The Bone Clocks

“No, no, not a knife fight, nothing so Shawshank Redemption. It was a spark from a welding torch on my very last day as a prisoner in Yorkshire. The doctor says the patch can come off in a week.”

“Good.” The framed photo of Gabriel is on the floor. I pick it up, and my visitor remarks, with sinister levity, “That’s your son?”

“Yes. Gabriel Joseph. After Garcia Marquйz and Conrad.”

“May your son be blessed with friends as true as mine.”

He knows. He’s worked it out. He’s here for payback.

“Must be tough,” remarks Cheeseman. “You here, him in Spain.”

“It’s less than ideal,” I try to sound casual, “but Carmen has family in Madrid, so she’s not alone. She’d been told she couldn’t have children, you see, so for her, Gabriel was a minor miracle. Well, a major one. We were no longer an item by that point, but she was determined to go through with the pregnancy and”—I reposition Gabriel next to my sticky-tape dispenser—“he’s the fruit of her labor. Won’t you sit down? I could scare up a shot of brandy to celebrate …”

“What—to celebrate my four wasted years in prison?”

I can’t look at him and I can’t look away.

“You seem antsy, Crispin. I seem to be unnerving you.”

“Seem” x 2 = textual mumble squared, I think, and notice that Richard Cheeseman’s coat pocket is bulging and sagging. I can guess what heavy lethal object it may contain. He reads my thoughts. “Working out who put the cocaine in my suitcase, Crispin, and when, and even why—it didn’t take me long.”

Hot. Strange. My insides are being decanted out of me.

“I made up my mind not to confront my betrayer until I was out. After all, he was doing his damnedest to get me repatriated and released. Wasn’t he?”

I can’t trust my voice so I just nod, once.

“ No, Crispin! He fucking well wasn’tdoing his best to get me out! If he’d confessed, I’d have been out in days. He let me rot.”

Snow is falling again, I notice. The second hand on the clock lurches in tiny arcs. Nothing else moves. Nothing.

“As I lay in my cell in Bogotб, it wasn’t only New York I dreamt of. I also dreamt of what I’d do to him. To the slug-fuck who came to see me, to gloat, who cared, but not enough to change places. Never that. I planned how I’d drug him, bind him, and kill him with a screwdriver over forty days. No script was ever polished as lovingly. Then I realized I was being silly. Teenage. Why take all that risk? Why not just meet him in America, buy a gun, and blow the fucker away in some out-of-the-way locale?”

I wish Betty the secretary or Inigo Wilderhoff was still pottering around. “Your tormentor,” I try to keep my voice steady, “has been tortured by remorse.”

Cheeseman’s voice turns into barbed wire: “Tortured? Swanning around the globe? Fathering children? While I, I, was caged in Colombia with killers, drug addicts with HIV, and rusty razors. Which of these fates is torture?”

His hand goes to his coat pocket. A janitor walks down the corridor, whistling. I see him framed in the outer doorway of Betty’s reception. Yell for help!urges Hershey the Sodding Terrified. Or run for it. Or beg for forgiveness: “Please don’t orphan my children.” Or negotiate. Or offer to write out a full confession. Or—or—or—

—or let him take his revenge. “Your tormentor,” I begin, “wasn’t gloating, when he came to visit you. He despised his own cowardice, and still does. But this changes nothing. He wants to pay, Richard. He’s only a step away from personal bankruptcy, so if you want cash, he can’t help you. But was it money that you wanted?”

“Weird thing is,” he swivels his head, “now I’m here, I don’t know what to take.”