‘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.’
‘They?’ Francis said softly.
‘The same people who were after him.’
‘And who were they?’
Slowly Ben turned to look his old friend straight in the face. ‘Leon was running away from someone. He phoned me. I heard his panic. I heard his fear—’
‘He wasn’t taking his medicine.’
‘He wasn’t crazy!’ Ben retorted sharply.
‘He wasn’t on his medication. You know how that affected your brother’s judgement,’ Francis went on, his tone calm. ‘Leon had become obsessed with the Goya business. You told me that yourself, Ben. You said he was out of his depth—’
‘That’s right,’ Ben agreed. ‘Leon was out of his depth. And that’s what killed him.’
Sighing, Francis pushed the glass again. Now it was pressing against Ben’s forearm, but he still didn’t pick it up.
‘My brother didn’t kill himself.’
‘Have you spoken to Gina?’
Ben nodded. ‘She’s distracted. Crying. Saying that she shouldn’t have gone to stay with her friend that night – that none of this would have happened if she’d stayed home … Apparently Leon had shut himself off, and she thought he wanted to be alone. She said she’d told him where she was going, that he knew her girlfriend and had the phone number. She said that her clothes hadn’t all gone – she’d just taken the ones she had with her that night.’
‘So Leon was wrong about that?’
‘I dunno,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘Their relationship was on and off. In the past Gina had left him for a while, then come back when Leon had calmed down. He loved her, but I don’t know how much she loved him. She didn’t take good enough care of him—’
Francis cut him off.
‘But she wasn’t kidnapped, was she? Leon was wrong.’
‘Meaning that if he was wrong about that, he was wrong about the rest?’ Ben asked, his tone challenging. ‘That there was no one in the house? No one after him?’
Francis paused before answering. ‘OK, if someone was after Leon, why?’
‘For the skull.’
‘What?’
‘Goya’s skull.’
‘He didn’t have it!’
‘They thought he did,’ Ben said. ‘I told him to keep it quiet, but Leon couldn’t. He said he hadn’t told anyone, but Gabino Ortega knew about it and Leon said some Englishman had wanted to buy it from him.’ Ben paused, about to confide about Diego Martinez, but changed his mind. Francis was a friend. He didn’t need endangering.
‘Who’s Gabino …?’
‘Ortega. He belongs to one of the richest and most infamous families in Spain. His grandfather was a murderer.’
‘Shit … And who was the Englishman?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said honestly.
Taking a long drink, Francis stared ahead for a while before continuing, ‘You really think Leon was murdered?’
‘God, how many times do I have to say it!’ Ben snapped, finally taking the brandy and downing it in one shot.
‘But how likely is it that someone killed your brother? And even if they did, why would they just to get a skull? I’ve got six in the fridge – they’re welcome to them … Oh, come on, Ben, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Where is it?’
‘What?’
‘Goya’s skull.’
Rising to his feet, Francis moved over to the end of the laboratory and unlocked the fridge, calling over his shoulder, ‘You want the original or the reconstructed head?’
‘Both,’ Ben replied, moving over to Francis’s workbench and watching as he put down the skull. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘Bugger all.’
‘Unless it’s famous,’ Ben went on, staring at it curiously. ‘Could it contain anything?’
Francis stuck his finger into the empty skull and wiggled it round. ‘Nope.’
‘What about inside the bone itself?’
‘Nothing.’
‘The teeth?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Because it underwent scans when I was trying to authenticate it, that’s how. Anyway, Goya hardly had any teeth left when he died.’
‘What about the bone itself? Anything unusual?’
‘There might have been. But after all these years most defects or diseases would be impossible to detect.’
Sighing, Ben reached for the powerful magnifying glass lying on the workbench beside him. Turning the skull around in his left hand, he peered at it from all angles.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Anything.’
Disappointed, he put down the magnifying glass and then the skull. ‘There are no markings, just age damage. Nothing clever, no words or symbols.’
‘Not even a bar code.’
‘It’s valuable simply because it’s Goya …’ Ben went on, staring at the skull. ‘I know how coveted these relics are. Museums would love it. The Prado would certainly want it, to exhibit next to Goya’s paintings. I mean, no other museum has got anything like it. The best the Tate Gallery could come up with was Turner’s death mask.’
‘Did a museum or gallery approach Leon direct?’
‘The Prado gave him free rein. It was Leon’s find, it was his triumph.’
‘Maybe there was something else which had caught people’s interest, as well as the skull.’
‘There was. Leon was working on a theory about the Black Paintings. He was researching Goya’s life when he died.’ Ben paused. ‘Not that he needed to do a lot of that. We were brought up by a woman who was always talking about the painter, always filling Leon’s head with stories. Spooking him.’ He glanced over at Francis. ‘This was my brother’s big chance. Goya’s skull would have made him famous and solving the riddle of the Black Paintings would have compounded his success.’