by Mike Hockney
‘You all seem to think that because you’ve been on the TV and in the papers you’re something special,’ he went on. ‘Think we can’t lay a finger on you? You couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t give a rat’s ass about celebrities. My job is to catch criminals, whoever they are.’
He lifted a brown folder from the table and thumbed through several pages.
‘Everything you told the police before was bullshit from beginning to end, wasn’t it?’
‘Listen, if this is yet another investigation into Sam’s death, all I can say is that the whole world knows what happened. They watched it on TV.’
‘You can’t walk away from this. When one of the most famous men in the world dies, no one forgets.’
No one forgets. The words made me shudder. The memories were in my bloodstream, circulating all the time. Sometimes when I looked in the mirror I thought I saw the ghosts of the four who died. Above all, I remembered Zara’s Day of the Dead and I wondered if they could come back to this world just as she claimed.
‘I know what the murder weapon was.’ Carson crouched down so that his head was level with mine. ‘Zara’s gang killed him with NexS.’
‘That’s a fantasy. There’s no such thing.’
‘We both know you’re lying.’
‘Like I said, Sam’s death was filmed. Everyone saw it. No one else was there. There was no murder. No one found any trace of this NexS.’
‘That’s what it seems like, but you know what they say about appearances being deceptive.’
I tried hard not to look at him: a smug Yank who thought he could understand the Top Table. They were light years beyond his comprehension. He’d probably come in his pants if Zara ever spoke to him.
Carson waved his folder at me. ‘It’s all here, the full story. All the motives. The whole shitty shebang.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘How’s this for starters? Mr Harry Mencken went to Yale as a student and joined an elite secret society called the Skull and Bones. It’s safe to say the Millionaires’ Death Club would have been right up his street.’
I tried not to react. Mencken himself had told us all about the Skull and Bones society, merely omitting that one detail that he was a member. OK, he’d deceived us, but the more I thought about it the less I cared. I was sure he had many secrets, some harmless, some unsavoury. I had no desire to find out what they might be.
Carson tried again. ‘In the end, we discover everyone’s secrets. Did you know that when Sam was eighteen he got his girlfriend pregnant? The baby boy was two months premature. He was so sickly the doctors couldn’t do anything for him. His mother and Sam were allowed to briefly hold him, but he died minutes after being born.’
I flinched. Poor Sam. Now his recurring dream made perfect sense.
‘I see I finally got your attention,’ Carson said. ‘Want to know what Lincoln said to Jez Easton at that MTV ceremony? An FBI sound engineer managed to isolate his words. It gives us a clear motive for Easton wanting Lincoln out of the way.’
I pretended I had no interest but I was desperate to find out what it was. It had always intrigued me.
‘Ah, here we are,’ Carson glanced at his notes. ‘“You’re some actor, aren’t you, Jez?” Sam said. “Shall we show the world what you’re really like, asshole? I have the whole thing on video.”’
I remembered Jane’s story about the party in Sam’s penthouse when a guest jumped to her death and suspicion fell on Jez; the rumour that Sam had a secret camera that recorded exactly what happened.
‘Easton made light of Lincoln’s comment,’ Carson continued, ‘saying it related to a home sex video he’d accidentally left in Lincoln’s apartment. We never did find any video, sexual or otherwise. That doesn’t mean it’s not out there somewhere. It will fetch up one of these days. Then we’ll know for sure.’
‘I can’t help you with any video,’ I said.
‘But the mere mention of it riled Easton, didn’t it? You have to wonder why.’
Was it possible that Jez threw the woman out of the window and Sam’s camera recorded the murder? Maybe Jez gave the victim something that made her jump. I was already familiar with a substance that could induce people to kill themselves. Did Jez know about NexS long before his trip to London?
Sam was definitely right about one thing – Jez was some actor. He’d fooled everyone, especially me. He had a recurring dream of his own, of course, and now I knew precisely what it meant. The weight he dreamt he was dragging around with him was neither fame nor guilt – it was the knowledge that Sam held damaging evidence against him.
‘Jez and Mencken have a close relationship, don’t you agree?’ Carson said. ‘It must have tortured Sam, what with him treating Mencken like a surrogate dad and all that. Did he ever tell you how he found out?’
‘Find out what?’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Carson’s eyes gleamed with malicious delight. His next words slammed into me like punches. ‘Jez Easton is Harry Mencken’s son.’
I stared straight ahead.
Carson couldn’t keep the sneer off his face. ‘He’s not the only Mencken bastard, of course. Simon Meade is Easton’s half brother.’ He took a photo from his folder and slapped it down in front of me.
‘Blond Elvis!’ I blurted.
‘Pardon me?’
I shrugged. ‘I never knew his name.’
‘You weren’t a big cog in this machine. I’m sure you weren’t party to any of the major decisions. It was probably like a jigsaw for you, with key pieces missing. Is it all beginning to fit together now?’
Was it?
‘I can’t help you,’ I replied. I knew that if my headteacher at school could see me now she’d shake her head and say, ‘I told you so. A strangely amoral creature, not fit for Roedean.’ But maybe my dad would still give me some credit. I wasn’t ratting and I never would. Didn’t that make me moral?
Carson was frustrated. ‘This isn’t over,’ he growled. ‘One day, one of you will crack. It might be a year, it might be twenty, but one day someone’s conscience won’t stay quiet any longer.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I insisted. I knew everyone’s loyalty to Zara was much greater than any notion of obeying something as remote as the law. ‘Well?’ I asked when Carson’s questions dried up.
He folded his arms and glowered at the floor.
‘Get out of here,’ a new voice said – Special Agent Levrov. Why had she chosen to speak now, just as we were finishing? She walked to the door and edged it open a few inches.
I got out of my seat and moved towards her. Manoeuvring past, I squeezed myself against her. I smiled as sexily as I could. I don’t know why I did that. Or perhaps I knew exactly.
Levrov reached out and grabbed my arm. ‘Come on, Sophie, why don’t you stay and tell us about Zara? You must be dying to.’
She leaned into me, invading my body space, just as I’d done to her. ‘Perhaps you think some cupboards should stay locked. You never know what might fall out, right?’ Reaching into her handbag, she brought out a glossy colour photograph that showed Zara and me. I was shocked because I didn’t know such a picture existed, and I had no idea how the FBI had got their hands on it. In it, I was standing side by side with Zara. She looked as perfect as ever while I was staring glumly at the ground.
‘She’s extraordinarily pretty, isn’t she?’ Levrov pressed her mouth so close to my ear I could feel her hot breath. ‘But you seem a bit down.’ She raised her eyebrows.
I froze. Everything started to flood back. That face.
‘I don’t think it was Sam Lincoln you loved,’ Levrov said. ‘Was Zara everything you aspired to be? All of your dreams come true?’
That last remark cut right through me. Last summer had started as a dream, but the flip side of heaven is hell. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
‘Oh, here’s something you might like to read.’ Levrov pulled a book from her handbag. ‘It’s an advanced copy of Jez
Easton’s autobiography. Ghost-written, of course, but none the worse for it, I’m sure.’
I didn’t want to look at it.
‘I like the pictures,’ she whispered, ‘especially the one on page ninety-eight. There’s one thing about it – I can’t work out what it’s showing me. Is it everything, or nothing? Have a good look. One of these days, maybe you can let me know what you think.’
I reluctantly took the book and walked out into the corridor. I should have been relieved to be out of that grim interview room, but I felt nauseous. The book was so heavy in my hand. I didn’t want to open it, but I knew I had no choice. Sooner or later you have to confront your demons.
I went to the loo and locked myself in a cubicle. With my hands shaking, I opened the book at the section full of glamorous celebrity photographs. As I flicked through them, I saw picture after picture of Jez surrounded by famous friends, meeting presidents and royalty, jamming with rock bands on stage, opening nightclubs, sitting at the wheel of racing cars, sipping champagne on yachts with beautiful models, living the glitzy highlife of a superstar.
Then I reached page ninety-eight. I stared at the photograph and kept staring. It was a picture from almost two years ago, long before my first contact with Jez. He had made an appearance as a celebrity speaker at the Oxford Union and afterwards he went to a party with the sponsors of his trip and the leading members of the Union.
He was pictured standing amongst three of the students, with his sponsors on the right of the photograph. One sponsor was Harry Mencken, another John Adams of Captain Toper Records, and the third was my former business mentor Peter Henson. As for the tall students on Jez’s left wearing tuxedos, Jez was paying no attention to them. He was preoccupied with passionately kissing a beautiful blonde in a blood-red cocktail dress.
There was no room for doubt, no possibility of error. The students in the tuxedos were instantly recognisable. One was Simon Meade, Mencken’s son and Jez’s half-brother, as I now knew. The other was Charles Leddington. As for the young woman being kissed…Zara was as alluring as ever. Every time I looked at that picture, I knew the truth.
I had been an accessory to the perfect murder.
Chapter 45: Bridge of Sighs
People talk about ‘the shock of their life.’ Maybe everyone needs one or they’d stay stuck in their rut forever. Wake-up calls didn’t come any bigger than the one I’d just had. No court could ever prove the Top Table killed Sam, but they did. It was exactly what Zara had bragged about at dinner on that first night in the mansion. The fact that she’d openly discussed it with Sam no doubt made it all the more delicious.
Why had I ever got involved with people like that? There was no point in denying it – I’d been on a self-destruct course all of my life. I’d always admired the wrong people, chased the wrong dreams, aspired to everything that was wrong for me. I guess I’d been running from the one thing I never wanted to confront – myself. I was achingly, embarrassingly ordinary. There was nothing special about me, nothing at all. I could never be in the same league as Mencken and Jez and, especially, as Zara and the Top Table.
I phoned Mencken and arranged to meet him at the Millennium Bridge, exactly in the middle. He laughed when I said that.
We met on an overcast afternoon. The Thames was grey and cold, and I was wearing a red Puffa jacket to keep out the chill. I didn’t say a thing about what Carson and Levrov had revealed. I knew that whatever I said about Sam, Mencken would put a spin on it. He would claim that he was doing Sam a favour, providing him with the same service that Stevenson’s Suicide Club offered its clients. But I was convinced that Mencken’s main motivation was to protect Jez and himself from being exposed over whatever it was that had happened in Sam’s apartment. Sam was a loose cannon who had to be silenced.
Anyway, I didn’t want to argue. There was no point. I just wanted to tell Mencken in person that there was no chance I’d ever be joining him in any kind of business enterprise.
‘So, this is where the adventure ends?’ Mencken said. ‘I suppose you want me to leave the bridge in one direction while you go in the other?’
I nodded.
He smiled. ‘I see you’ve picked up a few tricks. Here we are, poised over the river of life, so to speak, confronted by a choice of which direction to take. Not terribly subtle, I have to say, but quite effective.’
‘When I look back on this moment, I’ll know exactly what was at stake,’ I answered, ‘and why I did what I did. There was a time when I’d have bitten off your hand for what you’ve offered me. It’s everything I want, but it isn’t what I need. I’ve only just worked out that the two are totally different.’
‘You want to show the world the real you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But whenever you hear celebrities saying things like that, what they’re really confessing is that they’re faking it the rest of the time. You never hear them admitting that they’re professional phoneys.’
‘Well, I’m admitting it. I’m a fake, a phoney, a fraud, whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to be myself.’
‘Good for you. You’ve overcome your obsession with your sister.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Hey, come on, you’ve always known what this is really about. Your sister was the absent presence.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Mencken smirked. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you how you ended up in the middle of all this? Did you seriously think it was coincidence, or some whim on my part? I didn’t know a thing about you. I’d never heard of you. Zara picked you. She was fascinated by what Ophelia’s sister was like. Of course, you were never able to compete with a ghost, immortalised by a tragic death hours after giving a divine performance. Frozen perfection. In a way, Zara was much harsher towards you than anyone. Everything about you seemed to her like an insult to the memory of your deified sister.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Zara told me the whole story. I wanted to know how she came to be the way she is.’
‘What are you saying? You must tell me.’
I listened in silence as he told his story. The Headgirls from several of England’s most prestigious private schools were invited to Wycombe Abbey, the most elite girls’ school of them all, to take part in a public speaking contest. The theme was ‘Inspirational Heroines from Literature’. All the Wycombe Abbey girls, including Zara, who was just thirteen at the time, went to the great hall to watch the contest.
The usual suspects cropped up in the debate – Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Scarlett O’Hara, even Bridget Jones.
According to Mencken, my sister was the last to speak. She began by giving a spellbinding recitation of The Hollow Men, starting with the quotation from Heart of Darkness that precedes the poem: ‘Mistah Kurtz – he dead.’ Then she launched into a scathing attack on the heroines chosen by the other competitors. One by one, she deconstructed them, exposed their anaemic, man-intoxicated, twee souls. She condemned them as glorified Mills and Boon heroines who infected women with the disease of defining their existence in terms of their relationships with their tiresome suitors. No, she declared, what women needed was a Ms Kurtz, a modern woman for the modern age, unafraid to journey to the darkest destinations, determined to wrestle with the great questions of the mind and soul rather than the trivial issues of the heart. Modern women ought to be fiercely independent and validated by their own merit rather than by the men in their lives.
Every girl at Wycombe Abbey was awestruck. My sister got a standing ovation, and a unanimous victory; even the other speakers cheered her. She was garlanded with flowers.
It was on her way back to Cheltenham that she was killed.
I vaguely remembered some of those details, but over the years I’d tried to blot them out, to forget. But any deliberate act of forgetting simply creates the ghosts that haunt you.
When Mencken had finished, he gave me a curious smile. ‘You see, Sophie,
Zara is trying to make your sister’s vision a reality. She’s chosen that as her mission in life.’
I couldn’t believe it. My own sister was Dr Frankenstein. Trembling, I reached into my handbag and brought out my purse. I fumbled for the photograph of my sister. I hadn’t looked at it since I put it there the day she died.
‘Why do you have a picture of Zara?’ Mencken asked, looking over my shoulder as I drew out Ophelia’s photo.
I stared at the beautiful face, with the striking blue eyes, and the dramatic short blonde hair. With tears streaming down my face, I tore it up and scattered the pieces into the Thames.
‘That was my sister.’ I practically choked on the words.
‘Ah, now I understand.’
I sobbed as I watched the current taking away the fragments of the photo, the picture of my personal ghost. I refused to live in my sister’s shadow any longer. I missed her terribly, and I’d never stop admiring her, but she was a different person from me and I couldn’t keep trying to do the impossible and emulate her in some feeble way of mine. I just wanted to be happy on my own terms.
Mencken put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.
‘Keep it real, Sophie.’ He gave me his Californian smile for the last time before heading off towards the Globe. I watched him for a few moments. Then I walked away in the opposite direction.
Epilogue
(Five Months Later)
If I’d gone along with Mencken’s plan, I could have made quite a business of it. In fact, I’d have earned a fortune. As it turned out, Jane was the one who profited. Somehow, she managed to hook up with Mencken and now I hear she’s well on her way to her first million, and loving every moment. Jez was only too happy to give her his priceless celebrity endorsement, particularly after she threatened to expose his kinky sexual practices. Love and war, huh?
I’m starting to discover the real me. Not any kind of great person for sure, but not as bad as I feared. Mencken and the Top Table showed me what extraordinary people are like and the word that sprung most readily to mind was monsters. I could accept my ordinariness now. In fact, I liked it.