Unearthing the Bones by Connor Alex

Author:Connor, Alex [Connor, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

Four

Madrid, Spain

Diego Martinez could remember everything, every detail, with absolute accuracy. The sweating heat of the afternoon, the scent of dry earth and the judder of his spade as it hit something unexpected, hard. Surprised, he had stared at the exposed ground, the concrete floor broken up and put to one side, the centuries-blackened soil exposed – and something else. Something white and rounded peeking out from the dark.

A thrill tingled through him as he remembered.

If only he had known then, at that moment, what he had found … But instead Diego had bent down and touched the white orb, brushing away the dirt until two eyes' sockets appeared, staring full at him. Startled, he had almost fallen back, but righted himself and – for some reason he would never fully understand – had thrown his jacket over the skull to hide it.

It had been an instinctive gesture and soon Diego finished for the night. He could remember everything so clearly. Each action highlighted, intensified, as though strobe-lit, demanding attention. Much later – before dawn the following morning – he had returned to the boarded-up house in Madrid and unlocked the cellar door, walking down into the darkness and shining his torch beam around.

He had been terrified. Not that the skull would have been stolen, but that he had been mistaken. That some trick of malignant light had coaxed a vision out of dead earth. Slowly he had walked towards the hump in the floor, the rounded lump covered by his jacket, and then, holding his breath, he had pulled it away. At once the skull had been exposed, looking up at him. Unblinking, eerie, pale as a church candle. Spooked, Diego had turned to look over his shoulder to make sure he was alone. But there had been no one there. No other builders. Not even a city cat watching as he had wrapped up the skull in his jacket, picked up the torch and clambered out of the cellar …

‘Diego?’

He looked up as his name was spoken, smiling at the familiar man who was beckoning for him to approach. With the package tucked under his arm, Diego Martinez entered the study of Leon Golding.

*

He had known the Golding family since he was a child. His father had worked for them, doing repairs and maintenance on the old farmhouse. The farmhouse across the river from Madrid, in a place close to where Spain’s most famous painter, Francisco Goya, had once lived. And despite the fact that Diego was not so well educated, and only the builder’s boy, he had been treated as an equal.

The two Golding brothers had both been gifted and articulate, especially the fragile Leon, and when his father retired and Diego took over the business, he had continued to work at the farmhouse. Patching up, repairing, keeping the worn house upright. A worn house with only one eccentric occupant.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Leon said, sitting behind his desk. Fair-haired, pale – even in Spain. He had never been robust.

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