‘We had to run with the story, Ange. We did our best to protect you … the Simmons girl … a sex tape … Where are you?’
‘You need to send a plane, John, as soon as you can.’
‘Yes … yes, of course, of course.’ He was almost hyperventilating. ‘But where to?’ He picked up his pen, poised.
The line fizzed and sizzled.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked. ‘Where to, Ange? Where are you?’
There was a delay on the line, the signal dipping in and out making her sound like a dalek.
‘We’re on an island just north of Mykonos … I don’t know exactly. The boat’s not big enough for all of us. Please John, send a plane!’
‘Yes, yes, it’s OK. I hear you, Ange. It’s going to be OK. Is McKenzie with you?’
‘No, he’s meeting us at the mansion, tonight. Listen, John, what did you mean when you said you know?’
John Kirkbride picked up the brandy bottle that was lying on its side and attempted to drink the dregs. Jesus Christ alive, he thought as he took a deep breath, the poor bitch doesn’t have a clue.
52
‘Are we too late?’ Angelika burst onto the roof terrace, her gown hoisted in one hand, her Alexander McQueen sandals in the other. The Havaianas had gone overboard. She was almost hyperventilating, her chest tight with adrenalin. Nate followed close behind her, his expression equally dire. They appeared shocked and dishevelled, her face a sea-salty mess of smudged mascara, his hands dirty, shirt rolled to the elbows.
‘Jesus Christ, Angelika –’ Rupert cut her off ‘– where in fucking God’s name have you been?’ He stood abruptly, abandoning his dinner plate with a clatter, his appetite long since passed. His anger completely disappeared, however, when he caught the look of genuine anguish on his wife’s pale face. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’
Angelika wasn’t sure how she was going to tell them what Kirkbride had told her. She wasn’t sure that she could.
‘Did you know you were being filmed, Ange?’ Kirkbride had asked her, ‘that McKenzie has been spying on you all, though for what purpose … well … God only knows.’
‘Yes, I’ve had my suspicions all along.’ Her voice was breaking up and he struggled to hear what she was saying, ‘I found a camera, and confronted him. He denied it, of course. But John, how do you know? How do you know that he’s been watching us, unless –’ and it had hit her full force and she gasped, instinctively putting her hand to her mouth ‘– you’ve been watching us too …’
‘I’m so sorry, Ange.’ John Kirkbride had sighed heavily, . ‘I’m afraid it’s not just me who’s been watching,’ he’d said, wishing he didn’t have to, ‘it’s the whole Goddamn world.’
That’s when Angelika had become hysterical.
‘Nate?’ Mia stood up from the table now, her heartbeat knocking against the heavy necklace she was wearing. She sensed something was wrong … terribly wrong.
‘You cheating pair of bastards.’ Billie-Jo launched herself at her husband drunkenly before Angelika could answer them. Secretly seething she’d been steadily knocking back the champagne and slipping off to the restroom for her usual coke fix all evening and was ready to explode. ‘No fucking shame, the pair of yous.’
JJ held her back. ‘Take a chill pill, babe,’ he said in a bid to calm her down.
Billie-Jo was having none of it. ‘Headache, you said.’ She pointed a long, accusing fingernail at Nate’s chest. ‘Yeah, well you’d better get used to having one of them because the first thing I’m doing when we get home is contacting a solicitor. In fact, Rupert here has already agreed to represent me when I take you to the fucking cleaners, ain’t cha, Rupert?’
Rupert was still staring at Angelika; he’d never seen her look so frightened in all the years he’d known her and it sent a chill down his spine. He thought about reaching out to her and putting his arms around her but he still couldn’t bring himself to.
‘Angelika?’
‘We’ll rinse him for everything he’s got’ Billie-Jo ranted, fired-up on booze and coke. As hypocritical outbursts went it was pretty spectacular but she felt genuinely wronged. She may well be doing the dirty with JJ on the sly, not forgetting the afternoon with the well-built masseur, but at least she’d had the integrity to try and cover her tracks and keep it on the low-down. These two brazen fuckers … they didn’t seem to care who knew, sloping off like that and rubbing everyone’s noses right in it without a red face between them.
Furious, she struggled from JJ’s grip.
Holy shit, JJ thought, this chick is insane.
Rupert could see that Angelika was shaking.
‘No … no, you don’t understand,’ she said, ‘we have to get out of here … we have to leave now. Right now!’ Her voice was low and husky, and Nate spontaneously put his arm around her. ‘Something terrible has ha–’
‘You fucking bitch!’ Billie-Jo screamed, pushed over the edge by Nate’s action. As the slap made contact with Angelika’s face it resonated through the night air with a sickening crack. ‘He’s my fucking husband! Stay away from him, you slag!’
‘Leave her alone!’ Nate roared at Billie-Jo, pushing her away as Angelika brought her hand up to her face in shock. ‘You don’t understand, you stupid bitch!’
Mia looked on, horrified. ‘Children, please!’ she exclaimed. ‘This really isn’t the time or –’
But before she could finish, the video screen suddenly lit up and McKenzie’s image came into view.
53
Martin McKenzie felt a strange sense of relief as the private jet made a smooth take-off from the farthest – and most sheltered – northerly point of Pleasure Island in a calculated bid to ensure his guests would not detect his departure. He glanced at his Cartier watch. It was 11.57pm. The pre-recorded footage he had made would appear on the video screen at any moment now and his prestigious players were about to unwittingly enact the final curtain call in his master plan. With a bottle of aged malt beside him and a celebratory Cohiba already lit, he flipped the lid of his laptop and booted it up in anticipation.
This was the moment he had been waiting for – the pinnacle of the entire exercise, the crescendo – though the build-up had been somewhat dampened by a terrible hallucination he’d had the previous evening that was still lingering fresh in his mind. Elaine; she had appeared at his bedside during the night, her skin dripping with water, seaweed matted in her hair, her prefrontal cortex missing, blood and tissue smattered on her conservative swimsuit. Her fingernails were black, like she’d had been clawing at debris, her facial expression fixed in the one of despair she’d had as he’d brought the cloche down onto her skull.
‘Why, Marty?’ She had shuffled towards him in small, juddery, unnatural steps, her familiar voice gravelly as though her lungs were filled with water. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’
‘Elaine …?’ Perspiring profusely, he’d rubbed his eyes, the apparition almost rendering him blind with terror. ‘No … no … get away from me … Noooo!’
He had pulled the expensive, cotton sheets over his head and screamed. He had been unable to close his eyes again for the rest of the night.
McKenzie swallowed a few fingers of Scotch and decided to check his phone messages. He needed to get a grip; people had been trying to reach him. Once he was back in the UK it would be business as usual, plus he would have to declare his wife missing, and then there would be press to deal with, policemen to talk to, and an international search to embark upon. He would be forced to draw on his acting skills to convey a convincing role of the concerned husband. Damn that woman; even in death she would cause him consternation and bother. McKenzie located his phone and switched it on. It beeped immediately in quick succession and he cursed. The 67 previous missed calls had now escalated to 215. There were 16 new voice messages. This was his private number, all business calls were usually filtered through one of his many overworked PAs. Whoever was trying to reach him must’ve been desperate.
>
Knocking back the remainder of his Scotch, he filtered through them. The majority were from his legal representatives, Larry Goldenburg & Co. What did they want? Larry was a good friend but the kind you only called upon in an emergency. McKenzie felt the lightest flutter of concern settle on top of his Scotch as it slid into his guts. The messages went back a few days. He’d ignored them of course because deep down McKenzie knew he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.
‘Martin, yes, hi, it’s Larry Goldenburg.’ The man’s nasal, Jewish tones irritated his ear almost instantly. ‘Um, we got a bit of a situation going on here and I need to speak with you urgently. Can you call as soon as you pick up this message? Thank you.’
McKenzie puzzlement slipped seamlessly into concern. Like himself, Larry rarely, if ever, contacted his clients direct, not as a first point of call, anyhow. This would have to have been a matter of extreme importance. The remaining messages simply compounded that something was indeed very wrong:
‘McKenzie, yeah, um it’s Larry again. Listen, I have to speak with you as soon as possible. Please, the moment you get this message, call me’; ‘Martin, it’s Goldenburg again. Look, some serious shit has hit the fan. I really don’t want to have to do this in a message. Call me. Now. Please …’; ‘McKenzie, Goddamn it, man, call me! You’re in it up to your neck, and I need your instructions. My fucking phone is ringing off the hook … where are you?’
McKenzie had begun to shake now as he listened to the messages one after the other. There was a different caller.
‘Yeah, um, Mr McKenzie –’ the voice was as urgent as it was unfamiliar ‘– this is John Kirkbride from the Voice. I need to speak to you in connection with some footage we’ve reason to believe took place on an island that you own. It’s regarding Mia Manhattan and Joshua Jones, Angelika and Rupert Deyton, and Nate and Billie-Jo Simmons. We’d like to get some facts straight before we go ahead and run with anything, and were hoping to ask you a few questions if possible. We’ve tried your reps but no one’s getting back to us. I hope you don’t mind my calling you directly. My private line is 0207 …’
Hyperventilating, McKenzie scrolled through the myriad messages from his press team.
‘Please call the office. It’s URGENT!’ There were at least 30 more.
Even Bailey had given him the heads-up. ‘Your number’s up, McKenzie. You’re weally, weally in the shit now. We all are.’
Panic gripped him like a hand around the throat. Why the fuck would a filthy muck-peddler like Kirkbride want to speak to him about Pleasure Island? No one knew where it was. The guests had had no contact with the outside world since their arrival. Even if the likes of Bailey had sung to the press, which was unlikely given the fact he’d settled the man’s exorbitant tax bill, all he knew was that Mia had been invited to a private holiday destination. No one but he and Elaine and the Super Eight knew the identity of the other players. There was little if any chance of one of the club members having gone public; to do so would mean exposing their own identities and deviances, and unless the dead had somehow learned to speak from the grave …
So how did Kirkbride know? Unless, of course …
McKenzie, massaging his heart with his hand in a bid to stop it thudding, logged into his computer using his private access code and watched as the images of the island came into view as usual, clicking on his internal message system which allowed him to speak solely with the Super Eight club members.
‘Super8#4 is no longer active … Super8#2 has left the conversation …’
He looked at the bottom of the screen in a bid to check who might be online, and could shed some light on just what the hell had happened here. He saw that the current online users had rapidly escalated since he had last checked … to an astonishing 1,678,356.
But that just couldn’t be right; his technical people had given him their complete reassurance that it must just be a glitch, a mistake, a technical error. He clicked on his private email, ostensibly to contact that walking-dead man who had built the forum and who had claimed it to be ‘unhackable’. There was a message from him already waiting.
‘I need to speak to you with the utmost urgency, sir,’ it read. ‘I’m afraid something seems to have gone horribly wrong.’
There was another message underneath it. One from Super 8#4, the female deviant who had pleasured him so willingly in his office. It simply read: ‘You’re fucked.’
McKenzie dropped the laptop, and the bottle of Scotch went down with it.
‘Fucking shit!’
Alerted to the din, Aki came running through the red, velvet curtain.
‘Is everything OK, Mr McKenzie?’ she nervously enquired, scrabbling to clean up the mess.
‘A newspaper,’ he said, his lips were suddenly dry as sandpaper and he struggled with the words. ‘Bring me a newspaper … and another bottle of Scotch.’
Aki nodded profusely. She had never seen Martin McKenzie in anything other than a state of complete control and restraint and she hurried off, frantically rushing back with a pile of newspapers and a fresh bottle of Macallan single malt.
Snatching the papers from her grasp so violently that she gasped in shock, McKenzie stared at the front page as horror seeped into every crevice of his body to the point where he thought he might have a seizure.
‘Oh, fuck …’ he whispered as he read the headline. ‘Fuck …’
Aki hovered next to him, a look of genuine fear on her small, flat face.
‘Can I … can I get you anything else, sir?’ she squeaked through her terror.
‘Yes.’ McKenzie said. ‘Bring me my gun.’
54
‘Firstly, I must apologise for not being there in person.’ McKenzie cut a sharp image on-screen with his slicked-back hair and trademark dark suit, reminiscent of a fading Hollywood actor. ‘But I’m sure you can appreciate, or certainly will after this speech, why I felt perhaps it prudent not to be.’
‘He’s had a facelift,’ Mia remarked dryly.
Angelika was still as a statue, the sound of her heartbeat ringing in her ears, her hand still holding her stinging face.
‘Is this a live recording?’ Rupert blinked at the screen. ‘Because if it is –’
‘Shhh!’ Mia snapped. ‘Let’s just listen to what the bastard has to say, shall we?’
Nate slipped his fingers into Angelika’s and she gripped them tightly. No one noticed; they were too preoccupied.
‘We have to tell them now,’ she said quietly, but the truth was she wanted to hear what McKenzie had to say as much as the rest of them did.
‘I suppose you’re all wondering why I invited you here to Pleasure Island in the first place.’ McKenzie cleared his throat loudly, like a politician addressing his crowd. ‘Well, I am about to explain, but before that I would like to thank you all personally for providing myself and my fellow club members or, as I prefer to call them, “the Super Eight” with such excellent footage over the duration of these past two weeks, it’s been –’ he paused, thoughtfully ‘– riveting to observe.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Billie-Jo’s faced crumpled. ‘Observe? Observe what?’
‘Us, you stupid girl,’ Rupert said, without taking his eyes from the screen.
‘Some of you, that is to say the smarter amongst you, have rightly already suspected that you were being watched. Of course, the question you are no doubt asking yourselves right this very second is why exactly?’
Billie-Jo swallowed back nausea. This was a joke, right? A sick joke.
McKenzie paused again, though his cool composure remained intact.
‘Some time ago I had an idea for a new reality game show, one in which the contestants had no idea they were being observed. The premise of the initial concept was to place a group of people onto an island and … how can I put it?’ He stroked his chin. ‘Put them in various situations in a bid to see how they would react. Place temptation in their way, obstacles for them to overcome, secrets to divulge … that
sort of thing … thus affording the viewer a psychological insight into their individual personalities. A social experiment, if you will.’
‘Oh my fucking God.’ Billie-Jo exchanged nervous looks with JJ.
‘The plane crash,’ McKenzie continued, ‘was pre-designed to put you on the back foot. We wanted to test your metal, myself and my fellow viewers, see what you were made of, which of you would sink and which would swim, metaphorically speaking, of course.’
‘Fellow viewers?’ Rupert’s hands were shaking violently. ‘Super Eight?’ He rubbed his temples. This wasn’t really happening. It was all a horrific nightmare, wasn’t it? Had McKenzie witnessed his tryst with Raj?
‘As it was, all of you somewhat surprised us with your individual capabilities and survival instincts. Though perhaps now would be a good time to express my apologies to young Joshua for the business with his arm. That particular incident wasn’t supposed to happen, but the best-laid plans and all of that. Anyway –’ he smiled jovially ‘– the champagne was laced with a strong sedative which allowed the operation to run smoothly, or as smoothly as possible anyhow. And, shall I say, no real arm was done.’ He laughed then, a horrible sound that showcased him as the psychotic maniac he really was.
‘Of course, my wife Elaine was fully briefed and privy to all plans and the staff, the pilot and the flight attendant on my payroll, and the men and women who have helped make this experience a truly luxurious one, are all trained actors who, while aware of the cameras, were not aware of your lack of awareness of them, so please, don’t blame them should any of you feel the need to vent any frustration.’
‘I need another drink,’ Mia said to no one in particular.
‘Frustration? Is he for real? Angelika could barely believe what she was hearing.
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