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.
Back in London, it had been easy to track Golding and later break into his home. It hadn’t even taken long to find the skull. But what had been really interesting was the phone message Shaw had heard while he was in the house. A message from Francis Asturias about the skull – a message he had not completed.
Although the message had said nothing specific, Shaw’s instincts had been roused. He didn’t know what Francis was alluding to, only that his antennae for deception were tipping him off. So he had shifted his watch from Golding to Asturias. Had tracked the reconstructor to the Whitechapel Hospital and watched him. Shaw knew he looked sick enough to be a patient and no one would ask him why he was there. And before long Shaw discovered that Francis Asturias was a close friend of Ben Golding, and that he had reconstructed the Little Venice murder head. Which meant that he would know about the card Shaw had planted on the victim – the card which pointed to Ben Golding’s involvement.
The rest was easy to guess. Who else would Golding allow access to the skull but Francis Asturias? Who else would Golding confide in after his brother’s death? Who else would be privy to the whereabouts of Goya’s head? All roads led back to one person and one person only – Francis Asturias.
Not that Shaw had meant to kill him. He had meant to scare him off, to warn him to keep his mouth shut. Time had been getting so short, he had known he was dying, but at least he had the skull. At least he could give Dwappa what he wanted in return for his life … But when Shaw had got to the laboratory the reconstructor had been talking on the phone. And Shaw had heard his words.
… I swapped skulls. I have the Goya. Whoever robbed you got a fake.
The misery of the words had slammed into Jimmy Shaw like a demolition ball. After all his striving, after all the tracking, the travelling, the threat of his own death creeping up closer – ever closer – behind him, he had ended up with the wrong skull.
In his rage he had struck out. And in killing Asturias he had not only expunged his own fury, but had made sure there was no one living who could question the validity of the skull. Because when Shaw had stolen it, he had taken Asturias’s authentication papers too. No one would challenge its authenticity, least of all Dwappa.
Jimmy Shaw had had no choice. He had been too sick to start looking for the real skull. Time had bested him, and he knew he would be lucky to make it to Dwappa before he passed out. There was to be no more running after skulls, from London to Madrid. It was over. Jimmy Shaw had got a skull.
Only he would know that it was the wrong one.
‘So, this is it?’ Dwappa said, taking the skull and weighing it in his hands. ‘Not as heavy as I thought.’ Slowly he unwrapped the package, staring at the head.