Pleasure Island (31 page)

R
upert shook his head
. He didn't understand what Mia's shameful secret had to do with anything. Surely, this wasn't just about settling old scores? Mia's deflection to another record label had taken place years ago, and McKenzie was a businessman, if nothing else. Surely he understood that all was fair in love and business. But he realised in that moment that McKenzie was worse than a narcissistic maniac; he was truly psychotic
and dangerous
.

‘This leads me on nicely to the fragrant Angelika Deyton.'

Angelika almost crushed Nate's hand as she squeezed it tightly. It was her turn.

‘I can't watch this, ‘ Billie-Jo said, although she couldn't take her eyes from the screen.

‘Once upon a time, not so long ago, I very graciously accepted the lovely Ms Deyton's invitation to interview me for what she herself described as a ‘first-person insight' into my good character. After much due consideration, I made the – with hindsight – unwise decision to accept her offer and welcomed her into the realms of my private inner sanctum. However –'

‘I knew it.' Rupert turned to Angelika. ‘I knew it was that bloody piece you wrote on him. I told you so, didn't I?'

Angelika ignored him, her eyes transfixed upon McKenzie's image; it was the proverbial car-crash that she couldn't look away from.

‘– instead of the “insightful and thoughtfully written biography” that Ms Deyton had so carefully duped me into believing she was planning, she instead produced the most unflattering, defamatory portrait of my entire career, and subsequently caused me great embarrassment and considerable distress; a truly unforgivable act of betrayal.' He paused again momentarily. ‘I'm afraid your husband has simply been collateral damage in this little experiment of mine, Angelika. I only hope he can forgive you for dragging him into your mess. Although it does seem he has exacted his own revenge somewhat already –'

Rupert felt weak.
Oh God
,
here it comes
…

‘– but this you will discover in good time,' he added quickly, smiling affably.

‘So where the fuck do we fit into this fucking pantomime?' Billie-Jo shrieked at the screen. ‘What about me and Nate?'

‘And as for Nate and Billie-Jo,' McKenzie said as if he'd heard her question, ‘well, the contents of the boxes will explain. Though I would like to say to Nate Simmons how truly sorry I am for what you are about to discover, genuinely so. This was never anything personal against you. In fact, I rather like you, Nate. Out of everyone you appear to be the most likeable. And as for the divine Billie-Jo, well, what a fine performance indeed. You, my dear, are a star in the making, something our specially hired masseur can certainly vouch for.'

Billie-Jo felt a disconcerting mix of fear and elation at the same time. McKenzie had called her ‘a star in the making' but … the masseur … So he
had
seen what had taken place at the spa that time.

‘Why is he apologising to me?' Nate said. Whatever the reason, he got the distinct impression he wasn't going to like it.

‘The keys to the boxes are underneath the cushions of your dinner seats. I do hope you will accept my parting gifts with the good grace in which they were intended. At the very least I hope you will find them most
insightful
. Tomorrow, the telephone lines will be reconnected and the staff will duly arrange for a plane to take you back to reality – that is, your new reality – in the comfort and luxury of one of my private jets. Now I know what you're all thinking, and the distress you may be feeling at this very moment in time, so perhaps it would be prudent of me to remind you of the confidentiality clause, number 7a, and the agreements you, plus every member of the team, all signed before coming into the island, which clearly stipulates that there shall be no public disclosure following your return. Oh, and Rupert, as you well know, this clause is recognised quite clearly by the law. So should you have any inclination to go to the press or even the police, then I am fully within my rights to sue you for breach of contract. But let us hope that it will not come to this. After all, I think you'll all agree that it is in all of our best interests to adopt the motto that “what happens on Pleasure Island stays on Pleasure Island”.' He beamed broadly into the camera as it panned in for a close-up. ‘So, all that is left for me to say is thank you all –' he placed a hand onto his chest in mock sincerity ‘– for being the most entertaining and enlightening of guests on my new pilot TV show, which I think you'll agree is bound for future success. None of it could've happened without you. Adieu, my friends. Until we meet again.'

The screen went blank, the silence deafening as they all stood staring at it, paralysed.

Rupert was the first to speak.

‘I think we all need to be philosophical about this,' he said, adopting a professional tone as if to offer a panacea. ‘And as much as I am loathe agreeing with that sick piece of shit, I think perhaps he is right. We really should think about keeping this to ourselves. I mean, if we let this get out, then we'll all be under scrutiny, won't we? Our privacy invaded even more than it already has been.'

Angelika knew what her husband was saying and more over why he was saying it.

‘Taking on a man like McKenzie is akin to taking on the establishment; if we keep calm, stick together, then we may all come out of this better off yet.'

‘But he's been watching us!' Billie-Jo was incredulous. ‘Dirty old perv, him and his little gang of nonces, the Super Eight or whatever the fuck he called them. And he's been putting drugs in our drinks … he can't get away wiv it!'

‘Well, it seems to me you don't have too much of an issue when it comes to narcotics, Billie-Jo.'

‘I do when I've no idea I've been taking them,' she shot back. Rupert's stance had surprised her. She thought he'd have been the one screaming the loudest blue murder and threating McKenzie with all sorts. Now it seemed he wanted it all brushed under the carpet.

In that moment Billie-Jo realised that she'd probably been under the influence of something in the dalliance with the masseur and the thought knocked her sick. She'd shagged that bloke while she'd been unwittingly off her face. That was tantamount to rape, weren't it?

‘Yeah, but …'

‘He's had his fun,' Rupert interjected, ‘his twisted little revenge. Him and his little club of voyeurs. Perhaps we should all just try and put this nasty little experience beh –'

‘Only it's not just him that's been watching us, Rupert,' Angelika interrupted him.

‘So there were eight of them in this sick little club.' Rupert shrugged. ‘Strangers, people we'll never meet. They're nothing to us, nor us them. They've had their sick fun, these eight freaks, whoever they are.'

‘Eight.' Angelika squeezed her eyes tightly together for a moment. ‘If only it was just those eight.'

‘What you chatting about?' Billie-Jo said. ‘Don't tell me there's more of them?'

‘Yes,' Nate said, looking at Angelika's pained expression, seeing that she was struggling, ‘much more than eight.'

‘Much more …?' Mia was confused. ‘How many more have been watching us, Nate. Tell me?'

He looked at her with weary resignation.

‘The whole world.'

G
ifts
. This was the one word from McKenzie's speech that had stood out in Billie-Jo's mind and she rushed to her seat to locate the key to the box. She hoped that whatever was inside would be enough to compensate her for what she had just learned, that the world had watched her getting fucked by her husband, the massage dude
and
Joshua Jones, not to mention shovelling coke up her nose like there was no tomorrow. She was finished after this.

‘Open it, Nate.' Her fingers were shaking so much that she couldn't quite manage it herself.

‘I'm not sure I want to do this,' Angelika said, ‘I don't think I want to know what's inside them.'

‘Are we being broadcast now?' Rupert looked at his wife despairingly and she wished she could go to him and comfort him but it was too late for them now; too late for them all.

‘Kirkbride says the high court shut down the links some days ago.' She didn't tell him that Kirkbride had also told her that he had seen the footage of her husband with a dark-skinned man down by the rocks; that conversation was for another time. ‘I think we're safe.'

‘Let's open them in unison,' Rupert said.

‘I agree,' Mia said. She took the black box in her hands and began to unlock it.

‘Let's finish this sick game once and for all.'

‘She's right, Angelika,' Rupert said. ‘We need to see this through.' He was clinging on desperately to the hope that his afternoon with Raj was not now something of an Internet sensation. He thought about McKenzie's speech and evaluated it in his mind; something in the man's demeanour told him that McKenzie knew nothing of the fact the footage had been leaked at the time he had made that recording. Had the injunction been made active in time? He, above all people, knew how quickly these things could be turned around and he grasped onto this thought like a comfort blanket. Had he been outed via the Internet, for the whole world to see? He'd be a laughing stock, a figure of public ridicule, or maybe even hate. Would he lose his job, the support of his family, his son's respect. Good God, his own son may have seen. He wanted to throw up and thought he actually might, bile rising up through his diaphragm, his mouth watering, consumed with self-loathing and humiliation. He knew he had no choice but to come clean.

Miserably it also occurred to him that perhaps Raj had actually been paid to find him attractive; that their encounter had simply been an act, albeit a convincing one, and the very idea was somehow more painful than the thought of the entire world watching him getting fucked in the arse.

Mia opened the lid and pulled out the document that was inside it.

‘Oh my God.' She began to cry hysterically, her hands shaking violently as she read it. ‘Oh dear God, no …'

M
cKenzie had picked
his PC up off the floor, rebooted it and was watching the drama unfold while swigging neat Scotch from the bottle. The years he had spent planning this whole operation, the expenses he'd incurred buying the island and making it habitable, the research and private investigations … it had all culminated this very moment and yet he could not bring himself to enjoy it as he had hoped he would: the sublime sense of
schadenfreude
as he watched that bitch Mia's face, to feel her pain and suffering first-hand; witnessing Angelika Deyton's life implode as she realised her entire marriage had been a farce – it had all been marred by the thought of the impending fate that awaited him. Still, he attempted to reassure himself; he was one of the richest men on the planet – he would find a way out of this thanks to his chequebook and some considerable blackmail. First, however, he had some TV to watch. He wasn't going to miss this final episode for anything.

B
illie-Jo stared
at the photograph of a cute-faced baby – a newborn, practically, by the looks of it, in the arms of a young woman with dark hair and a pretty face – and peered into the otherwise-empty box. There were no jewels, no car keys, no platinum membership cards to private clubs or luxury hotels, no hard cash … nothing. Just a Goddamn fucking dog-eared old photograph of some kid. Her palpable disappointment erupted into uncontrollable rage.

‘What the fucking hell is this shit?' she shrieked, throwing it to floor, incensed. It fell on its face and she saw there were words written on the back of the picture: ‘Kit. September 21
^st
1978.'

‘Kit?' She was hysterical now, the ramifications of everything only just beginning to sink in. ‘Who the fuck is Kit?'

Nate snatched the photograph from the floor with shaking fingers. ‘September twenty-first,
nineteen seventy-eight. That's my birthday.' He stared at the photograph, at the woman holding the baby. Was it him? Was this his birth mother? Was it … he looked up. Mia was standing in front of him, her face a mess of mucus and mascara.

‘Yes,' she said, her voice low and calm as she handed him the birth certificate that had been inside her black box. ‘Hello. Kit. I'm your mother.'

Nate visibly stumbled backwards.

‘Holy fuckamoly,' JJ said. This had been some fucked-up vacation and no mistake. If he'd been a gambling man he would have put money on the idea that they'd just entered the fucking twilight zone.

Rupert reached inside his box and pulled out the contents. It looked like a press-cutting and a hospital-scan picture.

The cutting was taken from the obituary pages, for a Michael Curtis. He recognised the name instantly. Apparently some months ago Michael had hung himself.

Shaking, Rupert discarded it and looked at the hospital scan. It had been taken at the Marie Stopes clinic in 2007, and the small-print read: gestation, 16 weeks … the name on the top: Angelika Deyton.

Silently, they sat around the table. It was a while before anyone spoke.

‘I never wanted to give you away.' Mia looked at Nate through blurry eyes. ‘I was so young … on the brink of stardom. I was forced to choose and I … I made the wrong choice.'

Nate stared at her blankly. His whole body had gone into a state of paralysis as he struggled to comprehend. Mia Manhattan? His blood mother?

‘Can you forgive me, Nate? Please say you will forgive me. A day has never passed when I haven't thought of you. I have carried you in my heart from the moment I held you in my arms. Those few short moments before they took you from me … they were the happiest of my life. Please, Nate,' she begged him, ‘please believe me.'

She was on her knees now, her beautiful Marchesa gown gaping open to expose her bejewelled matching underwear, her face a blacked mess of MAC make-up and years of regret. She had dreamt of this moment, fantasised about it her entire life, and yet here it was, delivered in the most brutal fashion by the very man who had fathered him, a man so insidious and sick and evil that she wished she could go back in time and re-write history so as never to have met him. She would have traded it all in now, the fame and the riches, the adoration and success. The day she had met Martin McKenzie had shaped her entire life, and blighted it too.

Billie-Jo made to put her hand on Nate's but he moved it away.

Oddly, he felt relived somehow, like a particularly persistent boil had been finally lanced. They'd been sharing the same space for the past two weeks, neither of them aware of the revelation that was to come.
Mia Manhattan was his mother.
McKenzie had known all along, orchestrated this whole charade for the purpose of throwing them together, watching them, observing them, with the intension of dropping the final bombshell for his own voyeuristic pleasure in a bid to cause maximum pain and humiliation. It beggared belief, like something out of a twisted fairy tale. Still, if they had got through these past couple of weeks, then somehow he figured they could get through anything. McKenzie wouldn't win; he'd make sure of it.

After a long moment's silence he looked up at her.

‘Who is my father?' His voice little more than a whisper.

Mia shook her head and gave a small howl, a low, primal scream.

‘Mia, please …'

‘Oh, God,' she moaned as though she were in physical pain. ‘Oh, Nate. I'm so, so sorry.'

She was holding onto his knees now; the poor woman looked wretched and, despite himself, he touched her hand.

‘Will you ever forgive me?' Your father is Martin McKenzie,' she said, before collapsing at his feet.

M
artin McKenzie had been watching
Mia's performance with elation but as soon as she said those words he stopped laughing.
He
was Nate Simmons' father? That lying cunt. Frantically he cast his mind back. Mia had been stepping out with that American chap at the time she'd got herself in the family way, if he remembered rightly. Brogan … Chad Brogan … yes, that was it, some flash-in-the-pan overrated young actor. He'd assumed he'd been the one to father the child, although now that he thought of it Mia had never actually confirmed this, and the timing of their own brief affair … he supposed … No, she was bluffing, wasn't she?

McKenzie unbuckled his seat and picked up the Colt M1911 pistol that Aki had duly brought to him on request. He kept one in every aircraft he owned – a man of his wealth and status could never be too careful – and made his way, unsteadily, through the red, velvet curtain.

‘Turn the plane around,' he instructed Hiro. Aki's wide eyes were drawn to the gun in his unsteady hand and she said something to her husband in their native tongue.

‘Is impossible right now, Mr McKenzie,' Hiro replied. ‘The visibility is poor. It be too dangerous. We need more height, better vision –'

McKenzie wasn't interested in the details that accompanied the word no.

‘I'm not asking you, you stupid nip, I'm telling you, turn this damn plane around right now! Take me back to the island immediately. That's a command!'

Hiro and Aki began conversing quickly, their expressions animated.

‘Is no safe, sir,' she explained, ‘my husband say if we do, we die.'

‘And tell your husband that if he doesn't he's dead anyway.' McKenzie pointed the gun at Hiro's head. He had a son …
a son
. A decent, successful, talented, handsome son.
His
son. It was what McKenzie had always wanted: a child who would continue his legacy, someone to which he could pass down his knowledge and wisdom, who would follow in his footsteps, look up to him in awe adoringly … the unconditional love of a child which would offer the narcissist his purest source of supply.

‘No, sir, no!' Aki made to seize the gun and began to grapple with him. It went off almost immediately and she screamed as the contents of her husband's head exploded over the small cockpit.

‘Bloody hell! Now look what you made me do, stupid bitch!' he pistol-whipped her face and she collapsed on top of her husband's corpse. Ironic really, McKenzie fleetingly observed; it was almost an exact re-enactment of the death they had staged. Well, they did say life imitated art. And then it struck him: with the pilot decorating the cockpit who was going to fly this damned plane? He pulled Aki from her husband's body, and she fell lifelessly to the floor. He took up a seat, cursing to himself as he irritably wiped the blood and grey matter from his pristine, white shirt. He searched the control desk for autopilot mode. For a man with such an impressive collection of private jets, McKenzie surprisingly knew very little about how to operate one. He did, however, know that in an emergency, for which he felt this qualified, an aircraft could fly itself for some considerable time, giving him opportunity to contact the necessary people to talk him through landing the blasted thing.

Aki groaned on the floor beside him and he resisted the urge to put a bullet in her, kicking her in frustration instead. He'd deal with her later. She was silent once more. Women; they complicated the most simple of tasks. If this silly bitch hadn't made a rush for his weapon then it wouldn't have gone off, Hiro wouldn't be distributed all over the cockpit, and they wouldn't be in this mess. He stared at the control panels, attempting to make sense of the myriad lights and switches and buttons but reluctantly he was forced to concede he didn't have the first idea what he was doing. Randomly he began to press things and when nothing erratic happened he pressed more, flicking switches and lights with purpose. He hit the ALT mode and the aircraft began to descend rapidly, dropping vertically.

‘Fucking hell!' McKenzie screamed, frantically pressing and flicking. What he didn't know was that when first turned on, the ALT mode immediately tries to maintain the current altitude of the aircraft and that this can cause serious control issues, particularly if the vessel is climbing or descending too rapidly. Shaking his head he thought he felt the plane steady itself for a moment and stopped pushing buttons. A light suddenly came on signalling that the aircraft was in ‘Infinite flight Mode' and he felt the aircraft stabilise. He began to laugh manically.

‘Eureka!' His warranted panic began to neutralise almost instantly, his heart rate beginning to slow down to a more natural rhythm. ‘Thank fucking God for that!' he said aloud, just as Aki pulled the trigger at the back of his head.