The Club(58)

It had actually not been all that hard to persuade herself that Ned Groom deserved to die. When you added up all the slights, all the digs, all the hurtful comments she had put up with or tried to brush off or pretended to take as a joke. When you considered every time she had come up with a good idea, and he’d put his fucking brother in charge of actioning it, knowing that Adam did not really understand the idea in the first place, or why it was a good one, why they might be doing it, knowing that he was going to half-arse it and make a hash of the whole thing. When you thought of all the things he had done to other people. Had allowed other people to do. Home, not Ned, was what she loved, and Annie had absolute faith both in her ability to run the business and in his brother’s lack of interest in doing so with Ned gone. She would be the natural choice to take the reins and there was no doubt in her mind that Adam would happily hand them over rather than actually have to do some work.

She imagined it was even easier to persuade yourself that Ned Groom had to die when he had the kind of material on you that he had on Keith Little or poor Freddie Hunter.

Annie looked at Keith with his chin jutting out defiantly, then over to Freddie, whose chin was starting to tremble.

There had been plenty of points over the course of both men’s careers when Ned might have done this, but he liked to bide his time until his mark had everything to lose. He waited for the moment a misdemeanour that may once have felt tenuously excusable, the kind of thing a profile piece might jokingly allude to, a biography could breeze over, became something defining, tarring and utterly unforgivable.

‘So go on then,’ said Keith. ‘What’s this plan? And how are we getting away with it?’

Step by step, practicality by practicality, she told them.

In a sense, it was Ned’s obsession with watching Home’s most private spaces and all but ignoring the rest that made this whole plan a possibility. Cameras might be wired into every single cabin to spy on the members, and trained around the island’s shore to monitor any unwelcome guests, but Annie knew there was no other CCTV. Because unless you were one of the unlucky few, privacy was Home’s main selling point.

Vital to her plan too was the fact that this evening, during the promenade performance around the island, every single guest would be wearing a hooded velvet cloak and blank-faced mask. So how Keith and Freddie would get away with the murder was obvious.

The problem was how they would actually kill him. Ned Groom was a big man, and even with two of them, he would be tricky to overpower without causing a commotion.

That was where Keith came in.

A spiked drink – one of Keith’s little bottles of what she presumed to be GHB – would help to subdue Ned just enough to make him unsteady on his feet, render him unable to fight back. And from what Ned had told her, Keith had a lot of practice when it came to getting the dose right, perfected over decades of spiking drinks.

It turned her stomach even to think about it.

Annie was astonished – and a little ashamed – that she’d never suspected what he was up to. For as long as he’d been a member, Keith had had a habit of rocking up at Home clubs around the world, hanging around in his leather trousers under his own artwork in the bar or the lounge, asking people – beautiful young women, specifically – if they could guess the artist. Asking them if they knew how much it was worth. Singling one woman out. Buying her drinks. Ordering whisky after whisky for himself. Showing her the expensive Leica on a leather strap around his neck. Asking if she’d ever been photographed, been someone’s muse. Buying her more drinks. Getting louder, more arrogant, playing up to his hellraiser image. Striding out to the front desk, slightly unsteady on his feet, asking if there was a suite available because he was too pissed to hail a cab, inviting the girl up there for a nightcap.

That much everyone working at the clubs knew, laughed about: it was pretty much Home legend. What Annie had not known until a few days ago was what happened next.

They had been sitting on the leather banquette in The Manor’s ballroom when Ned told her who he was planning to extort this weekend. He had asked what she thought Keith did when he got a woman back to his suite. Annie had mock-shuddered at the thought of those leather trousers being peeled off. ‘I can guess,’ she’d said. Ned raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not sure you can, Annie. What he does,’ Ned had told her then, ‘is he sticks something in their drink. It takes a little while for it to kick in, of course. He’s clearly very careful about that – it wouldn’t work if they were passing out at the bar. They’re always fine when they get into the lift. But by the time he’s poured them another glass of champagne or two back in the suite, well, they’re not awake for that much longer.’

Annie had braced herself for what she was about to hear – and what came next was in one sense not as bad as she had feared, and in many ways far worse. ‘He straightens up, sober as a judge. Keith Little the hellraiser doesn’t really drink, you see. Not as much as he pretends. Not when he’s up to his tricks. He orders them, yes, nurses the glass, might take a sip or two even. But then he spills it, pours it away when he thinks nobody’s looking.’ Annie’s eyes had widened. ‘He doesn’t touch them though, the women. Not like that, anyway. I would have done something about it eventually, if he had. I’m not a monster. No, he tells them he wants to photograph them and that’s exactly what he does. Once they’re in his suite, comatose, he undresses them. Poses them, like a doll. Then he gets his camera out and click. Then he moves one arm a little, one leg a bit, stands back to survey his handiwork. Click. Leans in a little closer. Click. Then a lot closer. Click. Never touches them in that way. Never touches himself either – our flower pots are safe, thank God.’ He’d laughed at his little joke.