Memory of Bones (14 page)

‘Then do what I suggested, Leon. Get it off your hands. Donate the skull to the Prado. Make an announcement publicly so everyone knows you don’t have it any more—’

‘I can’t give up on it! I’m inches away from telling the world what happened to Goya. I
can’t just walk away now!
’

‘You can’t do this alone—’

‘I’m not doing it alone! Gina’s trying to help—’

It was the last thing Ben wanted to hear. ‘
Gina!
’

‘She told me that we have to keep the skull safe. She wants to protect me and my work.’

‘What the hell does she know about it?’

‘We had a seance—’

‘Oh, Christ, Leon!’

‘The medium thought that if we had Goya’s skull we much be able to reach him.’

Incredulous, Ben struggled to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘You really think you can get in contact with Goya?’

‘Why not? The medium contacted Detita.’

The name swung into action and with it a malignancy which took Ben straight back to his childhood.

‘Detita is dead. No one can bring back the dead. Detita is dead and Goya is dead, Leon … Listen to me. This is bloody ridiculous. You can’t let people fill your head with all this crap. As for Gina, I know you care about her, but she’s not reliable—’

Leon dropped his voice, almost shamefaced. ‘She’s done some research on the internet for me—’

‘Please, stop this.’

‘I can’t,’ Leon replied, his tone distant, resigned.

Behind Ben, the door of his consulting room closed
suddenly, making him jump. Looking round, he checked that no was listening and then realised that he was clinging on to the phone so tightly the bones of his knuckles were straining against the skin. The hand found in the Little Venice canal came into his mind unbidden, followed by an image of the head the police had found later, the face mashed into nothingness.

‘It’s dangerous, Leon. I told you people would be after the skull – I knew this would happen. Didn’t I say we had to keep it quiet?’

‘I have to get on with my research—’

‘You’re endangering yourself.’

‘I just have to write up my notes and it’s finished. I’ll stop then, I promise. I just have to get it down on paper … Anyway, not everyone’s against me. Some people are trying to help me. Some leave messages, others get in touch over the internet.’

Ben could feel his skin prickle. ‘
Do they know you have Goya’s skull?

‘But I don’t, do I?’ Leon replied. ‘
You
have it.’ There was a note of malice in his voice, suspicion mixed with anger. ‘Don’t treat me like a child, Ben. I’m just as important in my field as you are in yours. This is my big chance and I’m not going to let anything stop me. Even you.’

‘I’m not trying to stop you—’

‘You’re jealous, aren’t you?’

‘I’m just worried about you—’

‘Stop worrying about me!’

‘Leon—’

‘Stop getting in my way!’ he replied, his voice speeding up. ‘
I need that skull! I want it back!
It was given to me! I need it. It’s mine!’

And then the line went dead.

What cruelty, for discovering the movement of the earth,
For marrying whom she wished,
For speaking a different language,
For being Jewish
.

CAPTIONS GOYA WROTE UNDER
SOME OF HIS DRAWINGS

Quinta del Sordo

Madrid, 1821

Impatiently, Arrieta flicked away the insects. Then, leaning back in his seat, he looked slowly around the bedchamber. Below, the doctor could hear the sound of a woman’s footsteps, then her voice as she called out to a little girl, Rosario. Was it true that the child was Goya’s? That he and his housekeeper, Leocardia Zorrilla de Weiss, were lovers? His gaze moved back to Goya’s face, counting his pulse rate. It was too fast, but the artist was unmoving, apparently asleep
.

Almost choking in the heat, Arrieta opened the window further and leaned out. In the distance, over the heat haze, he could see the roofs of Madrid and knew that in the court the returned King, Ferdinand VII, would be plotting further pogroms and retaliations. No one was sure why Goya had moved to the farmhouse, but it was rumoured that it was to escape the restored Inquisition. The ailing painter wouldn’t have wanted to stay in Madrid under the Inquisition’s nose while they sniffed around
his private life. After all, Leocardia was a relative by marriage of Goya’s son, Xavier – a matter which could easily inflame the religious zealots. And besides, the Inquisition had been interested in Goya before, condemning his paintings of the Clothed and Naked Majas as obscene. The pictures had even been confiscated
.

The model – believed to be the sensational Duchess of Alba – was dead … Arrieta sighed, remembering the woman who had been Goya’s lover. Haughty, imperious, beautiful, she had intoxicated many men and inspired spite from the women of the court. Fearless, she cared little for convention, her reputation and beauty drawing Spaniards out on to their balconies to watch as she passed. Goya had painted her many times – as a duchess, a witch and a whore
.

But the last time Arrieta had seen the Duchess of Alba she had been passing in her coach, unrecognisable, desperate as she had signalled for him to approach
.

‘
Dr Arrieta,’ she said, her face hidden behind a dense veil, ‘I think you might find me much changed.’ Carefully she lifted the net, exposing her features. The skin had peeled from her cheeks in weeping patches and the tip of her nose was eaten away. Around her lips blisters crowded the bare gums. And her hair, once waist-long and lustrous, had thinned, exposing the scalp beneath
.

What …?
’

‘
… happened to me?’ She held his gaze, still brave. ‘I am poisoned, Dr Arrieta. And I will die … When you see Francisco tell him I loved him more than all the others. Tell him when you last saw me I was still beautiful. Lie for me.’ She let the veil fall back to cover her face and tapped on the side of the coach. A moment
later it moved off and she was gone. Two days afterwards news of the Duchess’s death was gossip in Madrid. She was buried in haste. Whispers of poisoning and the involvement of Godoy, the Queen’s lover, circulated the capital
.

Francisco Goya never recovered from her loss
.

And yet now he had another lover, Arrieta mused, thinking of Leocardia. But this woman was no duchess, no sumptuous aristocrat. This female was country-smart, ambitious, impatient and cold. Black hair, white skin, dark as a rook, and a listener at doors. No victim, this woman. Something else entirely. An odd companion for the painter’s old age. A strange ally at the Quinta del Sordo
.

But then the farmhouse had become a madhouse of its own … Dr Arrieta thought back to the night he had been called over the river, the water seeming to sweat with that molten boiling of earth into sky, the sun swelling like a pustule against the flank of blue. Moving into the cool interior of the farmhouse, Arrieta had waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness as a lumbering figure approached him
.

‘Arrieta,’ Goya said, staring into his doctor’s face, ‘I’ve been working.
’

He had pulled at the younger man’s sleeve, the smell of oil on his hands, a paint-spattered coat masking his naked upper body as Arrieta followed him into the dining room. A heavily carved dining table had been pushed up against one wall, the shutters half opened to allow some light, and much heat, to enter. In the middle of the wooden floor a bowl of luridly yellow lemons had given off an orchard scent
.

As Goya had continued to tug at his arm, Arrieta had followed
the painter’s gesture towards the far wall. Nervously he had moved closer towards the huge image. Painted directly on to the plaster, the monstrous vision of Saturn shimmered in its meaty colours, the god maniacally tearing off the head of a nude
.

‘
Remarkable,’ Arrieta had said finally, as the artist drew his attention to the wall behind them
.

This time the doctor had taken in a breath. The picture had also been painted directly on to the wall, but this time it was long and narrow, stretching almost the width of the dining room. Its meaning had been immediately apparent to Arrieta. It was a painting of a witches’ Sabbath. But there was no gaiety in this depiction, no courtly titillation. The witches were gnarled, mad women, who in real life would smell and be scabby with lice. And the huge billy-goat shape of the Devil was no pictorial effect, just a blackened, inhuman misshape
.

‘What does it mean?’ Arrieta asked, then repeated the words slowly so that Goya could lip-read
.

He had taken a long moment to reply, then he had rubbed his temple, leaving a streak of paint at the corner of his eye
.

‘When I am are finished, then you will understand.
’

A cat had leapt from the window sill on to the dining room floor. It had walked slowly towards the lemons then paused, a black shadow passing over the swollen fruit. And a memory came back to Arrieta in that moment; of a duchess rubbing lemon peel into her skin, trying, uselessly, to kill the smell of her dying
.

Little Venice, London

‘Nothing …’

Nodding, Roma Jaffe turned to see her second-in-command, Duncan Thorpe, walking over to join her on the restaurant balcony. He was thin, fair-haired, hardly out of his twenties, almost slow-looking, but clever.

‘Nothing else on the canal, or the banks …’

‘What about the card?’

‘Just the two numbers on it,’ Duncan replied, shrugging. ‘Ben Golding’s and another mobile number.’

‘Not Golding’s mobile?’

‘I dunno. When I rang it was disconnected. We can’t trace it.’

‘And the laboratory couldn’t get any prints on the card?’

‘No prints either. It had been in the water so long there was nothing left.’

‘The number must have been important, or it wouldn’t have been left on the body.’ Roma paused. ‘After all, there
was nothing else in the pockets. Someone wanted us to find those numbers.’

‘We know one of them belongs to Dr Golding. That’s a start.’

She nodded, thoughtful, as Duncan glanced behind him into the restaurant. ‘I brought my girlfriend here once. Christ, they know how to charge.’

Roma let the comment pass. ‘Nothing unusual about the blanket?’

‘Cut from a piece of cloth which went out of production five years ago.’

‘Naturally.’ Roma checked her watch. ‘They’re doing the reconstruction at the Whitechapel now. Should be ready later today, or tomorrow. Then we do the usual: put up the posters and see who recognises him.’

‘You want a coffee?’

She smiled wryly. ‘Here? Can you afford it?’

‘The manager said it was on the house,’ Duncan replied, smiling as he walked off.

Her hair damped down from the rain, Roma Jaffe stood on the restaurant balcony overlooking the Little Venice canal. Behind her a group of waiters watched listlessly, as the manager tried to field off a reporter on the phone. His voice was raised, out of patience, the resounding bang of the receiver echoing out to the balcony where Roma was staring down into the water. A duck – that most innocuous of birds – paddled a comical pattern down the canal, disappearing under the stone archway, taking the same route as the mutilated body parts had done two days earlier.

Much as Roma had tried to prevent it, the press had got hold of the story and it had made headlines in the
Evening Standard
and in the dailies the following morning.

The canal water was flicked with rain, drops making dwarf fountains on the surface. Perhaps it was because she was tired, but suddenly Roma wished that she had never taken on the task of heading up her own team of investigators. As Acting Head of the Murder Squad, her ambition had made her no friends. If anything, it had disturbed her previously smooth climb to the higher reaches of the London Metropolitan Police. After all the praise and promises of support, she had been left short-handed and short-funded, an opinionated harpy with something to prove.

‘Coffee. Latte,’ Duncan said, joining her. ‘D’you think we’ll ever find out who the victim was?’

‘I hope so.’ She changed the subject deftly. ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.’

‘Well, I see her now and again. Not really close.’

Roma sipped her coffee slowly, taking her time. She was hanging on to the priceless few minutes of quiet, watching the canal, relishing the escape from the phones. Her last case had been a murder in Holland Park. A drug addict had broken into an empty house to squat and found the remains of a woman who had been dead six months. Six whole months, Roma thought, in which no one had
missed a visit or a phone call. Six months in which a young woman had mouldered in an expensive house. Eventually the victim had been named and her murderer caught. His explanation was simple: he picked her because he knew she wouldn’t be missed.

He had been right.

‘Well, here we go …’ Roma said, staring at a text which had just appeared on her phone. ‘Francis Asturias has come up trumps. Our faceless victim is no more. We’ve got a reconstruction.’

Humming to himself, Francis took off his gauntlets and looked at the reconstruction he had just completed. Not bad – not bad at all, he thought. All this practice was refining his art. He tilted his head to one side, scrutinising the very ordinary face he had just reconstructed. Caucasian male, around forty, with a slightly overshot jaw. Having toyed with the colour of the eyes, Francis had finally guessed grey; somehow it seemed to go with the man’s face better than a darker shade. In fact, if he was honest, the victim’s face was bland, his features veering on weakness. A man who would have passed unnoticed in a crowd.

Footsteps behind him made Francis turn as Ben walked up to the workbench and stared at the reconstructed head.

‘You get the first look,’ Francis told him. ‘The police are on their way, but I promised you could have the first sneaky peek … So, do you recognise him?’