CHAPTER TWO

What did I say to this man I hadn't seen for almost a quarter of a century? A man who was more best friend or brother to me than uncle for the first twenty-one years of my life. A man who once loved me like a son, and who received my love, respect and admiration in return. A man who, the last time we talked, swore to end my life. Where did I begin?

           "You look old, John," I told him. It seemed a good place to start.

            "I am old," he snapped back.

            We sat out on the back deck by the pool, nursing cold bottles of MGD, night creatures serenading us from behind the black curtain of night. While my uncle John's eyes appraised the night sky, mine remained fixed on him. Never more than average height and build, he now seemed to have shrunken in on himself, his clothes at least a size too large. Once luxurious jet-black hair was now little more than faint white wisps trailed across the scalp, with bursts of cloud around and behind the ears. His flesh was pale, the texture of warm putty, and broken capillaries spread out from his nose as if he had been tattooed with a roadmap. He wore rimless spectacles, with no tint. The fingers that traced unconscious patterns in the moisture on the glass beer bottle, shook like unladen twigs on the branch of an autumn tree. We were both right: he looked old, and he was old.

            Despite his fragile appearance, I remained wary. I'd set the gun down in the kitchen when I fetched the beers, and had left it there when I came out on to the deck. For all I knew he had one on him, loaded and ready for action. The last time he spoke to me he'd told me I was a walking dead man. Almost twnty-five years had passed since then, but for all I knew he'd come to make good on that threat. It wouldn't be the first he'd carried through on, and I wouldn't be the first man whose final memory was that of my uncle's unforgiving grey eyes.

            "Are you hungry?" I asked him. "I can rustle up some eggs and bacon."

            "No." He shook his head. "I ate at some diner along the way. It was a long drive and I had to stop for a piss three times."

            "I heard old age could be a bastard."

            "You'll find out one day. Maybe."

            That single word carried more threat than an entire series of The Sopranos. I guessed we were all out of small talk.

            "How did you find me?" I asked him.

            He turned towards me, looked at me directly for the first time. "Did you think I wouldn't recognise you in those books of yours? Your style, your humour, your way of looking at the world."

            "It never occurred to me." And it hadn't. I thought I'd left the largest part of myself back in England the day I flew out of Heathrow in the winter of 1981. I thought I'd been very careful not to use even a single characteristic of anyone I'd known in what I'd come to think of as my 'previous life'. "How long have you known?" I asked him now.

            "What? That my nephew was Mark Bradshaw, best-selling novelist?" He snorted. "I read your most recent book when it was published three months ago. I'd not read any of your previous ones, but I bought all seven the following week and read them all. I knew right away, though. In my heart. The others just confirmed it in my head."

            "Bit of a step from reading a book you think I may have written, to turning up on my driveway," I pointed out.

            "I hired someone." He took a pull from the bottle and exhaled deeply. "He tracked you down through your publisher and agent."

            "Howard?" I leaned forward anxiously. Howard Fisher was my agent, and not in the habit of giving people my address, but I knew uncle John's favoured methods of persuasion could be effective. "You better not have hurt him."

            My uncle flashed an amused grin. "Wind your neck in, Tony. Mr Fisher is fine. I met with him personally, told him who I was and that I'd lost track of you down the years. I figured the fact that I knew your real name would be proof enough that I was a genuine family member. I also figured you hadn't told him that might be bad news."

            "And he just gave it up?"

            "No." Uncle John chuckled. "He told me the best he could do was call you and ask if it was all right to provide the information. I told him not to bother, and that as my visit was a surprise, he should leave it at that."

            "Then how..."

            "I waited until he was out of the office, then gave his secretary five-hundred dollars."

            "You wily old bastard."

            "You know me: like a dog with a bone when I want to be."

            I nodded. Tenacity and ruthless determination are an uncompromising combination. "So that leaves us with the most important question: why are you here, uncle John? Have to you come to kill me?"

            For the first time I saw a flicker of apprehension pass across his face. He glanced down at the wooden table, then back up to meet my gaze. The msile he gave this time carried no humour.

            "If that was the reason I'd just travelled six-thousand miles, you'd already be dead."

            I nodded. He was getting on, but he obviously still had his wits about him. "You must have mellowed down the years."

            "Not so's you'd notice. I can still be an aggressive fuck when I want to be."

            "I don't doubt that. The anger management classes didn't work out, then?"

            He gave me a sharp look. "Don't fucking push me, Tony. You and me still have business."

            "Okay. So tell me. Why did you come all the way out here?"

            Uncle John wiped a hand over his face, shook his head. "Your son needs you," he said, his voice softer now.

            I blinked. Had age addled his mind this much? I screwed up my eyes and gave a short laugh. "I think you're a little confused," I told him, shaking my head. "I don't have a son."

            "Yes you do," he said simply, nodding at me. Astonishingly, there were tears in his eyes. "Yes you do."