by Mike Hockney
Outside the mansion, I felt nauseous. It was a freezing morning and the lawn was covered with frost. I walked across the terrace and down the steps onto the grass. I wanted to escape, but something held me back, as if the mansion were invisibly gripping me. I buried my face in my hands. I detested these people. I detested what they’d done to me, what I’d become.
I started crying. I don’t know for how long. My head was aching, my body shivering and sweating, as though I were some junkie. I gazed at the mansion’s black door and realised I’d never set foot in there again. It had become such a huge part of me, given me the most vivid memories of my life, yet now I was outside. Forever.
My eyes flicked up to Zara’s window. Did she see me coming that first time? I remembered the spectacular flower display – all those lush, black tulips with their golden-orange flashes – on the lawn in the summer. Marcus told me they were a special variety of a tulip known as Oxford’s Elite. Zara had got a horticulturist to breed them specially for her. There had been something magical about it all. But there were no flowers now. Just winter setting in.
I looked up even further, at the mansion’s ornate roof, at the statues of the angels and gargoyles. I wondered what they were intended to symbolise. That beauty and ugliness are inseparable? That angels can become monsters? Did that sum up the Top Table – angels with hearts of darkness? To me, they’d always be the beautiful and the damned.
Dusted with frost, the mansion resembled a frozen palace from a fairytale. As I gazed at the white facade glinting in the morning light, I remembered that story I read as a kid – was it Narnia? – about the Snow Queen who seduced the little boy. I thought of the Snow Queen’s palace of dead kisses and frozen loveliness, its white sparkling beauty, twinkling like ice crystals. But there was no happiness in the Ice Maiden’s palace, was there? She stole laughter with her kisses that froze the heart. Had her icy fingers touched my heart, just as they had Sam’s?
I trudged the half mile to my apartment, showered and changed into fresh clothes – skinny jeans, a fleece and cowboy boots, my default winter wear. What now?
I phoned Sam and Jez. Both had switched off their mobiles. I did get through to Mencken. He said Jez had gone out half an hour after me yesterday and never come back. They weren’t at the Sargasso.
‘They’ve both vanished,’ he said.
Vanished? Part of me wondered if Jez and Sam were involved in a game of their own, or maybe another of their bets was in full swing. All through this thing, I’d been sure Sam was at the centre. Now I’d started to think it might be me. Someone was playing mind games with me. Right from the beginning it had been that way. Mencken started the ball rolling with his bizarre invitation to The Gherkin. Jez and Sam had taken up the slack and then the Top Table stepped in. I shook my head. I wasn’t interesting enough. The truth was I was just the cheap-seats sideshow, and that’s all I’d ever be.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I made myself a strong coffee and tried to clear my head. I took a couple of paracetemols then switched on the TV and watched the news, wondering if there would be anything about Sam. Part of me dreaded he’d show up dead somewhere with a convenient suicide note on his body. The police and the newspapers had explained away the Millionaires’ Death Club, but I knew the stuff they’d found on Marcus’ computer wasn’t the whole truth.
I opened the fridge and reached out for a carton of grapefruit juice. As I stood there, my eyes drifted down to the freezer compartment.
Ice.
Sam said his present for Zara needed extreme cold, didn’t he? He was keeping it at the castle hotel. I rushed out of my flat, jumped into my car and drove fast to the Aggiornamento.
A blonde at reception directed me to the lounge and said the manager would be with me in a moment. I sat staring out of the window at the moat where Sam had dreamt of taking Zara for the moonlit gondola ride that never was.
In the distance, the lake we’d driven to in the summer to have our picnic was different, faded, its vivid blue transformed into washed-out grey. When I thought of those sublime June days, everything was sepia-tinted, like photographs from another century. I was so young in June. I didn’t understand anything. Now it was November and I was decades older.
When the manager appeared, he initially walked past me. I guess he didn’t recognise me. Maybe I didn’t recognise myself anymore. I waved at him to attract his attention.
‘Mr Lincoln’s suite isn’t ready just yet,’ he said apologetically. ‘We weren’t expecting him until later.’
‘Er, he wanted me to check on his surprise.’
The manager nodded. ‘Ah, that is ready. I was just having a look at it. I’m certain the lady will love it. Actually, when he first mentioned it to me, I thought…After all, you and Mr Lincoln in the summer…He’s very taken with his new girlfriend, isn’t he?’
I shrugged. New girlfriend, indeed. I wished so much he had been satisfied with me. If we’d stuck together maybe Zara would never have got inside our heads. Now that she was there, I had no idea how to get her back out.
The manager gave me a key and said, ‘The pool’s just as requested. Can you make sure you return the key to me?’
The pool room was freezing cold. I took a few steps inside then stopped, stock still, as if I’d gazed straight at Medusa. So this was Sam’s present.
With all the water drained from the pool, I was able to walk down the steps and onto the black-and-white-tiled floor. Slowly, I negotiated my way around Sam’s surprise. He had commissioned an ice sculpture, but it wasn’t of swans, lions, cars or any of the other usual things – it was a group of life-sized human figures.
There were ten couples or, rather, one couple in ten different positions spread across the entire pool. The whole piece formed a narrative. The couple were at first apart, with their backs to each other. Then the man caught sight of the beautiful woman and began a pursuit. By the time I’d reached the fifth part of the sculpture, the woman had rebuffed her suitor with an outstretched hand. Three stages later the man’s hand was accepted. In the final composition, the two were locked together, naked, in a passionate kiss like Rodin’s famous sculpture, with the opaque ice taking on a sensual lustre, almost bringing the figures to life. The whole work had been sculpted exquisitely and it was unmistakable who it depicted: Sam and Zara, the enchanted boy and the fatal ice queen.
I wondered what the sculptors thought when Sam commissioned them to do it. Did they wonder who this beauty was? Did they fall in love with her too, with that frozen perfection, that ice-cold heart?
At the far end of the pool, a camcorder rested on a tripod. Did Sam plan to film the great moment when Zara arrived to see her present? Perhaps he hoped to make the ice doubles come alive, to take Zara in his arms for real.
Maybe the sculptures would appeal to Zara’s massive ego, but I couldn’t imagine her doing anything except mock them, as she did everything else connected with Sam. Above all, I was certain she’d laugh at the final one.
As I looked more closely at that passionate embrace, I saw that it wasn’t exactly the same as Rodin’s Kiss, after all. In Rodin’s, the girl seemed dominated by her lover, with her head tilted backwards and the man’s hand resting on her bare thigh. Here, there was no sense of the girl being submissive. Her lover’s hand hesitated above her breast, above a beautifully carved erect nipple.
Maybe Sam intended that feature to show how attracted Zara had become to him, at least in his imagination. But to my eyes – and Zara’s too, I was sure – all it revealed was that he didn’t dare touch her. He was just the frightened little boy awestruck by the Snow Queen in all her wintry power, dreaming of her white sparkling kisses, her frozen caresses.
I stood there, transfixed by Zara’s face. It had started to haunt me. I could only guess at how much it tormented Sam. What did he have in mind? To bring her here tonight, show her the surprise then propose to her? In the state he was in, anything was possible. Hollywood marries into royalty. It even had a suit
ably ludicrous ring to it. What was that word Marcus used? – hyperreal.
Chapter 36: The Hospital
As I left the hotel and headed for the car park, I tried Sam’s mobile again but still got nothing. Mencken and Jez were also incommunicado.
Leaning against my car, I watched my breath condensing in the cold air. Although the sun was shining for the first time in days, it didn’t provide any heat. With a sun like this, the whole planet could freeze. The more time I spent in the world of the Top Table, the more I felt part of me was freezing too.
As I watched a beautiful swan skim the surface of the lake, I wasn’t sure what was worse – being humiliated by the Top Table or ignored by them. I couldn’t face going back to my apartment.
I trudged over the frost-covered grass towards the lake’s edge. I wanted to dip my hand in the water and feel its coldness. It would comfort me somehow. As I stared off into the distance, I noticed the redbrick building on the far side of the lake. Marcus and Leddington had been so secretive about it when we picnicked here in the summer. Maybe…
I returned to my car then set out on the short journey round the lake. In minutes, I was outside the huge U-shaped building. It was in a dilapidated condition and all of its windows were boarded up. When I walked round to the side, I found five black people-carriers parked on a derelict gravel football pitch. Bingo. Marcus had once told me that the Top Table often used a convoy of people-carriers to transport them around.
I thought it might be easier to get inside the building from the rear, but all I encountered was an overgrown garden, choked with weeds and ferns, enclosed by the building’s two wings. Its concrete paths had disappeared beneath the undergrowth.
Returning to the main entrance, I noticed a rusting plaque on the wall. ‘St Benedict’s Hospital,’ it read, ‘For the containment and treatment of contagious diseases of the infected poor.’
I tried to force open the door but it was firmly locked. I strained to hear any noise coming from inside. I couldn’t believe this hospital had no part to play. It was exactly the sort of place the Top Table would love.
I skirted round the building, squinting at each boarded-up window, searching for any weak point. I picked up a metal pipe lying on a grassed-over path, planning to use it as a crude lever. I found a corner window with loose boards and dislodged them. I peered inside but saw nothing except thick darkness. I clambered through and jumped down onto the floor, my feet scrunching on broken glass. I stood there for a second, breathing the stale air. Beyond, there was only that deep darkness. When I heard a scurrying sound, my heart thudded. God, maybe the building was full of rats. I brought out my mobile phone and used the light from the display to get an idea of where I was. I seemed to be in a long corridor, apparently clean and tidy. I had that odd feeling you sometimes get in old buildings when you think that just yesterday it was in full working order, with hundreds of nurses and doctors streaming past. I could almost see them bustling past me discussing the latest cases.
I moved further into the building, trying to tiptoe to muffle my steps. I passed through several reception areas and empty wards where it was easy to imagine ghosts still lying in beds, waiting for the cure that never came. There was no sign of the Top Table.
I trudged on, depressed. At the far end of one wing, light edged out from the bottom of a black door. As I crept nearer, I stepped on something. Directing the light from my mobile phone downwards, I picked out a silver object – another mobile phone…an unmistakable Vertu!
I stuffed it in my pocket then pointed my mobile at the door, found a small hole and peered through. Shapes materialised. The room was completely white, even the tiled floor. The Top Tablers were sitting on two long white benches, all the men on one, all the women on the other. The men were in black tuxedos, the women in black cocktail dresses. They all had their faces chalked white, just as I’d seen that day at Royal Ascot.
No one was speaking. In fact, they were hardly looking at each other. They seemed scared. I scanned around for Sam and Jez. No sign of them. Zara and Leddington were also missing.
I strained against the door, trying to force my eye as close as possible to the hole to see if I could get a wider view.
A door at the far end swung open and Zara strode into the room. Wearing tight black leather jeans and a beige padded tunic, together with a gorgeous white fur hat, she looked every inch a modern Lara from Dr Zhivago. She took a few steps and positioned herself beneath a lamp. With her ice-cool blue eyes, she was indescribably beautiful. In her buttonhole was the blackest of tulips: Queen of Night. How apt.
She said something that I didn’t catch and a second later another figure emerged from the back room. I gasped. Jez was gagged and blindfolded, his hands tied behind his back.
There was no sound, no movement from anyone. What was going on? Then I heard more shuffling steps. A second figure appeared, also gagged, blindfolded and with his hands bound. Sam! I pulled back my head. Only then did I notice circles of light dancing around me. I spun round to see who was behind me and was dazzled by several torch beams. Leddington’s face materialised in the centre of the stinging light.
‘Give her the treatment,’ he said.
His two helpers seized me by the arms and forced a gag over my mouth. The door of the white room opened and the members of the Top Table filed out, pushing Sam and Jez ahead of them. A blindfold was slipped over my eyes. Something hard like a truncheon was pushed against my back.
‘Keep walking until I tell you to stop.’ Leddington jabbed me. Ahead of me, I heard someone opening a door and felt fresh air rushing in. I was pushed outside into the cold. I took a few steps then tripped. Someone’s hand gripped my shoulder and steadied me. I heard a metallic scraping noise and something being heaved to one side.
‘You’re about to go down a manhole,’ Leddington said. He gave orders for Sam and Jez to be untied.
I got a prod in the back and realised it was my signal to climb downwards. Someone helped me to locate the rungs of a ladder and I descended. At the bottom, I was roughly shoved forward. I heard shuffling feet and a cough. A door slammed.
‘Take off their blindfolds and remove their gags,’ Leddington said.
It took my eyes a couple of seconds to readjust to the light. I was with Sam and Jez in a concrete bunker painted lurid scarlet with a huge black skull logo staring out from one wall. This, I realised, was where the Top Table ended and the Millionaires’ Death Club began.
Chapter 37: The Bunker
Leddington pointed at a row of bunk beds at the far end of the room. ‘Your accommodation,’ he said. ‘It’s half past two. The games begin much later. I suggest you do the same as the rest of us and get some sleep. You’ll need all your energy for tonight.’ He gestured towards a small white bottle on a table. ‘If you’re not tired right now, I recommend the sleeping tablets. They’ll knock you out fast.’
One of his colleagues removed the ladder we’d climbed down and then the three men left by a side door, locking it behind them.
‘Jesus, what did they do to you?’ I stared frantically at Sam. ‘Did they harm you?’
He had the strangest, spaced-out look in his eyes.
‘They didn’t do anything serious,’ Jez said. ‘Just tied us up, shoved us in a corner and made sure we couldn’t see or hear. You know, the usual stuff posh English people get up to at those private schools of theirs.’ He scanned around, looking more bored than anything else.
‘How come you’re back all of a sudden, Jez?’ I asked.
He ignored me, turned to Sam and laughed. ‘Well, this is what we wanted right from the start. The answer to the big secret, right?’
I repeated my question.
‘I couldn’t leave you guys to have all the fun, could I? I’m taking Sam back with me when this is over. Right, Sam?’
I was certain Jez wasn’t being straight. I wanted to grab him and shake his secrets out of him. ‘Why are you really here, Jez?’ I said.
‘Just making
sure I win Alphabet Love.’ He gave me a cheesy wink.
‘I’m taking the tablet,’ Sam said. ‘We have a long wait.’
I went along with Sam’s example and hit the bunks after taking a pill, wondering what on earth would be waiting for us when we woke.
*****
When I next opened my eyes, Leddington was standing over me. Sam and Jez were already on their feet, looking groggy.
‘Showtime,’ Leddington whispered. He handed each of us a white robe and a fresh blindfold. ‘Strip naked then put on the robe.’
I panicked. I didn’t want him seeing me nude.
‘I’m not doing this,’ I yelped.
‘Suit yourself. You’ll have to stay here until we’re finished.’
‘Hey, man,’ Sam intervened, ‘don’t be a jerk. We’ll turn our backs.’
Leddington glared at me. ‘You know, you make me laugh. You stripped off on national TV and danced with monkeys. Now suddenly you’re Miss Modesty.’ He shrugged. ‘In a few hours, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. OK, you have ten seconds.’
All of the men turned away while I got naked and pulled on the robe. ‘Finished,’ I said, mouthing a thanks to Sam.
After Sam and Jez changed, Leddington tied our blindfolds and warned us not to try to remove them. The door closed and there was silence. I took a deep breath of musty air.
‘What happens now?’ I asked, but Sam and Jez didn’t answer.
Minutes passed in silence. Just when I thought the Top Table might be playing a joke on us, I heard several people entering the room. They gagged us, put hoods over our heads and tied our hands behind our backs. My heartbeat raced.
‘For a mortal to become divine a sacrifice is required,’ a deep voice said. ‘There can be no rebirth without death.’