—
This time it was Henry, wiping hair from his eyes and walking purposefully to the kitchen. For him it was a lot less hilarious, but certainly no more urgent:
“Yeah, good one, Achilles, thanks for the memories—Matthew’s sure to blow another stack tonight.”
Would I ever!
Next he opened the fridge, and this time there were some manners. “Can you just move your head there, please, mate? Thanks.”
He clinked, reaching and lifting, throwing beer cans into a cooler—and soon he was on his way again, bound for Bernborough Park, and the Murderer, again, remained.
What was going on here?
Could no one intuit the killer?
No, it wasn’t going to be that easy, and now he was left, this time crushed on the couch, to contemplate the term of his natural invisibility. He was caught—somewhere between the relief of its mercy and the shame of its impotence—and he sat there, simple and still. Around him, a cyclone of loose cat hair whirled in the evening light. The goldfish resumed its war with the glass, and the pigeon hit full stride.
And the piano watched him from behind.
At Bernborough Park, when the last of them turned up, they shook hands, they laughed. They reveled. They drank in that adolescent way, all greedy-mouthed and wide open. They said “Oi!” and “Hey!” and “Where the hell have you been, you dopey deadshit?” They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn’t know it.
As soon as he’d stepped from his car, Henry’s first order of business was to make sure Clay was in the grandstand dressing sheds. Down there he’d meet today’s batch; there’d be six boys, all waiting, and what would happen was this:
They’d walk back out the tunnel.
Each of those six boys would then position himself around the 400-meter track.
Three at the 100-meter mark.
Two at the 200.
And one anywhere from the 300 to the finish.
Last, and most importantly, all six would do everything in their power to stop Clay running a single lap. Easier said than done.
As for the mob who watched, they guessed at the result. Each would call out a specific time, and that’s where Henry came in. Henry, very willingly, handled the bets. A stump of chalk in his hand, an old-school stopwatch round his neck, and he was set.
* * *
—
Today, several boys were at him immediately, down at the foot of the grandstand. To Henry, many of them weren’t even real—they were nicknames with boys attached. As for us, for all but two of them, we’ll see them here, we’ll leave them here, they’ll be fools like this forever. It’s kind of nice, when you think of it.
“Well, Henry?” asked Leper. You can only pity a guy with a nickname like that; there were scabs of various shapes, sizes, and colors all over him. Apparently he’d started doing stupid things on his bike when he turned eight, and never stopped.
Henry very nearly took pity on him, but opted instead for a smirk. “Well, what?”
“How tired is he?”
“Not very.”
“Has he run up Crapper’s stairwell yet?” This time it was Chugs. Charlie Drayton. “And up the hill to the graveyard?”
“Look, he’s good, all right, he’s in mint condition.” Henry rubbed his hands together, in warm anticipation. “We’ve got six of the best down there, too. Even Starkey.”
“Starkey! That bastard’s back, is he? That’s worth at least another thirty seconds, I reckon.”
“Oh, come on, Trout, Starkey’s all talk. Clay’ll run right past him.”