Tom Knox: The Marks of Cain

'You're always broke, Quinn.'

'It's called freelancing. What do you have?'

'Something nice maybe. Strange case in Primrose Hill.'

'Yes?'

'Oh yes indeed.'

'So…What is it? Where?'

The detective paused, then answered:

'Big old house. Murdered old lady.'

'Right.'

'You don't sound very enthusiastic.'

'Well.' Simon shrugged, inwardly, watching a bus turn left by the Tube, heading down to Belsize Park. 'Primrose Hill? I'm thinking…aggravated burglary, thieves after jewels…Not exactly unknown.'

'Ah, well that's where you're wrong.' The policeman chuckled, with a hint of seriousness. 'This isn't any old fish and chip job, Quinn.'

'OK then. What makes it strange?'

'It's the method. Seems she was…knotted.'

'Knotted?'

'Apparently so. They tell me that's the proper word.' The policeman hesitated. Then he said, 'Knotted! Perhaps you should come and have a look.'

Beyond the hospice window stretched the defeated beauty of the Arizona desert: with its vanquished sands, stricken creosotes, and blistered exposures of basalt. The green arms of the saguaro cacti reached up, imploring an implacable sun.

If you had to die, David Martinez thought, this was a fitting place to die, on the very outskirts of Phoenix, in the final exurb of the city, where the great Sonoran wastes began.

Granddad was murmuring in his bed. The morphine drip was way up high. He was barely lucid at the moment — but then, Granddad was barely lucid most of the time.

The grandson leaned over and dabbed some sweat from his grandfather's face with a tissue. He wondered, yet again, why he had come here, all the way from London, using up his precious holidays. The answer was the same as ever.

He loved his Grandfather. He could remember the better times: he could remember Granddad as a dark-haired, stocky, and cheerful man; holding David on his shoulders in the sun. In San Diego, by the sea, when they were still a family. A small family, but a family nonetheless.

And maybe that was another reason David had made it all the way here. Mum and Dad had died in the car crash fifteen years ago. For fifteen years it had been just David in London, and Granddad living out his days in distant Phoenix. Now it would just be David. That sobering fact needed proper acknowledgement: it needed proper goodbyes.

Granddad's face twitched as he slept.

For an hour David sat there, reading a book. Then his grandfather woke, and coughed, and stared.

The dying patient gazed with a puzzled expression at the window, at the blue square of desert sky, as if seeing this last view for the first time. Then Granddad's eyes rested on his visitor. David felt a stab of fear: would Granddad look at him and say, Who are you? That had happened too often this week.

'David?'

He pulled his chair closer to the bed.

'Granddad…'

What followed wasn't much of a conversation, but it was a conversation. They talked about how his grandfather was feeling; they touched briefly on the hospice food. Tacos, David, too many tacos. David mentioned that his week of holiday was nearly up and he had to fly back to London in a day or two.

The old man nodded. A hawk was making spirals in the desert sky outside, the shadow of the bird flickered momentarily across the room.

'I'm sorry…I wasn't there for you, David, when your mom…and your dad…y'know…when it happened.'

'Sorry?'

'You know. The…crash, what happened…I'm so damn sorry about all of it. I was stupid.'

'No. Come on, Granddad. Not this again.' David shook his head.

'Listen. David…please.' The old man winced. 'I gotta say something.'

David nodded, listening intently to his grandfather.

'I gotta say it. I could've…I could've done better, could've helped you more. But you were keen to stay in England, your mom's friends took you in, and that seemed best…you don't know how difficult it was. Coming to America. After the war. And…and your grandmother dying.'

He trailed into silence.

'Granddad?'

The old man looked at the afternoon sun, now slanting into the room.

'I got a question, David.'

'Yes. Sure. Please.'

'Have you ever wondered where you come from? Who you really are?'

David was used to his Granddad asking him questions. That was part of their relationship, how they rubbed along: the older man asking the grandson about younger things. But this was a very different question — unexpected — yet also very acute. This wasn't any old question. This was The Question.

Who was he really? Where did he really come from?

David had always ascribed his sense of rootlessness to his chaotic upbringing, and his unusual background. Granddad was Spanish but moved to San Diego in 1946 with his wife. She had died giving birth to David's father; his father then met his mother, a nurse from England, working at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

So, for the first few years of David's life there had maybe been a certain sense of who he was — an American of Anglo-Hispanic parentage, a Californian — but the Latino surname and the dark Spanish looks still marked them out, as a family, as not quite your normal one hundred percent Americans. After that they'd moved to Britain, and then to Germany and then Japan, and then back to Britain — with his father's career in the US Air Force.

By the end of this world tour, by the time he was ten or twelve, David hadn't felt American, British, Spanish, Californian — or anything much. And then his mum and dad had died in the crash — and the sense of being cut off, of being alone and anonymous and floating, had only worsened. Alone in the world.

Granddad repeated the query. 'So…David? Do you? Do you ever think about it? Where you come from?'

David lied and shrugged and said, No, not really. He didn't feel like getting into all that, not right now.

But if not now, then when?

'OK. OK,' the old man stammered. 'OK, David. OK. And the new job? Job? You like that? What are you doing, I forget…'

Was Granddad losing it again? David frowned, and said:

'Media lawyer. I'm a lawyer. It's OK.'

'Only OK?'

'Nah…I hate it.' David sighed at his own candour. 'I thought…at least reckoned it might be a bit glamorous. You know…pop stars and parties. But I just sit in a dismal office and call other lawyers. It's crap. And my boss is a tosser.'

'Ah…Ah…Ach…' It was a wrenching, old man's cough. Then Granddad lay back and stared at the ceiling. 'Didn't you get a good college…college degree? Some kinda science, no?'

'Well…I did biochemistry, Granddad. In England. Not a lot of money in that. So I turned to law.'

Another hiatus. The light was bright in the room. At last his grandfather said:

'David. You need to know something.'

'What?'

'I lied.'

The silence in the room was stifling. Somewhere in the hospice a gurney rattled.

'You lied? What does that mean?'

He scrutinized his grandfather's face. Was this the dementia, reasserting itself? He couldn't be sure, but the old man's face looked alert as he elaborated.

'Fact, I'm lying now, son…I just…just can't…get past it, David. Too late to change. A las cinco de la tarde. I'm sorry. Desolada.'

This was perplexing. David watched the old man talk.

'OK I'm tired, David. I…I…I…Now I need to do this. Please look in there…Least I can do this. Please.'

'Sorry?'

'In the bag at the end…of my bed. Kmart. Look see. Please!'

David got up smartly, and went to the assorted bags and luggage stored in the corner of the room, beyond the bed. Conspicuous in the rather forlorn pile was a scarlet Kmart bag. He picked it up, and scoped inside: there was something papery and folded at the bottom. Maybe a map?