The Cinderella Killer (17 page)

‘But presumably,' Charles managed to interpolate, ‘you're retired now?'

‘Well, I don't have a job now, if that's what you mean. Paper had another “rationalization”, as they called it, which meant I was out on my ear. Well, you can take away a journalist's job, but you can't take away a journalist's
instinct
. That's what stays with you. That's what stays with
me
. I've still got a nose for a story. If I hear of some injustice, I still want to get to the bottom of it. I've never stopped working. And I'm still capable of getting scoops which the nationals will have to pay me top dollar for. Because they haven't got anyone out there now doing that kind of journalism. Eventually they'll have to fall back on people like me.'

Charles didn't think it was the moment to question how likely that confidence was to be justified. Instead he asked, ‘And are you involved in this drugs business because you scent there's a story there?'

‘You bet. That's exactly why I'm doing it. And it's going to be a bloody big story. Get a four-page spread in one of the national Sundays – no question about it. “Eastbourne's Drugs Hell” – I can see the headlines now – and the Vincent McCree byline. And it'll be a good story because no one expects that kind of stuff from a nice shooshed-up middle-class town like Eastbourne. No, when they run the story, it's going to be quite an eye-opener for a lot of people. See your glass is empty. Let me top you up.'

While Vinnie made with the bottle of Famous Grouse, Charles said, ‘But how did you get involved with Lefty Rubenstein? How come you ended up supplying him with cocaine?'

‘Ah.' The journalist looked very pleased with himself. ‘Well, this just shows the depth at which I've been working on this story. I've been working on it for a while, getting in with the Eastbourne dealers.'

‘At the Greyhound? Is that the place where the trade goes on?'

‘Some of it. A few of the guys use the place. But they move around a lot, always keeping one step ahead of the Filth. Have to be clever in their game – and I've had to be just as clever as they are. I pretty soon realized that the only way I was going to find out about how they really worked was to become “embedded” … you know, like journalists were during the Iraq War.'

‘You mean you had to become part of the drug-dealing operation?'

‘Virtually, yes. That's why I thought you might have been a dealer back in the Greyhound, one of my contacts having put you in touch with me. Of course that's the kind of thing I've done a lot through my career. When I started out as a cub reporter on the
Herald
I went undercover to do a feature on Glasgow's gang culture. Nearly got myself killed, of course, but got a damn good story out of it. So what I'm doing here in Eastbourne is kind of going back to my roots.'

‘But how far into the drugs network have you penetrated?'

‘Oh, I've got a long way in. I'm virtually like a member of the gang now.' Charles was beginning to realize that anything Vinnie McCree said had to be taken with container-loads of salt. ‘I started off meeting people down the delivery end, like runners, mostly boys just out of their teens. I bought some stuff off them, just as a way of getting closer to the centre of the organization. And then I decided that the only way I was really going to meet anyone higher up the hierarchy was if I pissed them off. So I bought some cocaine and didn't pay for it.'

‘How did you manage that?'

‘Easy. I'd arranged to meet the runner down on the sea front. I was in a cab. Soon as the boy had handed over the envelope I told the driver to put his foot down. He didn't get his money. I thought that might cause a bit of a stir. Sure enough, next day a couple of heavies come round here – don't know how they found out my address, but they clearly did, which is a bit worrying. They take me out to their car – I'm not struggling at this point. Once I'm inside they gag me and blindfold me with gaffer tape, shove me down on the floor at the back and drive off somewhere. Then I'm taken into a house – or maybe not a house, a garage or warehouse maybe, and they rough me up a bit.

‘Then the gaffer tape's ripped off my eyes and mouth – bloody hurt I can tell you, virtually took my eyebrows off – and I'm face to face with this guy – not one of the heavies, someone else, their boss I imagine – and he tells me what they do to people who steal drugs off them. It was just a warning, but let me tell you – I paid up pretty quick.'

‘Did you get a clear look at the boss guy?'

‘Not really. His face was in shadow – quite deliberately, I assume. But he did speak with a distinctive accent.'

‘Oh?'

‘Sort of Eastern European, I think. The heavies didn't say much, but when they did they had similar accents. Romanian, possibly? Albanian? Anyway, my interview with the boss – if that's what he was – was just to put the frighteners on me. The heavies punch me a couple of times in the stomach – hurt a lot, but fortunately that's all they did. Then in no time they've put more gaffer tape over my eyes, I'm hustled out to the car, once again shoved down in the back and they drive me back here, stopping somewhere just round the corner to remove the blindfold. So that's how it happened.'

Charles didn't want to sound picky, but he had to say, ‘That doesn't really make it sound as though you're “embedded” in their organization.'

‘Ah, but I have a lot of information about them.'

‘Not a huge amount. If you can't identify the boss and you still don't know where they took you. Or have you found that out?'

‘No,' Vinnie was forced to concede. But then a glint of triumph came into his bleary eyes. ‘But I do have something far more important, something that puts me right at the centre of their operations.' He reached into the pocket of his shabby cardigan and produced a mobile phone. ‘Never guess where I got this from.'

‘No, I'm sure I won't,' said Charles who was wearying a little of Vinnie's self-dramatizing.

‘It was just lying in the well of the car at the back, must've slipped out of one of the heavies' pockets. This will be the key, this phone will put me right in there with them.'

‘How?'

‘Because this phone gets calls giving drug orders.'

‘Ah.' Charles could see that that might be potentially relevant to his investigation.

‘So,' Vinnie went on, ‘I can find out a lot about the organization from the customers, from the people who actually buy the drugs.' He tapped the phone. ‘This is my big breakthrough. Finding it was pure luck, but back in my Fleet Street days you always needed a bit of luck. And once things started going my way on a story, then the luck would follow.'

‘And have you actually had many calls on the phone, ordering drugs?'

‘Only one so far.' The journalist did not allow himself to be cast down for more than a moment, before asserting. ‘But I know there'll be others.'

‘The one you did have,' asked Charles, ‘who was that?'

‘We don't deal too much with names in the drugs world,' replied Vinnie, as though he'd spent his whole life as a dealer. ‘False names, aliases, maybe. I never did find out the name of the guy who rang last Friday.'

‘Did he have an American accent?' asked Charles, warming to the chase.

‘Yes, he did. He said he'd been given my number and been told that I could source cocaine for him.'

‘So you did?'

‘Sure. I'd got plenty of the stuff, which I'd bought from the runners when I started my investigation. So we agreed a price. I asked for quite a lot more than I'd paid for it.'

‘Ah, you clearly have a drug dealer's instincts.'

Charles was slightly worried at having said that, but Vinnie took it as a compliment. ‘Yes. Anyway, the client didn't seem too worried about how much it cost – his casualness about the price actually made me wish I'd asked for more. But we agreed to meet for the handover.'

‘And you say this was Friday night?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where did you meet?'

‘Down by the front.'

‘Under the pier?'

‘No. In a shelter a little way away from the pier entrance.'

‘At street level?'

‘Yes. I suggested that for the handover. He was fine about it.'

‘So did you talk to him much?'

‘Hardly at all. I was already there when he arrived. He asked if I'd got something for him. I counted out the money he gave me.'

‘And then handed over the cocaine?'

‘No, this guy was just paying for it. He wanted me to deliver it to someone else.' ‘What did this guy look like?' Charles asked, simply for confirmation.

‘Shortish, round. American accent like I said. Oh, and he had one of those terrible comb-overs.'

There was no question. It had to be Lefty. ‘So you've no idea who the guy was?'

‘No. We don't deal too much in names in the drug business,' said Vinnie portentously, making himself sound at the same time grandiose and ridiculous.

‘Did he stay around?'

‘No, he left as soon as he'd told me where to hand over the cocaine.'

‘Which was?' asked Charles, knowing the answer.

‘He told me there was a guy waiting under the pier. Reddish hair. I just had to hand it over to him. Which I did.' He beamed with self-satisfaction and took a long swallow of Famous Grouse.

‘And you didn't recognize the guy?'

‘No.'

It was ironic, really. In his fumbling attempts to research the Eastbourne drugs scene, Vinnie McCree had managed to miss what could have been the biggest scoop of his life. If only he'd made the connection and realized that Lefty Rubenstein was sourcing cocaine for Kenny Polizzi, and that he, Vinnie, had actually handed over the drug to the star whose murder was splashed over the front pages of newspapers around the world, then he might have had a story to sell. As it was … his failure to recognize the connection seemed emblematic of many other failures in his over-glamourized career.

It was now around two o'clock. The journalist produced another unopened bottle of the Grouse and suggested Charles should stay the night. It was a while, Vinnie said, since he'd had a proper all-night drinking session. ‘Of course, it used to happen a lot back in the Fleet Street days. We'd start at El Vino's and then move on, all over the bloody place. Lots of private clubs and … Did some of my best work after I'd been drinking all night,' he asserted with tired braggadocio. And, he went on, if Charles did need to kip, there was an old sleeping bag somewhere he could borrow. Go on, it'd be fun to drink all night.

But Charles demurred, saying that he had to be up for rehearsal in the morning. Suddenly the squalor of the flat and the sadness of Vinnie McCree were getting to him. The thought of waking up with a hangover in that noxious place was more than he could contemplate. After fulsome farewells, he left his host and walked the half-mile back to his digs.

Though it had advanced his investigation, meeting Vinnie had shocked him. It had been like looking in a fairground distorting mirror only to realize: No, it was an ordinary mirror. Vinnie McCree was a horrible foreshadowing of what Charles Paris could all too easily become.

BARON HARDUP: But what's afoot, I'd like to know?

BUTTONS: Twelve inches, stupid – you're so slow!

L
efty Rubenstein rang at a quarter to eight the following morning. Charles felt infinitely weary, infinitely old and infinitely determined never to drink again.

‘You called me.'

‘Yes,' said Charles, trying to reassemble his scrambled thoughts. ‘It was about Jasmine del Rio.'

‘Oh yeah?' Lefty sounded totally uninterested in the information. ‘I told you when we met in the hotel, I've never heard the name.'

‘I met a friend of hers yesterday … well, a former lover actually. Female lover.'

‘OK, and …?'

‘From what the woman said, I think something did happen between Jasmine and Kenny in LA, before he got into
The Dwight House
.'

‘It's possible. I don't know everyone he screwed back then. Like I've said before, I wasn't his nursemaid.'

‘But I think you did know about this particular hook-up.' Charles knew he was taking a risk. The chain of logic that had seemed so solid the day before now looked tenuous in the extreme. Lefty could destroy it with a couple of words.

But fortunately something Charles had said had brought a note of caution into the lawyer's manner. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘At the time Jasmine del Rio was going under the name of Marybeth Docker.' Lefty didn't repeat his assertion that he'd never heard the name. He just waited to see what would come next. ‘And she was only fourteen years old.' Still no response. ‘For some reason someone paid her fifteen thousand pounds – I don't know what that would've been in dollars then – to keep quiet about something. She called it her “hush money”.'

‘So?' asked Lefty.

‘Lilith Greenstone told me you quite often paid hush money to dissuade people from taking legal action against Kenny.'

‘Did she? Never liked me, Lilith. Makes a habit of spreading nasty rumours about people … particularly Kenny and me. Why are you telling me all this, Charles?'

‘Because we said we'd work together on this investigation. If either of us found something out, we'd tell the other.'

‘I'm not really sure that you've found anything out, Charles. Just seems to me you're pretty big on conjecture. There's no solid basis to anything you're saying.'

‘Well, if there's no solid basis, you won't mind my sharing my conjectures with Detective Inspector Malik, will you?'

‘Hey, hey, just a minute. Let's not be hasty here.'

There was a silence. Charles knew he was behaving out of character. Blackmail wasn't a means of persuasion that he liked using. But somehow with Lefty, the arch negotiator, it seemed the right approach. And Charles was finding it easier to do on the telephone than if he had been face to face with the man.