Sam Bourne - Pantheon

Lund sighed and again looked left and right. His forehead was gleaming with sweat. ‘I believe they came here to Yale, yes. I am not exactly sure where they are now.’

James exhaled and sought to steady himself. ‘Thank you,’ he said with genuine relief. ‘It would be terrible if I were barking up the wrong tree entirely.’ He paused. ‘Now, I presume the paperwork for the Oxford group is kept in your office. I don’t understand why we can’t simply look up my wife’s file and find out where she’s staying.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘I understand. The foster families want their privacy respected and there’s the confidentiality-’

‘No,’ Lund snapped, catching James by surprise. ‘You don’t understand at all. This is much bigger than the lives of just a few families.’

‘Of course, I see that. There’s a hundred and twenty-five children, so that must involve, what, perhaps as many as fifty families, with an average of two children-’

George Lund seized James’s wrist. ‘You have no idea what you’ve walked into here, do you?’ The man’s hand was clammy. ‘You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Bigger and more dangerous.’

He broke his grip, almost tossing James’s hand back at him. His whole face was covered with sweat now and beginning to look pale, as if suffering from a fever. Lund rose to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Then he dashed in the direction of the lavatories, leaving James alone at the table, fielding the embarrassed stares of several diners, including the mother from the family table ahead, who had turned around to assess the commotion for herself.

What on earth had got into the man? James had simply asked for Florence and Harry’s whereabouts. He had mentioned the ship’s manifest and Canada. And that was it. Yet this man seemed as alarmed as if James had been threatening him. Or did he believe that simply meeting James exposed him to some grave danger? If it did, why had he been the one to suggest it?

James cut another slice of the pizza. Cooling now, it had lost its initial appeal, the cheese beginning to congeal. James thought it highly unlikely that such a dish could catch on back home: Brits would always prefer the reliability of meat and potatoes.

Still no sign of Lund. Had the man upped and fled for home? He seemed perfectly capable of such histrionics. On the other hand, he had left his briefcase on the bench where he had been sitting. James could see from the clasp that it was not locked.

His eyes flicked across the room, from left to right. In one rapid movement, he leaned across and pulled Lund’s bag to his side, shuffling up so that he could wedge the case between himself and the wall. Determined to look natural, he did not open it straightaway. He cut up and ate another slice of pizza instead, before taking a sip of the glass of iced water that he had never asked for but which had been placed in front of him all the same. Then, with his left hand, he found the clasp on the case, a button-release that needed only to be slid downward. The tag of leather that bridged the two halves of the case sprung free, so that now he could easily slip his hand inside. He could feel a hardback book, then another. He glanced down to see what looked like medical textbooks.

He looked up, briefly making eye contact with the boy of the family nearby, then let his hand carry on probing. Now he felt what he guessed was a large manila envelope. His fingers inched toward the top, where he could tell the envelope was unsealed. He pushed inside, his fingers finding the unmistakable texture of photographs. There seemed to be dozens of them, forming a thick wad. Peeling a few away from the set, he brought them close to the opening of the briefcase so that he might glance down for a quick look. It took him a while to absorb what he had seen. Once he had, the images both shocked him — and explained everything.

A moment or two later, a flushed George Lund returned. ‘I can’t go through with this, I’m sorry,’ he said and, before James had a chance to reply, he reached down for the briefcase — now returned to its place — turned and quickly walked towards the exit.

James got to his feet: ‘Stop!’

Lund did not turn around.

‘Don’t just storm out like that. Stop, will you!’ James called, much louder this time.

The mother at the next table was staring again. Digging into his pocket, James slapped down a couple of dollar bills and dashed out. He stumbled, knocking a glass over on his way to the door; he heard it smash to the ground. Once on the street, he looked left and right among the small knots of teenagers and geriatrics hanging around together in the warm evening, but he’d lost him.

It wasn’t the first time James had encountered one of Lund’s type, he thought as he headed back towards town. There were plenty like him in Oxford and, on two occasions, they had made their feelings known to James. Years later, he had told Florence about it and she had said it was his fault for being so damned handsome.

Even so, the photographs were pretty shocking. Shots of naked young men from the front, back and side on. At first glance each man looked as if he were standing before a medical examination board — facing the panel, then offering a profile, then showing them his back. James had wondered if that was how these pictures had been taken, by an official army photographer, or maybe by a hidden camera smuggled into the examination room.

But then he had spotted the strange spikes. At regular intervals along their spines, the men had sharp metal pins emerging from their backs. They were especially visible in the profile photograph, the spines silhouetted against the plain white background.

James liked to think he was a man of the world. In Spain a couple of the other volunteers had pornographic magazines which James had seen, featuring knickerless girls bent over chairs and tables, often prising apart their own buttocks in order to expose themselves more fully. He knew from his academic research that sexual desire was a complicated business and that some people were aroused by the unlikeliest of things — fetishes for women’s hair or feet, for example. But he had never contemplated anything like this, that a man could want to look at images of other men whose bodies had been elaborately pierced.

As James knocked back his second Scotch at the bar of the Owl Shop, he contemplated his rotten luck. He had hoped that Lund would prove to be his lucky break, the man who would prove that every now and again you could rely on the kindness of strangers. Instead he had run into a homosexual and pervert, who had somehow deluded himself into thinking this visiting Englishman would be interested in a quick, queer embrace.

No wonder Lund had wanted to meet far out of town, where no one would discover his shameful secret. James should have been suspicious from the off, starting with Lund’s suggestion that they meet in the evening and at a restaurant. And all that flustered placing of his moist hand on James’s wrist: the man was clearly nervous, uncertain of how James would respond to him. What was it he had said? You have no idea what you’ve walked into here, do you?

James ordered another whisky. And yet, he could not be sure. If Lund really were a homosexual out to make a conquest, why would he suggest meeting in public and early in the evening? If he had summoned James to his home at 11 o’clock tonight, promising some information on Florence and Harry, James would have gone there without hesitation. Meeting at Frank Pepe’s had only made it harder for the man.

Lund had said something else too. He’d been all but jabbering by then, so James had not taken it too seriously. But the message was clear enough: You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Bigger and more dangerous.