The Marks of Cain. Tom Knox
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Название: The Marks of Cain
Автор: Tom Knox
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780007353187
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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.’
‘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 СКАЧАТЬ