The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

  “Oh. Aoife Brubeck. She’s six. Only six!”

  “Okay, okay. And what’s Aoife wearing?”

  “T-shirt with a zebra on it. Leggings. Sandals.”

  “Okay, rapid response is the name of the game, so I’ll call pier security, and ask for the duty guys to watch out for your daughter. You write your number here.” She hands me a pen and a name-card and I scribble my number down. “Dwight, you take Ed back down the pier, combing the crowds. I’ll stay here. If you don’t find her on the pier, go back to the Maritime Hotel and we’ll have another confab. Ed, if Aoife shows up here, I’ll call you. Now go. Go go go go!”

  Back outside, my phone goes: Holly, asking, “Is she there?”

  My unwillingness to answer gives it away: “No.”

  “All right. Sharon’s texting all the wedding guests to search the hotel. Head back here. I’ll be in the lobby with Brendan.”

  “Okay: I’ll be right ba—” But she’s ended the call.

  Fairground music strobes from the funfair. Might Aoife be there? “They don’t let kids under ten past the turnstyles without an adult’s with them.” Dwight Silverwind’s still wearing his gem-encrusted waistcoat. “C’mon, let’s sweep the pier. Miss Nichols in there”—he nods at his sanctum—“she’ll hold the fort. She’s a traffic warden.”

  “What about your”—I gesture at the booth—“you’re working.”

  “Your daughter sought me out for a reason this morning, and I believe this is it.” We walk back down the pier, checking every face, even in the arcade. No good. Where the pier ends, or begins, I manage to thank Dwight Silverwind for his help, but he says, “No, no; I sense I’m scripted to stay with you until the end.”

  I ask him, “What script?” but now we’re crossing the road and entering the coolness of the Maritime Hotel, where all I have to show for my mad rush down the pier is this wizened druid in fancy dress, who doesn’t even look that weird in this fantasy crowd. Behind the concierge’s desk an operations center’s been set up. A hassled manager, with a phone in the crook of his shoulder, is surrounded by Sykeses and Webbers who all look up at the shite father who caused this unraveling nightmare: Sharon and Peter, Ruth and Brendan, Dave and Kath, even Pauline and Austin. “She’s not on the pier,” I report, redundantly.

  Ruth tells me, “Amanda’s up in your room, in case she makes her way back there.”

  Pauline says, “Don’t worry now, she’ll show up any minute,” and Austin nods at her side, telling me that Lee’s taken his friends to the beach in case she took it into her head to go for a paddle. Dave and Kath look like they’ve gone through an age-accelerator and Holly scarcely notices I’m back.

  The manager tells her, “Would you speak with the officer, Mrs. Brubeck?”

  Holly takes the phone. “Hello … Yes. My daughter … Yes—yes, I know it’s been less than an hour, but she’s only six, and I want an all-service emergency call to go out now … Then make an exception, Officer!… No, you listen: My partner’s a journalist at a national newspaper, and if Aoife’s not found safe and sound, you are going to regret very, very, very badly if you don’t put that 108 out now … Thank you. Six years old … Dark hair, shoulder length … A zebra T-shirt … No, not stripes, a T-shirt with a zebra on it … Pink trousers. Sandals … I don’t know, wait a moment.” Holly looks at me, her face ashen. “Was her scrunchie gone from the room?”

  I look dumbly. Her what?

  “The silver spangly thing she ties her hair back with?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. But before Holly can respond, her head lolls back at a weird angle and her face begins to shut down. What’s happening now? Once I saw a diabetic colleague go into what he called a hypo and this looks a lot like that. Sharon says, “Grab her!” and I lurch forwards, but Brendan and Kath have Holly and stop her falling.

  The manager’s saying, “Through here, bring her through here,” and Holly is half dragged, half supported into a back office.

  Her breathing is now ferocious in-out-in-out and Kath, who took a nursing course in Cork years ago, tells everyone, “Space! Back back back!” as she and Brendan lower her onto a hastily cleared sofa. “Slow your breathing, darling,” Kath tells her daughter. “Nice, slow breaths for me now …” I ought to be next to her but there are too many Sykeses in the way and the office is tiny, and, anyway, whose fault is all of this? I’m close enough to see Holly’s eyes, though, and the pupils shrinking away to almost nothing. Pauline Webber says, “Why’re her eyes doing that?”—and Peter’s shoulder gets in the way—and Holly’s face spasms—and Dave says, “Kath, shouldn’t we call for a doctor?”—and Holly’s face shuts down like she’s lost consciousness altogether—and Brendan asks, “Is it some sort of attack, Mam?”—and Kath says, “Her pulse is going fierce fast now”—and the manager says, “I’m calling an ambulance”—but then Holly’s lips and jaws begin to flex and she speaks the word “Ten …” blurrily, like a person profoundly deaf from birth, but huskier and tortuously slow, like a recording at the wrong speed, enunciating the syllable in drawn-out slow motion.

  Kath looks at Dave and Dave shrugs: “Ten what, Holly?”

  “She’s saying something else, Kath,” says Ruth.

  Holly forms a second: “Fiffffff …”

  Peter Webber whispers, “Is that English?”

  “Holly darling,” says Dave, “what’re you telling us?”

  Holly’s shaking slightly, so her voice does too: “Tee-ee-ee-een …”

  I feel I ought to take charge, somehow. I mean, I am her partner, but I’ve never seen her—or anyone—like this.

  Peter puts it together: “Ten-fifteen?”

  Dave asks his daughter, “Love, what’s happening at ten-fifteen?”

  “It won’t mean anything,” says Brendan. “She’s having an attack of some sort.” The pendant with Jacko’s last labyrinth on it slides off the edge of the sofa and swings there. Then Holly touches her head and winces with pain but her eyes are back to normal, and she blinks up at the array of faces frowning down. “Oh, f’Chrissakes. Don’t tell me I fainted?”

  Nobody’s quite sure what to say at first.

  “Sort of,” says Sharon. “Don’t sit up.”

  “Do you remember what you said?” asks Kath.

  “No, and who cares, when Aoife—Yeah. Numbers.”

  “A time, Hol,” says Sharon. “You said, ‘Ten-fifteen.’ ”

  “I’m feeling better. What happens at ten-fifteen?”

  “If you don’t know,” says Brendan, “how can we?”

  “None of this is helping Aoife. Did anyone finish my call with the police?”

  “For all we knew,” says Kath, “you were having a cardiac arrest.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, Mam, thanks. Where’s the manager?”

  “Here,” says the unfortunate guy.

  “Get me the police station, please. They’ll drag their heels on the 108 if I don’t fire a rocket up them.” Holly stands and steps towards the door and the rest of us shuffle back out. I reverse around behind the reception desk to make space—and a voice speaks: “Edmund.”

  I find Dwight Silverwind, whom I’d forgotten about. “It’s Ed.”

  “That was a message. From the Script.”

  “A what?”

  “A message.”

  “What was?”

  “Ten-fifteen. It’s a sign, a glimpse. It wasn’t from Holly.”

  “Well, it certainly looked as if she said it.”

  “Ed, is Holly at all psychic?”

  I can’t hide my irritation. “No, she—” The Radio People. “Well, when she was younger, stuff happened, and she … A bit, yeah.”

  Even more lines appear on Dwight Silverwind’s oak-grained, drooping face. “I won’t deny that I’m as much a ‘fortune discusser’ as a ‘fortune-teller.’ People need to voice their fears and hopes in confidence, and I provide that service. But occasionally I do meet the real thing—and when I do, I know it. Holly’s ‘ten-fi
fteen.’ It means something.”

  His Gandalfy face, my headache, the spinning pier, Eilísh … Any car could blow up at any time … The thought of Aoife being lost and scared and her mouth taped up—stop it stop it stop it …

  “Think, Ed. Those numbers, they’re not random.”

  “Maybe they’re not. But I—I’m crap at codes.”

  “No, no—the Script’s not some complex formula. As often as not it’s just staring you in the face, so close you can’t see it.”

  I need to look for Aoife, not have a discussion on metaphysics. “Look, I—I …” Dwight Silverwind is standing by the pigeonholes for the room keys. Room keys, these days, are a bit of an analog throwback, as most British or American hotels—not Iraqi—use rewritable plastic key cards with magnetic strips. Each pigeonhole is numbered with an engraved brass plaque that corresponds to the number on the ring of the key it houses. And six inches to the left of Dwight Silverwind’s head is a pigeonhole labeled 1015. 1015. The key is there.

  It’s a coincidence—don’t start “seeing signs” now.

  Dwight Silverwind follows my faintly appalled gaze.

  How improbable must a coincidence be before it’s a sign?

  “Cute,” he mutters. “Sure as heck know what I’d do next.”

  The receptionist is turned away. Holly’s waiting by the phone. The others are miserable, flapping, pale. One of Sharon’s friends appears and says, “No sign of her yet, but everyone’s looking,” and Austin Webber’s talking into his mobile, saying, “Lee? Any sign of her?”

  I take the key to 1015; my feet get me to the lift.

  It’s waiting and vacant. I get in and press 10.

  The doors close. Dwight Silverwind’s still here.

  The lift goes up to the tenth floor, no interruptions.

  Silverwind and I step out into a tomblike silence I didn’t expect in a busy hotel in April. Sunlight slants through dust. A sign says ROOMS 1000–1030 CLOSED FOR ELECTRICAL REWIRING UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE. I walk to 1015, put the key into the lock, turn it, and go in. Silverwind stays outside and, ignoring the unlucky thought that says if Aoife isn’t here I’ll never see her again, I walk into the musty room and say, “Aoife?”

  There’s no reply. Signs aren’t real. You’ve lost her.

  Then the silence is ruffled. The coverlet moves. She’s curled up on the bed, asleep in her clothes. “Aoife.”

  She wakes up, puzzled, sees me, and smiles.

  These seconds burn themselves into my memory.

  Relief this intense isn’t relief anymore, it’s joy.

  “Aoife, poppet, you’ve given us all quite a fright.”

  We’re hugging each other tight. “I’m sorry, Daddy, but after you fell asleep I still wasn’t sleepy so I thought I’d go and find Granddad Dave for a game of Connect 4, so I went up some stairs, but then I—I got a bit lost. Then I heard someone coming, or I thought I did, and I was afraid I’d be in trouble so I hid in here but then the door wouldn’t open. So I cried a bit, and I tried the phone but it didn’t work, so then I slept. How much trouble am I in, Daddy? You can stop my pocket money.”

  “It’s okay, poppet, but let’s find Mum and the others.”

  There’s no sign of Dwight Silverwind outside. Questions about how Holly could possibly, possibly have known will have to wait until later. They don’t matter much. They don’t matter at all.

  • • •

  THE NOISE OF the explosion died away, but half a dozen car alarms blasted out various pitches and patterns. I remembered being told that running outside wasn’t clever in case gunmen were watching the site to pick off survivors and rescue workers. I just lay there shaking for a bit, I didn’t know how long, until I got up and went back down to the lobby, my boots crunching on glass. Mr. Khufaji was crouched over the body of Tariq, the armed doorman, trying to curse him back to life. Probably I was the last person Tariq ever spoke to. Big Mac and some journalists were venturing out of the bar, nervous about a follow-up raid—often Bomber Number One clears the obstacles, while Bomber Number Two goes in and finishes off the tenderized targets.

  The Safir was spared a double attack, however, and time lurched by until midnight. A paramilitary unit with an English-speaking “Detective Zerjawi” arrived sooner than usual because of the foreigners involved, and a torchlit survey of the hotel forecourt was carried out, with a shell-shocked Mr. Khufaji. I didn’t go. Big Mac said several cars out front had been blown to smithereens and he’d seen a few body parts. Detective Zerjawi theorized that one of the security guys had killed the other—there was only one body—and let the car bomber through. The bomber had planned on driving through the glass porch and into the lobby to detonate the explosives there, hoping to bring down the building. This plan had been frustrated by an obstacle in the car park—“Who knows?”—causing the bomb to go off outside. God had been good to us, Detective Zerjawi explained in the bar, so now he, too, would be good to us: For only eight hundred dollars, he would spare three of his very best officers to stand guard in the shot-out lobby. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to guarantee our safety until the morning. Terrorists would know how vulnerable we were.

  After organizing a whip-round, some of us headed to our laptops to write up the story, others helped Mr. Khufaji with the clean-up, and a few went to bed and slept the sleep of the lucky-to-be-alive. I was too wired for any of the above, and went up onto the roof, and put a call through to Olive in New York. Her PA took the message: The Safir in Baghdad had been hit by a car bomb, but no journalists had been killed. I also asked the PA to get the message to Holly in London. Then I just sat there, listening to the bursts of gunfire, the drone of engines and generators, shouts, barks, brakes, music, and more gunfire: a Baghdad symphony. The stars were feeble for a browned-out city and the moon looked like it had liver disease. Big Mac and Vincent Agrippa joined me to make their satphone calls. Vincent’s wasn’t working, so I lent him mine. Big Mac gave us a cigar to celebrate not being dead and Vincent produced a bottle of fine wine from God knew where. Under the influence of Cuban leaf and Loire Valley grapes, I confided how I’d have been dead if it hadn’t been for a cat. Vincent, still a good Catholic, told me the cat was an agent of God. “Dunno what the cat was,” Big Mac remarked, “but you, Brubeck, are one lucky sonofa.”

  Then I texted Nasser to say I was okay.

  The message failed to arrive.

  I texted Aziz to tell Nasser I was okay.

  That message failed to arrive, too.

  I texted Big Mac to check the network was working.

  It was. Then a terrible possibility hit me.

  PROBABLY THE WORST hour of Holly’s and my joint parenthood is already morphing into a multiuser anecdote, sprouting apocrypha and even one or two comic interludes. I told the jubilant crowd in the lobby I’d just had the thought that maybe Aoife had gone up two flights of stairs instead of one in search of her grandparents’ room so I’d gone to check, and found a chambermaid who’d let me into all the rooms. The third one along, my shot in the dark had hit its mark. Luckily everyone was too relieved to examine my story closely, though Austin Webber huffed and puffed about Health and Safety and how doors that locked children in were a liability. Pauline Webber declared, “Wasn’t it lucky you thought of that? Poor Aoife could’ve been trapped for days! You don’t want to think about it!” and I agreed. Dead lucky. I didn’t say what room number I’d found Aoife in: It all sounded too X-Files, and would’ve eclipsed Sharon and Peter’s wedding. Until, that is, twenty minutes ago, when, on the balcony of the Maritime Hotel, looking down on the nighttime pier, I told Holly the full version. As usual, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “I’ll take a quick shower,” she said.

  Aoife is tucked up in bed with Snowy, the Arctic fox.

  A fleet of well-tuned motorbikes passes below.

  WE’VE BEEN TALKING for ages. Which is a pleasant novelty. Holly’s lying next to me now, with her head on my shoulder and
her thigh over my torso. We haven’t had sex, but still, there’s an intimacy I’d almost forgotten. “It was different from the glimpses I used to get,” Holly’s explaining, “y’know, the glimpses of stuff that hadn’t happened yet. The precognition.”

  “Was it more like the Radio People, when you were little?”

  Long pause. “Today it was as if I was the radio.”

  “Like you were channeling someone else?”

  “It’s hard to describe. It’s disturbing. Blanking out like that. Being in your body, but not being in your body. So embarrassing, too, coming back to myself with everyone standing round me like a—a Victorian deathbed scene. Christ only knows what the Webbers thought.”

  I’ve always put inverted commas around Holly’s “psychic stuff” but today this same psychic stuff won us our daughter back. My agnosticism’s badly shaken. I kiss her head. “Write about it, one day, darling. It’s … fascinating.”

  “As if anyone’d be interested in my bonkers ramblings.”

  “You’re wrong. People ache to believe there’s more than …”

  Screams from the funfair on the pier travel over the calm sea and through the slightly open window.

  “Hol,” I realize I’m going to say it all, “Nasser in Baghdad, my minder, and Aziz Al-Karbalai, my photographer. They were killed in the car bomb at the Safir last week. They’re dead because of me.”

  Holly rolls off me and sits up. “What are you talking about?”

  HOLLY CLASPS HER knees to her chest. “You should’ve told me.”

  I dab my eyes on the sheet. “Sharon’s wedding bash wasn’t the right time or place. Was it?”

  “They were your colleagues. Your friends. S’pose Gwyn died, and I clammed up for days before telling you. Was there a funeral?”

  “Yeah, for … the remains of them. But it was too dangerous for me to go.” Drunken laughter lopes down the corridor outside our room. I wait for it to pass. “It was too dark to see much at night, but at dawn, when the sun came up, there were just … twisted pieces of the bomber’s car, and of Nasser’s Corolla … Mr. Khufaji keeps a—a—a few topiary shrubs in pots up front, y’know, bushes clipped into shapes. A token gesture of more civilized days. Between two of those pots, there was a—a—a shin, with a foot attached and a—a canvas shoe. God knows, I saw worse in Rwanda, and your average grunt in Iraq sees worse twenty times a day. But when I recognized the shoe—it was Aziz’s—I puked myself inside out.” Get a grip. “Earlier, Nasser’d recorded interviews with patients from a clinic outside Fallujah. The next day, this is just one week ago, he was going to come over and transcribe them. He gave me the Dictaphone for safekeeping. We said good night. I went into the hotel. Nasser’s ignition was knackered, so Aziz probably got out to push-start it, or hook up a jump-lead, more likely. The bomber was aiming at the lobby, maybe hoping to bring down the building, I dunno, maybe it would’ve worked, it was a sizable blast, but anyway the car slammed into Nasser’s and …” Get a grip. “God, I’ve got tears coming out of my nose now. Is that even anatomically possible? So, yeah—Nasser’s daughters don’t have a daddy now because Nasser dropped me off late, at car-bombing time, at a Westerners’ hotel.”