Popcorn

Chapter TwentyOne

The unmarked police car pulled up outside the Beverly Hills mansion. The sun was out now, and the automatic sprinklers hidden beneath the perfect lawns had sprung to life. As he looked about him, Detective Jay could see a hundred rainbows shimmering in the spray which hung above the deep green grass. Everything looked so peaceful and so rich.

Jay wondered if inside that glorious colonnaded house unspeakable mayhem had already been perpetrated. It was just a hunch, after all. On the other hand, nobody had cut up a major Hollywood star since Manson.

‘You know,’ said Crawford as they approached the vast front door, ‘this guy was a daytime soap star for years, started as a kid. That’s what’s so clever about Delamitri. He makes weird moves, like, you know, doing the unexpected, casting against type. Making uncool cool.’

‘What, like murder?’

‘You don’t buy that copycat crap, do you? What? Are we all going to have to go and watch Doris Day movies?’

Buzzz. Buzzzzzzz.

At first Kurt didn’t hear it. The pounding of the treadmill and the Van Halen in his headphones blotted out any outside sound. He rarely answered the intercom himself, anyway. The staff arrived by public bus at nine, and nobody ever visited before that.

Except today.

If he hadn’t stopped for a swig of salinating energizer drink and five minutes under the sunlamp, he’d never have heard it at all.

‘LAPD,’ said the intercom. ‘Sorry to call so early, sir.’

In contrast to the characters he played, Kurt Kidman was as dull as old brown paint. Like many people in LA these days, all he ever did was work and exercise. He had certainly never been visited by the police at six fifty in the morning.

‘The police?’ said Kurt. ‘But… but why?’ The receiver actually shook in his hand.

He had never done anything illegal in his life (although some of his acquaintances considered that squandering his huge wealth and fame on a boring, healthy lifestyle was something of a crime). None the less, Kurt was a nervous sort of fellow and anybody suddenly confronted by the police tends to feel an irrational sense of guilt, particularly at so early an hour. Had he done anything wrong? Was it possible that he’d gone over the speed limit when he drove back from the Oscars on the previous night? Or else maybe, like Dr Jekyll, he had a terrifying subconscious alter ego, who roamed the night committing terrible murders of which his conscious self had no memory in the morning.

‘Good morning, officer,’ Kurt said, attempting to sound calm, as he answered the door. He had tried to communicate with them only over the intercom, but they had asked him to come down in person. He half expected to be brutally handcuffed the moment the door was open.

‘How can I help you?’

Should he have said even that without his lawyer being present? Kurt couldn’t remember the rules. Was saying hullo incriminating? He longed to tell them that his copious sweating was the result of an hour on the treadmill, not because he was desperately attempting to cover up some guilty secret. But would that sound like protesting too much? Probably.

‘Just a routine enquiry, sir,’ said Detective Jay ‘Have you been visited or contacted during the night? Have any strangers attempted to speak to you?’

‘No,’ said Kurt.

‘In that case we won’t bother you further. Sorry to have interrupted your workout, sir.’

Detective Jay gave Kurt his card and asked him to call if anything out of the ordinary occurred, and then he and his partner departed.

Kurt worried about it all day.