Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  DAY SEVENTEEN. 8.00 p.m.

  It had been two days since Woggle’s exit, and the House Arrest experience had returned to the basic formula of whining, backbiting and wondering who fancied whom.

  ‘It’s day seventeen in the house,’ said Andy the narrator.

  ‘After lunch, a meal of pasta and vegetable sauce, which Sally cooks, the group talk about first love.’

  ‘Well, it’s gotta be Chelsea FC, hasn’t it?’ Said Gazzer.

  ‘You never forget the first time you see the Blues.’

  ‘Because they’re so shite,’ Jazz opined.

  ‘Even when they’re shite they’re beautiful.’

  ‘We’re talking about proper love, Gazzer,’ said Moon.

  ‘Not fookin’ football.’

  ‘So am I, gel. Let’s face it, the love a bloke has for his team transcends all others. Think about it. I fancy loads of birds, all blokes fancy loads of birds, ‘cept poofs, and they fancy loads of blokes. Gay or straight, men like to put it about a bit, full stop. But when it comes to football, you only ever support one team, don’t you? You’re faithful. Moon, it’s true love.’ Watching from the depths of the monitoring bunker, Geraldine Hennessy could see that without Woggle life in the house was beginning to look dull. She needed to do something quickly to pep things up. Her solution was to give the housemates more to drink.

  ‘What is the number-one interest people have in watching these programmes?’ She asked her production team at their morning meeting the next day. There was silence. Geraldine’s minions all learned quickly that most of her questions were rhetorical.

  ‘To see if any of the inmates shag, am I right? Of course I’m right. When you get down to it, that’s what it’s all about. But basically it never fucking happens, does it? Nobody ever actually does it! We all keep up the pretence that it’s going to happen, us and the newspapers and the bleeding Broadcasting Standards Commission, we all pretend that it’s all so bleeding titillating when it patently isn’t. But nobody ever actually does the business. And why is that, I ask myself?’ She was indeed asking herself, for her cowed minions remained silent.

  ‘Because nobody is ever pissed enough, that’s why! Which, in a nutshell, is the problem with reality TV! Not enough booze! Oh, we can give them hot spas and massage rooms and nookie huts and all that bollocks, but in the long run no one is going to do the nasty, insert the portion, prise open the clam, heat up the sausage or cleave the bearded monster with the one-eyed lovesnake unless they are completely arseholed!’ Everybody shuffled their papers and looked embarrassed. They all knew that they were involved in a fairly tawdry exercise, but they fervently wished that Geraldine would not revel in it quite so much. Then Geraldine announced that she was changing the rules. She was going to separate the food and alcohol budgets in order to remove the usual constraint of having to sacrifice a meal for a drink. There were protests, of course, once it was announced, from the watchdogs and the bishops. Geraldine took the moral high ground, her usual defence for descending into the gutter.

  ‘We believe that people should be treated as adults,’ she sniffed.

  ‘If you set up a valid experiment such as ours and then police it from the outside as if it was some fifth-form trip, you learn nothing about the people involved. Our intention is to facilitate and encourage genuine social interaction.’ Nobody was fooled, of course. The tabloids put it most succinctly with their leader comment: ‘It’s House A’pissed} Lets get ‘em drunk and watch ‘em shag.’ Of course even Geraldine had to draw a line somewhere. These people were locked in a house with no TV, no writing equipment, no sense of time and almost nothing to do except a few foolish tasks, for weeks on end. Given the chance, most people would start drinking the moment they got up in the morning and carry on until collapsing into unconsciousness at night. Peeping Tom could not allow that. There were, after all, strict broadcasting standards to observe. Therefore, Peeping Tom banned daytime drinking and also rationed it during weekday evenings. At weekends, however, it was party time, and the housemates could have as much to drink as they liked.

  ‘And my rule in life has always been,’ Geraldine told a press conference, ‘that the weekend starts on Thursday.’ That afternoon, the Thursday following the drama of Layla’s eviction and Woggle’s arrest, found the store room where Peeping Tom left the house supplies filled with booze. Under normal circumstances Thursday should have meant another round of eviction nominations, but because of Woggle’s unexpected departure it was announced that the evictions for that week would be cancelled and that things would be picked up as normal on the following Thursday. If ever there was an excuse for a party, this surely had to be it.

  DAY THIRTY-SIX. 1.00 p.m.

  Coleridge had spent another fruitless morning out at Shepperton Studios wandering around the replica Peeping Tom house, foraging in his imagination for some stroke of insight that might lead on to a theory. Something was forming in his mind, the beginnings of an idea, but it was just a theory. There was nothing much so far to back it up. Still, better to be chewing on something rather than nothing, even if it did prove to be a red herring in the end. He returned to the station to find a faxed letter from the Irish Garda waiting for him. It was in response to an inquiry he had made to them about Ballymagoon, the village which Coleridge had heard mentioned on the radio and which was at the centre of an economic slump in rural Ireland. Dervla’s home village. Suspect family still resident in village, the letter read. Both parents and two younger sisters continue to live at family home. Family do not appear to have escaped effects of slump. Considerable financial hardship, car sold, negative equity on house and farm, mounting debts. Recent request for loans denied. Well, thought Coleridge, if ever a girl had a pressing reason for wanting to win half a million pounds it was Dervla. On the other hand, he knew from many years of experience that when it came to money most people did not need a pressing reason to covet half a million pounds. Nonetheless, her parents were in danger of losing their farm. And volunteering to be on House Arrest was quite a strange choice for a girl like Dervla to make. Of all of the housemates, she was undoubtedly the most…Coleridge struggled for the word…

  ‘beautiful’ sprang into his mind, but he fought it out again. Finally he settled upon ‘different.’ Dervla was the most different. There was no doubt about it that, as motives went, money was always a good one. Coupled with imminent family shame it was terrific…Except killing one housemate was scarcely going to guarantee her victory. It was only week four, there were seven other competitors, and it seemed unlikely that she had been planning to kill them all. She could not even have known that she was a popular housemate. None of them knew anything about what the world was thinking. Something to save for later was about all Coleridge could construe from his fax from the Irish police. He put it in the Dervla file and asked a constable to add a ‘motive’ note to her photograph on the wall map. Then he joined Trisha and Hooper at their habitual position in front of the video screen. They were looking at day eighteen.

  ‘Look at all that booze. Must be over a hundred quid’s worth,’ said Trisha.

  ‘It was the only way to get things going,’ Hooper replied.

  ‘Geraldine Hennessy said as much to the press at the time.’

  ‘Surely these people must have realized that they were being manipulated?’ Coleridge observed.

  ‘Getting them drunk is such a transparent ploy.’

  ‘Of course they realized it, sir, but you have to try and understand that they’re not like you. They don’t mind. And frankly if I was stuck in a sealed house with David and his guitar for weeks on end and somebody stuck five crates of booze on the table, I’d get stuck in myself.’

  ‘But have they no sense of personal privacy? Dignity?’ Hooper could disguise his exasperation no longer.

  ‘Well, sir, being as how they’ve all volunteered to be on the programme and they’ve been wandering around in their knickers ever since, I would say that the answer to that would probably have to
be no.’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, sergeant.’

  ‘What tone, sir?’

  ‘You know damn well what tone.’

  ‘I do not know what tone.’

  ‘Well, don’t take it anyway.’ On the screen, while the other housemates began their evening’s drinking. Moon got up and made her way to the confession box.

  ‘I just wanted to say…That I’ve been thinking about the trick I played on Sally and the girls the other night, you know, when I said all that stuff about being abused and institutionalized…’ Moon then went into a lengthy ramble about herself and what a mad-for-it gangster she was, a straighttalker who just said what she felt like and at the end of the day people would have to take her as they found her. Finally, she got to the apology.

  ‘What I’m saying is, I don’t want people to think it was cruel and the like, especially ‘cos I could hear her sobbing afterwards and all that, and I expect the public could too. Even though if you ask me it was a bit of an over-reaction…But what I’m saying is, if Sally’s been abused or whatever and has got, you know, mental health stuff going on or whatever, then fair play to her, right, because at the end of the day I wouldn’t like it myself if I thought someone was taking the piss out of me for being a nutter, particularly if I actually was a nutter, like Sally seems to be, although I’m not saying she is, if you know what I’m saying? So that’s all I’m saying, right. If you know what I’m saying.’ All of this was news to Coleridge. Geraldine had never broadcast the original discussion that had taken place in the girls’ bedroom; nor had she broadcast Moon’s apology in the confession box.

  ‘Sally has ‘mental health’ stuff going on?’ Coleridge asked.

  ‘It seems so,’ said Trish, ejecting the Moon confession tape.

  ‘I talked to Fogarty the Editor, and he told me that Sally pretty much said as much one night when the girls were chatting. They never broadcast it but Geri the Gaoler kept the tape for possible future use. That’s why we didn’t see it in our first trawl, it was still hidden on the edit suite hard disk. Fogarty sent it over. This is it.’ And so Coleridge, Hooper and Trish listened in on the conversation that had taken place in the girls’ room on the eighth night when Moon had lied about her past and Sally had shown herself so sensitive about the subject of mental health. For all three of them watching, one phrase stood out above all the others. Something that Sally had said as she sat there in the dark, her voice shaking with emotion.

  ‘…When once in a blue moon something happens, like some poor schizo who never should have been returned to the community gets stuck inside their own dark box and sticks a knife in someone’s head or whatever, suddenly every mild depressive in the country is a murderer.’ Trisha had marked down the time code of the comment and now they rewound the tape and listened to it again.

  ‘Sticks a knife in someone’s head.’

  ‘Sticks a knife in someone’s head.’ With the knowledge of hindsight, it was certainly an unfortunate choice of words.

  ‘Coincidence, do you think?’ Coleridge said.

  ‘Probably. I mean, if Sally was the murderer, how would she have known nearly four weeks beforehand how she was going to do it? We’ve already established that the murder was an improvisation.’

  ‘We haven’t established anything of the sort, constable,’ Coleridge snapped.

  ‘We have supposed such a thing because it seems difficult to see how it could have been planned. However, if someone in the house had an attraction for knives, if one of them was mentally predisposed towards stabbing, then we might suppose that this would make the murder method less a matter of chance and more one of inevitability.’ There was silence in the incident room for a moment before Coleridge added, ‘And Sally is a very, very strong woman.’

  ‘So Sally’s the killer, then?’ Trisha said with a hint of exasperation.

  ‘That’s an awfully big supposition to make from one little comment.’

  ‘I am not supposing anything, constable. I’m ruminating.’ Ruminating? Did he speak like that for a joke? Who ruminated? People thought, they considered, they might even occasionally ponder, but nobody had ruminated for fifty years.

  ‘Sally chose to use a phrase that exactly describes the murder. She said ‘stick a knife in someone’s head’. We have to consider the implications of that.’

  ‘Well, how about considering this, sir…’ Trisha fought down the feeling she had in her stomach that she might be being defensive on Sally’s behalf out of some absurd sisterly and sexual solidarity. She truly believed that she would as happily convict a lesbian as any other person…On the other hand she did rather resent the fact that people were so eager to suspect Sally.

  ‘She’s very strong,’ they kept saying.

  ‘Very very strong.’ It wasn’t Sally’s fault that she was strong and muscular. Trisha herself would have loved to have been that strong. Although perhaps not quite as muscular.

  ‘Go on, Patricia,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘Well, I was just wondering whether perhaps Moon wanted us to be reminded of what Sally had said. Perhaps she said all that stuff in the confession box because she wanted us to ruminate along the lines that you are ruminating along, sir.’ Coleridge raised a thoughtful eyebrow.

  ‘That is also a possibility,’he conceded, ‘and one upon which we must certainly ru — which we must certainly bear in mind.’ They turned their attention back to the screen.

  DAY EIGHTEEN. 8.15 p.m.

  Moon walked out of the confession box, having made her little speech about Sally, and announced her intention of getting immediately ‘shitfaced’.

  ‘I’m going to go large,’ she said, pulling the ring on a can of Special Brew.

  ‘I’m mad for it. I’m going to get shitfaced and rat- arsed!’

  ‘Funny that, isn’t it?’ Jazz said.

  ‘How we choose to describe having a good night.’

  ‘You what?’ Said Moon.

  ‘Funny way of describing a party. Moon,’ he said.

  ‘You what, Jazz?’ Jazz, ever watchful for opportunities whereby he could work on his patter and continue what he saw as his ongoing public audition for a career in comedy, had spotted what he thought was a fruitful opening.

  ‘Well, the English language is the most extensive in the world, but that’s the best you can do to describe having a good time. Tonight I’m going to have such a good time that it will be as if my face was covered in shit! My mood will resemble that of a rat’s arse! What’s all that about, then?’

  ‘Eh?’ Said Moon. Dervla tried to be supportive.

  ‘Very amusing. Jazz,’ she said, opening a bottle of wine.

  ‘I’d laugh but I’m not yet sufficiently shitfaced.’ And she smiled, hugging herself as if she had a special secret.

  ‘ ‘Kelly 1. Dervla 2.’ The secret hand had written in the condensation.

  ‘Hang in there. Gorgeous. XXX.’ The recipient of this little love note grinned broadly through the toothpaste foam. So now she had risen to second place in the affections of the public. Not bad at all after only two and a half weeks. Only Kelly was ahead of her and Dervla felt far better equipped to stay the course than she believed Kelly was. After all, it was going to be a long, long game for those who survived, and Dervla was confident in her reserves of inner strength. Kelly, she felt, was not so well equipped for the struggle. She was too open, too sweet, too vulnerable, not so mentally attuned to stay the distance. Dervla felt that all she had to do was hang on. If she could just survive the process, she would win the game. That was all she had to do. Survive. Jazz broke in on Dervla’s reverie.

  ‘So’re you going to get shitfaced too, then, Dervo?’ He said, throwing a friendly arm around her.

  ‘Can I join you?’

  ‘I’d be delighted, kind sir,’ she replied. Jazz’s smooth, beautiful, scented face smelt sweet close to hers, his arm was strong.

  ‘I never heard you swear before, Dervs,’ he laughed.

  ‘You’re loosen
ing up, my darling.’

  ‘Ah, to be sure, even us nuns like to let our wimples down occasionally.’ Jazz had been working up a little idea and, encouraged by Dervla’s friendly attitude, he decided to give it a trial run.

  ‘You know what?’ He said.

  ‘You give so much away about yourself when you brush your teeth.’ Dervla almost leapt away from him. In fact, she jumped so suddenly that she caused them both to spill their drinks. Everybody turned in surprise.

  ‘What the fuck do you know about me brushing my teeth?’ She snapped angrily. It was rare that anybody heard Dervla say ‘fuck’.

  ‘Here, steady on, girl,’ said Garry.

  ‘Mind the language. I ain’t as rough as you, you know.’ Dervla appeared shattered. She tried to collect herself.

  ‘I mean, what do you mean. Jazz? What about me brushing my teeth?’ Jazz struggled for words, confused by her defensive reaction.

  ‘Well, not just you, Dervs,’ he said.

  ‘I mean anybody, what I’m saying is people’s toothbrushes give a lot away about them.’

  ‘Oh, anybody,’ Dervla said.

  ‘So it’s not like you’ve been watching me brush my teeth or anything?’ Now it was Jazz’s turn to react.

  ‘What you saying, girl? That I’m some sort of tooth pervert? I never seen none of you brushing your teeth, right? On account of the fact that when I ablute, girl, I ablute alone, it’s a personal thing, OK? Because my body is a temple and I go there to worship.’ They all laughed and Dervla apologized. The moment passed, and Jazz pressed on with his comic material.

  ‘What I’m saying, right, is that I ain’t never seen none of you brush your teeth. But I bet I know who everybody’s brush belongs to.’ This caused a moment of semi-drunken attention. From everyone, that is, except Hamish and Kelly. Kelly was already too far gone to take much interest in the conversation, and Hamish was too busy taking an interest in Kelly. Hamish had come into the house with the intention of having sex on television and in Kelly he was scenting a possible opportunity. He had put his hand on Kelly’s knee and she was giggling. Meanwhile, Jazz expanded on his theme.