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 zipper 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.’