Memory of Bones Read online

  New York • London

  © 2012 by Alex Connor

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  e-ISBN 978-1-62365-594-5

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  CONTENTS

  Memory of Bones

  Book One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Book Two

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Book Three

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Book Four

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Book Five

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  Postscript

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Also Available

  MEMORY OF BONES

  ALEX CONNOR is also known as Alexandra Connor and she has written a number of historical novels. This is her third crime thriller. She is an artist, and this book features her own reproductions of Goya’s Black Paintings. Alex is regularly featured on television and BBC radio. She lives in East Sussex.

  Francisco Goya – Self-portrait

  Floating on the water at the edge of the canal, hardly visible, was a bundle, wrapped tightly in a soiled white blanket. It was small, benign, but eerie. Gently, it glided away and began its grisly procession down the middle of the canal, on an almost imperceptible current. Transfixed, they watched its progress, the bundle finally passing under the full glare of one of the restaurant’s outside lamps. The beam illuminated the blood-spattered wrapping – and the place where the parcel had come partially untied.

  From which a disembodied hand, fingers outstretched, clawed its way to the light.

  BOOK ONE

  1

  Bordeaux, France, May 1828

  Under a horned moon, two figures paused. It was past one in the morning in the cemetery, on a humid, early summer night, when even the insomniacs of the town were restlessly asleep. Both men knew that if they were caught they would be jailed. Grave-robbing, especially the plundering of the crypt of an important man, could result in a long imprisonment. Or worse.

  Impatiently, the older man began to shuffle his feet, his companion breaking open the seal into the crypt. Together they entered, ivy leaves brushing against their faces as they hurried in. Shutting the door behind them, the younger man immediately lit an oil lamp.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said, holding up the light to illuminate the crypt.

  The interior was dark and clammy with damp, the smell of mould oppressive as the man shone the light around the chamber. In the centre stood a large stone casket with a sealed lid, a mottled spider casting an intricate web over the lock, the lamplight flashing on the sticky threads. Without speaking, the man reached for his hammer and then brought it down violently, smashing the seal of the tomb.

  ‘Come on,’ he hissed at his companion. ‘We have to be quick.’

  Pushing at the stone, they strained to move the weighty top off the sarcophagus. Grunting with the effort, they finally edged the lid open, the smell of decomposition hitting both of them and making the older man gag. Together they pushed the lid further. It shifted a little. Again, they pushed. It slid again. On the third try it crashed on to the floor on the other side of the sarcophagus. The noise was deafening in the confined space.

  Losing his nerve, the older man hurried to the door and looked out. For a long, breathless moment they waited for the sound of someone raising the alarm. But the noise hadn’t woken anyone. Not even the stonemason who lived by the cemetery gates.

  ‘Help me,’ the younger man ordered.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Shut up!’ the first snapped, turning back to the tomb and shining the light into it.

  Expressionless, he stared at the remains of the man who had been buried a month before. As the odour increased – suffocating in the cramped vault – the robber could see that the corpse’s white collar and cuffs were stained with decomposition fluids, the face puffy and oozing, the crossed hands black on the underside of the fingers and palms where the blood had settled in death. Supposedly airtight, the sarcophagus had, however, leaked in enough oxygen and damp to begin decay. Sinkage in the ribcage and eye sockets was pronounced and the lips of the cadaver had shrunk, drawn back from the bared teeth like an animal about to attack.

  Stooping down, he took out a knife and hacksaw from his bag and turned back to the sarcophagus. Leaning over, he pulled back the white grandee collar from the corpse’s throat, the smell intensifying as he touched the slime of the skin. Then, savagely, he drew his knife across the throat, the skin and muscle giving way and exposing the bone beneath.

  ‘Give me the hacksaw.’

  Handing him the tool, the older man turned away, not seeing but hearing the repetitive sound of sawing. When he finally looked back, his companion had climbed into the coffin and was straddling the corpse. The cadaver’s flesh pooled under his fingers, his hands slipping as he sawed frantically at the neck bones. Finally, sweating with effort, the man tried to lift the head off, hoping to wrench it free from the body. The sound of cracking echoed in the dark crypt, the shadows of the grave robbers looming vast on the damp walls, the oil lamp flickering hellishly as he yanked at the head.

  With a sickening crunch it came away from the body, the grave robber losing his balance and falling back against the corpse’s le
gs.

  Slowly the horned moon sidled up the night sky, making chalk patches on the indigo earth. Moving furtively down a quiet road, the men kept to the shadow of the trees, then entered the Rue d’Arles, the younger man walking round the back of a large house and rapping on the door. Instantly a tall man appeared, putting his forefinger to his lips and ushering them into a shuttered basement room. That he had money was obvious from his clothes, his voice Parisian, at odds with the rural French spoken by the resurrection men.

  ‘You have it?’

  ‘In here,’ the younger man replied, holding up the sack.

  Gesturing for him to put it in a nearby sink, the man handed him a wedge of money. ‘You must tell no one—’

  ‘We never did before. Why would we now?’

  Nodding, the Parisian showed them to the door, glancing out and then beckoning to the men. ‘Say nothing to no one. Betray me and you’ll hang.’

  ‘And you?’ the grave robber replied. ‘They’ll do worse if they find out what you’ve done.’

  2

  London, the present day

  The sweating, grotesquely fat man checked the address twice, looked round, then moved into the building. From the street it had looked like every other shop, the words MAMA GALA’S painted in large red letters at the top of the window, a selection of herbs, breads, nuts and pulses set out in an alluring display. Inside, a heavy African woman was serving a customer, laughing as she wrapped some arrowroot, wind chimes tingling eerily by the open door.

  Nervous, the fat man walked over to her: ‘I came to see Emile Dwappa.’

  Her smile faded. ‘No one called that here.’

  ‘I was told to come here.’ The man leaned towards the woman, who took a step back. ‘Mr Dwappa sent for me himself.’

  Suddenly she relaxed, one fleshy black hand pointing to a door. ‘Go through there, right to the back. Then turn left and go up the stairs.’ She looked him up and down, laughing. ‘You’re one fat white man. One sweaty, fat white man.’

  Embarrassed, he moved on, opening the door and walking into the large back room beyond. Immediately an unfamiliar smell hit him, and he flinched as he saw carcass after carcass of dried meat hanging on butchers’ hooks along one side of the wall. Flanks of dark red flesh, ribboned with yellow fat, swung in a breeze from the open back door; other smaller packages piled up on high shelves. As the man stared up at the butchery, a piercing screech sounded behind him.

  Spinning round, he almost lost his footing as he stumbled against a large cage, a macaw flapping its wings at him, its yellow eyes fixed, hostile.

  ‘Christ!’

  Hurriedly he moved on, passing more cages. Some held snakes, others small, feral monkeys looking out disconsolately, one peeing between the bars. The urine hit the floor by the man’s feet, its stench mixing queasily with the smell of dead meat and the ammonia of bird droppings.

  Stumbling up the steep, narrow flight of steps, the obese man clambered into the darkness above. Grunting with the effort, he waited at the top of the stairs for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Every window was covered by blinds, daylight almost obliterated, and against a far wall was a sofa with two figures sitting on it, barely discernible in the dimness.

  As the man walked in further, he could see a table on the left, the overwhelming scent of oleander and musk making him retch. Sitting at the table, a wizened black woman was cutting some herbs, a pestle and mortar beside her. At her feet sat a small, silent child, its arms curled around its knees. From below, the man could hear the sound of jazz music, punctuated by the screech of the caged birds and a monkey banging its feeding bowl against the bars.

  The atmosphere was rancid, his curiosity forcing him on towards the sofa and the seated figures. Palms wet with sweat, he peered into the gloom. Then suddenly a match was struck, an African face coming into full view as Emile Dwappa leaned forward to light the candles in front of him. He was no more than thirty-five, his narrow head unexpectedly boyish, his eyes light against the black skin. Beside him lounged a woman, naked from the waist upwards, her left hand resting on one uncovered breast.

  Dwappa smiled. ‘Mr Shaw …?’

  The fat man nodded.

  ‘Take a seat.’

  Jimmy Shaw eased himself on to an uncomfortable chair opposite the couple. Uneasy, he wiped his forehead and his palms, laughing nervously.

  ‘It’s hot in here.’

  ‘Central heating,’ Dwappa replied. ‘I like it hot.’

  Listlessly the woman moved, her skirt falling open and revealing the inside of her right thigh. Running his tongue over his dry lips, the fat man stared, transfixed, his heavy suit damp under the armpits, his shirt collar rubbing his neck raw.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  Facing Dwappa, Jimmy Shaw tried to remember what he had been told. Emile Dwappa was a businessman, with a reputation so sinister even the hard cases in Brixton were afraid of him. Rumours abounded and followed him like a gaggle of black geese. In the three years he had been in London, Dwappa had built up a terrifying reputation. You didn’t cross him – you didn’t even go anywhere near him – unless you wanted something very specific. Or worse, he wanted something very specific from you.

  ‘So where is it?’

  The fat man wriggled in his seat. ‘Spain.’

  ‘I want it. Here,’ Dwappa said. ‘I have a buyer for the skull. How soon can you get it?’

  Shaw shook his head, trying to think up a lie and wondering at the same time how Dwappa had heard about the Goya skull so quickly. The same skull which someone had already approached him about. In the criminal undercurrent of the art world, news always travelled quickly, but this speed had been even more remarkable than usual. In the last twenty-four hours two dealers, an Iranian collector and a museum curator had contacted Shaw. And one was offering a king’s ransom for Francisco Goya’s skull.

  For over two hundred years the skull had been missing. All that was known for certain was that it had been taken around the time of Goya’s death in Bordeaux. No other facts were confirmed and the famous skull – emblematic of artistic genius – had vanished. Until now.

  A failed art dealer, Shaw knew that there was a thriving trade in art relics. In the past, various and suspect parts of the saints had changed hands for money. Sometimes the Church paid up, wanting to retain a relic or to purchase one for a cathedral in an area which had need of a spiritual revival. But as religion lost its grip, secular art dealing became big business. In the decades which followed, sales and auction prices exploded in an orgasm of greed, and third-rate dealers like Jimmy Shaw found themselves edged out onto the shady periphery of the art world. Forced away from the high-octane embrace of London and New York, for men with more greed than morals a greasy slide into crime was inevitable.

  And so Jimmy Shaw had become a handler. At first he had fenced stolen paintings, but gradually his slyness – and his contacts – promoted him into the select rank of men who stole to order. Collectors as far apart as Paris and Bahrain called on him to either find or thieve works of art. Naturally Shaw did none of the actual physical work; he had minions to do that for him. Men who needed money or a favour. Or, more likely, men who had something to hide. Something Shaw had winkled out of one of his other contacts. With impressive connections to old lags, runners, and gallery assistants looking to supplement their poor wages, Shaw had built up a network around London, expanding into Europe and even the USA. Physically repulsive, his sole companion was money and the whores it could buy. As his criminality had extended he had become bloated in body and amorality, normal life forever curtailed by his reputation and appearance.

  But who needed respectability when they had a fortune? And Jimmy Shaw could see a huge fortune waiting for him. Goya’s skull had been found – let the bear-baiting begin. Of course he realised that competition for the relic would be intense. Everyone would want to own the skull. Collectors, dealers, museums – all of them gr
ubbing around in the artistic mire to pluck an opal out of the shit.

  The power and fame of Francisco Goya had never waned. His paintings were reproduced endlessly, his pictures and etchings revered, the notorious Black Paintings as frightening and compelling as they had always been. Oh yes, Shaw thought, he would make a fortune out of Goya’s skull. A fortune Emile Dwappa wasn’t going to snatch out of his hands.

  ‘It might be a rumour.’

  ‘What?’

  Shaw coughed. ‘The finding of the Goya skull – it might just be a rumour. People have claimed that it was found before. But they were always fakes—’

  ‘I want it.’

  I bet you do. You want it to sell it on – and then what do I get? A handler’s fee? Fuck off, Shaw thought to himself. The skull was his prize.

  He could remember several years earlier when a supposed strand of Leonardo da Vinci’s hair had come on to the black market. Within hours Shaw had contacted collectors overseas, whipping up a frantic auction. In the end the relic was purchased by an Italian connoisseur in Milan. Hair, fingers or other bones from such legendary figures rarely came on the market, which was why they were so sought after. But a whole skull – Francisco Goya’s skull – would set a record.

  Curious, Dwappa leaned forward in his seat. ‘I’ll pay you for bringing it to me.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can—’

  ‘You said it was in Spain.’

  Fuck! Shaw thought. Why had he said that? He was nervous, that was why, but he couldn’t afford to be. Dwappa had a reputation, but so did he. A reputation for cunning. Perhaps he could outsmart the African.

  ‘I’ll ask around for you.’

  ‘What do you weigh?’

  Shaw blinked, wrong-footed. ‘Huh?’

  ‘What do you weigh?’

  ‘Three hundred and forty pounds.’

  ‘Heavy …’

  Shaw shifted around awkwardly on the hard chair. OK, so I’m a fat, ugly bastard, he thought – but I’m the one who’ll end up with the skull.

  ‘You have to get the skull for me. I have a buyer.’

  Only one? Shaw thought, unimpressed. His confidence was beginning, slowly, to return. He knew that Emile Dwappa had never dealt in art before; he was naive. Perhaps a lot easier to cheat than he had first suspected.