The Bone Clocks

ONCE THE THOUGHT gets into your head that a psycho mightbe hiding in that huddle of trees at the end of the field, or over there in that hedgerow, figures start appearing in the corners of your eyes. Like the Radio People you quarter-see instead of half-hear. I think about the timing of the murders; who’s to say it didn’t happen just as I was walking only a field or two away to the Kingsferry Bridge? S’pose it was that cyclist I met, driven mad by grief for his son? He didn’t look like a psycho, but who does, in real life? Or how about those boyfriends and girlfriends in the VW camper van? As we’re having lunch—Gwyn’s made me cheese and Branston sandwiches and gives me a banana ’cause she’s worked out my food situation—we spot a helicopter over where the bridge is, and on the one o’clock news Radio Kent’s saying that a forensic team’s arrived at the bungalow, and they’ve tracker dogs and everything there. The police still haven’t issued the names of the victims, but Mrs. Harty knows the local farmer’s wife and apparently the bungalow’s lived in at the weekends by a young woman called Heidi Cross. She studies in London during the week, and it looks like the dead woman’s her. There’s a rumor that Heidi Cross and her boyfriend were into “radical politics” so now Gary the student’s saying it was a political hit, possibly sponsored by the IRA or the CIA, if they were anti-American, or maybe MI5 if the couple were pro–coal miner.

I thought universities only let you in if you’re dead brainy, but I sort of want to believe Gary, too, ’cause it’d mean there wasn’t a random psycho hiding behind the haystacks, an idea I can’t quite shake.

We put in another couple of hours after lunch, and when we’ve finished we traipse back to the office, where Mrs. Harty changes our tokens into cash. I earned over fifteen pounds today. Back at the barn where we sleep, Gabriel Harty’s fitting a lock onto the inside of the barn door, just like Derby Debby wanted. Obviously our employer can’t have all his pickers deserting while the strawberries ripen and rot on the plants. Gwyn tells me that normally a bunch of pickers all walk into Leysdown for food shopping and a bevvy or two, but today it’s only the students with cars who’ve gone. I’ll save my money, and dinner can be a bowl of muesli, from the leftovers cupboard, and the last of the Ritz biscuits, plus Gwyn’s promised to give me a hot dog. Her and me then sit smoking in the warm shade of the crumbling wall on a grassy bank by the farm entrance. From where we’re sitting we can see Alan Wall hanging up washing on a line. His top’s bare and he’s all muscled and coppery and blond, and Gwyn fancies him, I reckon. He’s unflappable, only speaks when there’s something worth saying, and he’s not worried by a murderer in the undergrowth. Gwyn’s pretty laid-back about the murders, too: “If you’d just bludgeoned three people to death yesterday, would you go to an island that’s as flat as a pancake less than a mile away, where strangers stick out like a three-headed Adolf Hitler? I mean …”

Must admit, it’s a good argument. Drag by drag we share the last Benson & Hedges. I sort of apologize for being grumpy this morning.

“What,” Gwyn sort of teases, “my little sermon? Nah, you should’ve seen me when I left home.” She does a piss-take dozy-cow voice: “I don’t need yourhelp so you can just get lost, can’t you?” She stretches and lies back. “Godalmighty. I had not a clue. Not a clue.”

The supermarket van trundles off with the day’s strawberries.

I think Gwyn’s wondering whether to say nothing, a bit, or a lot …

“I was born in a valley above this village, Rhiwlas, near Bangor, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, like Ivor the Engine. I’m an only child, and my father owned a chicken farm. Still does, for all I know. Over a thousand birds, all in these little cages not much bigger than a shoebox that the animal-rights campaigners talk about. Egg to supermarket shelves in sixty-six days. Home was a cottage hidden behind the big chicken-house. My father inherited the house and land from his uncle, and built up the business over time. When God was ladling out charm, my father got a triple helping. He sponsored the Rhiwlas rugby team, and once a week he’d go to Bangor to sing in an all-male choir. Firm but fair employer. Donations to Plaid Cymru. You’d be hard put to find a man in all Gwynedd with a bad word to say about him.”

Gwyn’s eyes are shut. There’s a faint scar across her eyelid.