Rentboy (25 page)

“Your career will be over.” Edward’s speech sounded oddly slurred like that time he had smoked marijuana.

Without opening his mouth Howard chuckled deep in his throat. The sound was so smug it made Edward want to punch him. In fact, he had wanted to punch him for a long time.

“My career is just beginning. I am going to Uganda to live and work in my own lab, all funded by Mr. Maputwa. He will lead Uganda within the next year with my help and yours. If you had not changed the Lintrane and then refused to give me the original compound, you could have gone on with life, pursuing prostitutes, and been none the wiser. But you would insist on having morals. Silly man.”

The bullying he had been subjected to in school made the cruel words roll off Edward’s back. “Is Captain Baillie here as well, and his son?” Fox was in on this just like his father. He had to be.

Maputwa raised a hand to silence Howard. “Captain Baillie is in Uganda waiting for the Lintrane to use in guerrilla warfare. The boy in the skirt is nothing more than his father’s pawn. He is not here. He has nothing to do with this. He was sent to lure you, to get into your flat to steal the data we needed. And you were very easy to lure.” He grinned, leaning down into Edward’s face. “Begin now to give Dr. Howard the information he needs.”

So Fox had told the truth about his part in this. And he had come to Edward at LSHTM to warn him. That knowledge alone would make his death easier, because he was not going to tell this man anything. “I don’t remember the formula, and I destroyed all the data. There’s nothing I can do.”

Maputwa’s eyes opened wide as if he were terribly surprised. Edward spotted at once the signs of drug use: bloodshot eyes, clumsy movements, inappropriate affect. “But what about your eidetic memory, Dr. Atherton?”

This time the crack rocked the opposite side of Edward’s face. If possible, the force was even greater, but he saw it coming and avoided biting his tongue this time. The man was going to break his jaw. Gasping for breath, he steadied himself. The beating would continue and get worse. He saw that now. How long could he stand the assault before he passed out? Passing out might be a good thing. At least he would feel nothing.

“Atherton, don’t be a fool. Start speaking before you are unable to. If you think you are going to die before you give us what we want, you are wrong. They will torture you and bring you round as many times as it takes, but you will give up the information,” Dr. Howard said.

The swelling in Edward’s mouth was causing him to slobber as if he had been to the dentist and had freezing. At about eleven years old he had been knocked around quite severely at school before he took karate. At the time, in his eleven-year-old mind, he had thought he was going to die.

But it was the sight of one of the men with what looked like a crowbar in his hands that made him finally lose control of his bowels. Everything in his intestines had turned to liquid, and the crowbar hefted by a man in a suit with a blank look on his face caused it to run out. The smell filled the air around him, humiliating him more than anything else that could have happened.

“Oh dear. I think he is getting nervous,” Maputwa said.

Laughter erupted around him.

“For God’s sake, Atherton, just give me the information. This is not going to have a happy ending, but you can make it less painful by speaking now,” Howard said.

An unexpected raging anger took hold of Edward, making the man with the crowbar fade into a mist of faces. He closed his eyes and ordered his brain to focus on the one thing that was more important than anything. Fox was not involved in this. Fox had tried to warn him.

Every sense in Edward’s body was magnified and yet distorted. He heard a loud crack, but it was not his face this time. His left knee exploded with fiery pain that traveled up and down his leg and made him release the contents of his stomach. He had vomited and shit himself. What was left? His head dropped forward, and he must have lost consciousness because the next thing he knew, he was waking up. It was like the dentist again, that time he’d had his wisdoms out. One minute he was inhaling the gas; the next he was waking up with his mouth stuffed with cotton batting. But on that occasion the pain was numbed. Nothing numbed this pain. His left leg was on fire, the pain so severe that he would vomit again if there were anything left in his stomach.

“Are you ready to speak now?” Dr. Howard asked.

His voice sounded distant and strange. Edward did not answer, because at that moment he couldn’t. One glance down showed blood-soaked trousers and a bone sticking out of his left leg through the tear.

The confusion in his mind drew him back to the experiments he had conducted on the large animals. Fox would hate him for it. The animals had died slowly over a period of several hours. The autopsies he had conducted showed that their lungs and throats had become paralyzed. The very thought of people, not just soldiers, but women and children suffering such a fate made his pain fade into nothingness. He managed to say, “Fuck off.” All his years of martial arts training kicked in. He focused his mind on a single thought that made the pain bearable.
Fox.

* * * *

Fox was drenched. The soaking he had got before he was picked up by the trucker for Jesus had more or less dried by the time he was dropped off at the ring road into Mitton. Trying to remember the roads Eddie had driven along when they visited, Fox had wandered all over the place before finally finding the village green. From there he found his way easily to Cowbell Lane.

The sight that greeted him there made him sick to his stomach. Two black cars were parked in the dark courtyard. The lights in the downstairs rooms were on. Where the hell was Eddie?

Then he spotted a small car that looked like a rental by the barn. Eddie was in the house, and God only knew who else was in there and what they were doing to him. In the darkness he walked around the house looking for an open window, but there wasn’t one. He was out of his depth, having no idea how to break into a house undetected. Stealing Eddie’s computer was the only criminal act he had ever committed in his life, and he hadn’t wanted to do that.

At the kitchen window he listened. The pounding rain lessened for a few moments, allowing him to hear voices inside. Heavily accented English indicated Mr. Maputwa talking, but Fox could not make out the words. Then, in shock, he heard his father’s voice. Pressing his ear to the window, he heard the words, “Let him regain consciousness, and tell him what you will do next if he doesn’t cooperate. He already knows what you’re capable of.”

Regain consciousness?
He had to mean Eddie. Holy shit, what had they done to him? Baillie was supposed to be in Uganda; it must have been a lie.

Beside the window a spade leaned up against the wall. Fox grabbed it. What the hell was he supposed to do with it? Those men had guns like his father. A gun he could use if he had one; he knew how to shoot straight. He’d have to disarm one of the men. No. His only hope was to try to talk to his father. But he’d never listened to him before. Why now?

Without warning the kitchen door opened. Fox plastered himself against the wall. The man who exited looked briefly left and right, then turned to go back in. On instinct Fox slammed the spade over the man’s head. The thud of the spade and the man’s brief cry were both swept away in the storm. His heart pounding with fear, Fox felt over the body for his gun. As soon as it was in his hand he knew it was a GLOCK 26, his father’s weapon of choice.

Inside he heard someone moan, and a voice said, “He’s waking up.”

Driven by fear, not thinking or seeing, Fox opened the door and walked in. Maputwa stood looking directly into his eyes. The mad, drug-crazed stare he had seen before filled him with terror. The man was not in the slightest bit afraid of him, and a second later Fox knew why. By the time he felt someone behind him, an arm took a stranglehold on his throat. A hand gripped his wrist and effectively disarmed him before he had time to speak. “Sir!” he screamed, appealing to his father, but he could not see him.

“What are you doing there, you fucking moron?”

Fox looked frantically around for his father, unable to grasp were the man’s voice was coming from, but his gaze fell on Eddie. His face was bruised and turning grayish purple. Through swollen slits of eyes Eddie looked back at him. His face was bad enough, but it was his leg that made Fox’s stomach lurch. His left trouser leg was soaked with blood, and, sickeningly, the tibia bone was broken and sticking out through the flesh and out of the hole in his corduroys. The grayness of his face could be due to blood loss. “Eddie!” It came out as a wail.

With one finger Maputwa pointed at a chair, and in seconds Fox was secured to it with plastic handcuffs just as Eddie was but about five feet away from him. All Fox wanted to do was take care of him, get him to a hospital and nurse him back to health. Not being able to save him or even get close to him made him feel ill and raging angry. That was when he saw that one of the men held a crowbar. A glance back at Eddie’s leg and he knew how the injury had happened.

Maputwa snatched the iPad from Dr. Howard’s hands and thrust it into Fox’s face. His father was on Skype. He wore his camo gear as usual, but the background was unfamiliar. “I’m in Uganda. Why are you there and not at home where you’re supposed to be?”

For no more than a second Fox looked at the man he despised before looking back at the man he loved. “They’ve nearly killed Eddie. Do something, please, sir.”

“Get him to tell them the information they want, and they’ll let him go. They just want the information.”

At once Fox said, “Eddie, give them what they want, or they’ll kill you. Just give them what they want.”

It took Eddie more than a minute to answer, and when he did, his voice was weak with effort. “I’ll die first, but I won’t let them kill innocent people. I’m not telling them anything.”

“Eddie, I didn’t know anything about this. I stole your computer, but beyond that, I’m not involved. I didn’t know; I didn’t.” He blinked back tears, ashamed to be emotional before these men and his father. And the state Eddie was in, if anyone should be crying, it was him, but he wasn’t. Eddie sat stoic even in his bloodied and beaten state. There was vomit on his polo shirt and shit soaking through his trousers, but he wasn’t crying, and he was still refusing to compromise his principles.

Through swollen lips Eddie said, “I know, dear.”

At the words, Mr. Maputwa laughed out loud. Around him his lackeys laughed too. “They are in love. Captain Baillie. Your son is in love with Dr. Atherton.”

“You’re a fucking madman,” Fox said. “And you’re drugged up to your eyeballs.”

The smack across his cheek stung like hell but didn’t do the damage Eddie had suffered. Eddie looked like he’d been hit with a sock with a brick in it. Maputwa leaned into Fox’s face; his fetid breath turned Fox’s stomach. “Tell your boyfriend to give me the information I want, and all this will be over. You will be free to go and do whatever dogs like you get up to.”

Maputwa looked at the iPad. “Captain Baillie, what do you recommend next?”

“Show me the queer,” he said. Laughing, Maputwa turned the iPad toward Fox. “Not him. The other queer.” The man’s laugh was insane, literally like a hyena, as he turned the iPad to Eddie.

“Show me his whole body,” Baillie said.

Maputwa stepped back to give a better view. “He’s too injured to push him further, and if he can take that knee injury and still refuse to cooperate, he’s willing to die for what he believes in.”

“Yes!” Fox said. “That’s my Eddie.” The next words that came out of his father’s mouth struck him a blow like no other.

“Torture Fox. That will make the other queer talk.”

“No! No!”

For one unreal moment Fox thought he had cried out, but he was too stunned to speak.

Eddie, with a tortured look on his face, had screamed the words. “Don’t hurt him.”

Maputwa placed the iPad flat on the table and took a bag from his pocket. On the iPad screen he razored and snorted a couple of lines of cocaine before thrusting the bag back into his pocket. The act seemed to give the others leave to do the same. Several of the men present followed suit. Then Maputwa picked up the iPad and walked out of the kitchen, saying, “Tell me how best to do it. I take it you don’t want him dead.”

Across the kitchen Fox’s gaze met and locked with Eddie’s. If he weren’t about to be tortured and the man he loved weren’t sitting there with a bone sticking out of his leg and his face looking like raw meat, the look would have rivaled the best romantic film. “I love you, Eddie. I love you.”

“Do you?” He looked really weird speaking through swollen lips that hardly moved.

Not a sound came from the other men in the room during the exchange.

Minutes later Maputwa walked back in carrying a towel. “Dr. Howard.”

“Yes, Mr. Maputwa?”

It was like they were at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. A gang of complete nutters was doing blow while politely using everyone’s proper names. “Hold the computer so that Captain Baillie can watch his son.”

The man with the Charlie Chaplin walk obeyed while Maputwa went to the kitchen sink. After rooting about in the cupboard underneath, he pulled out a large black bin bag. Fox couldn’t take his eyes off him. As terrified as he was, he felt strangely still. It was like when he cut himself. Everything looked distant, and sounds became muffled.

Looking at his father’s face, he whispered, “Dad?” The stony stare he got in response was the same one he had seen many times before. It was that look of blame; if Fox would just be more of a man, more like Baillie, everything would be fine. It was that look that said,
You are a disappointment to me.

Maputwa turned on the tap and soaked the towel before wringing out some of the water. Then, standing in front of Fox, he wrapped the sodden towel tightly around his head. It took a second for him to realize what was happening, and when he did, he panicked, yanking at the plastic ties holding him to the chair, but he was helpless. They were so tight.