The Cinderella Killer Read online

  ‘I hope that’s true.’

  ‘And because the pressure’s getting worse and worse. That little scene with Danny last night was so embarrassing. I just had to tell someone. Also …’ He ran out of words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, this’ll sound daft, Charles, but Danny was so furious last night … you know, because I wouldn’t do what he wanted, that I got quite scared of him.’

  ‘Did he attack you?’

  ‘No. But he’s a big man and I was afraid he was going to beat me up. He was threatening me with all kinds of things. Said I should watch my back if I was ever walking round Eastbourne after dark. And then he said something strange.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He said: “Don’t forget what happened to Kenny Polizzi, Felix. Something like that could easily happen to you too.”’

  ‘Did he?’ said Charles Paris.

  TWENTY-ONE

  BUTTONS: The food in my B&B’s terrible. Not very generous portions either. Last night at dinner my landlady asked, ‘How did you find your steak?’ I said to her, ‘I moved a chip and there it was.’

  Following the instructions Felix had given him, Charles had no difficulty finding Danny Fitz’s house. It was in a small street off the landward side of Seaside Road, but not as far along as the squalid building where he’d found Vinnie McCree’s body earlier that morning. Danny’s was a red-brick cottage with windows and doors outlined in white stone. Probably late Victorian, possibly early Edwardian and considerably neater in appearance than its neighbours. Though no plants grew in them, the earth in the window-boxes on the ground floor sills was neatly raked, ready for the next season’s planting. The front door’s brass knocker, finger plate and surround of the bell-push had been polished to a high gloss.

  A freshly painted sign beside the door read: ‘DANMARK – Bed & Breakfast – All Rooms En Suite’. Charles wondered whether the house was just named after the Danish for ‘Denmark’, or if it was one of those composite words based on the owners’ names. He had never thought before whether Danny Fitz might have a permanent partner. If such a person existed, it seemed a reasonable bet that he might be called Mark.

  Charles hadn’t planned what he was going to say to Danny, but he was too caught up in the excitement of his investigation to worry about that. Something, he felt sublimely confident, would come to him. He pressed his finger on the white centre of the bell-push.

  Danny was mildly surprised, but not thrown to see him. He stepped back from the open doorway and said, ‘Come in, Charles.’

  There was just time for an impression of a hall lined with glass cases in which hung a meticulously arranged selection of pantomime dames’ costumes before Danny said, ‘I’m sure she’s expecting you.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m expecting him,’ said the voice of someone coming down the stairs.

  Charles looked up to take in the unexpected sight of Gloria van der Groot. Behind thick glasses the skin around her eyes was puffy with much weeping.

  And in her right hand she held a small automatic pistol.

  TWENTY-TWO

  BUTTONS: First day I was in the B&B one of the chickens died and we had chicken soup. Next day one of the pigs died and we had pork chops. Third day the landlady’s old man was taken ill, so we went back home.

  Fortunately the actual threat of being shot didn’t last very long.

  Danny Fitz stepped towards the stairs, announcing. ‘There are very few rules at the Danmark B&B, but there are some things not allowed on the premises under any circumstances. They include whores, rent boys, inflatable women, copies of the Daily Mail and, I’m afraid … guns.’

  As he spoke the word he neatly picked the pistol out of Gloria’s hand. She offered little resistance.

  ‘Anyway, where did you get this?’

  ‘You got money, you can get anything. I learned that a long time ago.’

  Danny grunted. ‘Well, I think I should make some coffee and you two should go into the sitting room and have a little chat.’

  He ushered them through. Gloria seemed numbed into obedience. Danny disappeared to the kitchen while the other two sat down opposite each other.

  Charles noticed that the sitting room too was a shrine to pantomime memorabilia. Old programmes were displayed behind glass. A giant rolling pin from some long-forgotten slapstick kitchen scene stood in its own case. And pride of place was given to a tall golden oriental headdress which Charles reckoned must have been part of the Walkdown costume for Widow Twankey in an Aladdin of many years before.

  But these were momentary impressions. In his current predicament Charles couldn’t take much notice of his surroundings. He was, after all, facing a woman who had recently threatened him with a gun.

  ‘I presume, Gloria,’ he said, ‘that it’s you I have to thank for the texts saying I shouldn’t be playing Baron Hardup.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That was Kenny’s part.’ Her voice wavered slightly, but there was no faltering in the confidence of her logic.

  ‘I didn’t take over the part out of any disrespect for him. I don’t even think I would play it as well as Kenny would have done.’ (This was a lie. Nearly every actor who takes over a part thinks they’ll do it better than the previous incumbent.) ‘But it’s just the old showbiz thing – “The show must go on.”’

  ‘Why should it go on without Kenny? Nothing should go on without Kenny.’

  Charles spoke gently. ‘When did you originally’ – he carefully avoided the words ‘become obsessed with’ – ‘get interested in Kenny Polizzi?’

  ‘When I saw the first episode of The Dwight House. I was just a teenager then, but I knew instinctively that I had to be near to him, in some way involved in his life.’

  Charles did a quick mental calculation. If Gloria had been in her teens when the sitcom started, she must be a lot younger than he’d thought when he first saw her. He assumed she’d been round the fifty mark, her oddity perhaps exacerbated by menopausal symptoms. But now he had to revise that age to her late twenties.

  ‘Did you tell anyone else how you felt, Gloria? Your parents?’

  ‘What interest would it have been to them?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘They weren’t people you could confide in?’

  ‘God, no. If I had any problems, they only had one solution – give me more money. So pretty soon I stopped telling them if I had any problems.’

  ‘Had they always had money?’

  ‘My real father didn’t have that much. They were comfortable, I guess, but no more than that. But then he died of a heart attack when I was, like, four.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So was I. And then a few years later my mom goes and marries this total asshole who’s got money coming out of every orifice. And she wants me to start calling him “Pop” or “Daddy”, and there’s no way I’m going to do that.’

  Their conversation was interrupted at this point by the arrival of Danny with a tray of coffee. As Charles found frequently when watching actors in domestic roles, Danny seemed to be giving a performance as a solicitous B&B owner.

  ‘Gloria,’ he said, ‘I’ve put your gun in the house safe. I’m sorry, but those are my rules. I’ll let you have it back when you leave – OK?’

  Without much interest, Gloria agreed to these conditions. Then Danny said to Charles, ‘I’ve been called for two this afternoon. What about you?’

  ‘Same, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to get a text telling us Bix is running late. I do think it’s bloody daft rehearsing out of sequence when we’re as close to opening as this.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me too much. At least I know my routines with Arthur are rock solid. Anyway, I’ve got to do some shopping. So when you’re done, if I’m not back the front door shuts on the latch. Just make sure it clicks to.’

  ‘Will do.’

  When Danny had gone, Charles said softly to Gloria, ‘And when you first watched The Dwight House did you see a kind of relaxed family life totally unl
ike what you were experiencing at home?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Gloria replied shortly. ‘I’ve never had much time for all that psychological garbage. I just saw a guy who was always going to be part of my life.’

  ‘And since that time you tried to be wherever he was?’

  ‘Yes. It’s fairly easy to work out his schedule from stuff on his website and a lot of other showbiz and celebrity sites.’

  ‘And you’ve never posed a threat to him?’

  ‘Of course not, Charles. I love the guy.’

  ‘Mm.’ He was finding their conversation odd. Though Gloria was by most definitions a crackpot, when she spoke there was a compelling logic which seemed entirely natural. ‘And now Kenny’s dead …’ That prompted a sparkle of tears behind the thick lenses ‘… what do you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know, Charles. That’s what I don’t know. I’ve thought of so many things.’

  ‘Was shooting me one of those things?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with disarming frankness. ‘I wanted revenge on someone, for what’d happened to Kenny. And when I heard from Danny that you were taking over the part of Baron Hardup, well, that seemed like it might be a start.’

  Charles felt distinctly uncomfortable. Gloria was a crank, but not just a harmless crank. Shooting him would have seemed logical to her, and something she was quite capable of doing. He felt relieved to know that her pistol was safely locked away.

  ‘So,’ he asked, ‘when did you first hear that Kenny Polizzi had been shot?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it,’ she replied. ‘I virtually saw it happen.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  FAIRY GODMOTHER: I’ll give my magic wand a tap and Then you’ll hear what really happened.

  This was the breakthrough Charles had been waiting for. He had spent so much of the last few days trying to piece together what had happened on the Friday night, and now he was in the presence of someone who might have witnessed all of it.

  ‘Have you spoken to the police about what you saw?’

  Gloria looked puzzled by the question. ‘Why the hell should I do that?’

  ‘Well, I think if someone’s witnessed a murder it’s fairly standard practice to report it to the cops.’

  ‘This wasn’t just any murder. This was the murder of Kenny Polizzi.’

  ‘So what have you been doing since Friday evening?’

  ‘I’ve been in my room right here, crying my eyes out. My life ended the moment Kenny was shot.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it must have been hard for you. And have you thought of doing anything that might make you feel better?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought of shooting the person who shot Kenny.’

  ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘I know what he looks like, but I’d never seen him before that night. I still can’t put a name to him. Otherwise I’d have found him by now and killed him.’ Again she made this sound a perfectly logical thing to do.

  ‘Would you mind, Gloria,’ asked Charles, ‘just telling me exactly what did happen that Friday night?’

  She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Yeah, OK. You might be able to put a name to the bastard who killed Kenny.’

  ‘So that evening, when did you start stalking—’ Her expression showed she didn’t like his choice of word, so he quickly corrected himself, ‘… following Kenny?’

  ‘I waited around the rehearsal room, but he didn’t come out at the end of the day like everyone else.’

  ‘No.’ Charles remembered. ‘Kenny had been recording a chat show in London, so he wasn’t called for rehearsal.’

  ‘So, anyway, I then thought he might have gone to his hotel, so I went along to the Grand and waited around the foyer, and sure enough a car delivered him there round eight o’clock. And I felt good because that meant I’d seen him, and I like to see him every day. But I thought I’d hang around just to see if he might come out again. And he did – and I thought of speaking to him, but he had this really angry expression on his face. I know his moods very well and that would not have been a good time to talk to him.’

  ‘I think he’d just come from a rather stormy encounter with Lilith Greenstone.’

  ‘Ah, well, that would explain it, Charles. Lilith was never any good for him. The worst of all his wives. I was so mad when I heard he was marrying her. I knew it wouldn’t work out.’

  ‘So did you follow Kenny when he left the Grand?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t see me. He was talking angrily into his cellphone. I wasn’t close enough to hear what he was saying, but I think he was making arrangements to meet someone. And then, kinda midway between the Grand and the pier, this little car draws up alongside him, and Kenny gets into it.’

  ‘What kind of car was it?’

  ‘What do I know from cars?’

  ‘Was it Mint Green?’

  ‘I don’t know about Mint, but it was pale green, yeah.’

  Jasmine del Rio’s Figaro, it must have been.

  ‘Were you close enough to see the driver?’

  ‘Not really, but I got the impression that it was a woman.’

  ‘Mm. So did they drive off?’

  ‘No, they stayed right there in the car.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Five minutes tops. Then Kenny gets out and slams the door, like he’s real pissed about something. And the car drives off, and he makes a call on his cellphone. Then he goes straight to a liquor store and comes out swigging from a vodka bottle. He sits on a bench with that for a while and then he makes a couple more calls on his cellphone. Then he goes into that pub, the one near the rehearsal room.’

  ‘The Sea Dog.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And shortly afterwards I join him there.’

  ‘Yes. Then after a while you both come out, and I don’t know where you went, but Kenny heads for the pier. And he goes under the boardwalk and he meets this guy. Shabby, wearing this scruffy light-brown coat.’ Vinnie McCree, thought Charles. ‘I’m watching this from the side of a little cafe down there, so I can’t hear what they’re saying, but they seem to be doing some kind of deal. And the shabby guy goes and next thing Kenny’s, like, snorting something out of a paper bag. Then he sits down at the foot of one of the pillars that hold up the pier and makes pretty serious inroads into the vodka bottle.’

  ‘You still didn’t think of going to talk to him then, Gloria?’

  ‘No, Kenny was not a nice person when he’d been on the booze. He’d said some very hurtful things to me on occasions when he’d been drinking. What’s more, down under the boardwalk he’d taken a gun out of his pocket and he was kind of fiddling with it. It wouldn’t have been a good time to upset him.’

  ‘So what happened next?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Well, I was thinking of coming back here, but then I didn’t want to leave Kenny there in that state. You know, he might have got mugged or anything. So I wait. And it’s getting quite late, no other people down at the beach level and very little traffic on the road above. Just the noise of the waves crashing against the shingle.

  ‘Then I hear footsteps coming down the stairs from the pier entrance and this very slender blonde girl appears. And Kenny hears her feet on the shingle and he stands up and turns to face her.

  ‘By now I’ve managed to get a bit closer and I can hear their words.

  ‘The girl says: “So, Kenny … have you got something for me?”

  ‘And he says: “Sure I’ve got something for you.”

  ‘And he raises his gun and shoots her in the forehead.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  FIRST BROKER’S MAN: I’ve got the yaws – it’s something chronic.

  SECOND BROKER’S MAN: What’s yaws?

  FIRST BROKER: Well, thank you. Gin and tonic.

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Do? I stayed put. I wasn’t going to let Kenny know I’d witnessed what just happened. He still had the gun, remember.’

  ‘But what did you think, Gloria? When you
saw this man you’d idolized shoot someone in cold blood?’

  Kenny Polizzi’s Number One Fan shrugged. ‘I’m sure he had his reasons for doing it. The girl was hassling him about something.’

  ‘It didn’t make you think less of him?’

  She looked at Charles as if he’d just asked the most peculiar question in the world. ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘You didn’t think of calling the cops?’

  ‘Hell, no.’

  ‘But you’d just witnessed a murder.’

  ‘Yes, but artists like Kenny Polizzi can’t be judged by the same standards as other people.’

  Charles had heard that or similar lines on many occasions and they always made his blood boil. But now wasn’t the moment to take issue. ‘So what did Kenny do? Just leave the girl’s body lying on the shingle?’

  ‘No, first he made a call on his cellphone, but with the sound of the waves I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he dragged her up to the steps that led up to the pier entrance. There was a big trash can there. He pushed the body out of sight behind it. Then he just waited, snorting more stuff from the paper bag, working his way down the vodka bottle.’

  ‘Did he appear to be nervous or panicky?’

  ‘No. He looked very calm. Anyway, after about ten minutes another man comes to join him.’

  ‘Someone you recognized?’

  Gloria shook her head. ‘Never seen him before.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Kinda short and round. With hair combed over his bald patch.’ It was the description Charles had been anticipating. Gloria went on, ‘So the two of them talk briefly, then Kenny takes the other guy across to where the body is. And, each putting one of the dead girl’s arms over their shoulders, they drag her up the steps to street level.

  ‘I don’t want them to see me, so I go up the steps the other side of the boardwalk. Parked outside the pier entrance is this little green car.’

  ‘The one Kenny sat in earlier?’

  ‘Yes. Or one identical to it. And there was a scary moment because just as Kenny and the other guy are manhandling the body to the car, a man walking his dog goes past.’