Someone’s watching me. Oh God, someone’s here—
Terrified, he jerked awake. ‘God Almighty!’
Concerned, the stewardess came over to him. ‘Is there something the matter, sir?’
He was befuddled, her face coming in and out of focus. He couldn’t remember where he was and mistook her for a maid coming into his New York hotel room. She would find the pig’s head … she would find the head.
‘I don’t know anything about it!’ Ben snapped, beside himself with tiredness and confusion.
The stewardess looked puzzled, the other passengers curious. Ben had a sudden, crazed impulse to cry. A madman in polite society.
‘You don’t understand!’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything!’
‘Calm down, sir,’ the stewardess said kindly. ‘We can sort this out when we get to London.’
And then Ben realised that she was humouring him, and thought of all the times he had humoured his brother. When he was irritated by him, or didn’t believe him, or was trying to protect him. And he suddenly knew how it felt to have the whole world staring in at your own personal insanity.
56
London
The young man off the 16.35 flight from Berlin to London was washing his hands in the men’s room at Heathrow airport. Idly, he checked his reflection in the mirror, then leaned forward to squeeze a blackhead on his nose. Deep in concentration, he jumped as he heard an odd sound behind him.
‘Hello?’
No answer.
‘Hello?’ he asked again, surprised as he had thought himself alone.
Warily he moved over to the cubicles. All the doors were open, apart from two. Curious, he pushed the first door. It swung open. The cubicle was empty. Then he pushed the second door.
‘Fucking hell!’ he said, rushing in. ‘Hang on, mate, just hang on!’
He thought the man was dead at first, jammed between the side of the cubicle and the toilet, tied to the cistern pipe by a rope around his neck. If he had lost consciousness he would have fallen forward and choked to death. His attacker had drawn his knees under his chin, tied his arms behind his back and taped over his mouth. Blood was coming from a cut over his eye and from a deep incision on the back of his head.
Hurriedly the young man untied him, unknotting the rope around his neck. Once released, he slumped forward on to the floor.
‘Hang on! I’ll get an ambulance.’
Gasping, Ben took in a breath and struggled to get up, the young man helping him on to the toilet seat. He was reeling in shock, trying to get his bearings.
‘I’m OK. I’m OK.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I’m OK–’
‘You need a doctor—’
‘I am a doctor.’
Trying to get some feeling back into his arms, Ben rubbed at the aching muscles. He hadn’t anticipated the attack. He should have done, but he had let down his guard momentarily and been jumped. The blow to the back of his head had knocked him unconscious, only regaining his senses when his attacker had gone.
‘You’ve been robbed,’ the young man said, pointing to Ben’s bag, its contents scattered around the toilet. Leon’s notes and laptop had been taken out and discarded. Obviously the skull was all that had mattered to his attacker. The theory was unimportant.
Struggling to his feet, Ben stuffed the contents back into his bag. So Bobbie Feldenchrist had talked. She must have challenged the man who had sold her the fake, and he had come after Ben to get hold of the real skull. Which he didn’t have … The killer must be panicking now, Ben thought, desperate that the Goya had eluded him. After so much bloodshed, so many deaths, how pointless to know that it had all come down the wrong piece of bone!
The young man was still hovering over Ben, concerned. ‘I should get help.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘But why would anyone hurt a doctor?’
‘Mistaken identity. Forget it, please. Don’t tell anyone.’
His rescuer was suddenly suspicious. ‘And why didn’t they take the laptop? I mean, if you were mugged—’
Ben put up his hands.
‘Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. It was someone’s husband …’ He paused, wanting to throw the young man off track and to elicit some male sympathy. ‘I was fooling around with his wife.’
The young man grinned. ‘Got caught out, did you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was she worth it?’
Slowly Ben dabbed at the wound on his head. ‘Yes,’ he said wryly. ‘She was worth it.’
57
‘How long is she staying here?’ Mama Gala shouted at her son as he came into the shop, slamming the door behind him. ‘I’ve got some white bitch upstairs and you go off and leave me to it!’
Rain had seeped into the shoulders of Dwappa’s jacket, his expression strained as he turned to his mother.
‘I had to make a trip—’
She slammed her meaty hands down on the counter and walked over to her son, looking him up and down like a side of bad meat. Above their heads was a locked room, the old woman outside guarding the entrance, and inside was an unconscious Englishwoman, Abigail Harrop. A couple of times Mama Gala had gone into the room and stared down at the mattress on the floor on which Abigail lay drugged. She had wondered about the bandage around her head, the blond hair matted with blood and sweat, but had not interfered. Instead she had made sure that the drugged woman stayed drugged. And silent.
‘Is she’ – Mama Gala jerked her head upwards – ‘part of your plan?’
She is now, Dwappa wanted to retort. She wasn’t originally, but now she certainly is.
He had left New York before Golding, numbed by the news of the skull being a fake. And on the flight over he had decided to raise the stakes and abduct Ben Golding’s partner. Dwappa knew the woman was in the Whitechapel Hospital because, having been watching Golding for days, he had discovered her identity. At first Abigail Harrop had seemed unimportant, but suddenly her role had turned out to be pivotal. Because as soon as Golding heard about her abduction he would give up the skull.
‘You don’t answer your phone no more?’ Mama Gala snapped, catching hold of her son’s arm, her grip ferocious as she pulled him round to face her. ‘You look sick, boy. Your plan not working?’ Her turbaned head leaned to one side, her tongue jutting out momentarily like a snake tasting the air. ‘You failing me? Is that it – you failing me?’
His confidence collapsed, his longed-for escape from his mother derailed. He had money, yes, but not all of it – not enough. He had been cheated. Ben Golding had cheated him. He had upturned his plans and made a fool out of him. And Emile Dwappa couldn’t bear it. This was to have been his chance, his triumph. And Golding had beaten him.
But he would suffer for it. For every day Emile Dwappa had to stay with his mother, Golding would suffer. For every indignity, every torture she inflicted on him, Golding would suffer. For the postponement of his new life, Golding would suffer.
Shocked by what Bobbie Feldenchrist had told him, Dwappa had moved fast, organising his cousins in New York to pile on the pressure. After his meeting at the museum he had arranged to have the pig’s head left as a warning in Golding’s hotel room. Then he had gone back to London. On his return he had personally abducted Abigail and now he was waiting for Ben Golding to come back, but not before arranging his attack at Heathrow only minutes after he had landed.
Dwappa was piling shock on shock, throwing Golding into confusion, cranking up the fear so that in the end he would give up the skull without a fight. He wasn’t sure if Golding already knew of Abigail’s abduction – he was simply increasing the pressure so that he would realise just how much danger he was in. Dwappa knew that he would already be running scared. It didn’t even matter that Golding hadn’t had the skull in his luggage – Dwappa hadn’t expected him to be travelling with it. What he did expect was panic. And that would come soon, Dwappa told himself, just as soon as he knew that Abigail Harrop had been taken.