The Marks of Cain

23

The light was sickly. Simon got up and walked to the window, pulled the curtains. He was greeted by the relatively quiet traffic of mid-morning. Twisting the watch on his wrist, he checked the time. It was nearly 11 a.m.; after a night of fraught insomnia, he had finally and evidently slept.

The silence from downstairs told him that he had missed Suzie and his son. He must have slept through it all — as she made breakfast, got Conor dressed, then took him to nursery school, before heading off for her own shift at the hospital.

He felt the acid reflux of fear and guilt. Again. The same feelings he had all night, the same feelings he'd had all week. Maybe he would never sleep well again? Not without a drink. Not without many drinks. He was scared, and guilty. And very very bored. He no longer had a role. Following Fazackerly's murder the Telegraph editor had taken Simon off the story, because it was all getting too hairy. What if they come for you next, Simon? What if your articles are tipping off the killers?

Lonely at the window, the journalist stared as the vehicles blurred past. One car raced to the lights then halted with a squeal. Simon got the usual surge of parental anger: slow down, you bastard, I have a little son. And then again he felt the pang of guilt: who was really threatening his son? Really? Who was endangering his young life? Who had brought death and mayhem so close to the family home?

Him. The father. The ambitious careerist. Him.

Simon knew he was in peril. Right now he wanted a drink more than he had in years. He was risking his hard-won sobriety. But what was he meant to do? He didn't have the motivation to get to a NA meeting. Yet he was bored and guilty, and scared.

Stepping into the bathroom, he showered in very hot water, brushed his teeth, chucked on some clothes and returned to the bedroom, feeling very slightly better.

Maybe it wasn't his fault.

Of course it was his fault.

Maybe it wasn't all his fault.

Opening his laptop, going online, he looked yet again at the emails from Tomasky and Sanderson, discussing Fazackerly's death, the strange parade of events and aftermath.

A few moments after he had found the professor, parboiled in his own laboratory oven, the police had rushed in, alerted by Simon's own call. They had swiftly escorted the stammering journalist away, then they had debriefed him, calmed him, interviewed him, they had even donated him a session or two with trauma specialists in the following days.

But Simon was still troubled by the appalling scene in the GenoMap lab, and he had sought succour and solace by emailing and telephoning questions to the detectives. He found Tomasky the best sounding board: the cheerful Pole had a sincere Catholic faith which helped; he had a dark Slavic yet Londony humour which also assisted: salty asides about death, which 'was about as bad as a weekend in Katowice'.

Tomasky and Sanderson had tried to explain the 'logic' of Fazackerly's death to Simon, that killing him in the microwave was clever, and brutally efficient: silent and swift, leaving no gunshot wounds, no DNA evidence. The killers' only bad luck was that Fazackerly's powerful cellphone could get a signal inside a metal box.

And yet. It still seemed like a grotesque medieval torture to Simon — being boiled alive in a microwave. Your blood plasma literally boiling in your veins.

He shut down the emails with a heartfelt sigh. The thought of blood reminded him of his brother; the memory of his brother was perturbing and yet energizing. Right this minute, his brother was locked away. Simon was therefore the only Quinn with offspring and a future. He had a responsibility. To earn and work and pass on his name.

And now Simon felt a surge of returning pride, self-esteem — even anger.

To hell with this. He needed to shape up: Fazackerly's death wasn't his fault. So his articles may have pointed the killers in the direction of the professor; equally, they may not. Whatever the case: he, the journalist, was just doing his job, being a hack. Following the lead. His soul agonized for the danger to his family — but how else was he meant to feed them?

There was no other means: this was his career. But that still left the practical problem. How was he going to feed his family now? He was a freelancer, who lived off stories — but he'd been kicked off his best ever story. And now he had nothing else to do, nothing to write. No other commissions. What was he supposed to do today, tomorrow, next week? Go back to writing accounts of petty crime?

Idly, he Googled 'witch murders', just to see if there were any developments. Just in case.

The news this morning was subdued, compared to the furore that had greeted Fazackerly's murder last week: just one or two follow-up pieces. An American website was rehashing the entire chain of bizarre events for the delectation of its more prurient readers. Simon noted this American journalist had actually stolen some of Simon's lines, and shamelessly used Simon's quotes from Fazackerly.

Bastards.

He sipped water. And then he had an idea. Quite a fetching idea. There was nothing to stop him following the clues, chasing up leads, even if he actually wrote zero. He could still write, and research — if only for his own satisfaction. And even if he was barred from daily journalism on the story, at the end he could…do a book? Yes! If he had all the notes he could still write a book. And then he could make some real money, when it was all over. He could do a job and feed his wife and son and pay his debt to his conscience, and the bank, without annoying his editor, or the cops.

Simon flexed his fingers. Then he attacked the search engines.

The trick he deployed was one of his favourites when he was on a complex investigative story and he needed new leads: he would throw randomly associated phrases into the internet and online newsfeeds, juggling quote marks, seeing what came out.

For two hours he toyed with words. He tried various combinations of Scottish and Killing and Nairn, GenoMap and Fazackerly and Basque.

Nothing.

He tried some more.

Syndactyly, Witch, Cagot, Inheritance, Murder, Canaan…

Nothing.

He tried one more time, a whole host of words: Scoring, French, Nazi, Burning, Deformity, Torture, Genetic, Homicide, Gascony, Bequest…

And…There! Yes. He'd lucked out: two possibly related news items. Two.

The first was a murder in Quebec. A Canadian news website gave a brief resume. A very old woman had been killed three weeks ago in her house just outside Montreal. The woman had been shot, for no apparent reason. It was the very last line of the report that really made him pay attention: the woman was apparently Basque, and as a young girl she had been interned in a Nazi concentration camp. In Gurs. The French Basque Country. The murder was a total mystery, as nothing had been stolen, despite the victim's wealth.

This had to be linked. Had to. Even if it wasn't, it needed more investigating. He wrote down the details on his pad, then turned to the next news item. The article had been carried by a couple of newsfeeds a few weeks ago.

The headline was: 'Bizarre Bequest Leads to Million Dollar Basque Mystery'

A thirty-something man called David Martinez was staring out of a photo: he was holding a map. Martinez had an awkward grin in the photo, as he brandished the map, a kind of uncomfortable smile. The article said the map showed places in the Basque Country. Moreover it said the young man's grandfather had died and left him two million dollars — and according to the newspaper this had come as a complete surprise.

Simon scanned the article, feeling quite alive with excitement. He didn't want a drink any more. He wanted to know what this was about: a link to the Basques, a mysterious amount of money, a very old man — thousands of miles away — now dead.

The article gave him almost everything: it even explained that David Martinez had been a lawyer in London prior to his inheriting this mysterious sum.

It took two minutes on the net to find out the 'well known law company' where David Martinez had worked: there were lists of lawyers of every company.

Walking to the window, Simon called Martinez's firm on his mobile. A clipped voice requested his name and credentials, he handed them over: Simon Quinn from the Daily Telegraph.

He was batted around the system for a few moments, put on hold, put through to HR, put back on hold…but then he reached a superlatively snooty man, apparently David Martinez's boss, Roland De Villiers, who was more than keen to hand out Martinez's mobile number. The boss actually added, for good measure, 'I do hope he's in trouble.'

The call clicked off, abruptly.

Simon looked at his notepad, resting on the windowsill. It was a British number that the lawyer had airily handed over. He keyed the numbers, but the ensuing ringtone was long bleeps — indicating that this guy Martinez was abroad — in Spain maybe?

Then a hesitant voice came down the satellite.

'Yes…Who is this?'