Pausing, Ben looked up, the rain blowing softly against the windows outside. Thinking of what he had read so far, he reached for the book on Goya’s Black Paintings and began to look at the illustrations. The images were familiar to him. He had grown up with them, seen them in the Prado, on mugs, on tea towels and on the sides of buses.
Turning to the frontispiece, Ben read the words written by Goya’s son, Javier.
… his own predilection was for the paintings he kept in his house, since he was free to paint them as he pleased … they were always his special favourites and he looked at them every day …
Ben wondered about that. Wondered how a man could take pleasure from such bleakness. Then he glanced back at the painting of The Dog. Suddenly a dull, far-off thunderclap echoed outside, rain striking the window sill.
‘He never let me read them
Startled, Ben looked up to find Gina standing in the doorway.
Calmly, she pointed to the notebooks. ‘I saw you’d taken them the other morning. You didn’t have to do that – I wouldn’t have stopped you. You were Leon’s brother, you were entitled to have them. All this is yours now. The house, everything.’ She leaned against the door frame, her silhouette outlined against the hall light.
‘How did you get in?’
‘You left the front door open,’ she replied coolly, moving towards the desk. ‘I can’t bear this room. Too sad …’
Leaning back in the chair, Ben watched her. ‘Why did you come back, Gina?’
‘I was driving past and I saw your car. I wanted to talk about Leon and you’re the only person I can talk to.’ She sat down, her knees pressed together like a child’s. ‘I miss him. He was good to me. Temperamental, yes, but kind. Always kind.’ She thought of Gabino, still stinging from his treatment, her calculating mind weighing the odds. ‘I know you don’t trust me.’
‘You lied to me.’
Her lips parted, then closed in a thin line. ‘About what?’
‘Losing Leon’s child.’
‘I did lose a baby—’
‘I don’t doubt that, but it wasn’t Leon’s. He was sterile,’ Ben replied, trying to work out what she wanted and wondering if he had left the front door unlocked, or if Gina had kept a key to the farmhouse.
‘It was a stupid lie … but I wanted to get you on my side.’
‘I was already on your side. Leon was dead. I could imagine how that would hurt you. But lying to me? You lost my sympathy then, Gina. And my trust …’
She clenched her hands together, her face drawn.
‘I asked you why you came back. It wasn’t to talk about Leon,’ Ben went on. ‘So what was it?’
Her indecision confounded her. She hadn’t expected Ben to discover her lie about the baby and her confidence wavered. Any attempt at a hurried seduction of Ben Golding would only damn her further in his eyes. The plan fluttered like a torn banner … Silent, she stared at the floor under her feet. There were indentations in the dark wood, deep and polished shiny over the decades. She had asked Leon about them once and he had told her the story Detita had told him: that the indentations were the Devil’s footprints. Lucifer had come to look over the writer’s shoulder, dictating madness. And then he’d laughed and told her he was joking.
Her eyes remained fixed on the indentations as she thought of Gabino Ortega. How he had used her. How she had used him. How she had used Leon. How, throughout her life, Gina had manipulated men and been manipulated in return. She felt a sudden weariness at the thought of Gabino and wondered if his lifestyle, five years on, would prove as satisfying as it had once done. If the sex and duplicity would be bearable. If even his towering wealth would compensate for the dry ache of a woman who would soon be aged out of the market.
‘Gina …?’
Realising that Ben was talking to her, she blinked slowly.
‘Sorry, I was thinking about – Jesus, I don’t know what I was thinking about. It’s getting late. I should drive back to Madrid.’ She stood up, then paused. ‘Can I stay the night?’ her voice was businesslike, almost cold. ‘I can use the room Leon and I used to have. I’ll leave you alone to work.’
He could hardly refuse. ‘OK.’
Her gaze moved back to the notepads in front of Ben.
‘Did he do it? Oh, come on, you can tell me that! Did Leon solve the Black Paintings?’
Remembering what he had heard about Gina’s previous relationship with Gabino Ortega, he lied.
‘No.’
‘He told me he was close.’
‘Not close enough.’
‘Like the skull. Not close enough …’ Her tone was expressionless. ‘He gave it to you, didn’t he? I know Leon must have, otherwise he would have got it back from Madrid and the phantom specialist. Thinking back, I never saw the skull after you came to the house – which means that you took it to London. You did, didn’t you?’
He shook his head.
‘Leon had the skull. I don’t know what he did with it.’
‘He didn’t have it when we did the seance.’
Leaning forward, Ben held her gaze. ‘Why do you care about it so much?’
‘It mattered to Leon.’
‘And you’re going to fulfil his legacy, are you? Save his reputation?’ Ben asked, bitterness obvious. ‘If anyone should do that, it should be me. But the funny thing is, I don’t care about his work. I miss Leon. I’m only reading his notes on the Black Paintings now because he was my brother and it’s a way to feel close to him. No other reason. I don’t have the skull. Truly, I don’t.’
She wasn’t sure if he was lying or bluffing. ‘So where is it?’
‘God knows. It was lost for centuries, it’s lost again.’
For a long moment she was sil
ent, then smiled faintly. ‘I’m glad.’
It was the answer Ben had least expected.
49
The following morning he woke and lay in bed, listening and wondering if Gina was still in the house. But all he could hear was the sound of the ancient plumbing and the cawing of rooks outside the bedroom window. Having taken all Leon’s papers upstairs with him Ben had still slept half-heartedly, wondering what Gina was doing in the house. Was she there for sentimental reasons or still trying to find out the whereabouts of the skull?
He found her too transparent to be clever, too clumsy to make a good liar. Obviously Gina didn’t know that he was privy to information about her past. That he had already guessed her tactics – that she was trying to obtain the skull for her ex-lover. Whether to effect a reconciliation or secure a big payoff was the only thing Ben wasn’t sure about … Pulling on his clothes, he moved out into the corridor, looking towards the bedroom where Gina had slept. The door was closed and as he walked downstairs he was surprised to see the door of Leon’s study open.
As he went in, Ben heard the muted tones of a news broadcaster and walked round the desk to find his brother’s old computer turned on. He looked at the headlines – a riot in India, the USA President taking a break at Camp David. Puzzled, he sat down, watching the tickertape strip of running news across the bottom of the screen.
… The skull of Francisco Goya has been found, and is now in the possession of the Feldenchrist collection in New York. This is the greatest art find for centuries …
A breath caught in his throat, his gaze moving towards a Post It note stuck on the nearby phone.
You were right – you didn’t have it.
Gina
Jumping up from his seat, Ben moved to the bottom of the stairs and called out for her.
‘Gina! Gina!’
But there was no answer, just the soft swell of dust and silence, and memory.
50
New York
Standing beside one of the newspaper booths, Ben gripped the magazine in his hand. The few people who passed him would never have believed who this anxious-looking man was. The composed surgeon Mr Benjamin Golding, FRCS, had been left behind in Madrid. Left at the farmhouse, written away in the letter to Abigail which said he was going away for a few days. That he would keep in touch. That she mustn’t worry.
That was the man he had left in Madrid.
This man was different. This man was obsessed, driven. For the first time Ben understood something of his brother’s sickness. Or maybe it wasn’t just Leon’s illness. After all, hadn’t Detita seen it in him too once, many years before? But Ben had cheated her out of her hopes of manipulation. Turning weakness into order and protecting his brother, he had swerved around his own mental potholes. But now his whole focus – and his hold on sanity – was fixed on finding his brother’s killer. The person who had stolen the Goya skull.
He stared at the magazine again, then smoothed it out on top of the paper booth. In all her callous triumph, Bobbie Feldenchrist stared out at him, the caption underneath reading:
GREATEST FIND IN ART HISTORY
GOYA’S SKULL IN
FELDENCHRIST COLLECTION
Ben didn’t know how it had arrived in the Feldenchrist Collection, and he knew that no one ever would. Its provenance would be sanitised, its sojourn in a London washing machine overlooked, its resurrection in Francis Asturias’s hands denied. It had come to rest in one of the wealthiest and most powerful collections in the world. In New York. The Spaniard’s head, so used to majas and hunting, would be gawped at by gum-chewing crowds and camera-punching tourists.
It was, Ben thought, so shabby. So out of place among the car horns and police sirens. It should have rested with the painter’s corpse, or within sound of the Manzanares and the river birds. Within sight of Madrid, not in New York. And if there had been any justice in the world, Leon should have been on the cover of the magazine, his alert, slightly nervous face stamped with his achievement.
‘Give it to me,’ Leon had said imperiously when they were boys. ‘I want it!’
It had been a summer, but overcast, the Spanish sun taking a day-long siesta. In the garden, an emerald lizard had shuffled its cool way across the lawn and from the kitchen had come the smell of herbs, cooking slowly in an earthenware pot.
‘Ben, give me the bat,’ Leon had said, the nervous tapping of his foot giving away his impatience. ‘I want to play cricket.’
‘You’re such a liar! You know damn well you just want to give it to that girl. And girls aren’t even interested in cricket. Dad gave you that bat—’
‘And Dad’s dead,’ Leon had replied. But the steam had gone out of him and, shrugging, he had glanced down, trailing his kid’s foot along the dry earth. ‘One day I’m going to be someone. I’m going to be famous. Marry the best-looking girl in Spain. One day people will know my name. You’ll see, Ben – one day everyone will know my name.’
The memory vanished as a car horn blasted alongside Ben, making him jump back from the kerb, the magazine dropping to his feet. Putting up his hand to stop the oncoming cars, he bent down to retrieve it, ignoring the impatient tooting as he moved back on to the sidewalk. Still immersed in his own thoughts, he walked into a cafe and ordered an espresso and Danish, opening the magazine and spreading it out on the table in front of him.
The piece described the impressive Feldenchrist Collection, their particular interest in Spanish art, and Harwood Feldenchrist’s ruthless acquisition techniques – techniques he had passed down to his daughter. As he sipped his coffee Ben read on about Bobbie Feldenchrist, her two failed marriages, her brush with cancer, and her recent adoption of an African baby.
An African baby …
Throwing some coins on to the table, Ben left the cafe, the magazine pushed deep into his pocket. Walking quickly, he hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the Feldenchrist Collection, off Park Avenue.
The cabbie looked at him through the rear-view mirror.
‘You English?’
‘Yes.’
‘This your first trip?’
‘No.’
‘You here on business?’
‘In a way.’
‘So, what you do for a living?’
‘I’m a surgeon.’
‘You’re kidding me!’ the cabbie replied, obviously shocked as he took another look at the big, crumpled man in the back seat. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t look like no doctor to me.’
‘I had a bad flight,’ Ben said simply, lapsing into silence.
When the cab finally dropped him off at the main entrance to the Feldenchrist Collection Ben paused, catching a reflection of his image in a glass door. Taking off his coat and trying to smooth down his hair, he moved from the warmth of the city into the crisp, air-conditioned cool of the gallery building. Obviously the Goya skull was big news, posters already advertising Bobbie Feldenchrist’s coup, a massive image of the skull itself erected over the Reception desk.
Ben stared at it as though mesmerised. He thought of Detita and her stories, of his childhood growing up near the old site of the Quinta del Sordo, and of Leon showing him the skull that first time. On that hot afternoon, in his study … But what he also noticed was the absence of something. Goya’s skull had had three holes in it. This had only two.
It was definitely the fake.
A moment later a small group of people entered, walking in a huddle, a manicured woman in their midst. Her face was impassive, the same as it was on the magazine cover. Stepping back, Ben watched her progress as a photographers took a series of pictures, Bobbie Feldenchrist pausing momentarily under the vast poster of the skull.
‘Ms Feldenchrist,’ someone called out. ‘When is the skull going on display?’
‘We have to make sure that it’s completely protected before we can risk showing it to the public,’ she replied, sleek with success.
‘Will it be displayed behind bulletproof glass?’ another journali
st asked.
‘My security advisors are looking into that at the moment.’
‘What about theft?’
‘The Feldenchrist Collection has never been burgled—’
‘But surely the skull of Goya would be a real target,’the woman persisted. Bobbie turned to her.
‘The skull will be exhibited only when we are convinced that it’s completely safe from harm.’
‘So where is it now?’ Ben asked suddenly. The group turned to look at him, Bobbie glancing over their heads to catch sight of the questioner.
‘Who are you?’
‘An art lover,’ Ben replied, walking closer, ‘… who would like to know where the skull’s being kept.’
‘I hardly think I could tell you that. It would be a breach of security.’
‘Are you sure it’s authentic?’ Ben continued, the journalists glancing from him to Bobbie and sensing that there was something more to his questioning than idle curiosity.
‘The skull is Francisco Goya’s,’ Bobbie replied. She was about to walk away when Ben called after her.
‘Who authenticated it?’
She stopped in her tracks, turning back to him. ‘When the skull is exhibited, its history will be published along with the authentication papers.’
Francis Asturias’s papers, stolen with the real skull. The same papers which had been stolen with the fake. Real papers, wrong skull.
‘Why can’t you tell me who authenticated it?’
‘Who are you?’ Bobbie asked curtly.
‘Someone who has a long-held interest in the skull.’
He could see her react. The momentary shimmer of unease.
‘Well, I’m sure if you leave your name and address my colleagues will be pleased to invite you to the opening night, where all your questions will be answered in full—’
‘I’d like to talk to you now,’ he retorted, moving to her side and edging one of the security guards out of the way. Dropping his voice, he said quietly, ‘My brother was Leon Golding. Talk to me – or I’ll talk to these journalists instead.’
