The Bone Clocks

I GO UPSTAIRS with scenarios flashing by at twenty-four frames a second: The brigadier’s died and a legal executor is asking, “ Whatvaluable stamps?”; Nurse Purvis is asked about the brigadier’s visitors; Kriebel points the finger at Marcus Anyder; CCTV footage gets reviewed; I’m identified; I conduct a taped interview with Sheila Young; I deny her accusations, but Kriebel appears from behind a one-way mirror—“It’s him.” Formal charges; bail denied, expulsion from Cambridge, four years for theft and fraud, two suspended; if it’s a quiet news day I’ll make the national papers—OLD RICHMONDIAN STEALS STROKE VICTIM’S FORTUNE; out in eighteen months for good behavior, with a criminal record. The only profession open to me will be wheel clamping.

In my garret, I wipe a clear bit on the misted-up window. Snowy roofs, Hфtel Le Sud, sheer peaks. No snow’s falling yet, but the granite sky is full of oaths. January 1.

A compass needle is turning. I feel it.

Pointing to prison? Or somewhere else?

Madam Constantin doesn’t choose people at random.

I hope. Hard rabbitty thumps from below: Quinn.

He comes soon, like a disappointed brontosaurus.

Detective Sheila Young isn’t a trap; she’s a catalyst.

Pack a bag, my instinct says. Be ready. Wait.

I obey, then find my place in The Magic Mountain.

THE CHALET OF Sin is astir. I hear Fitzsimmons on the first landing below: “I’ll have a quick shower …” The boiler wakes, the pipes growl, and the shower spatters; women are speaking an African language; earthy laughter; Chetwynd-Pitt booms, “Good morning, Oliver Quinn! Tell me that wasn’t what the doctor ordered!” One of the women—Shandy?—asks, “Rufus, honey, I call our agent, so he know we are okay?” Footsteps go down to the sunken lounge; in the kitchen, the radio leaks that song “One Night in Bangkok”; Fitzsimmons comes out of the shower; male muttering on the landing: “The scholarship boy’s still up in his holding pen … On the phone earlier … If he wants to sulk, let him sulk …” I’m half tempted to yell down, “I’m not bloody sulking, I’m reallyhappy that you all got your rocks off!” but why should I spend my energy on rectifying their assumption? Someone whistles; the kettle’s boiling; then I hear a half-falsetto half-croak half-shout: “You are shittingme!”

I give my full attention. A quiet few seconds … For the second time on this oddest of mornings I experience an inexplicable certitude that something’s about to happen. As if it’s scripted. For the second time, I obey my instinct, close The Magic Mountain, and stow it in my backpack. One of the singers is talking fast and low so I can’t make out what she’s saying, but it prompts a thud-thud-thudup the stairs to the landing, where Chetwynd-Pitt blurts out, “A thousand dollars! They want a thousand fucking dollars! Each!”

Drop, drop, drop, go the pennies. Or dollars. Like the best songs, you can’t see the next line coming, but once it’s sung, how else could it have gone? Fitzsimmons: “They’ve got to be fucking joking.”

Chetwynd-Pitt: “They’re very very not fucking joking.”

Quinn: “But they … they didn’t saythey were hookers!”

Chetwynd-Pitt: “They don’t even look like hookers.”

Fitzsimmons: “I don’t havea thousand dollars. Not here!”

Quinn: “Me neither, and if I did, why should I just hand it over?”

Tempting as it is to emerge from my room, stroll on down with a cheery “Would you Romeos like your eggs scrambled or fried?,” Shandy’s call to her “agent” is a klaxon with flashing lights blaring out the word pimp, pimp, pimp. Some would say it’s merely a fluke that I have a new pair of Timberland boots in my room, still in their box, but “fluke” is a lazy word.

Chetwynd-Pitt: “This is extortion. I say, fuck ’em.”

Fitzsimmons: “I agree. They’ve seen we have money, and they’re thinking, How do we get a slice of this?”

Quinn: “But, I mean, if we say no, I mean, won’t they—”

Chetwynd-Pitt: “Club us to death with tampons and lipsticks? No, we establish that piss off means piss off, that this is Europe, not Mombasa or whereverthefuck, and they’ll get the idea. Who’ll the Swiss cops side with? Us, or a trio of sub-Saharan rent-a-gashes?”