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.
‘He just drugs them, poses them, and takes photos. And then he puts their clothes back on. And then he fucks off home and leaves them in the suite with a little note saying he was worried they wouldn’t make it home okay, so he just tucked them up and left them sleeping peacefully, along with enough cash for their cab home in the morning. They leave thinking he’s the perfect gentleman.’
Ned had smirked and gestured upwards with his eyebrows to the artwork on the wall above their heads – the giant photo of the headless nude, the one with the spiders pinned on top. She looked upwards and let out an involuntary gasp, then slowly, exhaling, shook her head. Whose stolen modesty, she wondered, was being barely spared by stuffed arachnids?
She had thought of the curtain fabric Keith had created, commissioned by Ned, for The Dining Room at Country Home – that paisley pattern composed, when you got up close, of thousands of bare arses. And then she thought of the photo series he had done entitled All the Women I’ve Never Slept With, in the mid-noughties, those huge blown-up crotch shots, black and white, onto which he’d scrawled his poems, several of which adorned the walls at Homes around the world.
She felt sick.
‘You already have the cloaks and masks in your cabins, and all the men will be in black tie tonight, so you won’t be able to identify Ned by sight alone. There’s no talking during the performance, so you can’t work out who he is that way either. But I’d know him anywhere, so stick behind me and at some point, when I can, I will hand him an Old Fashioned. With an extra ingredient, courtesy of Keith here,’ Annie said, bringing her horse to a halt. ‘I assume you have the stuff with you?’
Freddie looked confused. Keith pretended to.
‘Keith?’
‘Yes. I do. Back in the cabin. I did bring some . . . force of habit. But I wasn’t planning on—’
‘That’s all I need to know, Keith.’
Some other time, she promised herself, he would get his comeuppance. Some other time, when she did not need Keith’s help quite so badly, there would be a reckoning.