Unearthing the Bones

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Quercus

Quercus
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7th Floor, South Block
London
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Copyright © 2012 by Alex Connor

The moral right of Alex Connor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 626 2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, 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.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Mama Gala’s,
London

She hit him with the flat of her hand as he walked in the side door. The blow was strong enough to send him backwards into the counter, her massive head jutting towards him. Shaken, he stared at her, at the pale eyes in the dark face, the force of her malice unexpected and terrifying.

‘Don’t,’ she said warningly.

He was trying not to wet himself, trying to remember that he was eighteen years old. Not a child any more. And yet a child now. Oh yes, back to a child now. He had pushed his luck and knew it. Shouldn’t have mocked her son. Shouldn’t have taunted Emile Dwappa. No one did that. No one with any sense.

‘
Don’t,
’ she repeated.

A mammoth in a print dress. Nigerian by birth, Londoner by choice. Proprietor of Mama Gala’s Health Shop. Babysitter for the local children, crooning to them as she nursed them in the barley-sugar-coloured rocking chair.

But now he remembered all the rumours he’d heard about Mama Gala and her son. Wondered if, perhaps, they weren’t rumours after all. And the chair in the corner by the window seems suddenly skeletal, malignant, a corpse on rockers.

It’ll do you no good to say sorry, Hiller thought. She’s not having it.

One of Mama Gala’s hands was resting on the counter beside him, her bulk blocking any escape. And now he could see the rumour coming alive, a vision of evil taking shape in front of him. Her face was waxy, like bruised fruit a day before rotting, her skin giving off an odour of sweat and dead meat.

Hadn’t his uncle warned him? Said, ‘Don’t go to work at Mama Gala’s. She’s not what you think. She’s Emile Dwappa’s mother. If he’s afraid, so should you be.’

But he’d been cocky, sucked in by the promise of easy money and an association
– however remote – with the most notorious man in London. Even if he
were
just
an errand boy, humping sacks of meal around and sweeping up the remnants of the herbs
Mama Gala sliced on her great chopping board. A board notched with a thousand knife
cuts, indented with the numerous blows she had delivered over the years. A board
scourged like the back of a flagellant.

She was staring at him now, and his body was pressing against the counter. He didn’t think, just said it. No, he’d been saying brainless things for weeks. Ignoring her warning looks, trying to laugh off the remarks he’d made. And then Hiller, because he was stupid and young, pushed it. Mentioned something said by his uncle –
Was it his uncle? Jesus, he couldn’t remember anything while she was staring at him like that –
something about Emile Dwappa being gay.

And he had repeated it. Like it was a joke. But as the words touched the air, Mama Gala had moved. She left the rocking chair, crossed the wooden floor and, all in an instant, had hit him. The blow, with all her weight behind it, had cracked against his head, his ear deafened.

But it wasn’t the attack that had him wet with fear now. It was Mama Gala
herself, huge and threatening, shape-shifting into the rumours he should have listened
to but had ignored. When she struck him again he fell down, limp-legged, and, lying on
the wooden floor, saw one of her gnarled feet – dusty in sandals – aiming straight at
his face.

And then he remembered what Mama Gala had done just before she attacked him. Before the first strike, she had gone to the door and turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

It was raining, the kind of rain that bores through clothes in an instant, as Jimmy Shaw took a left turn and drove into the supermarket forecourt. He was thinking about his stomach. Thinking that what he needed were some Snickers and a bag of Kettle Chips. He should, he thought, always make sure there was food in the car. In the glove compartment, because what the fuck else was it for? Not gloves. Who wore gloves any more?

Choosing a space close to the entrance, Shaw parked. Heaving himself out of the car, he fastened his jacket and noticed that he had grease marks on his trousers. He knew that to onlookers he personified the worst kind of travelling rep. Some deadbeat selling life insurance. But for all his sloppy appearance and Peckham vowels, Shaw was one of the smartest handlers in London.

His speciality was objets d’art, which covered a huge remit. Paintings, sculpture, furniture, antiques of any kind, books, medical equipment – and that Holy of Holies – relics. And the word ‘handler’ meant that Shaw literally
handled
pieces for collectors, crooked dealers, private connoisseurs and the criminal fraternity. For handler read thief.

Not that Shaw did his own thieving. He had others for that. Spent
lags down on their luck, eking out a living as runners and dossing down in the Salvation
Army hostels at night. Ex-convicts he would greet – bottle in hand – as the doors of
Wormwood Scrubs or Strangeways unlocked, beating relatives, lovers, certainly the
clergy, to the post. Scuppering any chance of the ex-prisoner going straight, Shaw was a
walking advert for recidivism, catching the vulnerable at the point between prison and
the outside world. The latter usually looked infinitely more threatening than the offer
Shaw was making.

Men who had become nervous about re-entering normal life found themselves lured in. Once in, they became part of Shaw’s team. A numbering dozens team that stretched across London. And each was a specialist in their field. Shaw was an equal opportunities employer too. A woman could often prove more useful than a man, seducing secrets out of people who usually betrayed nothing, even to themselves.

But by keeping himself remote from the actual handling – and by using an intermediary to negotiate for him – Jimmy Shaw was never caught. The runners were caught and served time for him, their sentences made bearable by a healthy retainer or the promise of future work. People might have heard of Jimmy Shaw, but they didn’t deal directly with him.

Except that now there was something in the offing which was too valuable, too precious, to entrust to any of his employees. Something too tempting for any crook to resist. Something Shaw would have to handle himself. A sticky secret, a whisper from Spain. And with it, the promise of enough wealth to satisfy even his greed.

Tripping over the step as he entered the supermarket, Shaw moved to the sweet counter and grabbed a handful of chocolate bars before snatching up a family-sized bag of crisps and taking his place behind the long queue at the checkout.

*

He could see from the sneering gaze of the woman in front of him
that he repelled her, and the thought made him smile. Oh, she’d be singing a different
tune if she knew what he was going to be worth soon. He was already a rich man, but this
new piece of bounty would put him in a different league. No snotty looks then. Just a
queue of women willing to lift their skirts.

‘I can’t put that through the till.’ At the sight of him, the girl had decided to be difficult.

Surprised, Shaw looked at the checkout girl. ‘
What?
’

‘You’ve opened the crisp packet.’

‘I’m eating the crisps. You know a way of doing that
without
opening the pack?’

She pulled a face and the woman behind Shaw joined in. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t come in and start eating things—’

‘Who invited you to the party?’ Shaw retorted, turning back to the checkout girl. ‘What’s the problem? I’m buying the crisps—’

‘A full bag.’

‘I’m
paying
for the full fucking bag!’ he snapped as the
checkout girl pointed to the sign over her till. It read:

‘I can’t put them through the till,’ she persisted. ‘Not half eaten.’

Nodding, Shaw glanced at the woman behind him. Then, greedily,
noisily and very slowly he began to eat the crisps, the whole queue watching him, until
finally he put back his head and emptied the last crumbs down his throat. Then he put
down the empty bag, smoothed it out, and passed it – with the bar code uppermost – back
to the checkout girl.

Red-faced, she ran the scanner over the bag. Shaw picked up his shopping and walked back to his car. Bitch, he thought, sliding into the driver’s seat. He could see the checkout girl through the window of the supermarket and waved, smirking as she gave him the finger.

But then Shaw’s attention was diverted by a note stuck under one
of his windscreen wipers. The writing was facing towards him, so he could read the words
through the window:

Getting out of the car, Shaw looked around. But whoever had left the message had long gone. Irritated, he reread the note and then screwed it up in his fist.

For once Jimmy Shaw wasn’t the only person to hear of a find – a notorious, infamous, priceless find. He had thought he was ahead of the pack and would secure the relic before anyone else. He had even made a discreet – anonymous – call to an unscrupulous dealer in Paris and a connoisseur in Turin. With pleasure he had sensed their longing and his hands itched with the whisper of coming money.

But now he had a rival
. Someone who was taunting him. Asking if Jimmy Shaw was
interested …
Shaw wiped his fleshy mouth with his handkerchief and wondered at the daring of the note. Who was fool enough to challenge him? Obviously someone who didn’t know his reputation. Someone who didn’t know that among Shaw’s runners and thieves were men who would do anything for enough money.

Irritated by what he took as a show of false bravado, Shaw drove out into the London traffic. Preoccupied, he never saw the van following him three vehicles behind, and his instincts – usually so nimble – cheated him.

It was a fatal miscalculation. One that would lead to humiliation,
failure, and enough suffering to turn him mad.

On the sofa in the room above the shop, Emile Dwappa dozed. In the chair
beside him a woman was reading a magazine, a child at her feet. And in a small space
beyond, hardly big enough to be a room, an ancient woman divided herbs and potions into
equal measures. Her hands were thin, her fingers like twigs, brown as sugar cane, long
years of practice making an alchemist of her. She never spoke – hadn’t done so for many
years – just made up the potions for Mama Gala to sell in the shop below. Potions
desperate women bought to make their men fall in love with them. Potions to help them
fall pregnant or get rid of a baby. Potions and remedies and spells for the vulnerable
who believed the
daytime
Mama Gala, who wanted to help. Because she was old
school, with tricks from the Old Country.