‘Why did you swap the skulls?’ Dwappa asked, pausing halfway up the stairs.
‘Show me Abigail and I’ll tell you everything.’
‘What if I just beat it out of you?’
The words were spoken almost in a whisper, catching Ben off guard. He felt the fear building up in him, mixing with the animal smells and the pungent aroma of herbs, and he knew that if he showed any weakness he – and Abigail – wouldn’t get out alive. Guile was his only chance of survival.
‘I still wouldn’t tell you. And then you’d be left with another body on your hands. And no skull.’
‘I could kill your woman.’
Ben tensed, but kept his nerve, bluffing. ‘There are always other women. There’s only one skull.’
‘I didn’t realise you wanted it,’ Dwappa replied, amused.
Turning away, he continued his ascent, Ben taking in a slow, relieved breath as he followed him. At the top of the stairs an old woman sat outside a locked door. She made no eye contact with Dwappa, just moved aside to let him enter.
Abigail was lying on a mattress on the floor, the bandage around her head bloodstained, her eyes closed. Moving over, Ben touched her face, then checked for a pulse.
Dwappa stood watching both of them. ‘She’s alive.’
‘Barely,’ Ben replied, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He had to stay calm, or they were finished. ‘Is she drugged?’
‘What d’you think?’
‘How long before she comes round?’
Dwappa checked his watch. ‘About an hour. No longer. But that’s only if we can do business. Otherwise her next dose might be her last.’
Every threat he uttered was in a soft, almost feminine voice, the meaning of the words taking a moment to register.
‘What happened to her?’ he asked, gesturing to the bandages. ‘Why was she in hospital anyway?’
‘She had surgery on her face,’ Ben replied, staring at the unconscious Abigail and longing to touch her, to clean her up, wipe the blood off her face. To see her move and speak again. But she lay motionless, her breath hardly discernible, her lips cracked. And beside her the floor scuttled with bugs, a water pitcher left empty by a boarded-up window.
‘Well, now you’ve seen her, let’s talk business,’ Dwappa said shortly, hustling Ben downstairs and back into the office behind the shop.
Despair welled up in Ben. The moment had come. Now Dwappa would finally discover that he had nothing to bargain with. That he was playing with no court cards, no aces, no hand at all.
‘So,’ the African whispered, ‘where’s the fucking skull?’
69
The moment stretched out into infinity. Ben was suddenly back in Madrid in the country house. He could hear Leon calling from the study and see the shadow of Detita cross the black tiled floor. Hot days, longer than weeks, came back to him, smelling of lemon and hibiscus, accompanying the river, the moon yellow as a church candle – and the solemn rusty crooning of the weathervane. He could smell the summer dust, hear the dripping water from an outside tap as it hit the dry earth, a bunch of spent flowers closing down their last day.
He was a boy again – before Leon, before Francis, before Abigail, before loss and confusion. He was young and the birds flew wide over his head, minnows making their shifty path down the river. It was the time before all the church bells rang out for funerals and wakes; before the dead were closer than the living; before night outlasted day and before men with blood on their hands talked in whispers like angels.
‘You had it.’
Dwappa blinked slowly. The shop behind him was dimly lit, the only strong light coming from the street lamp outside the window.
‘What?’
‘You had it. There was only ever one skull. There was only the skull you gave to Bobbie Feldenchrist. There is no real skull.’ His mouth was drying, words clinging like reeds to his tongue. ‘It was all a fake.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Dwappa gasped as Ben continued.
He was talking from another place. From safety, from the voice of something prompting him, telling him what to say.
‘I lied from the start. No one found the skull of Goya. I planted the story for my brother, for Leon. He was very disturbed, very unhappy, desperate to find a meaning to his life …’
The birds were winging higher and higher, over the stables, over the first great gobbling of an early moon.
‘I wanted to give my brother what he wanted, so I did. I organised the whole thing. Got Diego Martinez to “find” the skull and pass it over to Leon. I got Francis Asturias to say that it was genuine, to write authentication papers for it …’
And now here he comes, Goya whistling under his breath, notes that he can’t hear. And swinging a block of drawings under his arm. Detita is talking about the old man, and the black horses that come over the bridge at night.
‘There never was a skull of Goya. Leon never had it. No one ever had it. You were running after an illusion. You all were – you, Bobbie Feldenchrist, the Ortegas. The skull you got is worthless. An old skull that could have belonged to a pauper. I lied to make my brother happy.’ He paused. ‘I never realised what would happen until it was too late.’
‘You made it all up?’
Ben nodded, calm, because it was all so very calming in the end. Because he could believe what he was saying, and felt a drowsy removal from a sane world. The lie swung him up higher than a falcon. But soon the air would no longer be able to hold him and he knew he would have to make that long swoop, down into grass, and claws, and prey – and he held his breath.
‘There was no Goya skull?’ Dwappa said hoarsely, standing up.
Ben could feel the draught from the door increase. This time he knew someone was coming up behind him, a shadow shifting across the table from a lighted passage beyond.
‘You fucking idiot,’ someone said, voice coarse and reproachful.
Slowly, Ben turned his head as a huge woman came into view. Her bulk was commanding, her head swathed in a greasy turban, big hands holding a tray with glasses on it.
‘My son! My useless son! Promising to get me out of here. Promising to make money, lots of money.’ She slammed down the tray and the glasses tinkled. ‘You fucked up. Again.’
Pulling up a chair, she sat down, the seat creaking under her weight, her yellowed eyes turning to Ben. Her face was devoid of expression, her tongue flicking out to moisten her lips as she studied him. From the back door came the night air, fluting against the table top as she poured herself a drink and then swallowed it in one.
Filling the three glasses, she pushed one towards Ben.
‘No.’
Her eyes were dead, blank, without feeling.
‘Drink it.’
‘No.’
Shrugging, she pushed a glass over to her son, and then refilled her own, her disgust thick in the air. Dwappa watched his mother drain her glass again. Dry-mouthed, he sipped at his own and then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. His eyes flicked over to her and then looked away, as though he was afraid he might catch her glance. Together they drank, Mama Gala staring at Ben and then turning back to her son.
He shrank. Not physically, but emotionally. Buckled under a lifetime of abuse.
‘Fucking moron,’ she said, leaning back. The chair creaked as she folded her gigantic arms across the wide girth of her stomach. She smelt sour, unwashed. ‘ “There was no skull, after all,”’ she mimicked, then leaned towards Ben. ‘This skull – was it supposed to be valuable?’
He nodded, watching the two of them, his back to the door.
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s worthless?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ve nothing to give us in exchange for the woman?’
The words struck out at Ben. ‘I didn’t abduct her. Your son did that. He wanted to use her to bargain with me—’
‘For something you don’t have?’
Ben nodded, Mama Gala laughing like a lunatic. As quickly as she had started, she stopped, turning to her son. Her gaze moved over him slowly, her contempt corrosive.