She nodded, holding his gaze defiantly. ‘It would be the chance of a lifetime. You know how difficult it is to get a posting at a good hospital. A doctor needs every bit of help they can find. And an innovative paper, with a well-known case, would help me a lot.’
Sighing, Ben moved behind his desk and sat down. He knew that if he tried to stop her, Megan Griffiths would do the paper anyway. She would gamble on the notoriety of her work outweighing her mentor’s disapproval. He was tired and under stress, and her interference rankled.
‘You realise that it would be unethical for you to publish anything until the murder becomes public knowledge? Or until it has been solved?’
‘What if it isn’t solved?’
‘There’s nothing to stop you from writing it up anonymously,’ Ben replied, ‘but that would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?’
Defiant, she went on the attack. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’
‘You’re right, I don’t.’
Without saying another word, she turned on her heel and left.
For the remainder of the day Ben regretted the altercation and he knew he had made an enemy out of a colleague – something he would normally have avoided at all costs. But life wasn’t normal at the moment. Leon was dead and the police were asking him questions, and instead of seeking their help, Ben was lying to them.
Returning home later that evening Ben paused at the doorway, almost reluctant to enter. When he did walk in and turn on the light, he half expected his house to be broken into again. But the furniture was in the same place as it always was, the post on the mat at his feet. As he bent to retrieve it, he could hear the answerphone clicking off in the study.
By the time he got to it, the caller had rung off, the red light flashing three times. Three messages. Checking the room, he pulled the curtains closed, then flicked the PLAY button.
‘Ben, hi, it’s me …’
He relaxed at the sound of Abigail’s voice.
‘… I just wanted to say hello. I wondered when you were coming round. Anyway, phone me when you get in.’
A pause followed, then her voice again, gentle.
‘I miss you. Bye.’
Saving the message, Ben played the next, smiling when he heard Francis Asturias’s booming voice. His tone was pretend outrage, mock angry.
‘Bloody Golding! Call me back, you prick. I’ve got some news.’
Replaying both messages, Ben realised that Abigail would be safer if she returned to France and stayed with her father. In France she would be away from him. In France, she would be safe … An unexpected noise behind him made him turn, but it was only a pigeon on to the window ledge outside. Rolling his head to loosen his neck muscles, he clicked on the answerphone to access his last message.
The voice was a man’s. Disguised and ominous.
‘I’ve got the skull, Mr Golding …’
Ben stared at the phone as the muffled voice continued.
‘If you’re tempted to talk to the police, remember Leon. Remember your brother and what happened to him.
‘I’m watching you.’
40
There are fifty-nine steps leading from the back exit of the Whitechapel Hospital to the laboratory. There is a lift but it’s seldom used, too erratic to be trusted. Staff climb the stairs or take a short cut through the main body of the hospital, via Reception. The fifty-nine steps at the back are divided into dozens, a landing after every twelve except for the last flight. No one knows why there are only eleven steps here, but the last leads to a landing, the laboratory and, off that, storage.
Baffled, Francis Asturias stood in the storage room of the Whitechapel Hospital. He thought at first that he was imagining things, but then opened the box marked CAUTION – ANIMAL REMAINS again and felt inside. It was empty. The skull was gone. Tipping up the box, he rummaged through the shredded paper, but he could see at once that there was nothing there and glanced back to the shelf. It was definitely the right box. It was the only box marked CAUTION – ANIMAL REMAINS.
Reaching for a cigar stub in his pocket, Francis remembered that he couldn’t light up inside the hospital and chewed the end of the smoke instead. The skull had been there the previous day – he had checked – but now the box was empty. Preoccupied, he moved over to the door, fingering the key. Perhaps he had left the storage room open? He dismissed the idea immediately. For over thirty years Francis Asturias had locked up at night. The laboratory and the storage room. He’d never missed once.
So maybe there was another key. But who would have access to another key? And even if they did, why would they bother to go into a storage room which was just a repository for old files and junk? How would they know what to look for? Deep in thought, he walked downstairs to the back of the hospital and then moved behind a row of waste bins. Lighting up, he inhaled morosely on his cigar and nodded to a colleague who passed on his way to the car park. The evening was unseasonably cold and Francis shivered and pulled his white coat around him.
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.