Rentboy (23 page)

“I’m glad you came to me, Fox. I’ll do my best to help you and Eddie.”

Fox looked up at him. “Thanks. I really appreciate it. I’m just so worried.”

“If these people don’t believe us, we’ll go over to his flat next.”

“He said he was going to Paris to meet his parents, but I think he was trying to throw me off. Knowing Eddie, he went home to the family farm.” As if resolved, Fox stood. “I can’t wait any longer, God. You stay here and tell them everything, and I’ll go and see if I can find him. He might still be there. If he is, I’ll phone you and tell you where to find us. We’ll need to hide him somewhere. Give me your mobile number.”

“Hold on.” Godfrey pulled out his phone. He had always been hopeless at numbers, so he had written the number down and taped it onto the back of his phone. “There you are.”

Fox smiled as he punched it into his phone. “That’s a good idea to help you remember. I have to do stuff like that for the twins. I used to draw pictures; then at some point I realized they could read. God knows how they learned.”

Godfrey stood to walk to the door with Fox. “Good luck, and be careful.” With a firm hand he gripped the young man’s shoulder and was pleasantly surprised when Fox gave him a quick hug.

“You’re the only person I can trust, and I don’t even know you.”

Fox’s words made him brim with happiness. “Gemma can’t have children. She had leukemia when she was very young. It was the radiation. I’d be proud of a son like you, Fox.”

For a long moment Fox just stared at him as if he could not believe the words. “Looking like this? Gay, weird, makeup. You don’t know half the shit I do.”

Very quietly Godfrey said, “I know you cut yourself.” He hadn’t actually seen the scars, but the long sleeves and the general outlook of the young man told him what he had seen before so many times when he had counseled youth.

Fox looked down as if ashamed, which was the last thing Godfrey wanted him to feel. “There are better ways to deal with pain. When all this is over, we’ll talk more about it, if you’ll allow me the privilege of helping you.”

“You are one of a fucking kind, mate.” Fox kissed him on the cheek and left.

An hour passed and then another while Godfrey sat, paced, and sat again. After trying to phone Gemma and getting no signal, he stepped outside. He was in Starbucks with Fox, he told her. It was all right to lie sometimes if it helped someone and hurt no one, but he’d better lay off the cakes since Gemma was being so good about their diet.

Two and a half hours later his musings had drifted in several different directions, including that the whole thing was a ruse and he would be made to look utterly ridiculous. But surely the attempted kidnapping was real. He’d observed that with his own eyes. If he looked a fool after this, then so be it. The one thing he knew for certain was that he had to do something.

The main doors opened, and a man in a tuxedo hurried toward him. “Reverend Godfrey Rooke?”

“Yes.” Godfrey shook hands with the man. “You were out for the evening; I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“That’s perfectly all right. I apologize for keeping you waiting, but I was down at Oxford for a reunion.”

That alone brought out Godfrey’s smile. “Oh, lovely. I took my Masters of Divinity at Oxford.”

“A grand institution.” When the man smiled, his pale blue eyes transformed his face, giving the impression that he was trustworthy and kind. “Wasn’t there a young man with you, Afton Baillie?”

“Yes. I’m afraid he left. He was worried about his friend, and quite frankly so am I. He went looking for him.”

“Come with me. We’ll talk about it when we are sitting down. My name is Stephen Conran, by the way.”

They walked through the metal detector. The guard nodded politely at Conran. Godfrey felt like scowling at her but out of habit smiled instead. Feeling like Alice down the rabbit hole, he followed the man through a maze of corridors and down stairs until he was led into a conference room with concrete walls. A long oak table surrounded by chairs filled the center of the room. On one wall a series of clocks, all with different times on them, caught Godfrey’s attention. A closer look told him the clocks showed the current hour in different countries. For some reason he glanced at Uganda and saw that it was ten past midnight there.

“Please sit down, vicar.”

He almost said,
Call me Godfrey
, then decided not to. They’d made him wait two and a half hours. The least they could do now was treat him with respect.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, I’d love some. A few biscuits would be nice too. I’m starving.”

“Certainly.”

Mr. Conran got on the phone, and a few minutes later the tea arrived along with several people, all of whom were introduced and whose names Godfrey promptly forgot. They gathered around the conference table while Godfrey poured his tea from a very pretty china pot and at the same time stuffed a couple of Custard Creams into his mouth. He had taken a long drink of his tea and downed a couple more biscuits before he looked up to find the assemblage watching him.

“You know Mr. Maputwa from Uganda?” Mr. Conran asked.

Self-conscious at stuffing himself so openly, Godfrey felt his cheeks warm. Perhaps they thought he was a nutcase who was only on the scrounge for free tea and biscuits. “No, I’ve never met him. Young Fox, Afton Baillie, told me a most fantastic tale, which, to be honest, I tend to believe. He looks rather unusual—Fox, that is—but he is a kind and decent young man, and he’s very worried about the man he loves.”

“He’s gay?” Stephen Conran said the words rather nervously, or so Godfrey thought. What was he hiding? “What’s the other man’s name?”

“Dr. Edward Atherton. He’s a scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.”

Conran nodded at one of the men, who left the room. “How did you meet them, and what’s their connection to Maputwa?”

Managing to eat and drink at the same time, Godfrey told the silent group about the morning he met Fox and the young man’s confession that he disliked his father. Best not mention that he was going to kill him. “Apparently the father is a rather brutal ex-army man who now works as a soldier of fortune. A Captain William Baillie.”

Conran glanced at one of his colleagues. “Do we know him?”

The woman nodded. “He’s not one of ours.”

Briefly Godfrey went into the surprise meeting at the café and the offer to counsel Fox and Dr. Atherton. “I arrived at the address on Great Russell Street.” One of the men had been making notes on a laptop all along and asked him to repeat the address, which he did. “A black car drew up, and three very dark-skinned men attempted to abduct Dr. Atherton as he stood on the front step talking to Fox. But Dr. Atherton appeared to be rather good at martial arts and managed to escape back into the house. The men left in the car, and that was that. Fox told me later that he needed to speak to his father, but when he went home, Captain Baillie wasn’t there. Fox came to the rectory a couple of hours ago and told me all about the Lintrane.”

“Lintrane?” Conran asked.

As best he could remember Godfrey related the story of the lethal compound and how Dr. Atherton had made it safe, refusing to tell anyone how to make the dangerous version. “It seems this Ugandan man and a Dr. Howard are both in on it, along with Fox’s father who it seems is in Uganda himself at present. They want the compound as a bioweapon.”

“And Dr. Atherton? Where is he?”

“He told Fox he was going to join his parents in Paris, but Fox thinks he has gone to their family farm. I’ve no idea where that is.”

At a nod from Mr. Conran, the young man taking notes left the room.

Godfrey refilled his cup and took a long slurp of tea. “Thirsty work, all this regaling of tales.” He smiled, realizing as he did so how automatic it was. A grieving widow required an understanding smile. An unhappy husband needed a sympathetic smile. A parishioner with cancer was treated to a cajoling but understanding smile, a
you can beat this, and I’ll help you
kind of smile. Right now he was just smiling like an idiot because he was certain they would call the police and have him taken off in a straitjacket.

“Would you like more biscuits, vicar?” Conran asked.

“Oh dear me, I finished the whole plate. No. Better not, but thank you.”

“So you feed the poor?” The man was making conversation now while they checked him out to see if he had been sectioned recently. “That’s very Christian of you.”

“Yes, well, I am a vicar. I run a free tea and sandwich wagon. As I mentioned, that was how I met Fox, but he refused the sandwich because he’s vegan. I serve whatever I can get donated, and it’s usually Spam or cheese.”

“Where do you locate your van?”

“I drive it to the poorer areas and park for an hour or two, then move on. I was outside St. Pancras when I met Fox.”

The young man returned and whispered to Mr. Conran, who then said, “A Dr. Edward Atherton crossed into France today with his wife. But it appears to be the father. The younger Dr. Atherton has not left the country. We are watching the Chunnel and the ferries for him as we speak. And Fox, where is he?”

“He went off to find Eddie, as he calls him. They could both be in danger now. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes. And we appreciate you coming in and waiting all this time. I’ll have someone drive you home now. You must wait there. If Afton Baillie or Dr. Atherton contacts you, you must get in touch at once.” He handed Godfrey a card and rose to indicate that he wanted him to leave now. Beckoning a young man, Conran said, “Take the reverend home.” He extended a hand.

Godfrey shook it firmly but hung on to it when he said, “You will find them and keep them safe?”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be looked after.”

Feeling somewhat reassured by Mr. Conran, Godfrey followed the young man back through the maze of corridors and out onto the street. It was wonderfully cool out. The shining pavements and puddles attested that it had been raining for some time, but in the windowless concrete bunker he’d had no idea.

“NICE MAN,” STEPHEN Conran said to his colleague. “It took courage to bring this story to us, and thank goodness he did. Maputwa has been a concern for the last five years. Every bid for election has ended in failure for him, so now he’s resorting to terrorizing his way into government. He needs to be removed…permanently.”

“First we need to find Dr. Atherton and his bf,” Rosemary Crane said.

“Bf?” Conran squinted at her.

“Teenage abbreviation for boyfriend. My daughter says it all the time, that and OMG, which means ‘oh my God.’”

“Ahh.” Conran nodded. It would be a few years before his three children were teenagers, but soon enough. He dreaded the thought of little Annabelle bringing boys home. The phone on the table rang, and he pressed it to his ear. “Not there? Stand by.”

“No sign of Afton Baillie or the bf at Great Russell Street or at the Baillie house in Finchley. Where do the Atherton parents live?”

Conran stood behind Rosemary while she put a password in the computer, which took her directly into the database of the Metropolitan Police Service. She searched the name Atherton in the vehicle license files. “Cowbell Lane, Mitton Village. It’s about two hours away.”

Conran bit his lower lip. “Bet he’s there. When people are afraid, they always return to a place where they feel safe.” He picked up the phone again, punched in a number, and began to give instructions.

The first lift Fox got was from a middle-aged woman who spent the whole time admiring his clothes and telling him how much she loved gays. She said she wished her son were gay, though his dad would kill him. Fox just wished she’d shut the fuck up. All he wanted was to see Eddie, to know Eddie was safe until whoever Godfrey talked to at MI6 came to save him. Even thinking about MI6 and international kidnappers seemed crazy. Like the world had gone mad. If it seemed that way to him, who lived in the war zone of their house in Finchley with a father who threatened his family with guns, then what the hell were Eddie save-the-world Atherton and Godfrey feed-the-poor Rooke going through? Especially Eddie, who was running for his life. Fox did not believe the story about his joining his parents in Paris. He had gone to the farm even though the bad guys knew about the place. Like an ostrich, Eddie would hide his head in the sand and think no one could see him.

The woman dropped him off at a deserted BP station on the A603 where she had to make the turn to Aylesbury. “Someone will come along soon, luv. You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks.” Fox waved her off, glad not to have to listen to her anymore but worried that he wouldn’t get another lift. What was happening to Eddie at that moment? Had the Men in Black found him, and what would they do to him when they did?

The little variety shop at the petrol station was in darkness. Fox walked over to find that the sign read CLOSE 9:00 p.m. OPEN 5:00 a.m. He pulled out his mobile to check the time. It was coming up to eleven o’clock.

It had been raining steadily for the last hour, but suddenly it began in earnest. For a couple of minutes he tried plastering himself against the building, but the wind carried the rain into his face. There was no shelter, and anyway, he’d never get a ride by hiding. Perhaps someone would feel sorry for him standing in the downpour.

They didn’t.

Waiting by the side of the road, soaking wet, makeup running until he must look like Brandon Lee in
The Crow
, he was not attracting another lift. Cars sped by without stopping. The few that slowed down sped up again when they saw him up close.

When a vehicle finally did stop, it was a frigging great articulated lorry with a driver who looked like a serial killer from one of those road films. He had a shaved head with the hair just beginning to grow back, a day’s growth of beard on his face, and a plaid shirt that needed a good wash. His jeans looked greasy. “Hop in, kid.”

Fox hesitated just long enough for the driver to say loudly, “Get the fuck in, or close the door. The seats are getting wet.”

The man reminded him of William Baillie sufficiently to make him obey. Better the devil you know.