‘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 deceived 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.