The Bone Clocks

Patience is the hunter’s ally. “Understood. Anyway, I wouldn’t want your boyfriend to misinterpret my motives.”

She pretends to fiddle with something under the counter. “Won’t your friends be waiting for you?”

Odds of four to one there’s no boyfriend. “I’ll be in town for ten days or so. See you around. Good night, Holly.”

“G’night,” and piss off, add her spooky blue eyes.

December 30

THE BAYING OF THE PARISIAN MOB drains into the drone of a snowplow, and my search through French orphanages for the Cyclops-eyed child ends with Immaculйe Constantin in my tiny room at the family Chetwynd-Pitt’s Swiss chalet telling me gravely, You haven’t lived until you’ve sipped Black Wine, Hugo. Then I’m waking up in the very same garret groinally attached to a mystifying dawn horn as big as a cruise missile. A bookshelf, a globe, a Turkish gown hanging from the door, a thick curtain. “This is where we put the scholarship boys,” Chetwynd-Pitt only half joked when I first stayed here. The old pipe lunks and clanks. Dope + Altitude = Screwy Dreams. I lie in my warm womb, thinking about Holly the barmaid. I find I’ve forgotten Mariвngela’s face, if not other areas of her anatomy, but Holly’s face I remember in photographic detail. I should have asked Gьnter for her surname. A little later, the bells of Sainte-Agnиs’s church chime eight times. There were bells in my dream. My mouth is as dry as lunar dust and I drink the glass of water on the bedside table, pleased by the sight of the wedge of francs by the lamp—my wi

I pee in my garret’s minuscule en suite; hold my face in a sinkful of icy water for the count of ten; open the curtains and slatted shutters to let in the retina-drilling white light; hide last night’s wi

A male voice states, “Hugo Lamb. Got to be.”

I know this voice. “And you are?”

“Richard Cheeseman, from Humber, you dolt.”

“Bugger me. Not literally. How’s your earlobe?”

“Fine fine fine, but listen, I’ve got serious news. I met—”

“Hang on, where are you? Not Switzerland?”

“Sheffield, at my sister’s, but shut up and listen, this call’s costing me a bollock a minute. I was speaking with Dale Gow last night, and he told me that Jo

I didn’t mishear. “ OurJo

“Dale Gow heard from Cottia Benboe, who saw it on the local news, News South-West. Suicide. He drove off a cliff, near Truro. Fifty yards from the road, through a fence, three-hundred-foot drop onto rocks. I mean … he wouldn’t have suffered. Apart from whatever it was that drove him to do it, of course, and the … final drop.”

I could weep. All that money. Through the kitchen window I watch the snowplow crawl by. A well-timed young priest follows, his cheeks pink and breath white. “That’s … I don’t know what to say, Cheeseman. Tragic. Unbelievable. Jo

“Same here. Really. The lastperson you’d expect …”

“Did he … Was he driving his Aston Martin?”

A pause. “Yeah, he was. How did you know?”

Be more careful. “I didn’t, but that last night in Cambridge, at the Buried Bishop, he was saying how much he loved that car. When’s the funeral?”

“This afternoon. I can’t go—Felix Finch has got me tickets for an opera and I could never get to Cornwall in time—but maybe it’s for the best. Jo

“Tredavoe. Did Penhaligon leave a note?”

“Dale Gow didn’t mention one. Why?”

“Just thought it might shed a little light.”

“More details will emerge at the inquest, I suppose.”

Inquest? Details? Sweet shit. “Let’s hope so.”

“Tell Fitz and the others, will you?”

“God, yes. And thanks for phoning, Cheeseman.”

“Sorry for putting a downer on your holiday, but I thought you’d prefer to know. Happy New Year in advance.”

TWO P.M. THE passengers from the cable car pass through the waiting room of the Chemeville station, chattering in most of the major European languages, but she’s not among them, so I direct my mind back to The Art of War. My mind has ideas of its own, however, and directs itself towards a Cornish graveyard where the skin-sack of toxic waste recently known as Jo

Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.

GONE THREE P.M. Holly the barmaid sees me, frowns, and slows: a promising start. I close The Art of War. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Skiers stream by, behind her and between us. She looks around. “Where are your highly amusing friends?”

“Chetwynd-Pitt, which rhymes with Angel’s Tit, I notice—”

“As well as ‘piece of shit’ and ‘sexist git,’ Inotice.”

“I’ll file that away. Chetwynd-Pitt’s hungover, and the other two passed through about an hour ago, but I slipped on my ring of invisibility, knowing that my chances of sharing your ski lift up to the top”—I twirl my index finger towards Palanche de la Cretta’s summit—“would be a big fat zero if they were here too. I was embarrassed by Chetwynd-Pitt last night. He was crass. But I’m not.”

Holly considers this and shrugs. “None of it matters.”

“It does to me. I was hoping to go skiing with you.”

“And that’s why you’ve been sitting here since …”

“Since eleven-thirty. Three and a half hours. But don’t feel obligated.”

“I don’t. I just think you’re a bit of a plonker, Hugo Lamb.”

So my name has sunk in. “We’re all of us different things at different times. A plonker now, something nobler at other times. Don’t you agree?”

“Right now I’d describe you as a borderline stalker.”

“Tell me to sod off and off I will duly sod.”