A Sticky End (22 page)

I hurried back to my room in the doctors' quarters, sweet-talked the nurse at the reception desk into giving me a couple of sheets of Middlesex Hospital letterhead, and jumped on a bus to Piccadilly. From there it was only a short walk through St. James's Park to the barracks, and on the way I scribbled a note to the commanding officer requesting an urgent interview with one McDermott in the light of recent medical tests, results, and so on, and requesting the use of a private office at his earliest convenience. My medical bag, containing a stethoscope and a few other props, seemed to convince the relevant parties that I was in earnest, and within half an hour of my request I was being shown into a small, windowless room—it looked like an interrogation room—by a deferential young guardsman who started asking me about the best cure for athlete's foot. Resisting the temptation to inspect him right there and then, I advised him to bathe the affected part in a weak solution of chloroxylenol, available from any pharmacist under the brand name Dettol. This seemed to satisfy him.

My friendly young companion stayed with me until the door was opened by a dazzlingly handsome creature in a pair of black uniform trousers, shiny black boots, and an open-necked white shirt. His hair was dark and neatly cut, his sideburns ended in a sharp line level with the lobe of
his ear, and two regular black brows accentuated a pair of violet blue eyes. He may have been a guardsman, but nature had designed him to be a gigolo. In different circumstances—in a gentlemen's club, for instance, or a pub or nightclub—he would be absolutely irresistible, in his element, exuding the magnetic force that drew Bartlett and his kind like iron filings. But here, in a grim cube of a room in the barrack block, facing a doctor (I'd put the stethoscope around my neck to emphasize my status) and some mysterious medical problem, he looked far from comfortable. In fact, he looked worried. How much more worried will he look when the police catch up with him, I wondered. For I, unlike the Bartletts and Osbornes of this world, would have no hesitation in blowing the whistle on his nasty little racket. In my opinion, blackmailers are lower than shark shit, as we say back home in Boston, and I would take great pleasure in sending this specimen to meet his just deserts.

But first, I needed information, and in order to get that I had to play a part.

I consulted some papers—they were, in fact, random circulars about corn cure that I'd picked up at the Middlesex, but they were covered in long words and would do the trick.

“McDermott?”

“Yes, sir.” He stood inside the closed door, “at ease,” but ill at ease.

“First name?”

“Jack. John, sir.”

“Very well, Jack McDermott. Have to make sure I've got the right McDermott. Bet there's a few of you in the regiment.”

“No, sir. Just me.”

“Ah.” I indicated a chair. “Sit down, soldier.”

“Sir.” He pulled the chair up to the desk; he was close
enough for me to see tiny beads of perspiration on his upper lip, to smell the slightly smoky smell of masculinity at bay. There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing an arrogant cocksman like McDermott being taken down a peg or two. That is the only level on which I can get interested in sports, particularly those hypermasculine sports like boxing. I would far rather comfort the defeated boxer than congratulate the winner. McDermott did not yet reek of defeat—it was up to me to deliver the knockout blow—but he could sense a threat that his charm, his uniform, and his obvious physical strength could not overcome. He was afraid, and that's how I wanted him.

“You're probably wondering what this is about, McDermott.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did you last have a medical checkup?” I had answers ready for any response that he gave.

“Just last month, sir. We all had to.”

Good. Plan A. “Exactly. Now, a few anomalies have shown up during routine screening procedures on your endocrinological profile.”

He was suitably blinded with science. “My—what?”

“In layman's terms, you're registering a chromosomal imbalance that may or may not be related to underlying renal and urological problems.”

He stared at me, his mouth open. This was going well.

“Am I going too fast for you, McDermott?”

“Sorry, sir.” He closed his mouth and tried to sit up straight and regain his composure. “It's just—” He flashed a smile: obviously this worked with most men, women, children, dogs, cats, and possibly plants, but not on Dr. Edward Mitchell. “I was never very bright at school. Never did science.”

“Did you give a urine sample, McDermott?”

“A…what?”

“A urine sample. Did you make water?”

He was looking distinctly uncomfortable now. “I don't—”

“Did you piss in a bottle? I can't put it any more plainly than that.”

“No.”

“Just as I thought.” I looked irritably through the papers in front of me. “The screening procedures in the military leave much to be desired. It's only by chance that these things are picked up.”

“Am I—ill?”

“That remains to be seen, McDermott. First of all, we have to do a few simple tests.” I had a glass flask in my bag, approximately half a pint in volume. I placed this on the desk in front of him. “Do you think you could fill that for me?”

“With…with what?”

“Well I'm not asking for a flower arrangement. With urine, of course.”

“I…” He looked around him, hoping at least for a screen of some sort, but the room was bare, apart from our two chairs and the table between us.

“Don't be shy, McDermott. You're a soldier, aren't you? I imagine worse things happen in the field.”

“Yes.”

I handed him the flask. “Go ahead. I don't need a great deal.”

“You mean I should just…get it out and…do it?”

I sighed. “McDermott, I am a doctor. I work at the Middlesex Hospital. I see dozens, if not hundreds, of patients in the course of a working week. If you think there is any reason to be bashful in my presence, forget it right now.”

“Yes, sir.” He unbuttoned the high waistband of his black trousers. “It's just rather unusual.”

“I don't think you realize how important this is. Do you intend to have a family, McDermott? Are you the marrying kind?”

“One day, maybe. When I can afford to.”

When you've squeezed enough money out of your victims, you mean.

“Then I suggest we get on with it. Because if we catch this problem now, a very quick course of treatment will mean that you can go on to father a whole race of little McDermotts. If we don't, you can forget any plans to be a father.”

He started unbuttoning more quickly, pulling his shirttail out of his pants and working his way down his fly.

“Is this like…you know…VD, sir?”

“Good God, no. Nothing of that sort. I sincerely hope that you know how to protect yourself against that sort of thing.”

“Yes, sir. We have lectures about hygiene.”

“And do you follow the advice contained therein? Are you worried about VD?”

“I suppose all the lads are, sir.”

“I see. Then I'll have to make sure there are no complications. If you've been taking risks…”

All that was left of his modesty now was the thin cotton of his army-issue drawers.

“I don't think so, sir.”

“Are you sexually active, McDermott? Do you have a sweetheart?”

“No.”

“Are you playing the field?”

“I suppose so.”

I sighed, and scribbled on a piece of paper. “All right. I'll take a quick look around to make sure everything is in order. Meanwhile, if you wouldn't mind…” I gestured toward his open fly. “I don't have all day.”

I bent over the desk, apparently uninterested, dismissive even, of my patient. He turned away from me and fumbled with the front of his pants; after a few seconds I heard the musical note of piss on glass. It sounded like a good steady stream.

“Try not to overflow, McDermott. I don't want to make a mess of the floor.”

“Sorry, sir. I didn't think I needed to go so much.”

The pitch of the note rose as he filled the flask from its broad bottom toward its tapering neck.

“Oh dear, I—”

“Steady, McDermott.”

The stream stopped. “Just in time,” he said with relief. I looked up.

“Let me see.” He turned, with the full flask in one hand, his cock in the other. It was, of course, completely limp, and given the air of threat in the room I would have understood if it had shriveled to nothing, but even so there was enough there to keep a whole battalion satisfied.

“I'll take care of that,” I said, taking hold of the flask; steam was rising from its mouth. McDermott started to tuck himself away, but I put a stop to that. “Now just drop your pants. I'll be examining you in just a moment.”

“Drop them, sir?”

“Yes. No need to remove them completely. You may keep your boots on. That will give me access to everything I need.”

“Yes, sir.”

He pushed his pants down over his thighs, which were sturdy and covered in dark hair. His shins and calves were even shaggier. His cock rested on a pair of low-hanging balls. A single drop of piss hung at the tip, and I found myself involuntarily licking my lips, then it trickled off to lose itself among the hair on his scrotum.

“I won't keep you long. Sit, if you wish.”

McDermott resumed his seat. His shirttail covered his genitals, and I had to content myself with those magnificent legs. But all would be mine soon enough.

I rummaged in my doctor's bag and produced a small envelope containing strips of litmus paper; this, I thought,
was exactly the kind of hocus-pocus that would impress a soldier like McDermott. I stirred the bottle of piss with a glass rod, then wiped it carefully on my pocket handkerchief. Then, using a pair of tweezers, I took the little strip of litmus paper and dipped it into McDermott's still warm, delightfully fragrant urine. I held it up and scrutinized it as the color changed to the faintest of blues. McDermott leaned forward in his chair, entranced.

“Ah,” I said, sounding grim, “just as I thought.” Obviously he was as fit as a fiddle, but there was no need for him to know that.

“What, sir? What's the matter?”

“Blue,” I said, investing the word with, I hoped, the ring of doom. “This confirms what the random endocrinology suggested. A hormonal, chromosomal imbalance, possibly related to an aberration in the pituitary gland.”

“What does it mean, sir?” McDermott's knees were clamped together, his hands twisted over his groin, the very picture of anxiety. I think he might have run out of the room if it weren't for my authority as a doctor—and the fact that he was hobbled by his pants.

“To put it more simply, we sometimes find that certain men exhibit characteristics that are more usually found in women.”

This was absolute bullshit, of course, the kind of thing you occasionally read in the more reactionary medical journals—but I saw no reason not to turn such crap into ammunition.

“Women? You mean there's something wrong with me?”

“Wrong? No, McDermott, I wouldn't necessarily say wrong. Not from a medical point of view, at least. But we have to be careful with this kind of profile. There are certain problems that can arise if we don't take precautions.”

“Right. I see. So I'm not going to—die.”

“Good God, no. What gave you that impression? This is
simply a matter of common sense. Now, McDermott, before I examine you more fully, I have to ask you a few questions. Please answer them honestly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And remember, anything you tell me in this room is absolutely confidential. You understand?”

“Sir.”

“It will not be put in your notes, and it won't be divulged to any of your colleagues or superior officers.”

“Sir.”

“McDermott, are you homosexual?”

He almost shrieked. “What?”

“Homosexual, McDermott. Do you know what that means?”

“I… I don't…”

“There are many other words for it, if you prefer them. ‘Queer' being the most widely used.”

“I'm not…queer. No, sir.”

“Oh.” I referred again to my “notes.” “You're not? Well, that puts a very different slant on things. Usually, we find with this particular set of results that the subject is homosexual, queer, in which case a long and healthy life is perfectly possible. But in those case such as yours where the orientation is different… Well. Now.” I cleared my throat, as if I were embarrassed by the bad news.

“What? What is it?”

“If, as you say, you are not queer, then these results may be indicative of something much more serious. Much, much more serious.”

McDermott was as white as a sheet, and sweating. I was getting hard.

“Well, I mean, I might not be—”

“I'm going to have to examine you, McDermott.” I cleared the papers off the desk and put my bag on the floor beside me. “Jump up here.”

“Sir?”

“We can do this here, of I can ask your CO to send you to the hospital, where we can do it in a proper examination room with nurses and other doctors in attendance. It's up to you.”

“Here, sir.” He stood up. “How should I—?”

“Just sit on the edge here.” I patted the table, and he obeyed, perching his firm, hairy, muscular buttocks where my hand had just been. “Now lie back. That's it.” Soon he was stretched out before me—served up like a meal to a hungry diner. His knees bent over the edge of the table, and his legs dangled down, the heavy boots just brushing the floor. His torso was long, and the other edge of the table cut into his neck; he didn't know what to do with his head. He was obviously very uncomfortable, which suited me just fine. He cupped his hands behind his head and held his body tense.