Memory of Bones (11 page)

‘You don’t understand—’

‘No,
you
don’t understand. Because if you did – if you realised what that skull means – you’d have got rid of it already. And if you knew what’s coming to you, you’d sell it to me now. You’d get the fucking thing off your hands and keep yourself safe.’ He stared at Leon intently. ‘Call me. I’ll come and meet you whenever, wherever, you want. Just make it quick, for all our sakes. I’m trying to save you, Mr Golding. Please,
save me.
’

The Whitechapel Hospital, London

The following morning a good-looking mixed race woman of around thirty-five was waiting outside Ben Golding’s office when he arrived at the hospital for his clinic. Seated beside her was her companion, a bored young man, staring at his text messages.

As the woman saw Ben approach she walked over to greet him. ‘Mr Golding?’

‘Yes,’ he said warily, worried she might be an overanxious patient trying to jump the queue.

‘I’m Roma Jaffe. My colleague and I would like to have a few words.’ On cue, the bored young man got to his feet and stood beside her. Discreetly flashing her police identity badge she held Ben’s gaze. ‘Can we talk?’

A moment later she was seated opposite Ben Golding at his desk, a file in her hands, her expression professional. The dull navy suit she was wearing did not fully obliterate her figure and although her hair was pulled
back from her face it didn’t disguise the high cheekbones and strong jaw. Leaning against the wall behind her, Duncan Thorpe regarded his superior idly.

‘I’ve been told that you’re the leading reconstructive surgeon in London,’ Roma began, ‘and I need to ask your help with a case I’m working on. I’m investigating the murder of a man who was dismembered, and some of whose remains were found in the canal at Little Venice two days ago.’

Ben nodded. ‘I read about it in the paper. Do they know who it was?’

‘No, not yet.’ She paused. ‘We have the torso now, but no legs, and only a jacket. Which has no means of identification. But this morning a head turned up in the Thames. The pathologist believes that it belongs to the same man.’ She pushed a photograph over the desk.

The decapitated head was all but destroyed, the skull partially exposed, the features battered. In order to be photographed it had been placed on a forensic examining table, a measuring rule beside it, a label with the time and date of its discovery lying beside the jawbone.

‘How can I help?’ Ben asked.

‘I’ve got an X-ray too,’ Roma replied, passing it over to him. ‘And I wanted to ask you if there is anything unusual about the man’s skull.’

Walking over to the window, Ben held the X-ray up to the light. For a long moment he studied it, then turned back to the policewoman.

‘The skull’s male, adult, around thirty-five, forty, I’d
say. And he’s had some reconstructive surgery in the past. Broken cheekbone and jaw. Either an assault or a car accident—’

‘Before death?’

‘Long before,’ Ben replied. ‘It wasn’t the cause of death, if that’s what you’re asking. But it’s difficult to see any more with all the mutilation to the face.’

‘Will you look at the remains?’

‘Yes. But I’m not a pathologist – I can only tell you about any reconstructive surgery to the head.’ He looked at her. ‘Surely you have your own people?’

‘Not as specialised as you, Mr Golding.’

Ben nodded. ‘Do you have any idea who the victim was?’

‘No. We’re going to need some help in that area. Obviously no one could recognise him as he is.’ She picked up the photograph and put it back in her bag. ‘I believe you have a first-class reconstructor at the Whitechapel Hospital.’

‘Francis Asturias,’ Ben replied. ‘He could recreate the victim’s head for you. He’s done it many times. For the police and for archaeologists. What else?’

She looked at him curiously. ‘Should there be something else?’

‘I had a feeling that there was more you were about to tell me.’

She smiled. ‘The jacket we discovered with the torso had a card in the inside pocket.’

‘And?’

‘It was yours, Mr Golding.’ She pulled out a small plastic bag and slid it across the table to him.

Glancing at it, Ben nodded. ‘Yes, that’s my card. So what? Maybe he was an ex-patient. Or someone who’d been given my details to contact me. Journalists, writers – all kinds of people have asked me for help over the years. There must be hundreds of my cards out there.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Roma replied, then flipped over the plastic bag and pointed to another number written on the back of the card. ‘D’you know whose number that is?’

Jolted, Ben stared at the digits but kept his face impassive. He knew the number well, called it frequently – it was his brother’s private mobile number. Found in the jacket of a dead man without a face.

When the police officers had left, Ben walked into the laboratory looking for Francis Asturias. He had tried to call Leon repeatedly, but his brother hadn’t returned the messages and now Leon’s mobile was turned off. Of course the matter of the card might not be important, Ben told himself, but it troubled him nevertheless. It wasn’t so much that it was his business card, but the fact that it had been the only item found on a murder victim. Had he been a patient? If so, why did he have Leon’s private number as well? And why had the man ended up – in pieces – scattered around London?

Troubled, Ben thought back to the X-ray he had seen. Nothing about the surgery seemed familiar, but then it hadn’t been recent and certainly not undertaken by him. Which seemed to exclude the victim as an ex-patient. Jesus! Ben thought irritably. Why hadn’t Leon called back? He had left enough messages, stressing that Leon mustn’t use his mobile and should buy another one. But there had been no response.

‘I’ve done it.’

At the sound of Francis Asturias’s voice, Ben turned. The reconstructor was standing hands on hips, wearing a pair of old-fashioned motorcycle gauntlets.

Ben raised his eyebrows. ‘Trying to stop biting your nails?’

‘Very funny,’ Francis replied, pulling off the gloves. ‘I’ve been in the freezer. Got some nasty burns last time, so I thought I’d take precautions from now on.’ He looked at the gauntlets admiringly. ‘Got them at a car boot sale. Two quid.’

‘You were robbed.’

Ignoring him, Francis moved over to a nearby workbench, gesturing for Ben to look. The skull which he had brought over from Madrid was on a raised plinth, but it looked disappointingly dull, uninteresting. Beside it was a companion plinth, a damp cloth covering the rough outline of a human head.

Curious, Ben glanced over at Francis. ‘Is that the reconstruction?’

‘Sure is.’

‘Is it a secret?’

‘Huh?’

‘Can I see it?’ Ben asked wryly.

Francis hesitated for a moment. ‘In a minute. I wanted to ask you about something else first. A policewoman came to see me this morning – with a head they’d just fished out of the Thames. She said she’d already talked to you about it.’

‘She had.’

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

Ben smiled. ‘A unknown man was killed and dismembered. Various parts of him have turned up. Some in a canal in Little Venice—’

‘But why involve you?’

‘Roma Jaffe – the detective – wanted me to look at the mutilated head because it had undergone surgery in the past. She wanted my opinion.’ He paused, wondering why he wasn’t telling Francis about the card. ‘Have you got it now?’

‘Been a bit of a rush on heads lately. Up to my knees in them,’ Francis replied. ‘The police want a reconstruction.’

‘How long will it take you?’

‘Not long. I’m working with the pathologist.’

‘I’d like to see the reconstruction when you’re done,’ Ben said evenly. He was more than a little curious to see what the head had looked like when it had been a breathing, living man. Curious to know if Francis Asturias’s reconstruction would jolt his memory – and explain the victim’s link to him and Leon.

‘I knew you’d be aching to see it,’ Francis replied, walking back to the Madrid skull and standing by the plinth. He had the air of a third-rate Las Vegas magician about to do a creaky trick. ‘Ready?’

‘I thought it was all done on computer now.’

Francis gave him a withering look. ‘I don’t work on computer – that’s for amateurs. I work in the old-fashioned way, by hand … First you take the skull—’

‘Hang on,’ Ben interrupted him. ‘So you don’t make the reconstruction over the skull itself?’

‘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.’

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!