Inhaling again, he felt the bite of the tobacco on his tongue and glanced towards the main body of the hospital, lit up against the wintry dark. Half hidden in the shadow of the bins, he finished his smoke and moved back up to the laboratory. It was empty, no one due until the morning, but he had one more thing to do before he went home.

Flicking on a desk light over the workbench, Francis took out his mobile and dialled a number.

Ben picked up on the third ring, having obviously read the caller ID. ‘Francis, how goes it?’

‘Well …’ He shuffled his badly scuffed shoes. ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem. The skull’s gone.’

‘Shit! I forgot to tell you.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I took it from the hospital.’

‘You took it?’

‘When I came back from Madrid.’ He paused. ‘I’m really sorry – I forgot. I should have told you.’

‘Arsehole,’ Francis said distantly. ‘I was dreading telling you, thought you’d go mad—’

‘The whole thing’s academic anyway. I’ve been burgled. Whoever broke in took the skull.’

He could hear a low whistle coming down the line, Francis obviously gathering his thoughts. ‘So you took the skull from the hospital? But now someone’s taken the skull off you?’

‘That’s about the measure of it.’

‘I see …’

Curious, Ben prompted him. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s funny, I kept thinking about our conversation the other day and what you’d said,’ Francis went on. ‘About the skull being dangerous, and how you didn’t want anyone to know about it. Or even where it was. And then a thought came to me. I mean, I’d handled the Goya skull, and the pathologist had seen it. Of course I’d told him to keep it a secret, but he might have told his secretary, might have left a note hanging about. People in hospitals gossip all the time …’

‘So?’

‘… And then Leon died, and you started talking about how you thought someone had killed him. That was scary, Ben, fucking scary. And now you’re saying that you’ve been burgled.’

‘What is it, Francis?’

‘You went off to Spain in such a hurry I didn’t have time to tell you before you went. And you never return your bloody messages—’

‘Tell me!’

‘I swapped skulls. I have the Goya. Whoever robbed you got a fake.’

At the other end of the line, Ben flinched. ‘So where’s the real skull?’

Francis was about to tell him. He was forming the words. But although his lips moved, no sound came from them. Instead a sudden and tearing pain made him drop the mobile, his left hand going to his throat, arterial spray drenching his fingers as he tried to breathe. As his knees gave way, Francis made one desperate last effort to hold together the gaping wound. But bubbles of bloodied foam came from his mouth and he slumped to the ground, the knife coming down again and severing his spinal cord.

The last thing Francis Asturias saw before he died was his mobile being turned off, and then dropped into the pool of his own blood.

41

Passing the monkey’s cage at the back of the health shop, Emile Dwappa paused, glancing through to where Mama Gala was sitting, picking her nose. Her bulk, hot in all its fleshy weight, sagged in the chair, her feet in wide sandals, the toenails long and ridged. Around her head she had, as always, a tightly woven turban. Dwappa knew why. It wasn’t some cultural fashion – it was to cover the fact that she was virtually bald. Only once had he caught her without the turban and stared, fascinated, for a long time, watching through the door of her bedroom. Her head had been covered with the scars of old sores, the back of her neck criss-crossed with lesions.

Outside, the rain had emptied the street, only a few school kids hurrying home, Mama Gala watching them. Under her arms the sweat patches swelled into dark half-moons, and her black eyes, with their yellowing whites, were alert. Shifting her position in the chair, she picked some matter from the corner of her left eye and stared at her son, her expression full of malice. He knew she was angry, looking for a reason to be provoked to violence. So strong was the sense of imminent menace around her, it leached from the floorboards of the shop, over the dried herbs and the packets of health foods, staining the labels and smearing the cheerful red lettering outside.

‘So?’ she said slowly.

‘What?’

‘You said you were going to get us out of here.’ She picked her nose again listlessly. ‘What happened to the big idea? I don’t see no big money coming in.’

He smiled, thinking of Bobbie Feldenchrist. ‘It’s working out – have a little more patience.’

She was surprised, and showed it. ‘How much patience I need?’

‘How much money you want?’

Her gaze moved over to him again, fixed him, made him remember the times he had wet himself when he was a child, so terrified of her he could hardly breathe.

‘You said we were moving,’ Mama Gala went on. ‘We should move on, get out of here soon. I don’t like being poor. I don’t like living like this.’ She studied him. ‘Don’t you hold out on me, boy. Don’t you think you can make money and run off and leave me here.’

‘I won’t leave you—’

‘No, you fucking won’t!’ she snarled. ‘I want a big house. A really big house.’

And he wanted to put her in a big house – a huge place with enough room for him to breathe. With air that wasn’t already tainted with her. He wanted to load his mother with money and buy himself some life. And he would, soon. Very soon.

‘I had to set it all up. It took time. The first part’s working out just perfect.’ He thought of the baby being cosseted in New York. ‘Any time now I’m on to the second part. Then I can move in for the kill.’

‘Fuck time!’ she snapped, heaving herself to her feet. ‘I’ve heard too much about time. I want to get out of here, you hear me?’

‘I hear you.’

‘So, now you hear me – you do it!’ she snapped, moving behind the counter and beginning to chop some dried herbs.

Her skin gave off an acrid smell, her hands greasy with sweat. And for an instant he couldn’t relate what he was seeing to the genial woman who babysat for the neighbours’ children. All the time she rocked them and sang songs, her feet tapped on the rug. And under the same rug were loose floorboards, and under the loose floorboards pornographic tapes, tapes crackling with malice.

Sing me a lullaby, they asked her, and she sang, tapping her feet on the corruption below. Rocking the children over the discs of the bad, the mad and the dead.

Hearing the shop door open, Mama Gala looked over at the visitor, her expression challenging as she stared at the fat man.

‘You again?’

‘I want to see Emile Dwappa.’

Shaw was sweating, leaning against the door jamb, his face bloated, shiny. Although freshly bandaged, his hand was swollen to twice its size, the stink of decay unmissable. Trying to work up enough saliva to speak, he pushed himself upright.

‘I want to see him. He’s expecting me.’

Slowly Mama Gala turned her head and beckoned to her son. Gesturing for Shaw to follow him, Dwappa moved to the stairs. Hiding his triumph, he watched as Shaw grunted his way up the narrow staircase.

When he came within a yard of Dwappa, the African waved his hand in front of his face. ‘You stink.’

‘You did this to me!’ Shaw gasped, breathing raggedly. ‘You cure me now.’

‘All in good time,’ Dwappa replied, glancing at the package under Shaw’s arm. ‘That it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you get your money?’

Shaw nodded. But the action hurt him, tore into his neck muscles, every inch of his body sweating and blistering. ‘I got the money. And I got the skull.’

He could hear his own breathing, his lungs gluey, exhausted. On the flight from Madrid he had been isolated, the other passengers moving away from him, the stewardess asking if he was fit to fly. He had lied, said he had suffered an allergic reaction, that he would recover within twenty-four hours. And all the time he had been following Ben Golding, knowing he had the skull. After all, if Leon no longer had it, his brother must have.