Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘Shhhhhr.’ That was the first word that had appeared. Written as Dervla watched, letter by letter appearing through the steam and condensation, right near the bottom of the mirror, just above the basin taps.

  ‘Don’t stare,’ came next, and Dervla realized that she was standing bug-eyed, still holding her toothbrush in her mouth, looking at the letters. Quickly she readjusted her gaze, looking at her own reflection as toothbrushers are wont to do. After a moment she allowed her eyes to flick down again.

  ‘I like you,’ said the words.

  ‘J can help you. Bye now.’ There was a pause and then the anonymous communicator’s final letters.

  ‘XXX.’ Dervla finished brushing her teeth quickly, wrapped a towel around her, took off her wet knickers and vest, dressed as fast as she could and went outside to sit in the vegetable garden. She needed to think. She could not decide whether she was angry or excited about this un-sought-for development. On balance she reckoned that she was both. Angry because this man (she felt certain it was a man) had clearly singled her out for his special attention. He had been watching her and now he wanted to use the power he had over her to intrude on her space. That gave her rather an uncomfortable feeling. What were his motives? Was he attracted to her? Was he perving on her? What other reason could he have for risking his job in such a manner? On the other hand, perhaps he was doing it for a laugh? Perhaps he was just a wild and crazy guy who fancied the crack of manipulating Peeping Tom? Dervla was well aware of how much the media preferred scandals and skulduggery in the house to honest relationships. It was always the bad boys and girls who got the publicity. If this mysterious letter-writer managed to open up a dialogue with her, the story would certainly be worth more than a cameraman’s wage. That was a thought. Perhaps he was already in the pay of a newspaper? The press were always trying to drop leaflets and parachutists and hang-glider pilots into the house; it must have occurred to them to try to bribe a cameraman. Now another thought occurred to her: perhaps this person was no friend at all, but an agent provocateur! Seeking to tempt her into breaking the rules! Was this entrapment? A sting? Were Peeping Tom or the newspapers trying to catch her out? If so, then were they trying the same trick on the others? Dervla imagined her exposure as a cheat, the earnest tones of the voiceover man revealing her shame. Revelling in it.

  ‘We decided to test each of the inmates by offering them an illegal channel of communication with the outside world. Dervla was the only housemate to take the bait, the only willing cheat…’ That would be it, expulsion in disgrace, for ever more to be labelled ‘Devious Dervla,’

  ‘Dastardly Dervla’…Dirty Dervla. Her mind swam. She forced herself to focus her thoughts. It simply couldn’t be Peeping Tom doing this. Entrapment was immoral — she wasn’t at all sure if it wasn’t an actual crime. If a respectable production company did that, then nobody would ever trust them again. No, it couldn’t be Peeping Tom. What if it was the media? Well, so what? So far she had done nothing wrong and she would be careful to keep it that way. Besides, any paper that had bribed a cameraman could not publish anything about it without revealing their source, and they would certainly wait a while to do that. Dervla reckoned that at the very least she had time to sit back and see how the situation developed. And if it really was a friend, somebody who had taken a shine to her and wanted her to win…Who could tell? Perhaps it might give her the edge. It would certainly be nice to get a bit of outside information…And she hadn’t actually asked for any help, so it wasn’t really immoral. Not to look in the mirror, surely?

  DAY THIRTY-TWO. 9.20 p.m.

  One wall of the incident room had become known as ‘the Map’. On it Trisha had affixed photographs of the ten housemates, which she had then connected by a great mass of crisscrossing lines of tape stuck to the plaster with Blu-Tack. On the strips of tape Trisha and her colleagues had written short descriptive sentences such as ‘attracted to’, ‘loathes’, ‘had row about cheese’, and ‘spends too long in the toilet’. Hooper had attempted to recreate Trisha’s map on his computer, using his photo scanner and untold gigabytes of three- dimensional graphic-arts software programming. Sadly the project defeated him and a little bomb kept appearing and telling him to restart the computer. Soon Hooper was forced to slink back to the drawing pins and Blu-Tack along with everybody else. Now Coleridge was standing in front of the map solemnly contemplating the ten housemates and the ever-growing web of interconnecting relationships.

  ‘Somewhere,’ he said, ‘somewhere in this dense mass of human intercourse must lie our motive, our catalyst for a murder.’ He spoke as if he were addressing a room full of people, but in fact only Hooper and Trisha were there, everybody else having long since gone home. They had decided that the evening’s subjects for discussion would be Layla the beautiful ‘hippie’ and David the dedicated actor. On one of the tapes that connected their two photographs Trisha had written: ‘Friends for first day or two. Turned sour.’

  ‘So what was this early friendship based on?’ Coleridge asked.

  ‘It can’t have been much if it went sour so quickly.’

  ‘Well, they have lot in common,’ Trisha replied.

  ‘They’re both vegans and obsessed with diets and dieting, which seems to have formed a bond between them. On the very first evening they had a long and rather exclusive conversation about food-combining and stomach acids. I’ve lined up the tape.’ Sure enough, when Trisha pressed play there on the screen were David and Layla, set slightly apart from the rest of the group, having the most terrific meeting of minds.

  ‘That is so right,’ said Layla.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ David agreed.

  ‘But it’s amazing how many people still think that dairy is healthy.’

  ‘Which it so isn’t.’

  ‘Did you know that eggs killed more people in the last century than Hitler?’

  ‘Yes, I think I did know that, and wheat.’

  ‘Ugh, wheat! Don’t get me started on wheat!’ Now the sombre tones of Andy the narrator intruded briefly.

  ‘David and Layla have discovered that they have a lot in common: they both miss their cats dreadfully.’’

  ‘Pandora is the most beautiful and intelligent creature I have ever met,’ David explained, ‘and sadly I include human beings in that statement.’

  ‘I so know what you mean,’ Layla replied. Trisha stopped the tape.

  ‘Fogarty the editor told me they got very excited about David and Layla that night. They thought that they might even troll off to the nookie hut and have it off there and then, but all that happened was a shoulder massage.’

  ‘But they were definitely friends?’ Coleridge asked.

  ‘I think it’s more that they hated everybody else. Looking at the tapes, it’s pretty obvious that they thought themselves a cut above the others. On the first day or two the cameras often caught them exchanging wry, superior little glances. Peeping Tom broadcast them, too. The public hated it. David and Layla were the absolute least popular people in the house.’

  ‘But of course they didn’t know this.’

  ‘Well, there’s no way they could have done. They were sealed off. In fact, watching them you get the impression that they think people will love them as much as they love themselves. Particularly him.’

  ‘Yes, David certainly is a cocky one,’ Coleridge mused.

  ‘Arrogant almost beyond belief, in fact, in his quiet, passiveaggressive sort of way.’ Hooper was surprised to hear Coleridge using a term as current and overused as passive-aggressive, but there was no doubt that the phrase summed up David exactly. They looked at David on the screen and stared into his soft, puppy-dog eyes. All three were thinking the same thing.

  ‘It would certainly take a very confident person to believe that they could get away with what our murderer got away with,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘No one with the slightest self-doubt would ever have attempted it.’ He returned to the theme of friendship.

  ‘So familiarity
quickly took its toll on David and Layla’s closeness. Like many a friendship too eagerly begun, it had no staying power.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Trisha.

  ‘It started going wrong with the cheese and went downhill from there.’

  ‘They were too alike, I reckon,’ said Hooper.

  ‘They got in each other’s way. They wanted the same role in the house, to be the beautiful and sensitive one. It all fell irrevocably to pieces over Layla’s poem.’

  DAY FIVE. 9.00 p.m.

  The row began with the best intentions. David had suggested, in an attempt to engineer a rapprochement between himself and Layla (and hence avoid her nominating him), that since he was trained and practised in the art of recitation perhaps he should learn one of Layla’s poems and recite it for her. Layla had been touched and flattered and because there were no papers or pens allowed in the house David had set to learning the poem orally directly from the author.

  ‘Lactation,’ said Layla.

  ‘That’s very, very beautiful,’ said David.

  ‘It’s the title,’ Layla explained.

  ‘I understand,’ said David, nodding gently, as if the fact that ‘Lactation’ was the title required a heightened level of perception to come to terms with.

  ‘Shall we take it two lines at a time?’ Layla asked. By way of an answer David closed his eyes and put his hands together at the fingertips, his lips gently touching his index fingers. Layla began.

  ‘Woman. Womb-an. Fat, full, belly, rich with girl child. Vagina, two-way street to miracles.’ ‘ David breathed deeply and repeated the first two lines of Layla’s poem. It was clear from his manner that he thought Layla would be amazed and thrilled to have her words lent wings by such a richly liquid and subtle voice. If she was, she hid it well.

  ‘Actually, that first line is meant to be very upbeat, joyful,’ Layla said.

  ‘You’re being too sombre. I always say it with a huge smile, particularly the words ‘girl child’. I mean, think about it, David, doesn’t the thought of a strong, spiritual woman’s belly engorged with a beautiful girl child just make you want to smile?’ David was clearly aghast.

  ‘Are you giving me direction, Layla?’ He asked.

  ‘No, I just want you to know how to say it, that’s all.’

  ‘The whole point about getting an actor to work on a piece of writing, Layla, is in order to get another artist’s interpretation of it. An actor will find things in a poem that the author did not even know were there.’

  ‘But I don’t want the things that aren’t there, I want the things that are.’ David seemed to snap.

  ‘Then you’d better recite it yourself,’he said, jumping angrily to his feet.

  ‘Because quite frankly it stinks. Apart from the repulsive imagery of fat, engorged female stomachs, from, I might add, a woman with less flesh on her than a Chupa Chups stick, I am a professional actor and I simply will not take direction from an amateur poet! Particularly after I have paid her the enormous compliment of actually taking an interest in her pisspoor work!’ And with that David headed outside for a dip in the hot spa.

  DAY THIRTY-TWO. 10.15 p.m.

  Very short fuse. Master David,’ Coleridge observed thoughtfully.

  ‘Short enough for murder, do you think?’ Rewinding slightly and freezing on David’s furious face, it did seem possible.

  ‘He certainly looks like he wants to murder her,’ said Hooper.

  ‘But of course it wasn’t Layla that ended up getting killed, was it?’

  ‘As we have discussed endlessly, sergeant. If the motive were obvious our killer would be awaiting trial right now. All we can hope to find is the seed from which a murder will grow.’ Hooper informed Coleridge as briskly as he dared that he was aware of this.

  DAY FIVE. 9.15 p.m.

  After David had left the room, Layla did indeed take his advice and recite the poem herself, grinning like a baboon with a banana wedged sideways in its mouth throughout. Jazz, Kelly, Dervla and Moon listened respectfully, and when it was over, they all said that they thought it was very, very good. Woggle opined from his corner that poetry was merely an effort to formalize language and as such indicated a totalitarian mindset.

  ‘Words are anarchists. Let them run free,’ he said. But the others ignored him, something that they had learned to do as much as possible, while counting the minutes to nomination day.

  ‘That was the business, that poem, Layles. It was dead wicked, that, so fair play to yez,’ Moon said in her Mancunian accent, which seemed to be getting thicker by the day.

  ‘Did you notice my red lipstick?’ Layla gushed. They all had.

  ‘Some anthropologists believe that women paint their lips red in order to make their mouths reminiscent of their vaginas.’

  ‘Steady on, girl,’ said Gazzer from over by the kettle.

  ‘Just had my dinner.’

  ‘They say that women do it to make themselves more attractive to men, but I do it as a celebration.’

  ‘Of what?’ Jazz asked innocently.

  ‘Of my vagina.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Any time you want someone to help you celebrate it, Layles,’ said Garry.

  ‘Sherrup, Garry,’ said Moon.

  ‘It’s not about fookin’ blokes, it’s about being’ a strong and spiritual woman, in’t it, Layles?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Moon, that’s exactly what it’s about.’ Kelly was still a bit confused.

  ‘Well, I don’t get what these anthropologists are on about. Why would any girl want to have a face like a fanny?’ Layla had to think about this for a moment. She had never been asked before. People she knew just tended to nod wisely and ask if there was any more guacamole.

  ‘I don’t think they mean exactly like one. It’s just an impression of genitalia in order to steer the male towards procreation.’

  ‘Oh, right, I see,’ said Kelly.

  ‘It’s why female monkeys turn their bottoms pink. If they didn’t they would have died out as a species long ago. Trust the woman to find a way.’ Everybody nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Did you know that monkeys have star signs?’ Said Moon.

  ‘Yeah. This mystic went to London Zoo and did horoscopes for all the advanced primates, and do you know what? She got them all bang on, their personalities and everything. It were fookin’ weird.’

  DAY SEVEN. 8.00 a.m.

  For the previous day or two Dervla had made a point of always being the first up in the morning so that she might have the shower room to herself. On this occasion, however, she found Moon had beaten her to it, not because Moon had suddenly transformed herself into an early riser, but because she was only just on her way to bed.

  ‘I’ve been sat up all night reading that Red Dragon book Sally brought in. You know, the first one with Hannibal Lecter in it. Fookin’ amazing, I were fookin’ terrified. I reckon that’s the scariest kind of murder that, when there’s no fookin’ reason for it except that the bloke’s fookin’ mad for topping people, you know, a serial psycho.’ Dervla waited while Moon brushed her teeth and staggered off to bed.

  ‘Wake me if I’m missing out on any food,’ Moon said as she left the bathroom. Now Dervla was alone, standing before the basin mirror in her underwear. She sensed movement behind the mirror. The housemates were occasionally aware of the people behind the mirrors: there were tiny noises and at night sometimes, when the lights in the bedrooms were off, shapes could vaguely be made out through the mirrors. Dervla knew that her friend had come to meet her.

  ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,’ she said, as if having a private joke with herself, ‘who’ll be the winner of us all?’ She pretended to laugh and put some toothpaste on her brush. None of the editors watching could have imagined that she was talking to anyone. Soon the writing appeared, just as it did every morning. Ugly ungainly letters. The messenger was clearly having to write backwards and perhaps, Dervla thought, at arm’s length. Woggle number one with public,’ said the message.
She nearly blew it. She nearly blurted Woggle’s name out loud she was so surprised to discover that he was in the lead. Fortunately she stayed cool, allowing her eyes to flick downwards only momentarily. Her anonymous informant completed his message.

  ‘Kelly 2. You 3,’ it said, and then, ‘Good Luck XXX.’ Dervla finished brushing her teeth and washed her face. So she was running third. Not bad out of ten. It was certainly a surprise that Woggle was so popular, but when she thought about it she supposed he must have a lot of novelty value. It would soon wear off. Kelly was much more of a threat. She was a lovely girl. Dervla liked her. Clearly the public did too. Never mind, Dervla thought to herself, there were eight weeks to go yet. A lot could happen in nine weeks and surely Kelly couldn’t stay so happy and so sunny for ever. Before leaving the bathroom Dervla wiped the words off the mirror and blew a little kiss at her reflection. She thought that her friend the cameraman might appreciate a small friendly gesture.

  DAY THIRTY-TWO. 11.35 p.m.

  Coleridge tiptoed from the kitchen into the living room with his second can of beer. Upstairs his wife was asleep. She had been asleep when he’d arrived home and would still be asleep when he left the house again at six the following morning. She had left Coleridge a note pointing out that although they lived in the same house she had not actually set eyes on him for three days. Coleridge searched out a Biro and scribbled, ‘I haven’t changed,’ beneath his wife’s message. The note would still be there the next night, only by then Mrs Coleridge would have added ‘more’s the pity’. She didn’t mean it, she liked him really, but, as she often remarked, it’s easy to think fondly of somebody you never see. Coleridge had brought home with him the Peeping Tom press pack relating to week one in the house. On the front was attached a photocopied memo written on Peeping Tom notepaper. It was headed ‘Round-up of housemates’ public/press profiles at day eight.’ The writer had been admirably succinct.