Tom Knox: The Marks of Cain

Simon Quinn was listening to a young man describe how he'd sliced off his own thumb.

'And that,' said the man, 'was the beginning of the end. I mean, cutting off your thumb, with a knife, that's not nothing, is it? That's serious shit. Cutting your own thumb off. Fucked my bowling.'

The urge to laugh was almost irrepressible; Simon repressed it. The worst thing you could do at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting was laugh at someone's terrible story. Just not done. People came here to share, to fess up, to achieve some catharsis by submitting their darkest fears and shames: and thereby to heal.

The young man finished his story: 'So that's when it, like, kicked in. I realized I had to do something, about the drugs and the pop. Thank you.'

The room was silent for a moment. A middle-aged woman said a breathy thank you, Jonny, and everyone else murmured: thank you, Jonny.

They were nearly done. Six people had shared; pamphlets and keyrings had been distributed. This was a new group for Simon, and he liked it. Usually he went to evening NA meetings nearer his flat and his wife and son in Finchley Road, the London suburbs. But today he'd had to come into Hampstead for business and en route he'd decided to catch a new meeting, try somewhere fresh; he was bored of the boozers at his usual meets, with their stories of guzzling lighter fuel. And so he'd rung the NA hotline and found this meeting he'd never been to before, and it turned out it was a regular lunchtime job — with interesting people who had good stories.

The pause was prolonged. Perhaps he should share his own story now? Give a little change?

He decided to tell the very first story. The big one.

'Hello, my name's Simon and I'm an addict.'

'Hello, Simon…'

'Hi, Simon.'

He leaned forward — and began:

'I was a drunk…for at least ten years. And I wasn't just an alcoholic, I was…a polydrug abuser, as they say. I did absolutely everything. But I don't want to talk about that. I want to…explain how it started.'

The leader of the group, a fifty-something man with soft blue eyes, nodded gently.

'Whatever you want. Please go on.'

'Thank you. Well. OK. I…grew up not far from here, in Belsize Park. My parents were pretty affluent — my father's an architect, my mother was a lecturer. My background is Irish but…I went to private school in Sussex. Hence the stupidly middle-class English accent.'

The leader offered a polite smile. Listening attentively.

'And…I had an older brother. We were rather a happy family…At first…Then at eighteen I went off to university and while I was there I got this frantic phone call from my mother. She said, your brother Tim has just lost it. I asked her what she meant and she said, he's just lost it. And it was true. He'd suddenly come home from university — and he'd started talking absolutely mad stuff, talking equations and scientific formulas…and the maddest thing of all is that he was doing it in German.'

He gazed around the faces, gathered in this basement room. Then continued:

'So I shot home and it turned out my mother was right. Tim had gone mad. Genuinely cracked. He was doing a lot of skunk with his chums at uni — maybe that was a catalyst — but I think he was schizophrenic anyway. Because that's when schizophrenia usually kicks in, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. I didn't know that then of course.'

The middle-aged woman was sipping from a plastic cup of tea.

'Tim was a science student. Seriously bright — much brighter than me. I can barely say bonjour but he could speak four languages. As I say, he was doing a physics PhD, at Oxford, but he'd come home suddenly…without warning — and he was ranting, quoting scientific formulas in German. Doing it all night, walking up and down the landing. Das Helium und das Hydrogen blah blah blah. All through the night.

'My parents realized my brother had a pretty serious problem — and they took him to a doctor, and they prescribed Tim the usual drugs. The wretched little pills. Antipsychotics. And they worked for a while…But one night when I was home for Christmas I heard this muttering noise and…and it was this voice. Again. Yes. Das Helium und das Hydrogen. And I lay there wondering what to do. But then I heard this terrible scream and I rushed from my bedroom and my brother was in…' He closed and opened his eyes. 'My brother was there in my mother's bedroom and they were alone because my father was away…and…and my brother was attacking her, hacking at my mother, with a machete. A big knife. A machete. I don't know precisely what it was. But he was chopping away at her, our mother, so I jumped him and I held him down and there was blood everywhere, just everywhere — actually sprayed up the walls. I very nearly throttled him. Almost killed my own brother.'

Simon drew breath.

'The police came and they took him away and…my mother went to hospital and they stitched her up, but she lost the use of some fingers, some nerves were severed. But that was all, really, which was incredibly lucky. She could have died — but she was alright. And then we had this terrible dilemma as a family — should we press charges? My father and I said "Yes", but my mother said "No". She loved Tim more than the rest of us. She thought he could be treated. So we agreed with her, stupidly, crazily, we agreed. Then Tim came home and he seemed OK for a while, on the drugs, but then one night I heard it: Das Helium und das Hydrogen…'

Simon could feel the sweat on his forehead; he hurried on with his story.

'Tim was muttering, again, in his room. And of course that was that. We called the police — and they came straight round. Then they put Tim in an asylum. And that's where he is now. Locked and bolted and shut in his box. He's been there ever since. He'll be there the rest of his life.'

As his conclusion approached, he experienced the usual relief. 'So that's when I started drinking — to forget, you know. Then sulphates and then pretty much everything…But I finally stopped the boozing six years ago and yes I did my course of NA antibiotics, my sixty meetings in sixty days! And I've been clean ever since.

'And I now have a wife and a son and I dearly love them. Miracles do happen. They really do. Of course I still don't know why my brother did what he did and what that means but…I look at it this way: maybe I haven't got his genes, maybe my boy will be alright. Who knows. One day at a time. And that's my story. And thanks very much for listening. Thank you.'

A murmur of thank yous filled the warm fuggy space, like the responses of a congregation. The ensuing silence was a coda; the hour was nearly up. Everyone stood and hugged, and said the Serenity Prayer. And then the meeting was finished, and the addicts filed out, climbing up the creaky wooden stairs, out into the graveyard of Hampstead Church.

His mobile rang. Standing at the church gates, he clicked.

'Quinn! It's me.'

The phone screen said Withheld, but Simon recognized the voice immediately.

It was Bob Sanderson. His colleague, his source, his man: a Detective Chief Inspector — at New Scotland Yard.

Simon said a bright Hi. He was always pleased to hear from Bob Sanderson, because the policeman regularly fed the journalist good stories: gossip on high profile robberies, scuttlebutt on alarming homicides. In return for the information, he made sure that DCI Sanderson was seen, in the resultant articles, in a flattering light: a smart copper who was solving crimes, a rising star in the Met. It was a nice arrangement.

'Good to hear your voice, DCI. I'm a bit broke.'