Memory of Bones (23 page)

‘Anyone there?’

No response.

But he felt something. A creeping sensation that he
was being watched
. Unnerved, Ben paused, his hand gripping the door handle. His breathing speeded up, sweat sheening his skin as he heard a movement behind him.

‘Who is it?’ he snapped, his voice loud to cover his anxiety. ‘Come on, who is it?’

Silence. Slowly he looked around, then pulled the door closed and began to walk back down the corridor. He longed for the familiar sounds of the hospital – a stretcher clattering along the lino, a phone ringing, the siren as an ambulance arrived at A & E. But the consulting rooms of the Whitechapel Hospital were eerily silent, locked off from the main body of activity, not even a cleaner, bucket in hand, to break the quiet.

He wondered suddenly if he should run, and then dismissed the idea, embarrassed by his own nerves. He was tired, that was all. Tired and spooked – which was hardly surprising considering what had happened in the last few days. His imagination was playing mental hopscotch with him, Ben told himself – that was all … Out of patience, he turned and made for his consulting room again, slamming the door behind him and sitting down at his desk.

He would finish his work, and go home. Have a drink and get some sleep. Everything would be clearer in the
morning. He couldn’t afford to let
his
imagination get out of control. Taking in a breath, once more he began to dictate:

‘… Sean will undergo a further operation shortly, undertaken by myself. Megan Griffiths will be in attendance, and George Turner the anaesthetist.’

He paused, adding an afterthought for his secretary:

‘This is a message for you, Sylvia. Just in case I’m in theatre when—’

Suddenly Ben stopped talking. There
were
footsteps outside the consulting room door. No mistake. No imagination this time. They were real. Automatically he looked behind him, then turned back to the door, staring at it. The whispering began again, together with a muffled shuffling, the handle of the door beginning to turn.

In that instant the gas fire hissed, the noise spurting around the room as someone began to rattle the door handle. Mesmerised, Ben kept to his seat, a pulse throbbing in his neck, a feeling of dread overwhelming him. And as the door finally opened, he saw a rush of darkness and nothing more.

It was the aggressive, unending ringing of the telephone that finally jerked Ben out of his sleep. Leaping up, he knocked over some papers and for an instant couldn’t recall whether he was in Spain or London. Then he remembered the noises he had heard and realised he had simply fallen asleep at his desk and dreamt them.

Feeling foolish, he snatched up the phone. ‘
What?
’

‘Ben?’

He relaxed when he heard Abigail’s voice. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘In London. My father’s better and I wanted to come home to see you. I’m going back in a few days, but at the moment I’ve got a nurse to cover for me … Are you OK?’ she went on.

She didn’t mention the problem she was having with her face, the swelling under her skin on the left side. A swelling no one knew about but her. Too small to be seen, but not too small for her to feel.

‘I’m fine, darling. Tired—’

‘You sound it. You didn’t stay at the hospital last night, did you?’

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

‘I came back for my clinic, but I must have been more tired than I thought and dropped off.’ Outside, the hospital clock chimed ten – and he suddenly remembered the skull. ‘Are you at my house?’

‘No,’ she said, surprised. ‘I’m at my place.’

‘Don’t go to the house!’

‘But—’

‘I’ll explain later, but don’t go near my place.’

‘Is this anything to do with Leon?’ she asked, disturbed. ‘Ben, what’s going on?’

‘I can’t explain over the phone. I’ll tell you more when I see you.’ He paused, then confided something which had been bothering him. ‘I spoke to Gina. She was still at the farmhouse. She told me she’d lost Leon’s baby.’

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry—’

‘I left Madrid without telling her. Just took Leon’s notes and his laptop—’

‘
You didn’t tell her?
’ Abigail said, surprised. ‘You just upped and left? That’s not like you, Ben.’

‘I don’t trust her.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she lied to me. And if she lied to me once, she could lie to me about everything else. She was very interested in the skull – too interested. Gina doesn’t know I have it – she thinks it’s still in Madrid – but she seemed very keen to get hold of it.’ He thought back. ‘And she
was reluctant to let me look at what Leon was working on—’

‘So you stole it?’

‘He was my brother!’

‘She was his lover,’ Abigail said softly. ‘And she was once carrying his child.’

‘No, she wasn’t.’

‘You just said—’

‘I know what I said – Gina told me that she had lost Leon’s baby. Well, she might have been pregnant, but not with his child. Leon had mumps when he was eighteen.
My brother was sterile
…’

Abigail took in a breath.

‘The baby wasn’t his. Of course she could have made the whole story up just to get sympathy, get me on her side. She’s very manipulative and she had a big influence on Leon, always so keen on him writing that book about the Black Paintings. Even when I didn’t want him to do it, even when I warned him off, she kept pushing the idea.’ He thought of her behaviour the last time he saw her. ‘I don’t know if Gina was doing it deliberately, but I think she was screwing my brother’s head up. Leon wouldn’t have stood a chance with a woman like that.’

A moment passed before Abigail spoke again. ‘You don’t think she had anything to do with his death, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said honestly. ‘But I wonder what it would have been like living with her, in that house. What Leon’s last weeks and days were like … The whole
atmosphere was eerie there. Not just because Leon was dead – there was more to it than that.’

‘You’re tired, darling. Get some rest.’

‘I will, and I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, hurrying on. ‘But don’t come round to the house—’

‘I won’t, I promise. But you’re scaring me, Ben. If you’re in trouble, call the police.’

‘No, not yet,’ he replied. ‘I will if I have to. But not yet.’

He was lying to her and his conscience needled him. But what was the alternative? To tell her he had the skull at his home? The skull which had already cost two lives? And how could he risk telling her about Diego Martinez, the builder whose find had set the whole series of events into motion. Had he been killed because of the skull? And if so, why had he been murdered in London, not Madrid? Did the same person who had killed Martinez also kill Leon? Abigail was right about one thing, Ben thought. He would go to the police when he had proof, but not before. It was
his
brother who had been murdered and it was up to him to prove it.

Reaching for his coat, Ben walked out, locking the door of his consulting room behind him. Skirting the decorators’ ladders, he hurried towards the loggia, the glass windows and ceiling full of London greyness. In the distance he could hear a phone ringing, and as he approached the back entrance he saw an ambulance pull up, its light flashing.

Preoccupied, Ben walked to his car and got in, turning on the wipers to clear the rain off the windows. In the rear-view mirror he watched a stretcher being taken out
of the ambulance and hurried into the A & E department, the ambulance men returning a moment later with the stretcher empty and folded. Sighing, Ben started the car and pulled out on to the Whitechapel Road, waiting at the first set of traffic lights and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Still weary, he rubbed his eyes and then moved on when the lights changed, making for home.

It was nearly half an hour later that Ben finally arrived back, finding a parking space opposite his house. Hurrying up the front steps, he fumbled with the lock, pushing open the door and walking in. The place seemed unwelcoming as he put down his overnight bag and flicked on the hall light. Picking up his post from the floor, he moved into his study, spotting a fax and scanning it.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF DR BEN GOLDING

He read on, skipping the formalities:

The autopsy findings on Mr Leon Golding are as follows
…

Automatically Ben held his breath.

Conclusion: suicide
.

Conclusion: suicide
… Ben read the two words again, the image of his brother’s body flickering behind his eyes. Leon hanged. Leon dead. Leon killing himself … Exhaling, he put down the fax, not bothering to read any more of
the report. He already knew that the Spanish coroner would have backed up his findings with the bald facts – that Leon Golding had tried to commit suicide twice before. That he had been unstable. That his life had always been only an inch away from death.

Pouring a drink, Ben sat down with his legs stretched out in front of him, promising himself that he would get drunk. And then, remembering that he was operating later, he put down the glass. Idly, he riffled through his post, and found to his surprise that his hands were shaking and he was fighting tears. Embarrassed, he walked into the kitchen and began to make himself something to eat. His actions were automatic, unconsidered: the cutting of the bread, the buttering, the slicing of the tomato and some cheese. He made the sandwich because he needed to eat, not because he cared what it would taste like, filling the kettle and setting it to boil.

His mind kept replaying images, like scenes viewed through a train window, passing fast and unfocused. Leon, Gina, Abigail, Francis, the hospital … His eyes aching from exhaustion, he began to eat. Slowly he chewed the food, making little saliva, forcing himself because he hadn’t eaten for hours. When he had finished the sandwich, he would sleep. But it was unappetising and Ben could only eat a little. Turning, he was about to put the plate on the draining board and paused.

Something was different
, he could sense it. Slowly, he looked around the kitchen – and then realised that the door of the washing machine was ajar. Bending down, he
felt around inside the machine frantically, then dragged out his clothes, his hands rummaging, panicked, around the back of the empty steel drum.

The skull was gone.

… I should like to know if you are elegant, distinguished or dishevelled, if you have grown a beard, if you have all your own teeth, if your nose has grown, if you wear glasses, walk with a stoop, if you have gone grey anywhere and if time has gone by for you as quickly as it has for me
…

LETTER FROM GOYA TO MARTIN ZAPATER

Spain, 1821

Shuffling across the dry stretch of grass outside the Quinta del Sordo, the old man paused beside the fountain, plunging his face under the fall of water. The coolness shimmered against his skin, pumping the aged blood into the pores, making his pulse thump to the liquid sensation of cold. His mind wandered from the hot day back to the court, to the past. When he had dabbled with colour and women, mocking the
majas
while he slept with them. Taking a salary from the king while the ruler slept and hunted his days away, and his Minister in Chief, Godoy, ruled over Spain and the bed of the Queen Maria Luisa. Godoy, a suspected murderer. The man rumoured to have had the Duchess of Alba killed
.

Goya lifted his head out of the water, letting the heat dry the flutter of hair. Not bald, even past eighty, but deaf as a stone tomb. Inside his head the dull humming of blood beat in rhythm to the vibration of his footsteps as he made his way into the largest room of the house, on the left of the ground floor. Insects, plump with feeding, made trapeze movements over his head, a
lizard basking on the window ledge outside. Once, many years before, he had lain on a bed with the Duchess of Alba, both of them watching a lime green lizard making its showy way across the bedroom floor
…

She had been poisoned, taken from him, the motive unclear. Jealousy, greed, her fortune up for the taking after her death. Or maybe she had been killed because she was, in truth, most frightening. Too wild, too reckless, her reputation tainted by rumours of her dabbling in the occult
.

Soon it would be dark … Sighing, Goya picked up a paintbrush. The handle was worn, smeared with grease and an echo of old paint. No one was paying him for his work. There was no sponsor, no collector, to please. The house and the walls were his, to do with as he chose
.

Like the bulls he had admired so often in the ring, Goya sighted his target and moved towards it. The wall fell to the onslaught of darkness, figures emerging half-completed, half human, winding in a mad procession. Mouths gaped, eyes extended, insanity in the turn of bodies, a demented congregation smearing their ghoulish progress across the wall
.

‘
… I have painted these pictures to occupy my imagination, which is tormented by all the ills that afflict me
…’

He had sent the confession to a friend, but knew he could not risk confiding the whole truth in words. Anything written could be retained and used as a weapon against him
.

The written word had held danger before. Earlier in his life
he had scrawled captions under his works, the most damning reserved for
The Disasters of War,
the eighty aquatints which he had never published. Under the drawings he had made comments like a war correspondent writing from the front:

One cannot look at this
.

This is bad
.

This is how it happened
.

I saw it
.

And this too
.

Why?

He had charted the war atrocities and recorded them, but kept them secret. The reason was obvious. A famed liberal, Goya could not risk retaliation from the vicious Ferdinand VII. He was too old and too weak for political grandstanding. Too frightened to rebel publicly
.