“Some dead twink?” I whispered. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I felt sick.
“They advised us to bring him back to the base. I was the most sober,” Simon said. “So, it was my job to do it, while Guy and Jed cleaned up any evidence of him being here. We … had to do things to the body so people wouldn’t know what we’d been up to.”
I screwed my face up. “You washed off all the” – I wrinkled my nose – “evidence that he’d been having sex?”
The thunder boomed. Neither of them would look at me now.
“We had to make it convincing. Death by overdose,” Simon said. “I drove his body back to the base. I snuck into where he lived and … left him in his bed to be found the next morning.”
Silence.
“And then what?” I asked.
“We went back to our lives,” Guy said. “It was the truth, he overdosed. We had nothing to do with that. He took those drugs. It wasn’t our responsibility to know what a grown adult had taken.”
“You took turns fucking him and then disposed of his body?” I said, my anger spilling over. I couldn’t bear to know this.
“We didn’t do that!” Simon protested.
“Really?” I yelled, slamming my hands down on a table. “Because it sounds like you two were high-fiving while you Eiffel Towered him!”
There was silence.
“Look, he died of an overdose!” Simon shouted at me. “The coroner’s report confirmed it. There was nothing we could’ve done.”
“What happened afterwards?” I asked.
Simon fidgeted. “My superiors knew. I was reprimanded. I was essentially fired from the service, but it was more of a suspension. I couldn’t be part of the organisation for a while. They told me it was temporary. So, I became a handyman.”
I scoffed. I needed to throw something. “That’s why you weren’t a spy when I arrived? Because someone in the British intelligence services, somewhere, at least had a bit of a conscience?”
He was silent. Just the thunder.
“And what about now? You’re back in?”
“The project I was working on. It’s nearly at fruition. I was allowed back. But – I’m out of it again until Riz – until this all blows over. I’m a liability. Again.”
“My heart bleeds.”
“Arden, please! We … we did nothing wrong. He took those drugs; no one forced him to. No one forced him to have sex with us. He wanted it. He initiated everything that night.”
“And covering it up and moving his body?” I asked. “Was that his final wish?”
“We’re not proud of what we did,” Guy said.
I fumed. I paced. I kicked a chair – Guy winced. I paced the room some more. The thunder boomed again. I put my head in my hands and scrubbed my face, hoping it would all make sense.
“Why are you telling me this now? What makes you think this is relevant?”
“How could it not be?” Simon asked. “Jed’s attacked, Guy’s career is ruined, my fiancé is killed. It must be someone who knows what we did.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong,” I said in a mocking tone under my breath. Out loud, though, I asked, “Who could know? His family?”
Simon shook his head. “They were estranged. Homophobes, from what he told me.”
“A friend?”
“He was close to a lad on the base, platonic, he was straight. His name was Jeremy. He’s stationed in Qatar now and has been for a couple of years. I’ve … asked around. He’s not been back to the UK in over a year.”
