Power Games (33 page)

Would they lay claim to Eve Harley? Show her what was really going on?

‘It’s outrageous that someone in this person’s position could have fallen for the fraud
,’ Eve’s latest piece had read. ‘
We are asked to trust this man, one whose decisions might some day affect the world, and to entrust ourselves to him. Yet he believes the deception. He sought it out and he welcomed it …’

She would see. She would repent.

The cave was calling. Those footprints didn’t belong to the missing flight attendant—they belonged to the enemy.
Come to us
…

Mitch became aware of something thick and hairy pooled at his feet.

Stooping, he encountered a dark, coarse mass enveloping his toes. He had walked into it without noticing. Seaweed? A jellyfish? No, too furry.

Mitch lifted the thing out. At first he thought it was a washed-up creature, sodden and matted, before realising it wasn’t. It was his hairpiece.

The bat must have dropped it.

Mitch held it aloft, dripping and sodden, before pressing it to his head. It seeped down his temples and the back of his neck. He took it off and hurled it back into the sand, where
it landed with a wet squelch. Still not satisfied, he knelt and rummaged through the grains, digging a hole, slamming the wig in and covering it up.

The time for pretending was over.

Tasting the skin of his fear, Mitch gazed up to the forest and over the ridge.

If he went, he would not come back again.

54

Day 12

K
evin moved noiselessly through the forest.

He was deep in the trees, far in on his usual track.

The sound of hooves came across him diagonally this time, what couldn’t be more than five metres in front. The molten air was charged. Kevin’s spear was raised, his eyes alert, his ears pricked to any sound that might give away its whereabouts.

The animal had got clever to his advances—but not that clever.

Kevin stopped, sensing it close beyond the screen of leaves. He exhaled, the expelled air cool against the perspiration on his top lip. Nothing mattered more than this victory. A bead of sweat ran from his earlobe to his chin and fell to the earth.

It was an effort to hold back, everything primed for action and ready to spring, but he had to wait, he had to be patient …

In the end, it gave itself away.

A shuffle. A hot snort—

And then it was running, charging through the thicket but this time it was a done deal, this time it wasn’t getting
away, and Kevin’s vision refined to a point as deadly as his weapon’s as he launched the stick high into the air, his body propelled forward with the motion, watching as the javelin shivered in the steam before sailing towards its target on a fatal trajectory and impaling the boar through its neck.

He finished the job efficiently. In seconds it was over.

Kevin slit the knife, belly to throat, so the innards fell out. He butchered the head and the legs. With Jacob’s help he skewered it. He had brought back the impossible: meat.

He thought of all the times Joan had brought mac and cheese to his bedroom while he was playing computer games, a knock at the door and a tray on the side: plastic containers, film lids and microwaves, knives and forks and a can of Pepsi.

An artificial world, a toy town, superstores packed with fakes and forgeries. Here was where reality set in.

Some days Kevin found it hard to remember all that. It was like a photo album whose images were disappearing one by one. He knew he should be crying for them, Joan and Sketch, just as he had at the start, but while his brain computed this message, he could not drag up the tears.

He told himself he couldn’t afford to. The only way to make it was to throw away the key. Kevin had to change.

The old him would never survive.

Tawny gagged into a bush. ‘My God,’ she choked. ‘You don’t seriously expect me to eat that?’

‘Makes more for the rest of us.’

‘It’s probably got rabies.’

Afterwards, Kevin went to wash in the pool. His naked body rose proud from the water and he surveyed the surrounding
jungle with new eyes. Nothing here could defeat him. He had overpowered a beast. The others held him in reverence; even those who didn’t admit it. He had hunted a wild thing and returned the victor.

55

Los Angeles

O
n Friday night, Sketch Faulkner arrived ahead of time, manoeuvring his BMW through the crowd of fans at Kevin’s mansion gates. Agonised Chasers hollered for information, battering their fists, as grey, tear-streaked faces materialised like phantoms at the window. ‘
Where’s Kevin? Have you found him?
’

If only Sketch had. Two weeks and nothing. Christ, Joan was in a state but it wasn’t an easy ride for him either. He had loved the kid too, in his way.

Shame seared when he recalled giving Kevin his ultimatum—go to Salimanta or get out the door. How did he come to terms with that? He had sent Kevin to meet his maker. Sketch knew it. Joan knew it. Soon, no doubt, the fans would know it.

They screamed on. Mics lunged. Cameras loomed.

How had Kevin learned to live with this? The times Sketch had sat in the car with his client as they had passed through a post-gig fan pit hadn’t been much different. Whether the Little Chasers were worshipping their idol or mourning him, it apparently spawned the same hysterical misery.

Past the gates, he relaxed a bit, and eased the car to a stop outside the porch.

The mansion was still shuttered, reams of mail and clusters of flowers heaped up at the door. Sketch began to sort through some of it before losing patience and kicking it to one side—then, on second thoughts, he lifted an attractive bouquet, tore off the message card and presented it just in time for Joan to open the door.

She looked awful. Fat and bloated, pale and yellow-eyed, and shoddily dressed in a pair of baggy lime-green sweat pants that Sketch had seen Kevin in once.

Inside, it was worse. Photos of Kevin were scattered across the floor, boxes of his belongings exploded in a kind of sprawling, shapeless shrine, and cartons of half-eaten takeout were tossed across counters and wedged under couches.

Sketch flicked the window blind and flooded the room with light, prompting Joan to dive onto a beanbag, shielding her face with her arms and crying for the dark.

‘Joanie …’ he coaxed, approaching with caution. ‘Joanie, this can’t go on …’

‘
I can’t go on!
’ Joan spluttered, her blotched, angst-riddled face careening up at him, and the shock made him stumble back. Joan had always been a meek character, someone Sketch had regarded as a necessary if slightly irritating supplement to his client, but now she was demonic. She had lopped her hair off, the ends hacked and chewed, and it was stuck up at the back in a stiff nest, like a tuft of candy-floss.

Unexpectedly, she fell against him, weeping.

Sketch patted her through the worst of the sobs, and as she succumbed to more pedestrian tears looped an arm round her, gently stroking the ruined hair and telling her it was OK, things would work out, everything would be all right …

It was the worst thing to say. Joan clawed at it like a drowning woman.

‘Is there news?’ Her head knocked his chin on the way up. ‘He’s been found?’

Ruefully, Sketch shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Joanie. No news.’

Trey scampered in, sniffing at the takeout boxes.

Sketch took her hand. ‘I think we have to accept facts, Joan.’

‘
I don’t!
’ She scooped up the dog, dressed in a jumpsuit and baseball cap—Kevin’s favourite outfit. Trey was licking sweet and sour sauce from his nose and didn’t give a happy shit about Kevin. ‘
I can’t!
’

‘Even if they did make it through whatever happened up there,’ said Sketch, ‘it’s over now.’

‘I’m his mom,’ she said, squeezing Trey so hard the dachshund’s eyes bugged. ‘I believe.’

‘You’re killing yourself.’

‘Not fast enough.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t I? You think I don’t wonder every second of the day what his final moments were like? How he died, and if he called for me,
his mommy
—and I couldn’t be there? I’ve always been there for Kevin—always.’

‘I know.’

‘How could you know? You don’t have kids.’

‘It felt like I did.’ Sketch splurged it, hadn’t meant to. ‘With Kevin, Joanie—I know it’s not the same but sometimes Kevin felt like mine. The closest thing I had, anyway. I want him back just as much as you do. Every morning I wake up and I’m thinking, Maybe today’s the day—yeah, maybe today—and I check the date in case I have to remember it: this special day they found him and brought him home.’

Joan blubbed.

‘D’you know the worst thing?’ she whispered. ‘I did everything with Kevin. I did everything for him. Yet I don’t know if I knew him at all.’

It wasn’t like Joan to pose deep and meaningful questions. Sketch rode it out.

Bleakly she gazed up at him. ‘He was my son … but he had so many secrets.’

Sketch didn’t reply.

‘I know he was sick, Sketch.’

‘What?’

‘All those pills.’ Joan licked her lips. ‘I’m not an idiot. You always thought I was, so did Kevin, but I’m not.’

‘Joanie …’

‘You were all too chicken to tell me—everyone at Cut N Dry. And yes, maybe I would have fallen apart, but I’d still have rather known. Whose decision was it? Yours? Kevin’s? Who decided to keep it from me?’

Ice dripped down the back of Sketch’s neck. He had thought it was over: that the tragedy of Kevin, appalling as it was, meant at least—at last—the sinking of the pills.

The pills …

‘Well? I was his mother.’

‘Joan—’

‘When was
I
going to find out? When the pills stopped working, when my baby finally got poorly? The same time as the fans?’ Her lip quivered. ‘At first I believed you about the vitamins. Then I realised it was all a charade.’

Countless times Sketch had imagined this conversation. With whom he would have it, what the evidence would be, how it would play out … Now it was actually happening, he found he was stumped for words. Saying the truth was
impossible. The facts were too absurd. The deception was too extreme. Joan could never grasp it.

‘Now he’s gone,’ said Joan, ‘and I never had the chance to comfort him. To tell him it was OK,
I knew
, and I would be there with him through it all, whatever it was and however it happened. He must have been so scared. He tried to protect me, even though he was the one that needed protection. I should have noticed. He was always small. What was it, Sketch? Something bone-wasting?’

A channel of sunlight fell across a framed picture of Kevin, mounted on the wall. In it the star was performing at the Olympics Closing Ceremony, fist raised to the sky like a warrior. Sketch stood. He crossed the room.

What did it matter any more? The boy wonder was gone. There were no more performances, no more tours, no more fragrance launches or book signings or red carpet junkets. No more protection. No more secrecy.

Joan Chase was a mother in mourning. How could he let her believe that her son had kept a terminal disease from her? He might be a coward, but he wasn’t evil.

‘The pills weren’t because Kevin was sick, Joan.’

Sketch could feel her scrutiny on his back. He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

As the truth unravelled, he kept his eyes fixed on Kevin in the frame—just Kevin.

‘The pills weren’t vitamins either,’ he said. ‘That was what we told Kevin, and that was what he accepted. We chose not to think of it as a lie—rather, a shield.’

Silence.

‘The pills were hormones.’

Dense as lead, the admission heaved from Sketch’s mouth.

‘Kevin didn’t know. They were hormones. Female hormones, Joan.’

He heard her sit down.
Collapse
—that was a better word.

The door swung open and the rest came free in a deranged rush.

‘Picture it. We signed Kevin when he was twelve years old—this cute-as-a-button, candy-cane kid, with this butter-wouldn’t-melt voice and little-boy dimples. We wanted him to stay that way. We wanted him to remain the boy we had found, and, for a couple of years, he did.’ Sketch remembered when Kevin’s voice had started to wobble, the deep notes creeping in. ‘But by the time he turned fourteen, changes were starting to happen. The voice was about to drop. There were wisps round his chin. We had to take action.’ Sketch was fired up by his own propaganda despite the fact it reeked of bullshit.
Did we? Did we really?
The question had haunted him for seven years—but once they had embarked on the campaign it was impossible to stop.

‘It wasn’t an easy decision,’ he said. ‘It was a mindfuck. But consider the evidence, Joanie, just for a second’—his own argument, the ideas that had been batted across the board at Cut N Dry—’child stars across history lose their appeal: Culkin, the two Coreys, Fred fucking Savage. Why? I’ll tell you.
Puberty
, Joan. These guys lose their fan base because their fan base changes. It grows up, and the new fans that take their place are looking for the same thing, only those guys
aren’t
the same any more. Enter a new king: a new Kevin. What we did was give Kevin the ability, the
right
, to keep that crown. We gave him immortality.’

Sketch turned. He was shaking.

Joan’s lips formed around a word that made no sound.

‘Oestrogen arrested his development,’ he said. ‘Not enough to give Kevin female assets, but enough to prevent the male ones: it stopped the hairs growing, it kept his voice young, it made him delicate, unthreatening, even pretty. It
never hurt him and it never caused him pain. He was our star and we wanted to keep him—that was all. We did this in Kevin’s best interests, Joanie. Remember how much he wanted this career? How much
both
of you did? Kevin knew what it took to succeed—and what it took to stay at the top. We enabled that to happen for him.’