by Alex Connor
‘You won’t.’
‘What if I do?’ Shaw persisted. ‘You’ve poisoned me, you fucker, what if I don’t get back to you in time?’
‘You want to live, don’t you?’
Shaw was sticky with sweat, matter collected at the corners of his eyes. ‘What if you’ve tricked me?’ he said, his voice harsh. ‘What if you can’t cure me? What if I get back to London, give you the skull – and I still die?’ His cunning was automatic, vicious. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. And wondering – what’s to stop me getting the skull for myself and selling it to someone else?’
Dwappa kept the surprise out of his voice. ‘By your reasoning, you’d still die.’
‘But you wouldn’t get the skull, would you?’ Shaw remarked, coughing and then spitting into the gutter. ‘You see, I’ve been thinking about it, Dwappa, and I think that if I return with the skull you won’t let me live anyway. Why should you? Why should you pay me when you can just wait for the poison to finish me off? No fee, no witness.’ He was still watching the lighted hotel window, dangerous and desperate.
‘I’m the only one who can save you, Shaw.’
‘Well, be that as it may, I’m the only one who can get the skull. So, you see, I want a new arrangement.’
Wrong-footed, Dwappa hissed down the line: ‘What new arrangement?’
‘I want my fee now—’
‘Hah!’
‘I want the money now, Dwappa,’ Shaw warned him, thinking of Gabino Ortega, ‘or I sell the skull to someone else. You won’t get it—’
‘If I don’t get it, you’ll die.’
‘My life for the skull.’
Dwappa took in a breath. ‘It was always your life for the skull.’
‘Pay me my fee in advance and I’ll deliver,’ Shaw replied steadily. ‘I’ll send details of the bank account to pay the money into, then wait till it’s cleared. Then I’ll come back with the skull.’
‘What’s to stop me killing you then and retrieving the money?’
‘You think I’d leave it in an account you had details of?’ Shaw countered. His brain was working fast although his breathing was becoming more laboured with every breath. ‘Soon as I get it, I’ll move the money on to somewhere you can’t find it. Fuck, the Inland Revenue and the police can’t find it, so you’ve no chance. That’s what I’m good at – leaving no paper trail. You won’t get the money back, Dwappa. And if you let me die, you lose the money and the skull. You pay me in advance, you cure me, and you get the skull. It’s simple.’
He was gambling with his life and he knew it. Dwappa was the only person who could save him, but only if forced to do so. It was in Dwappa’s interests to keep him alive, not kill him. Shaw knew how the African’s mind worked and Dwappa certainly wouldn’t let him die when he’d cheated him. He would come after Shaw instead. After Shaw and the money.
But he would worry about that later. From a distance.
24
When Ben finally arrived in Madrid it was late at night. And hot. Exhausted and unshaven, he caught a cab to the Hotel Melise, half running into the lobby towards the Reception area.
‘I’m Ben Golding. My brother’s staying here. Dr Leon Golding?’
The tired night porter looked at the reception book wearily. ‘Oh yes,’ he said in heavy accented English. ‘In room 230. Second floor.’
Hurriedly, Ben walked to the lift, then decided against it and made for the stairs. Climbing as fast as he could, he came to the second floor and checked the room numbers, taking a right turn at the end of the corridor. Finally, he found room 230 and knocked.
‘Leon, it’s me, Ben. Let me in.’
There was no answer. He knocked again. ‘Leon! Wake up! It’s me. Open the door.’
Again, no answer. Uneasy, Ben tried the handle then turned it, the door unexpectedly opening. Slowly he walked in, flicking on the light and catching his breath. The bed was crumpled, sheets scattered, a chair overturned.
‘Leon?’ Ben called out, looking round the room. ‘Leon?’
Warily he pulled back the blind and glanced at the balcony. Unlocking the French windows, he walked out, then moved over to the edge and peered down, relieved to see nothing lying on the hotel forecourt below. His nerves on edge, he turned back into the room and relocked the windows, his body straining for any sound or movement.
‘Leon?’ he said again, jumping as the air conditioning kicked in, the fan overhead beginning its queasy swirl into the hot air.
Panicked, Ben looked around the room once more. Maybe Leon – despite all he had said – had just gone out? Maybe it had been his brother who had made the mess in the room. It wasn’t beyond him, in his present mental state. Whatever had happened, there was nothing more he could do except wait. He wouldn’t jump to any sinister conclusions, he would just wait until his brother got back …
Moving into the bathroom, Ben bent over the washbasin and ran some cold water, closing his eyes and splashing it over his face. Behind him, he could hear the fan whirling and the soft creak of the bathroom door swinging closed. Reaching for a towel, he dried his face and then opened his eyes.
In the mirror he could see the room reflected behind him – and the body of his brother, face bloated, tongue black and protruding, hanging suspended behind the door.
25
London
Moving down the backstairs of Mama Gala’s shop, Emile Dwappa paused, listening. Beyond the curtain which separated the shop from the back rooms he could hear the fat woman laughing with a customer, his gaze flickering towards the tamarin monkey in the cage at the foot of the stairs. The animal stared at him, its pale eyes unblinking, as Dwappa reached for a piece of apple on the cage floor. At once the monkey scuttled to the back of the cage, hunched in the furthest corner, as Dwappa held out the fruit between his thumb and forefinger.
Immobile, the monkey regarded him. Only yards away the snakes uncurled themselves, one slinking towards the glass and raising its head. Dwappa kept holding out the fruit, and a moment later the monkey rushed towards him, grabbing for the slice of apple.
‘What you doing?’ Mama Gala said, walking through. ‘I don’t want the monkey feeding.’
Ignoring her, Dwappa let the animal take the apple, Mama Gala making a snorting sound as she glanced upwards.
‘You haven’t left that woman upstairs, have you?’ she went on. ‘I don’t want her here. Always stoned, always stumbling round. She’s no good to you – you should get rid of her.’
‘Maybe I should get rid of you.’
Her fat hand went out and patted Dwappa’s cheek in mock tenderness.
‘You’ll never get rid of me, baby boy. I’m your mama; you need me. And besides, I’m not afraid of you. I kept your father under control, and he was a mean son of a bitch. He learnt from me, you hear me? He learnt tricks from me. So don’t get ideas, Emile. And if anyone should be afraid of anyone, you should be afraid of me.’ She laughed, a booming from the guts.
He could feel the muscles at the back of his neck tighten, but kept his face expressionless. It irked him that his mother had such control. It plagued him that he did, indeed, stand in awe of her. That she terrified him. Her bulk had borne down on his whole life, her corruption fascinating and contagious. There was nothing he could think, or do, that would be new to her. Nothing that would shock her. She had the knowledge from the old country and used it with the swinging confidence of the totally corrupt.
He smiled at her with closely mimicked affection. From his earliest memories, Emile recalled how his father had told him about Mama Gala. Had spoken in revered tones about the stout woman who looked so benign and was so poisonously callous. Back in Nigeria she had been almost revered and when Dwappa Senior invited her London he had been half surprised, half proud, when she accepted his marriage proposal. There was no woman as casually cruel, as naturally unfeeling. Behind the round dark-skinned face which pretended kindness there was a terrible cunning. Mama Gala knew only too well how her appearance decei
ved people. No one would suspect her of anything sinister. By day she ran a health food shop – that was all. Talked to her neighbours, made jokes with the local police, waddled into the park with next door’s toddlers. Known for her kindness, her advice.
But Emile Dwappa knew the other side. Knew that when the shop was closed at night, the lights turned off, that benign face dropped its pretence. Then Mama Gala moved upstairs to the flat above. She harried the old woman, who no one ever referred to by name, and ran her hands over the chopped herbs, making pouches of coarse leather and filling them with potions she knew the superstitious would buy. Mixing cereal with ground-up bone, animal urine and powdered herbs, she muttered incantations over the table top, her face sweating with the effort, her flabby arms wobbling in their short cotton sleeves. Once she had kept a turtle in a fish tank – the reptile huge, too big for the space, the water murky in days. Mama Gala had lifted the creature out with one jerk, slamming it on the table and driving a knife repeatedly into its soft underbelly. Within seconds she had been covered in blood, smelling of it.
Gigantic and grotesque, she could have been amusing, but her expression, and the aura she gave off, was fetid. How many times had Dwappa seen her greet people who had hurried up the narrow stairs to the dim room above? How many gullible people had been sold potions and then threatened into silence, warned not to talk about her business outside? And God, no one ever did. Not more than once, anyway. There had been one young man, a year earlier, who Dwappa had hired to pimp for him. Bony and glib, he had hung around Mama Gala’s shop doorway and smoked cannabis on the street outside, making obscene hand signals to the girls who walked past. Not overly bright, he had never believed in Mama Gala’s covert reputation, and had made jokes about voodoo without realising that for her it was more than power, it was a religion.
Soon after the lanky pimp went missing. Three months later his remains were found in Shoreditch, a nail driven through his skull. No one talked about Mama Gala after that … Wary, Dwappa studied his mother. Wondered how it was that her weight obliterated her wrinkles, belying her age and making a malevolent child out of her.
‘I want you to get that addict out from upstairs,’ she said curtly. ‘The bitch will bring the police round. We don’t need that. I don’t want anyone drawing attention to this place, you hear me?’ She lost her patience fast. ‘You said you were working on something. That you were going to make a fucking fortune—’
‘I am. I’ve got a couple of things going.’
She put her head on one side and tapped his cheek. ‘Pretty boy. Mummy’s pretty boy. Like your daddy, hah?’ Her hand moved away, her expression curdling. ‘My queer little baby.’
He flinched, flushing, and she laughed, making a clumsy child out of him. Reminding him of when she had found him, years earlier, with his best friend. Didn’t do to be gay in Brixton, she had told him. Didn’t do to be homosexual when you were the son of Mama Gala … She had wielded the information like a machete. Every argument ended in a sexual insult; every attempt to stand up to her was hobbled by a homophobic joke. Mama Gala didn’t care if her son was gay or not, but she knew that he cared. And she knew that if people found out that Emile Dwappa was a fag, his reputation was over.
She never said that she would betray him. She didn’t have to. Emile Dwappa knew his mother. He hated his mother. He feared his mother – and that kept him in line.
‘You get enough money to get us out of here. You promised me that.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Or you think you make your fortune and up and leave your mama? That what you want, boy? To leave your mama?’
‘I never said I’d leave you.’
‘You’d die without me. Remember, I’m the only person in the world who gives a shit about you. Without me, you’re alone. Poor queer baby on your own. There’s no one to look out for you but me. So you get us money, hey? You get that new house you promised.’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Working on it?’ Slowly she shook her head, her expression unflinching, feral. ‘Well, work harder.’
26
‘I’ll come home,’ Abigail said simply over the line from France. ‘I’ll get the first flight I can.’
Two days earlier she had hurried over to France to be with her father, who had had a stroke. They had never been particularly close, but she hadn’t wanted him to be alone in hospital. And besides, arrangements had to be made for a nurse to stay with him when she returned to England. Her dutiful response had met with unexpected affection, the stroke releasing some of her father’s usual reserve. Indeed – to Abigail’s amazement – he had even talked about her mother, long since estranged from both of them.
But now Abigail’s whole concern was centred on her lover. ‘Darling, did you hear me?’
‘Stay with your father,’ Ben replied, his voice low as he sat, head bowed, in the laboratory of the Whitechapel Hospital. ‘He needs you.’
‘You need me too.’
‘No, not like he does,’ Ben replied, trying to get the image of his murdered brother out of his mind. The image which had haunted him all the time he was talking to the Spanish police. The image which had plagued him on the flight home to London. The image which he knew would never – however long he lived – lessen or diminish. It was burned into him. ‘I should have got there earlier—’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Abigail said softly. ‘Leon was always struggling—’
‘He was brilliant.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He was brilliant and you loved him and he loved you. He thought the world of you, Ben. But your brother was troubled.’
‘You think he killed himself?’
She faltered on the line. ‘You said that the police told you he’d killed himself.’
‘Leon didn’t commit suicide.’
‘Ben,’ she said gently, ‘he’d tried it twice before.’
‘It wasn’t suicide.’
‘All right, so what else could it be?’
He didn’t answer her. Had already decided that Abigail was to be left in ignorance. The less he told her, the safer she would be. In fact, Ben was relieved that she had been called to France, away from London. Away from him and any connection to Leon Golding. Because his brother hadn’t killed himself. He had been murdered. Just like Diego Martinez.
‘Abi?’
‘Yes?’
‘I have to go now. I’ll call you later.’
‘Will you be all right?’
He nodded, then remembered that she couldn’t see him. ‘I’ll be OK.’
‘Make sure you eat something,’ she said, clinging to the phone. ‘I wish I was with you.’
‘I know. I know.’
Silent, Francis Asturias watched Ben finish his phone call and then reached into his desk and pulled out a half bottle of brandy. ‘You need a drink.’ Pouring out two measures into glasses, he pushed one over towards Ben, who ignored it. Thoughtful, Francis downed his own drink and began to pick at the label on the bottle.
He had never known Leon Golding, but he had heard about him. About his ability and his instability. And on the occasions Ben had confided in him, Francis had learned about Leon’s suicide attempts and the whole messy clotting of mental instability which had dogged his life. He had commiserated with Ben and never stated the obvious – that Leon Golding was profoundly, incurably unstable.
Again, Francis pushed the glass closer towards Ben, but there was no response. His face was expressionless, shock taking all colour from his skin. He seemed bloodless, as though his veins had been siphoned off as easily as a night thief would drain the tank of a deserted car. Outside, the lights went on in the Whitechapel streets, the glass dome of the lecture hall making a hot swelling into the London night.
Francis wasn’t ready to risk words. He had listened instead when Ben returned to work, blank with disbelief and shock. In a flat voice he had told Francis how he had found his brother, then called the Spanish police. How the ambulance had taken Leon away in a body bag, the zippe
r closing over his distorted face.
After Leon had been moved to the mortuary Ben had insisted that the death was murder and demanded an autopsy. Something which would have happened automatically – if the police hadn’t investigated Leon’s life and uncovered his mental instability. From then on, they believed that Leon Golding had taken his own life. It had happened before, they told Ben. A depressed man hires a hotel room and then hangs himself …
‘He wouldn’t have done it,’ Ben said suddenly, looking over at Francis. ‘Leon was terrified that night. He was running for his life … I told the police about his phone call to me. And about Gina going missing.’
‘What did they say about that?’
‘That she was at the house when they went over later,’ Ben replied, his expression challenging. ‘But Leon told me she’d gone. He was insistent. He said that the bedroom had been wrecked, that her clothes had been taken. He thought they’d kidnapped her.’
‘They?’ Francis said softly.
‘The same people who were after him.’
‘And who were they?’
Slowly Ben turned to look his old friend straight in the face. ‘Leon was running away from someone. He phoned me. I heard his panic. I heard his fear—’
‘He wasn’t taking his medicine.’
‘He wasn’t crazy!’ Ben retorted sharply.
‘He wasn’t on his medication. You know how that affected your brother’s judgement,’ Francis went on, his tone calm. ‘Leon had become obsessed with the Goya business. You told me that yourself, Ben. You said he was out of his depth—’
‘That’s right,’ Ben agreed. ‘Leon was out of his depth. And that’s what killed him.’
Sighing, Francis pushed the glass again. Now it was pressing against Ben’s forearm, but he still didn’t pick it up.
‘My brother didn’t kill himself.’
‘Have you spoken to Gina?’
Ben nodded. ‘She’s distracted. Crying. Saying that she shouldn’t have gone to stay with her friend that night – that none of this would have happened if she’d stayed home … Apparently Leon had shut himself off, and she thought he wanted to be alone. She said she’d told him where she was going, that he knew her girlfriend and had the phone number. She said that her clothes hadn’t all gone – she’d just taken the ones she had with her that night.’