Memory of Bones (6 page)

‘Is she still having treatment?’

‘Not at the moment,’ Ben replied. ‘She agreed to leave it for a while—’

‘She agreed? Or you talked her into it?’

Ben refused the bait. ‘
We
agreed.’

‘Poor Abigail could hardly argue with you even if she did want more treatment, could she?’

‘She doesn’t want—’

‘You being her lover
and
her doctor. You being Ben Golding.’

‘I’m not her doctor any more.’

‘Whatever …’ Leon’s jumpiness was gathering speed, his brother the nearest target. ‘You were never influenced by anyone, were you? I was. First with our parents, then Detita, now Gina. And always you. But not this time.’ Leon paused. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, he embraced his brother, releasing him just as quickly. His pique had taken a sidestep, balance coming back sweet and sure. ‘Stop worrying about me. I know you do – you always have. But this is the start of something important. This is my big chance.’

‘Just take it steady, hey? And if you need me, phone.’ Ben tapped the box holding the skull. ‘As for this, I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Goya’s skull will make my name.’

‘You’ve already made your name, Leon. You’re a respected historian.’

‘Respected, but not famous.’

Ben wondered fleetingly how his brother would cope with notoriety. How press attention and any prying would affect him. All his life Leon had longed for attention – but on his terms. Attention which could be corralled, fenced in. But fame wasn’t like that. Renown flicked its victim like a bagatelle ball from one pitfall to another. It could test a strong man, a weak one it could destroy.

‘For your sake I
want
it to be Goya’s skull …’

‘It is,’ Leon insisted. ‘It is.
I can feel it.
’

‘… I want it to be genuine because you want it so much. Because you think it’ll bring so much. But if it isn’t—’

‘It will be,’ Leon insisted quietly. ‘It
has
to be.’

London

As it had done for centuries, the Whitechapel Hospital crouched disconsolately among the warren of East End streets. Slivers of alleyways dating back centuries snaked between the modern concrete smack of office blocks. Overhead, the bridge joined the separate wings of the hospital and straddled the road like a birthing stool. The oldest part of the building had been standing when Jack the Ripper was active, the Whitechapel streets housing some of the poorest of London. In among slums, the overcrowded hovels had paid court to prostitution, thievery and gambling.

It was a part of London overhung with its own grim allure, where part-time enthusiasts held murder tours and overseas visitors thrilled to the knowledge that the skeleton of the Elephant Man was housed in the hospital across the road. Time and progress had smartened up some of the area, but a few hidden warrens and alleyways still
lurked. The names of the places where Jack the Ripper killed his victims had been changed too. There was no Miller Court, no Buck’s Row any more, but the stubborn, unremitting atmosphere of gloom remained. And over this thick knotting of streets and memory glowered the edifice of the Whitechapel Hospital.

Pounding towards his consulting room in the oldest part of the building, Professor Francis Asturias paused at a door marked EXIT, then hurried on to the fire escape outside. Lighting a cigar, he drew in the smoke hungrily, pushing the half-empty packet back into his pocket. Smoking was forbidden in every area of the hospital, but Francis always managed to find somewhere to take his intermittent nicotine breaks. Well into his seventies, he cut an eccentric figure, straight, greying hair reaching his shoulders, his eyes slyly amused. Beneath his white coat he wore faded corduroy trousers and suede loafers, bending up at the toes with age.

For ten years various Principals had tried to fire Francis Asturias, but he wasn’t going anywhere. His father had donated a large amount of money to the Whitechapel Hospital and Francis took care to remind everyone of the next legacy which would follow – after his own death. So they let him stay on, long after anyone else would have been retired, working in the Forensic Department on archaeological remains or reconstructions of the victims of murder cases.

‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ a voice said suddenly as the Fire Exit door opened and Ben walked out.

Francis shrugged. ‘Fuck you. I thought you weren’t back until tomorrow.’

‘I came back early,’ Ben replied, helping himself to one of his colleague’s cigars and putting it into the top pocket of his white coat. ‘I’ve brought something for you.’

‘Not one of those straw donkeys with a sun hat?’

‘I thought it would go nicely with your plastic bull-fighter.’

‘You spoil me,’ Francis replied, amused. ‘So what it is?’

‘Something special. Well, it could be. I want you to reconstruct a face for me.’

Stubbing out his cigar, Francis raised his eyebrows. ‘One of your patients?’

‘No. This is a very old skull – possibly of world importance.’

‘They burnt Hitler.’

‘They didn’t burn Goya.’

Francis blew out his cheeks. ‘Where’s the rest of the body?’

‘Still in his tomb. The head went missing a long time ago, apparently stolen by the French. Look, to be frank, it’s unlikely to be genuine, but I want to check it out for my brother. He’s an art historian and it would mean a lot to him.’

‘Wouldn’t hinder his career much either,’ Francis remarked mischievously.

‘Can you do it?’

‘Sure, I can date it for you too. What about DNA?’

‘No point. Goya has no living relatives. No points of comparison.’

‘So you’re relying on the dating and the reconstruction of the skull?’

Ben nodded. ‘Your facial reconstruction’s important because we can see if it matches the known images of Goya.’

‘I could cheat, mug up on his self-portraits,’ Francis suggested archly.

‘You won’t do that, because if the skull is genuine, just think how much it would do for your career when we release the news,’ Ben replied. ‘Keep you here for at least another fifty years, however many Principals come and go.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Keep it quiet.’

‘Don’t tell me your brother stole it?’

‘No, but news travels fast. I don’t want people to start asking questions, leaking it to the press. If it got out, everyone would be after the bloody thing—’

Francis looked over, his expression dubious. ‘What the hell for?’

‘It’s a relic. An artistic object of worship—’

‘It’s a lump of bone.’

‘It’s a lump of
famous
bone,’ Ben corrected him. ‘Because it’s Goya’s skull it would be worth a fortune on the open market. Or the not-so-open market. There’s a big trade in art relics.’

‘In that case, someone should find Van Gogh’s ear.’

‘Actually, they said they
had
found it only a few years ago. Said it had come down the family from the prostitute Van Gogh gave it to originally.’

‘And they didn’t want to keep it?’ Francis replied sarcastically. ‘Mind you, Napoleon’s penis has been going the rounds for decades. Probably getting more action now than it ever did.’

Smiling, Ben tapped Francis on the shoulder. ‘Seriously, keep it quiet. The art world can be a dangerous place. Collectors will pay people to find the skull. By whatever means.’

Trying not to show her nerves, Megan Griffiths walked into the Reconstructive Department of the Whitechapel Hospital, situated above the hospital kitchens. The patients in this particular ward were children, the most serious cases sectioned off in isolation wards to allow their wounds to heal in sterile conditions. Not that these areas were only for children. It was to one of the side wards that Abigail Harrop had been taken when she first came to the Whitechapel Hospital. And it was the reputation of Ben Golding – not the surroundings – which had kept her there.

Megan paused, listening. Outside, rain – its rhythm as persistent as a tin drum – scuffed the high windows and dripped from Victorian gutters and lintels. In private clinics around London the rich and famous paid for their treatment, their buttocks filled or noses straightened in privacy. But in the National Health sector burns were treated side by side with deformities and car accident injuries.

Still thinking about Francis Asturias, Ben was preoccupied when he arrived on the ward and surprised to see
Megan Griffiths there. Moving into the nurses’ station he paused in front of the electric fire to warm his hands and thought of the heatwave in Spain, hardly able to reconcile the damp London chill with the smouldering dryness of Madrid.

‘How long has she been here?’ Ben asked the sister, jerking his head towards the window which looked out over the ward.

‘About half an hour. Dr Griffiths often comes to see the patients. One of your keener registrars.’

Curious, Ben glanced back through the partition glass, watching Megan examine a patient. The child’s injured head was encased in a metal frame, from which steel rods protruded into her cranium. The metal screws on the helmet were turned twice a day to gradually pull the features into alignment. Brutal. Painful. Necessary.

An old memory came back, unbidden. Of his brother falling out of a tree. Falling flat, like a sandbag, without putting out his hands to break his fall. Leon, bellyflopping into the parched Spanish earth … He had broken his left leg, his jaw and two of his ribs and knocked out four of his teeth. In a Madrid hospital Leon’s jaw was wired back into line and his leg put in traction – and all the time he joked with Ben about why he had fallen.

The tree told me to do it
…

What their parents had euphemistically referred to as ‘Leon’s accident’ had determined Ben’s future career. Throughout their teens he had gone through every operation with his brother, sat with him, listened to him,
watched him. Known how much the surgery hurt as he observed the slight body pulled back into shape, the face restored, rebuilt. Over a period of years he saw Leon turned from a disfigured misfit back into a normal child. Physically, at least.

Two decades later Ben had notched up over twenty years’ experience as a reconstructive surgeon, treating both adults and children. Twenty years of facial burns, of careless playing with candles, of car accidents, of hit-and-run drivers. Two decades of womb injuries, of nature’s vicious tricks, of hiccups in the DNA. Twenty years, two hundred and forty months, one thousand and forty weeks spent in the company of victims. While his colleagues had made fortunes from facelifts and liposuction Ben Golding had stuck to his principles. He wasn’t interested in making someone perfect; he was interested in making them fit in.

Walking over, Megan interrupted his thoughts. ‘I was reading about one of your cases. Harry Collard—’

‘I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. I’ve got to get back to my office,’ Ben replied, glancing at his watch. ‘Let’s talk as we walk.’

Together they made their way down the main arterial corridor of the hospital, leading to the consulting rooms.

‘Harry Collard’s had over twenty operations, hasn’t he?’ she asked, almost running to keep up with Ben. ‘Isn’t that a lot for a child?’

‘Harry’s twenty-one now.’

‘But he was a child when you started,’ she persisted.
‘And surely the risks of all those anaesthetics is serious? Research shows that they can undermine a person’s resilience, even do long-term harm.’

Pausing, Ben opened the door of his consulting room and showed her in. The room was crowded with research books, piles of X-rays creeping inexorably across the top of the filing cabinets. On the wall, over a black-painted iron fireplace, was a painting of a landscape long gone, the chimney behind leaking a faint odour of soot.

‘We both know serial anaesthetics are bad for a child,’ Ben said evenly. ‘And much as I commend your interest, I think it’s a front.’

‘
What?
’

‘Let’s be honest, that wasn’t what you wanted to talk about, was it?’

She flushed, surprised by his perception. ‘I’ve got to make a decision about my speciality.’

‘You could do well in reconstructive surgery.’

‘I don’t want to do what you do. I want to go where the money is,’ Megan admitted bluntly. ‘The National Health’s declining. If it was a patient, they’d turn the respirator off.’ She gestured to the high walls, brown wood below the dado, dark anaglypta wallpaper above, the lamp-shade over their heads a cheap inverted bowl design from the 1930s. ‘I don’t like being poor. I want to get on to the reconstructive gravy train.’

‘But there are a lot of cosmetic surgeons,’ Ben replied evenly. ‘Why don’t you do something more worthwhile?’

‘Maybe I’m not the worthy type.’ She held his gaze, but
didn’t pull her punches. ‘That little girl, the one we’ve just seen – I don’t think she should be alive. I don’t think she’ll ever have a normal life.’

‘So what are you saying? We shouldn’t try?’

Tactlessly, Megan blundered on. ‘Whatever you do, she’ll still look terrible. People will make her life a misery. I sometimes wonder if you’re doing all this to help her – or to experiment.’

She had gone too far and knew it.

‘Well, do continue to stand in judgement over me,’ Ben replied coolly, ‘especially when you’re taking a litre of fat from some eighteen-year-old’s backside … I don’t experiment. God does that. Life does that. I just try to repair what’s been buggered up.’ He sighed. ‘Don’t try to provoke me, Dr Griffiths. We’re
all
mechanics. Every surgeon is a mechanic, every body is a machine. What we do is brilliant and pedestrian at the same time.’ He paused, looking at her. ‘One day a doctor went to a garage to get his car fixed—’

‘You’re telling me a joke?’

‘The mechanic repaired the very intricate fault. Then he said to the surgeon: “You couldn’t fix the engine, but I could. So how come you’re paid so much more than me?”

‘And the doctor replied: “Have you ever tried fixing it when the engine’s still running?” ’

Despite herself, Megan smiled.

‘I could experiment with you, Dr Griffiths. See how far a few well-chosen words on your reference could go to wreck your career.’