Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘Annoyed.’

  ‘Thank you, sergeant. It will speed matters up considerably in this incident room if we all speak the same language. Is there any evidence that this boy can actually act?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ said Trisha.

  ‘He had a very good start. RADA graduate and quite a lot of work at first, but recently it just hasn’t been happening for him.’ Coleridge studied David’s face frozen on the screen.

  ‘Bit of a come-down, this, eh? I can’t imagine that appearing on House Arrest was what he had in mind when he left drama college.’

  ‘No, it does look a bit desperate, doesn’t it?’ Coleridge looked once more at David. The face was flickering and jumping about because the police VCR was old and clapped out and did not like pausing. David’s mouth was slightly open in a grin and the effect made him look like he was gnawing at the air.

  ‘What does he live off while he’s doing his real job of not acting?’

  ‘Well, I wondered about that, sir,’ said Hooper, ‘and I have to admit it’s a bit obscure. He doesn’t sign on, but he seems to do pretty well for himself — nice flat, good clothes and all that. He told Peeping Tom that his parents helped him out.’

  ‘Look into it, will you? If he’s in debt or steals or sells drugs and one of the other people in the house had found out…Well, there might be something, the ghost of a motive…’ But Coleridge did not sound convinced.

  ‘The telly people would have heard it, wouldn’t they, sir? I mean, if another inmate had found something out about him? Don’t they hear everything?’ Trisha asked.

  ‘Not absolutely everything,’ Hooper, who was a reality TV buff, replied. ‘They see everything, but they don’t hear everything — most but not all. Sometimes, when the inmates whisper, it’s hard to make out what they’re saying, and every now and then they leave their microphones off and have to be told to put them back on. And they sometimes tap them when they speak. The contestants in the first series worked that one out. Remember Wicked Willy? The bloke who got chucked off for trying to manipulate the votes? That was his little trick.’

  ‘Well, that would be worth watching out for, wouldn’t it?’ Trisha said.

  ‘Microphone tapping — very conspiratorial.’

  ‘Unfortunately most of the bits where you can’t hear weren’t stored on disk because they were useless for broadcast.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘As my mother used to say, life wasn’t meant to be easy. Next one, please. Move on.’

  ‘Check it out, guys! A swimming pool!’ Jazz had opened the patio doors and spun round to announce his discovery. The graphic punched bricks into his handsome young face: Jazz. Real fob: trainee chef. Star sign: Leo (cusp of Cancer).

  ‘This is better than Ibiza!’ He performed a little acid-style dance on the edge of the pool while doing a convincing vocal impression of a drum and bass track.

  Duh! Boom! Chh chh boom! Chh chh boom! Chhh chhh BOOM! Now a girl came running out to join Jazz. A pretty girl with a happy laughing face and a small jewel stud through one nostril.

  Kelly. Real job: sales consultant. Star sign: Libra.

  ‘Wicked!’ Shouted Kelly.

  ‘Chh chh boom!’ Jazz replied. Kelly began to jump up and down, clapping her hands together with excitement.

  ‘Wicked! Unreal! Amped up!’ She shouted, and, kicking off her baggy hipsters, she jumped into the pool.

  ‘Sales consultant?’ Coleridge enquired.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Shop girl,’ said Hooper.

  ‘Miss Selfridge.’ Coleridge stared at Kelly’s flickering image on the screen.

  ‘Did you see those trousers she was wearing? They showed half her bottom.’

  ‘I’ve got a pair exactly the same,’ Trisha remarked.

  ‘Well, frankly, Patricia, I’m surprised. You could see her knickers poking out of the top.’

  ‘That’s the point, sir.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes, sir, no sense paying for a CK G-string if people can’t see it, is there?’ Coleridge did not ask what CK stood for. He wasn’t falling into obvious traps like that.

  ‘What sense of her own worth does that girl have if she chooses to boast about her underwear?’ Coleridge wondered if he was the only person in the world who felt so completely culturally disenfranchised. Or were there others like him? Living secret lives, skulking in the shadows, scared to open their mouths for fear of exposure. People who no longer understood the adverts, let alone the programmes. On the TV screen Kelly burst back out of the water, and as she did so one of her breasts popped momentarily over the top of her sodden vest. By the time she surfaced for a second time she had got it covered up.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Shouted Kelly.

  ‘I’m wearing my microphone. Peeping Tom’ll kill me.’

  ‘She was wrong about that,’ Hooper remarked.

  ‘Kelly’s famous boob. I remember it well. Definitely worth the cost of a mike. They used it in the trailers, all hazy in slow-motion, very cheeky, very nice. It was in the papers, too — ‘It’s House ABREAST!’ Most amusing, I thought.’

  ‘Could we get on, please?’ Coleridge snapped testily. Hooper bit his lip. He pressed play and a young woman with tattoos and a Mohican haircut strutted out of the house to look at the swimming pool.

  Sally. Real job: female bouncer. Star sign: Aries.

  ‘They should say ‘Real job: token lesbian’,’ said Trisha.

  ‘She’s the gay one. They have to have a gay or a dyke, I think it’s part of the Broadcasting Standards Commission guidelines.’ Coleridge wanted to object to the word ‘dyke’ but he wondered whether perhaps it had become the officially accepted term without his noticing. Language changed so quickly these days.

  ‘Do you think those tattoos mean anything?’ He asked instead.

  ‘Yeah, they mean keep clear ‘cos I’m one scary hard bitch,’ Hooper replied.

  ‘I think they’re Maori,’ Trisha said.

  ‘They certainly look Maori.’ Sally’s arms were entirely covered in tattoos; there was not a single square inch of flesh left showing from her wrists to her shoulders. Great thick stripes of blue-black snaked and coiled across her skin.

  ‘You know she’s the number-one Internet choice for having done it,’ Hooper noted, adding, ‘She’d be strong enough. Look at the muscles on it.’

  ‘That knife was very sharp,’ Coleridge snapped.

  ‘Any one of the people in that house would have been strong enough to pierce a skull with it if they felt strongly enough about the skull they were piercing. And would you kindly keep comments about the Internet to yourself? The fact that there are millions of bored idiots out there with nothing better to do than tap rubbish down telephone lines has absolutely nothing to do with this investigation.’ Silence reigned briefly in the incident room. Coleridge was so unabashed in the way he treated them all like schoolchildren; it was difficult to know how to react.

  ‘This bouncer business,’ Coleridge said, returning to the subject of Sally.

  ‘Known to us?’

  ‘Soho nick have talked to her occasionally,’ said Tricia, leafing through Sally’s file.

  ‘She’s cracked a few heads,but only in self-defence.’

  ‘Her mother must be very proud.’

  ‘She also got into a bit of a fight at last year’s Gay Pride march. Took on a couple of yobs who were jeering.’

  ‘Why do these people feel the need to define themselves by their preferences in bed?’

  ‘Well, if they didn’t talk about it, sir, you wouldn’t know, would you?’

  ‘But why do I need to know?’

  ‘Because otherwise you would presume they were straight.’

  ‘If by that you mean heterosexual, I would not presume any such thing, constable. I would not think about it at all.’ But Trisha knew that Coleridge was deceiving himself. Trisha was quite certain that Coleridge presumed she was a heterosexual. It simply would no
t occur to him to think otherwise. How she longed to shock him to his foundations and prove her point by announcing that she was as entirely and absolutely a lesbian as the tattooed girl on the screen. Actually, sir, all my lovers are women and what I particularly enjoy is when they bang me with a strap-on dildo. He would be astonished. He thought she was such a nice girl. But Trisha didn’t say anything. She kept quiet. That was why she secretly admired women like Sally, irritating and graceless though they might be. They did not keep quiet. They made people like Coleridge think.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘Nice knockers, girl!’ Sally shouted at Kelly, who was just emerging from the pool. Garry, all muscles and shaved head, was the next to emerge from the house. On seeing Kelly, soaking wet with her skimpy singlet clinging to her fit young body, he dropped to his knees in mock worship.

  ‘Thank you. God!’ He shouted to the skies.

  ‘Something for the lads! We like that!’

  Garry. Real job: van driver. Star sign: Cancer.

  ‘Or the girls!’ Sally shouted back.

  ‘You never know, she might play for my team.’

  ‘You a dyke, then?’ Garry enquired, turning to her with interest.

  ‘Derr!’ Said Sally, pointing to the front of her vest on which were written the words ‘I eat pussy’.

  ‘Oh, is that what it means? I thought it meant you’d just been to a Chinese restaurant!’ Garry laughed hugely at his joke, which was to provoke a minor scandal when it was broadcast later that evening, being considered highly bold, provocative and controversial. Inside the house a bald woman in a leopardskin-print miniskirt was exploring the living area.

  ‘Check it out, guys! There’s a welcome basket! Wicked!’

  Moon. Real job: circus trapeze artiste and occasional lap-dancer. Star sign: Capricorn.

  ‘Fags, chocolate, champagne! Wicked!’

  ‘Get stuck in!’ Shouted Garry from the patio doors. The others quickly assembled around the basket and the four bottles of Sainsbury’s own-brand champagne were immediately opened. They all collapsed onto the orange, green and purple couches on which they would lounge for so much of the long days to come.

  ‘Right, since we’re chilling out and kicking back, I might as well tell you now,’ Moon shouted in her exaggerated Mancunian accent, ‘because at the end of the day you’re all going to find out anyways. First of all, I’m going to win this fookin’ game, all fookin’ right? So the rest of you bastards can just forget it! All right?’ This exhibition of bravado was received with friendly cheers.

  ‘Second, I’ve done lap-dancing, right? I took money off sad blokes for letting them see me bits, I’m not proud of it, but at the end of the day I was fookin’ good at it, right?’ This provoked more cheers and shouts of ‘Good on you!’

  ‘And third, I’ve had a boob job, right? I was dead unhappy with my self-image before, and my new tits have really empowered me as a person in my own right, right? Which at the end of the day is what it’s all about, in’t it? Quite frankly, at the end of the day, I feel that these are the boobs I was supposed to have.’

  ‘Gi’s a look, then, darling, and I’ll tell you if you’re right!’ Gazzer shouted.

  ‘Easy, tiger!’ Moon shrieked, revelling in the attention.

  ‘Take it easy. We’ve got nine fookin’ weeks in here, don’t want to peak too soon. Oh God, though, what have I said? I feel terrible. Me mum never knew ‘bout me being a stripper, she thinks I’m dead proper, me. So-rry, Mum!’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against a bit of cosmetic surgery,’ Jazz reflected.

  ‘I’ve never regretted my nob reduction, at least now it don’t poke out the bottom of me trousers!’ The housemates laughed and shrieked and said ‘Wicked!’ But there were some who laughed more than others. A quiet-looking girl with raven-dark hair and green eyes only smiled. Sitting beside her was a rather straight-looking young man dressed in smart but casual Timberland.

  Hamish. Real job: junior doctor. Star sign: Leo.

  ‘He doesn’t look happy,’ Coleridge observed, staring at Hamish’s handsome face, which was caught in a rather sullen expression.

  ‘He’s thinking about winning,’ said Hooper.

  ‘He went in with a strategy. Keep your head down, don’t get noticed, that’s his little motto. ‘Only the noticed get nominated.’ He went into the confession box every night and said that. It’s a very complex game,’ Hooper continued.

  ‘They have to play their fellow housemates one way and the public another. Be unobtrusive enough not to get nominated but interesting enough not to get evicted if they do get nominated. I think that’s why people find the programme so fascinating. It’s a genuine psychological study. Like a human zoo.’

  ‘Is it?’ Coleridge snapped caustically.

  ‘In that case I wonder why the producers never seem to miss a single opportunity to broadcast sex talk or to display breasts.’

  ‘Well, breasts are fascinating too, aren’t they, sir? People like looking at them. I know I do. Besides which, when people go to the real zoo, what do they like looking at most? Monkeys’ burns and rumpo, that’s what.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous at all, sir. If you had the choice of watching two elephants either having their tea or having it off, which would you choose? People are interested in sex. You might as well face it.’

  ‘I think we’re straying from the point.’

  ‘Do you, sir?’ Said Trisha, who was looking at Hamish’s face on the screen.

  ‘I don’t. This house was riddled with sexual tension and that’s got to be relevant, hasn’t it? For instance, just look who Hamish is staring at.’

  ‘It’s impossible to say.’

  ‘You’ll see in the wide shot, it’s coming up next.’ Trisha touched the play button on the ancient VCR and, sure enough, the picture cut to a wide shot of the laughing, slightly drunken group lolling about on the couches.

  ‘He’s looking at Kelly now, sir, and then he starts staring at Layla. He’s checking them out. The psychologist on the show says that during the first hours in the house the group will be thinking principally about who they’re attracted to.’

  ‘Now that is a surprise, constable! And there was me imagining that they were thinking about the value of their immortal souls and the definition of God.’ Coleridge regretted his outburst. He did not approve of sarcasm and he liked Trisha and valued her as an officer. He knew that she did not speculate idly.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m still having some difficulty getting over my exasperation with these people.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. They certainly are a bunch of pains. But I do think it’s important that we find out who fancies whom. I mean, in this unique murder environment jealousy has to be a fairly likely motive.’

  ‘Who do you think fancies Woggle, then?’ Hooper asked, laughing at the figure who had just appeared on the screen.

  Woggle. Real job: anarchist. Star sign: claims to be all twelve.

  ‘I mean, let’s face it,’ Hooper continued.

  ‘If you were looking for a potential murder victim out of this lot, it would have to be Woggle, wouldn’t it? I mean, that bloke is just asking for it.’

  ‘Any white bloke with dreadlocks is asking for it in my opinion,’ Trisha remarked, adding, ‘Woggle was Geraldine the Gaoler’s private little project, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, constable?’ Trisha was referring to one of the confidential internal policy briefings that she had secured from the Peeping Tom offices on the day of the murder.

  ‘He was the only inmate of the house that Peeping Tom actually approached, rather than the other way round. In Geraldine Hennessy’s opinion he was, and I quote, ‘guaranteed good telly. A natural irritant, like the grain of sand in the oyster shell around which a pearl will grow’.’

  ‘Very poetic,’ Coleridge remarked.

  ‘I must say, it’s a stretch of the imagination to
think of Mr Woggle as a pearl, but it takes all sorts, I suppose.’

  ‘She saw him on the lunchtime news on the day of the annual May Day riots, sir.’

  ‘Ah. So he was arrested? Now that is interesting.’

  ‘He wasn’t arrested, sir, he was being interviewed by the BBC. It was Woggle’s claim to fame.’

  ‘I saw that interview you did ‘bout anarchy and all that malarkey,’ Moon was saying to Woggle, sensing a kindred alternative spirit.

  ‘You were fookin’ magic, babe. Double wicked.’

  ‘Thank you, sweet lady,’ Woggle replied.

  ‘But what was the story with the medieval jester’s hat? Was it, like, making a point or what?’

  ‘It was indeed making a point, 0 bald woman. When the so-called wise men have run out of answers it is time to talk to the fools.’

  ‘So they talked to you, then,’ said Jazz drily.

  ‘Correctomundo, soul brother.’ Woggle flashed what he believed was a smile of devilish subtlety but which, owing to his beard and the state of his teeth, looked like a few broken Polo mints buried in a hair-filled bathroom plug-hole.

  ‘I couldn’t get to work that day,’ Kelly complained.

  ‘They closed Oxford Street. How’s stopping people doing their shopping going to help anybody?’ Woggle did his best to explain, but his politics were not overburdened with detail or analysis. He seemed to recognize something he called ‘the system’, and he disapproved of this system in its entirety.

  ‘That’s it, really,’ he said.

  ‘So what is the system, then?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Well, it’s all that capitalist, global, police, money, hamburger, American, foxhunting, animal-testing, fascist-groove-thing, isn’t it?’ Woggle explained in his dull, nasal monotone.

  ‘Oh, right. I see.’ Kelly sounded unconvinced.

  ‘What we need is macrobiotic organic communities interacting with their environments in an atmosphere of mutual respect,’ Woggle added.

  ‘What the fahk are you talking about?’ Garry enquired.

  ‘Basically it would be nice if things were nicer.’ Once more Inspector Coleridge pressed pause.

  ‘I presume Woggle’s antagonism to ‘the system’ does not prevent him from living off it?’