Tom Knox - The Marks of Cain

'Here,' said Fazackerly. He was bending to the soil. The professor reached down an old liver-spotted hand and picked something up.

In his lined old palm was a red ant, crawling for freedom.

'Watch this, Mister Quinn.' He leaned closer to the ground.

Flat paving stones surrounded a drain. The flagstones were inhabited by a multitude of black ants, many of them gathered around a discarded and glistening apple core.

Fazackerly delicately dropped the red ant amongst the dense crowd of black ants. Simon leaned further, even though he felt slightly ludicrous. He wondered if the students were laughing at them, as they in turn watched the ants.

Fazackerly explained.

'I am sure you must have done this as an inky-fingered schoolboy. Such a fascinating process. Observe.'

The red ant, evidently confused by its sudden translocation, was turning this way and that — then it began heading for the soil of the flower bed. But the route was barred by the black ants.

Simon watched.

The red ant butted into a black ant.

'And now…' prompted Fazackerly.

Immediately the ants began fighting. The black ant had the slightly larger red ant in its pincers. The red ant fought back, toppling the black ant onto its back — but the other black ants were mobilized now: they had gathered around the solitary and terrorized red ant, and they were ripping the legs off the red ant, leg by leg; a final black ant gripped the enemy with its pincers and pulled the red ant's head clean away. The dying ant twitched.

'There,' said Fazackerly, standing up again.

'What?' asked Simon, also getting to his feet. 'So what?'

'What you have just witnessed is interspecific competition.'

'And that is, precisely?'

'Ferocious rivalry, between closely related species, that occupy a similar evolutionary niche. It is just one kind of Darwinian struggle. But very destructive. Very fierce.' Fazackerly was walking to a nearby bench. He sat down on the warm old wood; the journalist did the same. The older man shut his leathery eyes and tilted his face to the sun. And continued.

'Intraspecific competition can be almost as vicious. Sibling rivalry. The Cain Complex. The murderous hatred of one brother for another.'

'OK.' Simon breathed in and out, trying not to think about Tim. Trying very hard. 'OK, I get it, and this is all rather interesting. Thank you. But what's this got to do with Angus Nairn?'

The professor opened his eyes. 'Angus was a scientist. He hungrily accepted the bitter truth that…you civilians will not or cannot accept.'

'And that truth is?'

'The universe is not as we wish. It is not a large version of Sweden, run by a giant social worker with sandals. It isn't even a kingdom, with a capricious sovereign. The universe is a violent and purposeless anarchy, full of pitiless struggle.' He smiled, cheerily. 'Natural selection may feel like progress, but it isn't. Evolution is random, it is not…going anywhere. The only law is competition, and killing, and struggle. The war of all against all. And we are no exception. Humanity is subject to the same laws of pointless competition as the animals, as the ants and the toads and the noble cockroach.'

The breeze shivered the oak trees behind them.

'And Angus Nairn?'

'People don't want to know this truth. Darwin has been around a hundred and fifty years and still people deny the ruthless truths he revealed. Even people who accept natural selection prefer to delude themselves that it is teleological, that it has a purpose, a direction, a journey to higher forms.' He tutted. 'But this is, of course, arrant nonsense. Yet no one wants to know. So our task is a thankless one. And I wonder if maybe Angus became disheartened by this. Maybe he just gave up, and went off to some beach somewhere. I wouldn't blame him.' A sad sigh. 'He was a brilliant geneticist, in a world that doesn't wish to hear the verities that are so richly revealed by genetics.' The old man exhaled again. 'Though there is a generous irony here, of course.'

'What's that?'

'Nairn was religious.'

'Sorry?'

'Yes. Bizarre. Despite his natural brilliance in genetics, he…had a profound faith, of sorts.' Fazackerly shrugged. 'I believe Nairn was brought up to be religious, a lay preacher father, so he acquired a great deal of rather arcane knowledge. Of course we used to have quite splendid arguments; but I'm not sure I would want his faith even if I could believe it. Angus Nairn saw no conflict between pitiless evolution and a rather…malevolent deity.'

Simon thought of his brother, momentarily. Condemned by a cruel god? The insight was fleeting, and troubling, and painfully irrelevant. He concentrated on the interview.

The old man had extracted a crimson silk handkerchief; he was delicately wiping some sweat from his brow. He spoke:

'Angus would talk about such subjects rather a lot. Towards the end. When we had…guests…some of our sponsors, they would have intense debate. The Bible and the…the Torah. Is that the word? I quite forget. The Jewish holy book.'

'The Talmud.'

'Yes. All rather astrological if you ask me. Runes and horoscopes! — the consolations of the foolish, like lottery tickets to the poor. But Angus did get very het up discussing the intricacies of his faith. Some strange doctrine called Serpent Seed, the Curse of Cain and so forth.'

'The what?'

'I don't know the recondite details. If you want to know — speak to Emma Winyard. Try her. She was very important to him. The last few weeks he was super-saturated in all this, and he would quote her. Write this down.' 'I don't understand…sorry…'

'I'm going to give you her name! She may be able to tell you more.'

Simon apologized, and poised a pen. Fazackerly spoke slowly, his aged face grey in the sunlight:

'Emma Winyard. King's College. Theology Department.'

'KC London?'

'Yes. I know he used to converse with her, towards the end. Perhaps she's important. And perhaps, quite possibly, it is nothing.'

The journalist made his notes. They were quiet for a few minutes. Then the old man said, with an air of distinguished sadness, 'The truth is…I rather miss him, Mister Quinn. I miss Angus. He made me laugh. So if you find him, do keep me informed. And now I must return to my packing. You have ants crawling up your trousers.'

It was true. A couple of ants were ascending his jeans. He brushed them off. Fazackerly was already walking swiftly away.

For a while Simon sat there. Then he got up and walked to the station and caught the train home, his mind full of images of ants. Fighting. Killing. The war between species, the war of all against all. As he emerged from his suburban stop his phone rang. It was DCI Bob Sanderson, talking excitedly.

'Money!'

'Sorry?'

'The monies! We have a lead.'

Sanderson sounded very animated, he was talking about Edith Tait's strange inheritance. The journalist was glad for the distraction; he paid close attention. Sanderson said:

'I got a hunch when you told me. About Charpentier. So I did some old-fashioned detecting. They all had money. The Windsor victim left eight hundred grand. The Primrose Hill victim more than a mill.'

Simon felt a need to play devil's advocate.

'But a lot of old people have money, Bob. A decent house in a nice part of Britain and that's half a million.'

'Yeah sure, however…' Sanderson drawled, merrily. 'Let's look a bit closer. Eh? Why didn't they spend it? Charpentier especially. She lived in that minging little croft in Foula, as far as we know, ever since she arrived in the UK. Yet she had a ton of dosh.'

'It is odd.'

'And she had the money when she emigrated.'

'In 1946?'

'Exactly, my old papaya. Exactly. In 1946. A bunch of French people, all of Basque origin. They fetch up in Britain just after the war, having lived in Occupied France, and they all have money and they all get killed nearly seven decades later.'