The Millionaires' Death Club Read online

  Sam winked. ‘Some surveillance stuff.’

  *****

  I went back to my apartment. Surveillance? Fuck. I was dreading reading about it in the papers the next day. It was vital to find out if these students were serious players. I made calls to all of my contacts and, for the second time, tried to discover if they knew anything about a group of eccentric Oxford University students. This time I was able to add the detail that they were extremely rich and holed up in an amazing mansion in Green Park. Still no joy.

  Peter Henson, my murky former business mentor, had put me in touch with a dodgy policeman from the Met a year before – Sergeant Jim McCann, ‘a useful guy to know’, Henson had told me. And he was right about that.

  I’d call him whenever I wanted someone checked out. It’s amazing what info you can get from someone inside New Scotland Yard; for a small consideration, of course. He wasn’t available when I first called, so I left a message.

  He got back to me at around 3 am, after he’d finished his shift. He ruined a lovely dream I’d been having about Sam, so I was a bit tetchy at first. He told me the students had come to the attention of the police on more than one occasion. They called themselves the Top Table.

  I pictured the card Sam had swiped from Lawrence Maybury. The gold lettering, the One Button and Top Table references, and that strange quote along the bottom. So, now I’d found out about one of the cryptic statements. They weren’t the Millionaires’ Death Club after all, it seemed.

  McCann said the Top Table was an exclusive drinking and dining club for super-rich Oxford University students. Each summer they made the short journey from Oxford and took up residence in their Green Park mansion. They got themselves involved in all kinds of trouble, but everything was always hushed up thanks to their influential connections. They liked cruel stunts and practical jokes. Humiliating celebrities was their speciality, but their pranks never made the media because they never attempted to publicise them.

  I realised the student Mencken had met at the Beverley Hills party wasn’t there by accident: he’d been sent on a mission to lure Sam and Jez to London so that the Top Table could play a trick on them. Exactly why was a different matter. I couldn’t imagine they’d had any previous contact with Sam. Maybe they were targeting him because he was the ultimate celebrity and therefore probably everything they despised. In a way, I was relieved. There was no doubt in my mind now that these were the people who’d taken out the contract on Sam. If they were nothing more than student jokers there couldn’t be anything to fear. Well, except embarrassment.

  When I asked McCann if there was any chance of getting two friends and myself an introduction to the group, he laughed.

  ‘Absolutely no chance. They never let in outsiders.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, then cringed as the sergeant laughed even louder.

  Chapter 15: Clues

  I slept badly that night, unable to get the Top Table out of my mind. I considered them the worst type of snobs, laughing at everyone, and laughing all the harder when their joke went way over everyone’s head. But Lawrence Maybury was dead and there was nothing funny about that.

  As I walked into the Sargasso hotel that morning, part of me was certain I couldn’t help Sam and Jez with the Top Table. But another part hadn’t given up on the fifty grand Mencken had offered for NexS, and the five grand Sam promised for an intro to the Top Table. That was serious money; money I urgently needed. Also, I had professional pride. I felt bad about letting clients down, and it would be like admitting I didn’t have much clout in London if I had to confess I’d made no progress. I hadn’t worked out if I was going to come clean or plead for more time.

  I trudged to the breakfast area, trying not to trip over my long face.

  Déjà vu.

  Sam and Jez were sitting in exactly the same positions as they had on Royal Ascot day and were again absorbed with what was on the TV. Lying in front of them was an intricately designed, colourful piece of paper that looked like a page from a medieval illuminated manuscript. The marvellously ornate gothic lettering on the page was embellished with bold yellows, greens, blues and reds that appeared to have been painstakingly applied by some ancient monk. I was about to pick it up and read it when Sam spoke.

  ‘You won’t believe this. Quick, take a seat.’

  On the TV was the same newsreader who’d made the announcement about Lawrence Maybury. The picture switched to an eerie black balloon floating over the Thames.

  The newsreader spoke over the pictures: ‘In an extraordinary sequel to Thursday’s suicide of brilliant Oxford student Lawrence Maybury, his close friend and fellow philosophy student Chloe Sanford has now also been found dead. She was wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘Lady Lazarus’ printed on it. As with Mr Maybury, two unopened bottles of rare champagne were found lying next to Ms Sanford. An amateur cameraman shot the pictures you are now seeing of the hot-air balloon in which her body was discovered just after dawn this morning. The balloon travelled over twenty miles and was sighted by numerous eyewitnesses before drifting to the ground on farmland in Surrey.

  ‘A note was found on the body. It said: “Lawrence has found the exit from the Lazar House. It’s time for me to join him. NexS delivers us all from this prison. Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.”

  ‘Those last words are from the poem Lady Lazarus by the American poet Sylvia Plath. Plath, a heroine of Chloe’s, gassed herself to death in 1963.’

  ‘That girl,’ I blurted, ‘isn’t she…?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said, ‘one of the Clockwork Orange girls.’

  ‘Listen, two people are dead now. We have to finish with the Top Table right away.’

  ‘But they have NexS,’ a voice said from behind me – Mencken.

  ‘You won’t believe what’s been going on,’ I said.

  He ignored me and picked up the strange parchment. ‘What’s this?’

  I couldn’t believe they were all behaving so casually about two deaths.

  ‘Come on, guys. This is serious. What would the papers say if they found out we knew anything about this?’

  ‘Screw the papers,’ Sam said. ‘Anyway, no one’s finding out anything. We’re the guys who do the finding.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sam nodded at the parchment Mencken was now clutching. ‘We found that in the mansion last night.’

  ‘You’re not telling me you broke into someone’s property?’ I spluttered. I looked at Mencken expecting him to be equally outraged, but he seemed intrigued.

  ‘It was easy,’ Sam said. ‘The mansion has a courtyard at the back. We climbed over the wall and found a tradesmen’s entrance.’ He grinned. ‘The door was a cinch. I learned all about how to pick locks in The Jericho Conspiracy.’

  ‘We found the paper lying on a photocopier,’ Jez added. ‘We’d planned to have a good look around, but we heard noises and got out.’

  ‘You guys are mad,’ Mencken said. ‘I can’t have my stars getting arrested just before we start shooting my picture.’

  ‘We’re really into this,’ Jez said. ‘It’s like something from one of our movies, but for real. Besides, you’re the one who keeps going on about NexS.’

  ‘I know, but please try to remember who you are and where you are.’ As Mencken read the parchment, his eyes widened. ‘Wow, this is terrific.’ He waved it in the air before handing it to me.

  The ornate page was entitled The Fourth Protocol. ‘Of the gathered,’ it said, ‘one is selected as the chooser by receipt of the knave of hearts in the dealing of the cards. The chooser selects the Chosen One and presents him with the Substance. The Substance is always contained in a black capsule. The attenuated Substance is always contained in white capsules. In the ceremony, the gathered take the white capsules while the Chosen One receives the black capsule.’

  ‘Are you getting it, Sophie?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I’m not getting anything.’

  ‘Here�
�s our theory,’ Jez said. ‘The mansion in Green Park is the Lazar House. The Substance described in this “Fourth Protocol” is a designer drug of some kind, maybe NexS itself.’ His eyes gleamed.

  ‘What about the black and white capsules?’

  ‘Different concentrations,’ Sam answered. ‘The black is much stronger. The person who takes it has special status. We think Lawrence Maybury was chosen on the first night and Chloe Sanford last night. That ceremony at the mansion is part of it, the moment when someone is made the Chosen One. That’s why everyone cheers.’

  ‘So those stunts they do are some sort of initiation or selection ceremony?’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon,’ Jez said.

  ‘But why do they kill themselves?’ Mencken asked.

  ‘We were thinking about that,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe once they’ve taken the black capsule, life is downhill from then on. They check out while they’re at the top.’

  ‘A devil’s deal, huh?’ Mencken remarked. ‘The price of ultimate pleasure is death.’

  ‘Only if you take the black capsule,’ Sam said.

  Mencken gazed at each of us in turn. ‘Well, we said we’d go anywhere and pay any price for the perfect high.’ He turned to Sam. ‘How far are you willing to go?’

  ‘All the way,’ Sam responded without hesitation.

  I was shocked. Did he really mean that?

  Mencken’s face betrayed the slightest of smiles. ‘If you’re not in, you’re out, right, Sam?’ When he turned to me, I felt queasy. ‘Are we all in?’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ I said. I explained what my sergeant friend had told me about the Top Table. I mentioned how the students had got a reputation for targeting celebrities, and my theory that they’d been following us all along, probably luring us into some spectacular prank. I even mentioned the contract on Sam, and the sinister gesture Elvis made in the nightclub.

  ‘It was no accident they came into the Hexenhaus on the first night,’ I said, ‘no accident they found us at Royal Ascot, and again last night.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care,’ Sam said. ‘We’ve got the drop on them now.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck their contract,’ Jez added. ‘We’ll take one out on them – but ours will be serious.’

  ‘They’re weird intellectuals with a sadistic sense of humour,’ I protested. ‘You can’t second guess people like these.’

  ‘Listen,’ Mencken interrupted, ‘maybe these people have targeted us, but they obviously didn’t know we were looking for them anyway. Let’s just focus on what I told you before. They’re a secret society that performs a pleasure ceremony based on NexS. That’s all we’re interested in.’

  He’d omitted one detail – the goddess. I pictured her as a deadly Siren, luring my men away from me. I prayed I was right that she didn’t exist, or that her goddessness was exaggerated.

  ‘They’re just like the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale,’ Mencken went on.

  When he saw that we were staring at him blankly, he explained himself.

  ‘Skull and Bones is reserved exclusively for the ultra-rich and powerful,’ he said. ‘Members are recruited from one place only – Yale University. Many American presidents, CEOs, CIA directors and Supreme Court judges have been members. Membership is for life. Rumour has it that the society practises occult rituals. They see themselves as a super-elite destined to rule the world. In fact three of the last four presidents were Skullsmen.’

  For me, that confirmed just how dangerous these people were. ‘We should forget we ever heard about the Top Table,’ I said.

  ‘No way,’ Sam said.

  ‘We’ve been doing some digging,’ Jez said. ‘You know the card Sam swiped from Lawrence Maybury, the one that mentioned Hyperboreans? I Googled it.’ He pulled a printout from his back pocket. ‘Listen to this. The Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived in a paradise beyond the north wind, where the sun shone twenty-four hours a day and gold lay heaped on the streets. The Greek god Apollo spent his winters there. That line on the card is from a poem by some ancient Greek guy called Pindar.’

  ‘It’s a perfection cult,’ Mencken commented. ‘They’re chasing the rainbow. NexS is their passport to paradise.’

  ‘You mean they’re all going to kill themselves?’ I said.

  Before anyone could respond, my mobile phone rang.

  ‘Hi, Sophie.’ It was Sergeant McCann. ‘Bit of a coincidence you were asking about the Top Table,’ he said. ‘I hear the top brass are getting interested in them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve seen the news, haven’t you? The two Oxford students who killed themselves were both members.’

  ‘Yeah, I sort of knew that.’

  ‘Well, here’s something else. This case isn’t as straightforward as people are making out. Something was found on each body.’ He hesitated. ‘No one’s supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Five hundred.’

  That was twice McCann’s usual rate for good snippets, but I agreed.

  ‘OK, here’s the thing. Black calling cards with silver writing were found on the bodies…’

  I gulped and stepped back from the others.

  ‘This is what the cards said,’ McCann stated. ‘“Congratulations, you have been selected by the Millionaires’ Death Club.”’ He paused. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

  I knew, all right. The two deaths weren’t suicides. They were murder.

  And I also knew who else had been given one of those cards.

  Chapter 16: Alphabet Love

  Later on that evening, just before midnight, I found myself standing outside the Top Table’s mansion with Sam and Jez. I was hoping the revelations about the cards might have changed things, but the others seemed even more intrigued now, and keen to get to the bottom of the whole thing. Mencken insisted that the whole Millionaires’ Death Club thing was a Skull-and-Bones-type stunt done purely for effect. Jez, more cautious at first, had eventually agreed.

  I was still trying to work out where the Top Table ended and the Millionaires’ Death Club began. Were they the same thing? Perhaps a club within a club. As Mencken said, the Millionaires’ Death Club might be nothing more than an elaborate joke, but I didn’t think so. It was dangerous for the simple reason that two people were dead. The police were certain to begin a serious investigation of the Top Table. Sergeant McCann had implied that much already. Then the media would get hold of the story and if they found out there was a connection with Sam and Jez it would hit front pages all over the world. But there was no talking to them. They were determined to get their hands on NexS. End of.

  This evening’s cooked-up plan was to wait until dark, knock on the Top Table’s front door and then for Sam and Jez to try to use their star status to get us an invite to the ‘party’.

  As we stood there, I could hear someone playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata inside the mansion. Sam was staring at the black door, at the huge silver doorknocker. He seemed mesmerised for some reason. Jez ignored the knocker, and loudly rapped on the door. It opened almost immediately. A six feet plus, gaunt young man – surely one of the Oxford students – peered at us. He was dressed casually in a black fleece and stone-coloured combats. With his fair hair and clear blue eyes he was definitely my type, much to my annoyance. Why did I always seem to fancy the wrong guys?

  ‘Who are you?’ he said in a plummy accent that was several notches up from my own. Eton, I suspected. I’d never quite perfected my Roedean accent, but I could do upper class. Not like this, though. This was pukka posh. The young man peered even more. ‘No way,’ he said then slammed the door shut.

  Jez knocked a second time. The door opened again, more slowly this time.

  Sam stepped forward, holding up the Fourth Protocol.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ the student snapped.

  ‘We want to talk,’ Sam said.

  ‘You know what? You’re pissing me off.’ He turned round a
nd shouted something I couldn’t quite make out. A moment later an even taller student appeared. He had longish, flowing hair and was handsome in that pale, vampiric way so characteristic of elite English public schoolboys. A blond, blue-eyed version of Lord Byron, I thought. Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his casual clothes didn’t match the arrogant glint in his eyes. There was a whispered conversation and then the newcomer gestured at us to come in. All the time, Beethoven’s beautiful music wafted from somewhere further inside. Abruptly, it changed to one of my father’s favourite pieces – Liszt’s First Mephisto Waltz, a virtuoso piano solo. He always claimed it was so difficult that it took a genius to play it properly. He’d never mastered it, but whoever was playing it now certainly had. It was a stunning rendition.

  The two students stood there in the large entrance hall, with their arms folded, glaring at us. A spectacular chandelier hung over their heads, a grand staircase behind them and a row of black doors further back, presumably leading to the ground floor’s interior rooms. Gloomy paintings of apocalyptic scenes hung on the walls while large, ornate mirrors, full of eerie reflections, were perfectly positioned to capture the strange light being cast by two solid gold Venetian lanterns. My gaze flicked to a couple of marble statues of winged, demonically handsome angels – two of Lucifer’s fallen angels, seemingly – and I wondered if they were modelled on the two students.

  They were probably a couple of years younger than I was and yet there was something about them that made them seem older, much older.

  ‘Well?’ the second one asked.

  ‘We want to know – why are you following us?’ Jez asked aggressively.

  I was amazed that he’d come out and said it so bluntly.

  The two students glanced at each other.

  ‘If we’re following you, how come you’re standing on our doorstep?’ the first one said. ‘Logically, you must be following us.’

  ‘Look, we were outside last night and we’re intrigued,’ Sam said. ‘We want to join whatever kind of thing you’ve got going on here. We’ll give you whatever you want.’