Текст книги "Unearthing the Bones"

Автор книги: Alex Connor

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First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Quercus

Quercus

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7th Floor, South Block

London

W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2012 by Alex Connor

The moral right of Alex Connor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 626 2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:

www.quercusbooks.co.uk

One

Mama Gala’s, London

She hit him with the flat of her hand as he walked in the side door. The blow was strong enough to send him backwards into the counter, her massive head jutting towards him. Shaken, he stared at her, at the pale eyes in the dark face, the force of her malice unexpected and terrifying.

‘Don’t,’ she said warningly.

He was trying not to wet himself, trying to remember that he was eighteen years old. Not a child any more. And yet a child now. Oh yes, back to a child now. He had pushed his luck and knew it. Shouldn’t have mocked her son. Shouldn’t have taunted Emile Dwappa. No one did that. No one with any sense.

‘Don’t,’ she repeated.

A mammoth in a print dress. Nigerian by birth, Londoner by choice. Proprietor of Mama Gala’s Health Shop. Babysitter for the local children, crooning to them as she nursed them in the barley-sugar-coloured rocking chair.

But now he remembered all the rumours he’d heard about Mama Gala and her son. Wondered if, perhaps, they weren’t rumours after all. And the chair in the corner by the window seems suddenly skeletal, malignant, a corpse on rockers.

It’ll do you no good to say sorry, Hiller thought. She’s not having it.

One of Mama Gala’s hands was resting on the counter beside him, her bulk blocking any escape. And now he could see the rumour coming alive, a vision of evil taking shape in front of him. Her face was waxy, like bruised fruit a day before rotting, her skin giving off an odour of sweat and dead meat.

Hadn’t his uncle warned him? Said, ‘Don’t go to work at Mama Gala’s. She’s not what you think. She’s Emile Dwappa’s mother. If he’s afraid, so should you be.’

But he’d been cocky, sucked in by the promise of easy money and an association – however remote – with the most notorious man in London. Even if he were just an errand boy, humping sacks of meal around and sweeping up the remnants of the herbs Mama Gala sliced on her great chopping board. A board notched with a thousand knife cuts, indented with the numerous blows she had delivered over the years. A board scourged like the back of a flagellant.

She was staring at him now, and his body was pressing against the counter. He didn’t think, just said it. No, he’d been saying brainless things for weeks. Ignoring her warning looks, trying to laugh off the remarks he’d made. And then Hiller, because he was stupid and young, pushed it. Mentioned something said by his uncle – Was it his uncle? Jesus, he couldn’t remember anything while she was staring at him like that – something about Emile Dwappa being gay.

And he had repeated it. Like it was a joke. But as the words touched the air, Mama Gala had moved. She left the rocking chair, crossed the wooden floor and, all in an instant, had hit him. The blow, with all her weight behind it, had cracked against his head, his ear deafened.

But it wasn’t the attack that had him wet with fear now. It was Mama Gala herself, huge and threatening, shape-shifting into the rumours he should have listened to but had ignored. When she struck him again he fell down, limp-legged, and, lying on the wooden floor, saw one of her gnarled feet – dusty in sandals – aiming straight at his face.

And then he remembered what Mama Gala had done just before she attacked him. Before the first strike, she had gone to the door and turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

Two

It was raining, the kind of rain that bores through clothes in an instant, as Jimmy Shaw took a left turn and drove into the supermarket forecourt. He was thinking about his stomach. Thinking that what he needed were some Snickers and a bag of Kettle Chips. He should, he thought, always make sure there was food in the car. In the glove compartment, because what the fuck else was it for? Not gloves. Who wore gloves any more?

Choosing a space close to the entrance, Shaw parked. Heaving himself out of the car, he fastened his jacket and noticed that he had grease marks on his trousers. He knew that to onlookers he personified the worst kind of travelling rep. Some deadbeat selling life insurance. But for all his sloppy appearance and Peckham vowels, Shaw was one of the smartest handlers in London.

His speciality was objets d’art, which covered a huge remit. Paintings, sculpture, furniture, antiques of any kind, books, medical equipment – and that Holy of Holies – relics. And the word ‘handler’ meant that Shaw literally handled pieces for collectors, crooked dealers, private connoisseurs and the criminal fraternity. For handler read thief.

Not that Shaw did his own thieving. He had others for that. Spent lags down on their luck, eking out a living as runners and dossing down in the Salvation Army hostels at night. Ex-convicts he would greet – bottle in hand – as the doors of Wormwood Scrubs or Strangeways unlocked, beating relatives, lovers, certainly the clergy, to the post. Scuppering any chance of the ex-prisoner going straight, Shaw was a walking advert for recidivism, catching the vulnerable at the point between prison and the outside world. The latter usually looked infinitely more threatening than the offer Shaw was making.

Men who had become nervous about re-entering normal life found themselves lured in. Once in, they became part of Shaw’s team. A numbering dozens team that stretched across London. And each was a specialist in their field. Shaw was an equal opportunities employer too. A woman could often prove more useful than a man, seducing secrets out of people who usually betrayed nothing, even to themselves.

But by keeping himself remote from the actual handling – and by using an intermediary to negotiate for him – Jimmy Shaw was never caught. The runners were caught and served time for him, their sentences made bearable by a healthy retainer or the promise of future work. People might have heard of Jimmy Shaw, but they didn’t deal directly with him.

Except that now there was something in the offing which was too valuable, too precious, to entrust to any of his employees. Something too tempting for any crook to resist. Something Shaw would have to handle himself. A sticky secret, a whisper from Spain. And with it, the promise of enough wealth to satisfy even his greed.

Tripping over the step as he entered the supermarket, Shaw moved to the sweet counter and grabbed a handful of chocolate bars before snatching up a family-sized bag of crisps and taking his place behind the long queue at the checkout.

*

He could see from the sneering gaze of the woman in front of him that he repelled her, and the thought made him smile. Oh, she’d be singing a different tune if she knew what he was going to be worth soon. He was already a rich man, but this new piece of bounty would put him in a different league. No snotty looks then. Just a queue of women willing to lift their skirts.

‘I can’t put that through the till.’ At the sight of him, the girl had decided to be difficult.

Surprised, Shaw looked at the checkout girl. ‘What?’

‘You’ve opened the crisp packet.’

‘I’m eating the crisps. You know a way of doing that without opening the pack?’

She pulled a face and the woman behind Shaw joined in. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t come in and start eating things—’

‘Who invited you to the party?’ Shaw retorted, turning back to the checkout girl. ‘What’s the problem? I’m buying the crisps—’

‘A full bag.’

‘I’m paying for the full fucking bag!’ he snapped as the checkout girl pointed to the sign over her till. It read:

WE WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY OF OUR STAFF BEING ABUSED BY CUSTOMERS.

‘I can’t put them through the till,’ she persisted. ‘Not half eaten.’

Nodding, Shaw glanced at the woman behind him. Then, greedily, noisily and very slowly he began to eat the crisps, the whole queue watching him, until finally he put back his head and emptied the last crumbs down his throat. Then he put down the empty bag, smoothed it out, and passed it – with the bar code uppermost – back to the checkout girl.

Red-faced, she ran the scanner over the bag. Shaw picked up his shopping and walked back to his car. Bitch, he thought, sliding into the driver’s seat. He could see the checkout girl through the window of the supermarket and waved, smirking as she gave him the finger.

But then Shaw’s attention was diverted by a note stuck under one of his windscreen wipers. The writing was facing towards him, so he could read the words through the window:

Art relic up for grabs.

Historian has it in Madrid.

Interested?

Getting out of the car, Shaw looked around. But whoever had left the message had long gone. Irritated, he reread the note and then screwed it up in his fist.

For once Jimmy Shaw wasn’t the only person to hear of a find – a notorious, infamous, priceless find. He had thought he was ahead of the pack and would secure the relic before anyone else. He had even made a discreet – anonymous – call to an unscrupulous dealer in Paris and a connoisseur in Turin. With pleasure he had sensed their longing and his hands itched with the whisper of coming money.

But now he had a rival. Someone who was taunting him. Asking if Jimmy Shaw was interested … Shaw wiped his fleshy mouth with his handkerchief and wondered at the daring of the note. Who was fool enough to challenge him? Obviously someone who didn’t know his reputation. Someone who didn’t know that among Shaw’s runners and thieves were men who would do anything for enough money.

Irritated by what he took as a show of false bravado, Shaw drove out into the London traffic. Preoccupied, he never saw the van following him three vehicles behind, and his instincts – usually so nimble – cheated him.

It was a fatal miscalculation. One that would lead to humiliation, failure, and enough suffering to turn him mad.

Three

On the sofa in the room above the shop, Emile Dwappa dozed. In the chair beside him a woman was reading a magazine, a child at her feet. And in a small space beyond, hardly big enough to be a room, an ancient woman divided herbs and potions into equal measures. Her hands were thin, her fingers like twigs, brown as sugar cane, long years of practice making an alchemist of her. She never spoke – hadn’t done so for many years – just made up the potions for Mama Gala to sell in the shop below. Potions desperate women bought to make their men fall in love with them. Potions to help them fall pregnant or get rid of a baby. Potions and remedies and spells for the vulnerable who believed the daytime Mama Gala, who wanted to help. Because she was old school, with tricks from the Old Country.

This was the Mama Gala who had wheedled her way into the community; the woman who had proved herself a good friend, a gentle neighbour; a woman so loved it took a while for people to begin to whisper against her and longer for the rumours to start. Even more time for people to hurry past the shop to escape her gaze following them from the window.

Because she did have tricks from the Old Country. Mama Gala had tricks from hell. Some she inherited, some she stole, some worked like worms in the pus of her mind. Potions from the night-time Mama Gala, the ones she sold under the counter when the shop was closed. When the neighbourhood children no longer needed babysitting, and the health-food customers had all gone home. When the iron shutters came down on the windows, the doors were barred and the shop alarm went on. As though there were something in a health shop other than the meagre takings worth stealing.

But there had been no rumours fifteen years ago. Not when Mama Gala first opened the shop and Emile Dwappa was a teenage boy. She rolled down the street smiling, rocking her girth through the market and joking like a jester. She collected friends like fresh eggs, drawing them out of the nest of their families. Children too – all came to Mama Gala’s when the shop sign turned to OPEN.

But when more than a year had passed, another kind of person visited after the sign turned to CLOSED. They weren’t children or shoppers. They were furtive, coming in at the back door, skirting the shop that smelt of spices and herbs, making instead for the cordoned-off area. Separated behind a locked door, any sounds muffled behind thick drapes suspended from a metal rod.

To the left of this unwelcoming space stood a massive fish tank, the water milky, an ailing turtle banging wretchedly against its glass confines. Opposite the tank were cages in which monkeys crouched disconsolately, the ammonia smell of their urine catching at the throat. And under the arch of the stairs, glass tanks writhed with snakes, the artificial sunshine of the lighting casting gloomy shadows on the wall behind.

As Mama Gala’s son grew into a vicious and determined thug, many people began to avoid the shop altogether. Others asked how Emile Dwappa, who had been a sickly child, had developed a cruelty which was fast becoming notorious. What had happened to change a nervous boy into a man who tortured men and women alike?

Among the underworld, rumours began to circulate. Dwappa had knocked over a man who owed him money, and then reversed the car over his legs. Dwappa had poisoned a rival, the man suffering a lingering death, the skin of his scrotum peeling away with an infection resistant to anything a hospital could prescribe. Soon Dwappa had a reputation: he was dangerous, he was ungovernable, he was fearless.

Only one person controlled Emile Dwappa: his mother.

The worst of his excesses were as nothing to her cruelties. The widow Gala had raised her poisonous offspring single-handedly. As an only child, Dwappa had had her full attention, which had proved to be his downfall. To outsiders they seemed a unit, but inside the hermetically sealed confines of the shop, their hatred festered. She despised him for being handsome, slight of build and a homosexual – a fact hidden from the world, a fact with which she taunted her son and blackmailed him. Her suffocating attention and demands had stunted his emotions, his resentment had made a killer of him, and yet – for all this – Emile Dwappa could not break free from her. And, God forbid, he needed her.

Mama Gala didn’t care for her son, she owned him.

She owned him with her potions and her threats. And as he grew older, Dwappa was hired out to relatives to toughen him up. There were dozens in the Dwappa clan who had him inflict petty tortures on slow payers. And as he hardened up, Dwappa began to flex his own muscles and challenge his uncles, to the point that one left London after his betting shop was torched. Then gradually the crude dealings in racing and dogfighting gave way to Dwappa’s personal preferences, and as he cultivated his appearance he drifted towards two dissimilar – but very lucrative – worlds: child trafficking and art theft.

Which was why Emile Dwappa was now lying on the sofa with one arm over his eyes, plotting. He could never escape his mother; she had an emotional stranglehold on him. He had even considered killing her, but was afraid that she would have yet more power when dead. A vengeful, sinister ghost bent on retribution. His only option was to make money, so much money that he could buy her a house big enough to keep her at one end and him at the other. A house with space to divide their festering hatred. The house Mama Gala had always wanted.

‘You’re useless! My useless, pretty boy,’ she had sneered earlier. ‘Queer baby, no good at nothing.’

‘I’m working on something—’

‘You’re always working on something,’ she replied, her head on one side, picking at the matter in the corner of her left eye. ‘Working on something that never comes to nothing. Working on something big, that just gets smaller.’ She laughed, the sound hateful.

‘This time I’m going to make a fortune.’

She spun round, fast for such a heavy woman.

‘A fucking fortune! Well, you make it, boy, You make it. ’Cos I want it. I want that house you promised me. I want out of here. Remember, you owe me. You owe me for raising you, for looking after you. It’s your turn now. Now you look after me.’

She could see the flicker in his eyes and leaned towards him, her tone threatening.

‘Mama Gala protects her baby. Always has, always will. Just think of what would happen if people knew about you and your tastes.’ She flicked his crotch with her fingers, laughing, and then gripping his arm. ‘You pay me back, you hear? You pay me back good.’

And he intended to.

Because Emile Dwappa had heard about something so extraordinary, so valuable, that people would go to any lengths to own it. All he had to do was to get hold of it first. Beat his rivals to the chase. Make sure he was the one – the only one – to triumph.

There was no limit to his longing for the relic – and no limit to the depths he would sink to to get hold of it.

Four

Madrid, Spain

Diego Martinez could remember everything, every detail, with absolute accuracy. The sweating heat of the afternoon, the scent of dry earth and the judder of his spade as it hit something unexpected, hard. Surprised, he had stared at the exposed ground, the concrete floor broken up and put to one side, the centuries-blackened soil exposed – and something else. Something white and rounded peeking out from the dark.

A thrill tingled through him as he remembered.

If only he had known then, at that moment, what he had found … But instead Diego had bent down and touched the white orb, brushing away the dirt until two eyes' sockets appeared, staring full at him. Startled, he had almost fallen back, but righted himself and – for some reason he would never fully understand – had thrown his jacket over the skull to hide it.

It had been an instinctive gesture and soon Diego finished for the night. He could remember everything so clearly. Each action highlighted, intensified, as though strobe-lit, demanding attention. Much later – before dawn the following morning – he had returned to the boarded-up house in Madrid and unlocked the cellar door, walking down into the darkness and shining his torch beam around.

He had been terrified. Not that the skull would have been stolen, but that he had been mistaken. That some trick of malignant light had coaxed a vision out of dead earth. Slowly he had walked towards the hump in the floor, the rounded lump covered by his jacket, and then, holding his breath, he had pulled it away. At once the skull had been exposed, looking up at him. Unblinking, eerie, pale as a church candle. Spooked, Diego had turned to look over his shoulder to make sure he was alone. But there had been no one there. No other builders. Not even a city cat watching as he had wrapped up the skull in his jacket, picked up the torch and clambered out of the cellar …

‘Diego?’

He looked up as his name was spoken, smiling at the familiar man who was beckoning for him to approach. With the package tucked under his arm, Diego Martinez entered the study of Leon Golding.

*

He had known the Golding family since he was a child. His father had worked for them, doing repairs and maintenance on the old farmhouse. The farmhouse across the river from Madrid, in a place close to where Spain’s most famous painter, Francisco Goya, had once lived. And despite the fact that Diego was not so well educated, and only the builder’s boy, he had been treated as an equal.

The two Golding brothers had both been gifted and articulate, especially the fragile Leon, and when his father retired and Diego took over the business, he had continued to work at the farmhouse. Patching up, repairing, keeping the worn house upright. A worn house with only one eccentric occupant.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Leon said, sitting behind his desk. Fair-haired, pale – even in Spain. He had never been robust. ‘Are you working nearby?’

‘I’m working in Madrid,’ Diego said shyly, because although Leon Golding was an old friend, he was also brilliant, his reputation intimidating. ‘I found … I found … something.’ He stalled on the words. Was he being an ass? What was he doing here? Bringing a lump of bone to Leon Golding? What the hell was he doing? ‘You know all about him … I mean, you write about him. Don’t you?’

‘Who?’

‘Goya.’

‘Yes, I write about him,’ Leon replied, hands clasped, fingers interlaced, holding on to himself. ‘Have you something to tell me about Goya?’

‘He stayed in the house,’ Diego continued. ‘I know about it, because I was told as a boy. Well, it’s common knowledge, I think … Anyway, they told me to redo the floor, the people who’ve bought the house. It’s to be offices … offices now.’

‘Diego, take your time,’ Leon reassured him. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

Diego controlled himself, talking more slowly.

‘I was hired to work on a building in Madrid. It was a private house, but it’s going to be made into offices. It was owned by the same family for generations, and it’s falling apart. It needs a lot of work, but first we have to clear the rubbish.’ He paused, remembering to breathe. ‘It was once Goya’s home. For a while. In Madrid. He lived there.’

Leon’s back was to the light. Hot Spanish sunlight, making his silhouette wraithlike.

‘Go on.’

‘A long time ago the cellar floor was covered with flagstones.’ Diego pushed back his hair, noticing with embarrassment that his hands were dusty as he unwrapped the skull. ‘Then later it was cemented over. The concrete stayed there for decades – until we broke it up. Yesterday.’

Leon’s gaze moved to the skull, his eyes fixing on it.

‘And you … you found this?’

Diego nodded. ‘It’s been there – I don’t know how long – a long, long time. And I remembered how your mother told me about Goya’s head being missing. And then I found this skull, and I thought … Well, the painter did live in that house.’

He stopped, startled, as Leon jumped up. His hands went to the skull and he touched it with the tips of his fingers, holding his breath. The sun was crawling through the window, hoarding dust mites, Leon’s shadow falling across the desk and throwing the skull into darkness.

‘Go on …’ he said quietly. ‘Go on.’

Diego hesitated for a moment before continuing.

‘I thought that if it was Goya’s skull, if it was, then you should have it. You know all about him, you’ve always been interested in him …’ He paused, staring at Leon, who had now lifted the skull and was staring into the open eye sockets. ‘It was meant to come to you.’

‘You’ve told no one else?’

‘No, no one,’ Diego assured him, hurrying on. ‘Of course, I could be wrong. It could just be any skull. But Goya did live there, and his head is missing …’

Curious, Diego Martinez trailed off, staring at the man in front of him. Leon had now regained his seat and had the skull in front of him, his hands cupped around it as a child would cup a bowl of hot chocolate. He seemed unnervingly close to tears.

In that instant the years fell away. They were children again, and Diego had been temporarily banished from the Golding farmhouse. Not because of anything he had done, but because Leon was seriously ill. He had had a fall, they said, a bad fall, and it would take a while for him to recover.

All that long, protracted, eerie summer, Leon stayed in the hospital in Madrid. And Diego wrote him a few badly spelled letters, but never asked how Leon had fallen. It was the summer that changed them all. The Goldings, the Martinezes, even the farmhouse. And within a year, the Golding parents were killed in a plane crash and the two brothers closed ranks against the world.

But for some reason, as he looked at Leon now, all Diego could remember was the summer of his fall …

‘Did I do the right thing, bringing it to you? I wondered—’

Leon cut him off. ‘Are you sure that no one else knows about this?’

Diego shook his head. ‘No one. I found it and I brought it here—’

‘And you had it with you last night?’

Diego faltered momentarily. ‘No, I left it where I found it.’ He could see the anxiety in Leon’s face. ‘But the house was locked up all night—’

‘You were the only man working there?’

‘No, there are two others.’

‘With keys?’

‘No one came back,’ Diego said firmly. ‘I found the skull, I covered it, and I locked up the house when I left. I was the last man there. When I went back early this morning, the skull hadn’t been touched.’ He paused, confused. ‘Why would someone take it anyway? It might not even be important—’

‘Goya’s skull, not important?’

‘But it might not be his skull.’

Frowning, Leon’s tone became curt. ‘It is his skull. It is.’ He sighed, controlling himself. ‘I’ll have it checked, dated. Authenticated. I’ll have it proved—’

‘They can do that?’

‘Yes,’ Leon said distantly. ‘They can do that.’

A silence fell between them. Diego spoke first.

‘And if it’s the right date, and it turns out to be Goya’s skull – would it be worth a lot?’

‘Priceless,’ Leon replied, reaching into the middle drawer of his desk. ‘I can pay you—’

‘No!’ Diego replied, uncharacteristically sharp. ‘You helped my father when he needed it. This is my way to repay you.’

He could see that Leon wasn’t really listening, that his attention had wandered, his interest fixed on the head in front of him. Uneasy, Diego stood up to leave. The sun had moved behind clouds and it seemed it might rain. It was as though the morning had sobered up.

Walking to the door, he turned. ‘I wish you luck with it.’

Leon looked up. ‘What?’

‘The skull. I wish you luck,’ Diego repeated kindly. ‘I hope it brings you everything you want.’