Rentboy (24 page)

Climbing up into the rig was like climbing a tree. It was incredibly high and felt unsafe. While he fastened his seat belt the driver watched him, half smiling. “You a queer?”

“I am, actually. Do you want me to get out?” The scared side of him hoped the man would say yes, but the desperate-to-see-Eddie side prayed he would say no.

“Nah. You can stay.” With a looked over his shoulder the driver pulled the lorry back into the sporadic traffic. With one hand he reached between the seats and produced a roll of kitchen paper. “Where you going, kid?”

“Mitton. How close can you get me?” Fox pulled off several sheets of paper and began to dry his face. The paper came away black with his eye makeup. With another wad of paper he wiped away the remaining makeup and rubbed his hair.

“I’m going right by, but I can’t drive through. They have a
no big hauls
regulation that prohibits lorries driving through the village. I’ll drop you on the nearest ring road; then I can go on to the coast.”

“Thanks, mate,” Fox said gratefully. The bloke seemed kinder every minute.

“So what do queers get up to?”

Here we go again. The endless curiosity of boring heterosexuals about what gays do in private.
“Same as you lot: eat, sleep, fart, go to school, go to work. We just choose to do it with members of the same sex.”

The man looked sideways at him while Fox wished he would keep his eyes on the road. He was as bad as Eddie on that trip to Mitton. Eddie. Everything was Eddie now. Eddie had become his reference point. The center from which all else extended. For so many years it had been the twins, and he was still circling in their orbit, but Eddie had become his satellite without his even realizing it. Now Eddie hated him, and Fox couldn’t blame him, but he wouldn’t let anyone hurt him if he could help it.

The man looked straight ahead as he said, “Will you give me a blowjob? I’ll pay you.”

That didn’t take long.
Fox looked at the windscreen, rain belting against it. The wind had picked up, whipping trees and sending branches hurtling across the road. He did not want to be left out in this mess trying to find another lift. “I don’t want money. I just want to get to Mitton. If I have to suck your cock for it, I will. But I’d rather not.”

For the next ten minutes the only sound in the cab was the rain lashing the windows and the wind screaming. There was very little traffic; people probably had more sense than to be out in a storm. When the traffic thinned to almost nothing, the driver pulled over into a lay-by. Without a word he opened the fly on his greasy jeans and leaned back against the headrest. One more glance at the storm and Fox decided there was no getting out of this. He unfastened his seat belt and leaned over.

The smell of unwashed cock met his nose before the feel of wiry pubic hairs tickled his face. Holding his breath, he took the cock in his mouth and sucked hard, but he refused to squeeze the balls or help the man orgasm. Typical of a straight bloke, he lasted about ninety seconds before flooding Fox’s mouth with his hot sperm. Even as the serial killer look-alike filled his mouth, Fox was grabbing blindly for the kitchen roll. He sat up and spat the fluids into a wad of paper, wiping his lips as he did so in an attempt to erase the taste of the man from his mouth. The only cock he wanted to taste was Eddie’s. The only smell he wanted in his nostrils was Eddie’s. Eddie’s mouth on his. Eddie’s tongue down his throat. Only Eddie.

Panting, eyes still closed, the man handed him a bottle of water from the door pocket. Fox drank most of the bottle with gratitude, washing the taste from his mouth. He fastened his seat belt again and waited.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“That’s nice, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing you again, kid,” the man said.

“I wasn’t talking to you, mate. I was talking to my boyfriend.”

The man glanced over his shoulder before looking at Fox. “Oh, right.”

Within minutes they were on the road again. Looking straight ahead, the driver slid a CD into the player. “This is an American CD.
Truckers for Jesus
.” The cab was blasted with a woman who sounded like Dolly Parton warbling a sentimental hymn, “The Road Ahead Is Straight, and My Lord Leads Me Down it.”

“No shit,” Fox said. “Did Jesus like blowjobs?”

“Hey!” The man looked at him. “I won’t have any blasphemy. I’ll leave you at the next service center if you say things like that.”

Both hands held up, palms out in a gesture of defeat, Fox watched the road, thinking of Eddie. “Just get me to Mitton.”

* * * *

Except for the muted light filling the kitchen and living room windows through the closed curtains, the farm lay in darkness when Edward drove into the courtyard. In an attempt to make it look like he wasn’t there he parked the small rental car over by the barn. Covering his head with his carryall to ward off the pouring rain, he ran to the house and let himself in, punching in the alarm code at the door. Only when he had wandered through the house, checking every room, did he acknowledge that his parents were not there. They were in France. They had said they were going, and they went. His mum had phoned him last night to verify their departure and to assure him that the timed burglar lights and the alarm were activated.

Ever since he could remember, even though he knew something to be so, in his mind’s eye Edward always saw what he had seen the last time or what he saw most times. Home always meant his parents at the door happy to see him.

“You are thirty years old. Grow up, Edward,” he said into the stillness. The way his mind worked had always confused him. How was it possible to be so intelligent and yet so naive, to understand complex information so well and yet not understand a joke or truly grasp that his parents were not home until he checked every room?

In the kitchen he opened the fridge. Mum had been shopping for a siege as usual. With a packet of cold meat in hand he took a loaf from the bread bin and put them on the table before setting the kettle to boil on the AGA.

In almost every instance Edward had the ability to put distracting thoughts from his head in order to focus on the immediate task. The drive to the farm had been horrendous in the rain, and the idea that the men in the black car could be behind him at any moment was not far away, but he was able to focus on the road and arrive in one piece. They’d find him at the farm, Eddie knew that for certain, but home was always a place he felt safe and loved, so that was where he gravitated. Here he knew all the places to hide.

For the last few days he had attempted to thrust Fox from his mind. Fox was a liar. He was a betrayer. He was an artist who wore makeup and skirts. They would never have lasted. But he could not compartmentalize him. Thoughts of Fox crept into everything Edward did, every thought he had.

To his utter astonishment he sank down at the table, dropped his forehead onto the cool wooden surface, and burst into tears, wailing loudly for several minutes. Gasping, choking on his own mucus, he finally sat up, looking round for something to blow his nose on.

His father always kept a copious supply of snowy white hankies in the drawer in the bedroom. Edward lifted the hissing kettle off the hob and set it aside before stumbling upstairs.

Sure enough a stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs was in its usual place in his father’s underwear drawer. Comforting, familiar, the sight almost made him break down again. On the side of his parents’ four-poster bed Edward sat down and blew his nose.

Fox, I want you. I want to be able to trust you. I want us to live together and have kids. A little boffin like me and a little Goth like you. You can paint and sell your work whenever you can. I’ll bring home the bacon until you’re famous. The twins can live with us forever if you want. Just be my husband, and stop confusing me with your stories.

The pouring rain on the thatched roof muffled the sounds coming from the road, so it was not until Edward saw a light through the curtains that extinguished abruptly that he knew a car had pulled into the courtyard. He switched off the bedside light before opening the curtain a little. Outside a sleek black car waited in the rain. Five or six men got out and began to move around the exterior of the house. They had found him, and so quickly. They wanted the deadly version of Lintrane. He’d die before he would live with that on his conscience, but not willingly.

It took only minutes before they were inside the house. Edward heard them moving around, speaking in heavily accented English and another language he assumed to be Swahili. It was too late to run up to the attic. As a child he always hid under the bed during hide-and-seek, and he was always found. Eventually a school friend had told him,
Atherton, if you always hide in the same place, I’ll always be able to find you
, that he’d realized his mistake.

Dropping to his knees, he crawled under the bed. There was no other choice. A moment later the door opened, and the overhead light went on. The man searching the room was methodical. Edward heard the wardrobe doors open, the curtain being lifted aside, and then the whites of two eyes shone brightly in a dark-skinned face, staring straight at him. The man called out in Swahili. Moments later the room was filled with strangers. Arms reached under the bed, dragging him out by his clothes.

Five men surrounded him, three black and two white, but they faded into nothing at the entrance of a large man who looked like Idi Amin. His presence was frightening, exuding a sense of raw violence and power. He was not as tall as Edward, but he was much broader and more muscular.

The man laughed, showing dark gums and yellow teeth. When he’d heard the men in the house, Edward had begun to get frightened, but that laugh formed a knot of abject fear in his belly, taking it to a new level. That the man was mad was patently clear.

“Dr. Edward Atherton. The boyfriend of Captain Baillie’s son with the black eyes. Do you know what we do with homosexuals in my homeland? We hound them to death. We put them in jail. We torture them. When I am leader, there will be a death penalty for any man caught in a homosexual act. Women will be beaten in the public squares.”

“Then I pray you will never gain power,” Edward said. He sounded remarkably calm considering how loose his bowels were.

“I will gain power. I will rule Uganda. And you will help me. My name is Ogwambi Maputwa. Remember that name if you live through this night.”

The men in the room could be the same men he had confronted on his doorstep. It had happened so quickly he never got a proper look at them, but judging by the way these men swarmed him and took control of him so quickly, they were obviously ready for him. Two of them pinned his arms behind his back and handcuffed him while the others cuffed his feet. In a second Edward was helpless and being carried downstairs to the kitchen.

The bread and meat from his unmade sandwich were where he had left them. He was dying for a cup of tea. At a gesture from Maputwa, the men dragged the large kitchen table away from the middle of the room.

The Ugandan placed a kitchen chair in the middle of the flagstone floor. He pointed at it, and at once the men fastened Edward to the chair. The steel ankle cuffs were removed, and his legs were secured to the chair legs with plastic handcuffs. Likewise his hands were tied to the sides of the chair. The kitchen he had always found so inviting had become a torture chamber.

It was the most terrifying and surreal situation he had ever been in, and it was made stranger by the fact that all the men, including Maputwa, wore dark suits as if they were at some sort of diplomatic meeting at the UN. He had not anticipated the suddenness of this attack and the helplessness of being overpowered and restrained.

“Now, Dr. Atherton.” With his arms folded over his broad chest, Maputwa stood before Edward, smiling down at him. “You know what I want.”

Edward met his gaze. “You want to kill people with my pesticide.”

“Yes.” Maputwa laughed again. “I hear you are a genius. Would you like to work for me? You would enjoy untold wealth.” Thunder crashed loudly overhead. “You could live in a country where it is warm and sunny much of the time.”

Scattered laughter issued from the men standing about the kitchen. One of them had taken the packet of cold meat from the table and was eating it directly from the plastic wrapping.

“No, thank you. I would rather keep my integrity,” Edward said.

The power of the arm that shot out, cracking Edward across the face, sent his head snapping back. Caught unawares, his tongue crushed between his teeth. Blood ran from his mouth even as he wondered if his vertebrae had fractured.

“You will lose your life if you do not agree to cooperate very quickly.” Maputwa took a step back, refolded his arms, and smiled. “Let us begin again. I hear you have an excellent memory. That you are a genius. You will give me formula for the lethal form of Lintrane, and I will let you live.”

The ringing in Edward’s ears made it impossible to think. There was a gash in his tongue where he had bitten it. The taste of blood was sickening, and he feared his jaw was dislocated.

When the pain subsided slightly, he attempted to move his lower jaw from side to side. It still moved, but his tongue was swelling from the bite. When he spoke, his words sounded thick. “I don’t care to live with that on my conscience, so kill me if you must.” Like birds winging through the skies, images flew through Edward’s brain. His mum and dad at his funeral. Nik telling her kids about Uncle Edward who had died heroically. Fox living with another man, not even remembering him.

Through the kitchen door a short, stocky figure strode. “Don’t be a fool, Atherton. You are taking the high moral ground right now because all you have suffered is a slap to the cheek. You will be praying for death by the time these men have finished with you, and you will have told them all they want to know anyway, so why not get it over with?” In one hand Dr. Howard held an iPad, and with the other he dragged a chair over to sit about six feet from Edward. “I have in here the data on the safe form of the pesticide. You will tell me what alterations to make, and I assume Mr. Maputwa will let you go.”