A Sticky End (2 page)

“Mitch?” He put his teacup down and stood up, brushing some creases from his trousers. I thought he was going to ask me to leave. “Would you mind awfully,” he said, “if we went to bed? I think I might start crying, and I would feel a lot better if I was in your arms.”

It wasn't long before we were lying in his bed—his and Belinda's bed, a large, comfortable piece of furniture with a handsome Turkish rug thrown over it. The curtains in the bedroom were closed, shutting out the light and sounds of the day. We had undressed to our shirts and underpants. Morgan lay on his side, and I lay behind him, holding him the way I'd held him so many times before under happier, hornier circumstances. Of course he felt my hard cock pressing against his ass, and he even backed up against it,
wriggling those firm, rubber buttocks the way he always did—but we did these things without thinking. Perhaps, later, we would fuck. But right now, he had to talk, and I had to listen.

“I found him in the bathroom,” he said, and let out a great sigh; I felt his rib cage rise and fall, and his heart pound. “He had cut his wrists. There was blood everywhere—all over the bath, the sink, up the walls. It must have taken him a long time to die.” His voice broke again, and I held him tight, waiting for the crisis to subside, gently kissing his neck.

“Oh Mitch, I can't bear it. Everything is wrong. What am I going to tell…” He couldn't go on, but I knew what he was going to say.

What am I going to tell Belinda?

“It's okay, Morgan. There's nothing that we can't sort out together. You and me. The old team. Come on. Tell me everything.”

“I suppose I must.”

“I think you'd better.”

He took a deep breath, and began.

“The door was locked. I'd gone to bed, oh, hours before. Bartlett was staying for the weekend—he's an important business associate, and he's become a good friend. Of both of us,” he added, hurriedly. “Belinda's gone to stay with his wife, Vivie. They've been awfully good to us. They don't have children of their own, and I think they've rather taken a shine to Margaret and Teddy… Oh God…” He was weeping now, as silently as he could, ashamed of his tears, but I could feel the shaking of his body. I held on tight, soothing him, kissing him.

“I woke up at about three o'clock, and he… I realized something was wrong. I got up. The bathroom door was locked, and the light was on inside. I knocked, I called him, but there was no reply. I thought at first that he might have
fallen asleep in there—like we used to do at Cambridge sometimes, remember? When we'd had too much to drink?”

“I remember.”

“But I kept knocking and calling, then banging on the door, shouting out—and still there was nothing. And so I… I broke a pane of glass in the door and unlocked it and… Oh God, Mitch, it was horrible. He was lying on the floor, half propped up against the side of the bath. There was an open razor lying beside him. The blood… God, there was so much blood. And his eyes…”

“I know. I know. It's dreadful when you're not used to it.” I've seen many dead people, but I will never really become accustomed to that eerie stare.

“I tried to do something—to save him. But there was nothing I could do. He was…gone.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“What? Of course I touched the body. I thought I might be able to…to help him.”

I wanted to say “You should have left him alone”—but I didn't think that was what Morgan needed to hear at that moment. “So what did you do?”

“I called the police. They were very good, I must say. They came round right away.”

“And what did they say?”

“Well, it was pretty obvious, I suppose. Poor Frank had committed suicide. It's awful, Mitch. It's so awful. How am I going to tell his wife?”

I thought about the scene that presented itself to the police officers who arrived on the scene—a dead man in the bathroom, another man in his pajamas, presumably covered in the dead man's blood. They would not be quite as eager to write it off as suicide as Morgan might believe.

“Are they coming back?”

“Yes. They said that someone would be here later this morning to ask a few routine questions.”

“And the bathroom?”

“They put a padlock on it.”

“What about the body?”

“They took him away on a stretcher. He was still bleeding, Mitch. Oh God.” That explained the stain in the hallway.

“What else did they take?”

“Stuff from the bathroom, from the guest room. Stuff he'd brought with him. I don't know. I wasn't really paying much attention. They were looking for a note, I suppose.”

“Did they find one?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“So—this Bartlett. What's the story? He turns up at your house to discuss business, locks himself in the bathroom, and slashes his wrists. Why?”

“I… I don't…”

“Who was he, Boy? What's this all about?”

His breathing became heavy again, and he whimpered. I felt powerless. I wanted to make things better for him, to make the pain go away, to break through to the real Boy Morgan. I wanted to kiss him on the mouth, to pull his shirt over his head and see his fine, pale, athletic torso, to run my hand over his muscular stomach and inside the waistband of his shorts. But I could not do that. I felt paralyzed.

“Frank Bartlett and I met about a year ago,” he said, when he'd finally gained control of his voice. “He's a partner in a City law firm, Bartlett and Ross—he and Walter Ross built it up after the War, and they've been very successful. International shipping, mostly. Complicated stuff. Pots of money. Anyway, they brought their business to the bank, wanting help with investments, and so on—all the stuff that I do every day of the week, although not usually with quite so many noughts at the end. I was assigned to manage the Bartlett and Ross account, and over the course of a few meetings I got to know Frank Bartlett pretty well.
We hit it off. He's a nice chap. Was. Was a nice chap.”

I didn't want him to start crying again, or the police would be here before I'd had a chance to get the full story. I felt sure that, if I were going to help Morgan out of this jam, I needed to know as much as possible—things, perhaps, that he would only tell me, from whom he had nothing to hide.

“What did he look like? I mean, what sort of age, build, coloring?”

“He was in his mid-forties. Average height, a bit shorter than me, but then I'm such a beanpole. Bit taller than you, shortarse.” This was better; Morgan was more like his old, bantering self. “Dark hair, what was left of it; he told me he started losing his hair when he was an officer in France. He saw some terrible things over there, Mitch. He was a hero, you know. Distinguished war record. Decorated, and everything. He wasn't one of those awful old men who try to hide it by brushing their hair over the top; he wore it cut short on the back and sides, with a good pair of side-whiskers that he always kept very neatly trimmed. I remember thinking, when I first met him, what a neat, clean man he was. He always looked freshly barbered, freshly shaved…”

A shudder went through Morgan's body—and through mine. We were both thinking of the razor. I squeezed him tight, and he continued.

“Anyway…” He cleared his throat. “He was in very good shape for a man of his years. Most of the chaps in the City get very flabby once they're over thirty, but not Bartlett. He played a lot of sport, trained with weights at his club, had a lot of massages and steam, and so on. His gut was as hard as mine; harder, actually. He was strong and wiry, with a lot of dark hair on his chest and stomach and arms and legs. To look at him, you'd have taken him for ten years younger, at least.”

“So you got to see quite a lot of him?” I couldn't keep a suggestive tone out of my voice.

“Yes, well… I mean, like I said, we got on terribly well. He invited me to his club. You know, the Parthenon, in Saint James's.”

I whistled.

“Oh yes, he had everything of the best. Very nice, the Parthenon. Excellent food, and excellent facilities. They have a Turkish bath in the basement. You can exercise down there on all sorts of pulleys and contraptions, then you can get a jolly good rubdown and a steam bath.”

“I see.”

“And… Well, Mitch, you know what I'm like.” He sounded ashamed, as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“I do.”

“We were there one evening after work. It had been a long day; Bartlett was preparing a report for his shareholders, and we'd spent hours going over and over a load of figures until my eyes were rolling around in my head. So he suggested we go for a massage and a spot of steam. And it jolly well did the trick. Those Turkish chaps, they can really work the knots out of you. Have you ever tried it?”

“No. Go on.”

“Well, afterwards we were relaxing in the steamroom. It's marvelous, all done out in oriental tiles, and so on, with little cabins that you can rest in, get a bit of shut-eye.”

“I see.”

“And so we were lolling around in one of these, just with towels wrapped round our waists, and I got…you know. A stiffy.”

“You would.”

“I didn't really notice particularly, I just felt so relaxed and good after the massage, until I noticed that Bartlett was staring rather hard at the front of my towel. So I shifted my leg to try and, you know, hide it a bit, but that didn't work, because the towel started to come undone, and the
old feller was about to pop out, so instead I rolled over on my front.”

“And what did he do?”

“Blow me if he didn't start stroking my backside.”

“Through the towel?”

“At first. Then his hand went up my leg. He had big, strong hands, and he was grabbing me—not roughly, but very firmly. Like he was playing with a football.”

I knew exactly what he meant; I have done the same to Morgan's ass myself a hundred times. It's one of the most grabbable asses I have ever seen. I couldn't fault Bartlett's taste, even though I found myself hating him for touching something that, in some way, I thought of as “mine.”

“So what did you do? Tell him to get off?”

“I suppose I should have done. Business and pleasure, and all that. But—well, it felt good, and you know what I'm like when things feel good, Mitch. I find it very hard to say no.”

That's one of the reasons I love you, I wanted to say.

“Then he pulled the towel off me completely, and got both his hands on my bum, kneading it like dough. God, that made me so hard. It had been ages since anyone had touched me there. Not since you and I… When was that?”

“A while ago,” I said, not wanting to remember the strained atmosphere at our last parting.

“And then I felt his face pressing between my buttocks, kissing, his tongue pushing between them. I said he was always clean shaven, but by now it was early evening, and there was a bit of stubble on his chin. It scratched and scraped; I love that feeling, and my legs just opened up. His tongue was straight in there, and it hit my you-know-what. It was incredible, Mitch. His tongue was so firm—it felt like… Like a cock.”

I was hard myself, and pressed against him. He moaned softly, and wriggled back into me.

“I had my forehead resting on one forearm, but with the other hand I reached round and found his cock. It was like an iron bar, Mitch. It was so big and hard. When I grabbed it, he groaned like a soul in torment. I looked up, and there was the most extraordinary expression on his face—I couldn't decide if he was sad, or happy, or angry. We looked at each other for a while, and then… And then… He kissed me.”

“I see.”

“God, it was wonderful, Mitch. Not like you—with you I always feel good, and happy, and alive. But this was something different—something serious, and intense, and dangerous. He kissed me like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. It wasn't a bit of fun between two chaps who happen to like each other a lot—this was like…like it meant everything to him. Life and death.”

I felt that stupid stab of jealousy—I, who was betraying Vince just by being here. “And then he fucked you, I suppose.” I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice, but I don't think Morgan even heard me.

“There wasn't much we could do, right there and then; someone could have walked in. I suppose things go on in those steamrooms all the time, don't they? But it wouldn't do to be caught with one's legs in the air, not in the Parthenon Club, not with an important client like Frank Bartlett. But we carried on kissing as if we couldn't stop, my hand on his cock, his hand on mine, sitting side by side, kissing and wanking each other until suddenly we were both coming at the same time, breathing in each other's mouths, sharing the same feelings, as if we were one body. It took both of us a while to come round. Anyone could have stumbled in and found us; we were awfully lucky. Afterwards, we just got dressed. We had a quick drink at the bar, but we didn't have supper or anything. We both suddenly remembered that we had important reasons for getting home. It had taken us by surprise, rather.”

“I imagine it had.”

“But we both knew that we were going to do something again. There was no going back. I don't know how other chaps feel after things like that—I suppose for some people, that sort of business doesn't mean a lot, just a quick fiddle with another fellow and that's it, full stop. But it wasn't like that for me. I couldn't stop thinking about him. I was all keyed up for days. Even Belinda noticed. I didn't hear from Bartlett for a while, but there was no reason for him to speak to me. We'd done all we needed to do.”