The Marks of Cain Read Free Page B

loss.’
    David dropped the phone and checked the clock: working out time differences. It was too late for him to call England and tell anyone the bizarre and amazing news; it was too late for him to ring his boss and tell him to go choke on his stupid job.
    Instead he went to the little table and picked up the map. He unfolded the soft, sadly faded paper and scrutinized the tiny blue asterisks. The stars had been firmly and neatly handwritten next to placenames. Striking placenames. Arizkun. Elizondo. Zugarramurdi . Why were these places marked out? What did this have to do with churches? Why did his grandfather even own this map?
    And how come his impoverished grandfather had two million dollars that he never touched?
    He needed to look for flights to Bilbao.

3
    In the crowded Arrivals lounge of Bilbao airport he opened his laptop and emailed Frank Antonescu. Attached to the email was a jpeg of himself holding a Basque newspaper, to prove his arrival in the country: to fulfil the one stipulation of his grandfather’s will. The entire escapade was surreal, and borderline foolish, and yet this was what his grandfather wanted. So David was happy to obey.
    Despite the troublesome time difference, the lawyer emailed back, at once – and with impressive efficiency: the money was being wired over.
    Clicking on a website, David checked his bank account.
    There. It was really there.
    Two point one million dollars.
    The feeling was unsettling, as well as gratifying.
    He was rich but in a garish and discomfiting way; he didn’t quite feel himself; he felt like someone had snuck into his house, and painted his furniture gold. Was he even allowed to sit down?
    Shutting his laptop, David yawned, and yawned again, and glanced through the wide glass terminal doors. It wasraining, very hard. And he was very tired. He could do the rest of his travelling tomorrow.
    Sheltering ineptly under his copy of El Correo David wheeled his luggage to the taxi rank; he was saved by a cheerful cab driver with a lurid Barcelona soccer shirt under a smart leather jacket, who smoked and chattered as they pulled out of the airport.
    The taxi slashed along the rainy motorway. On the left was the distant greyness of the Atlantic Ocean, on the right sudden green hills reached to the clouds; in the steep dips between the hills lurked steelworks and papermills, and factories with tall redbrick chimneys churning out ribbons of smoke the colour of faded white underwear.
    David buzzed down the window and let the rain spit onto his face. The cold rain was good – because it pierced the weary numbness; it roused him, and reminded him. He gazed at the Basque Country. He was here.
    He’d done some investigating during his thirty-hour flight around the world: some internet research into the Basque Country, and the Basques.
    He now knew that some people thought the Basques were descended from Neanderthals. He knew that they had surprisingly long earlobes. He knew they had a unique and complex language unrelated to any other language in the world; he knew that Arrauktaka meant ‘to hit someone with an oar’.
    He had also learned that the word ‘bizarre’ came from the Basque word for ‘bearded’; that the people were tall and burly compared to Spaniards; that the Basques were expert whalers; that they had special cherries, a passion for rugby, their own form of linen, a wavy solar symbol called a lauburu , and a tiny wild horse called a pottok.
    David buzzed the window shut. The research had been diverting enough, but it hadn’t been able to give him any of the information he really wanted. Who was José Garovillo?What was this reference to churches? What about Granddad’s map?
    The memory of Granddad was a discernible pain. David fought back the emotion; if he thought of his grandfather the thread of cognition could so easily lead to his parents. So he needed to do and not think ; and he had one more severance to make, one more definite change to enact.
    He