Rentboy

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    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