Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘A tape measure!’ Said Gazzer as he and the others reentered the house.

  ‘A fahkin’ tape measure! That’s what Constable Plod’s using to catch a killer!’ It had been Trisha’s idea to take all of the housemates down to the Peeping Tom rehearsal house at Shepperton and ask them to walk the journey taken by the killer, thereby enabling a comparison to be made with the number of strides taken on the video. Coleridge had thought it was worth a try, but the results had been disappointing and inconclusive. A tall person might have scuttled, a short one might have stretched. The sheet made it impossible to work out clearly the nature of the killer’s gait, and so the inmates were released without further comment. Gazzer’s frustration was echoed across the nation.

  ‘The fahkin’ FBI have got spy satellites and billion-dollar databases, and what have our lot got? A fahkin’ tape measure!’

  DAY THIRTY-EIGHT. 7.00 p.m.

  Hooper had to ring David’s doorbell for a long time before he could get him to answer it. While he waited on the steps of his apartment building the three or four reporters who were hanging about fired questions at him.

  ‘Are you here to arrest him?’

  ‘Was he in league with Sally?’

  ‘Was it all of them that did it? Was it planned in the sweatbox?’

  ‘Do you accept your incompetence in so far not making an arrest?’ Hooper remained silent until finally he was able to announce his credentials into David’s intercom and gain admittance. David greeted him at the lift dressed in a suit of beautiful silk pyjamas. He looked tired. He had been home for only three days but he was already heartily sick of the one thing he had gone into the house to get; fame.

  ‘They don’t want me,’ he moaned when finally Hooper found himself inside the beautiful flat that David shared with his beautiful cat.

  ‘They want the man that bitch Geraldine Hennessy created. A vain, nasty probable murderer. Vain and nasty I can handle, lots of stars are guilty of that, but probable murderer is something of a career no-no. If only that silly girl had not got herself killed. It’s ruined everything for me.’ He was entirely unabashed about his take on Kelly’s death.

  ‘You think I’m a right bastard, don’t you?’ He continued, making Hooper coffee from his beautiful shiny cappuccino machine.

  ‘Because I don’t pretend to forget my own interests and reasons for going into that house now that the girl is dead? Well, excuse me, but I do not intend to add hypocrisy to my many other faults, which seem now to have become a part of the national consciousness. She was a stranger to me, and if she hadn’t been killed I might have had my chance to shine. To show people all the things I have to offer. To be the leading man. Instead it appears that I’ve been cast in the role of villain.’

  ‘And are you a villain?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, sergeant! You’re worse than that silly bitch Chloe. If I had killed her do you think I’d be telling you? But, as it happens, I didn’t. What possible motive could I have?’

  ‘Fuck Orgy Eleven.’ David took it well. He clearly had not been expecting this, but he hardly let it show.

  ‘Oh, so you know about that, then? Well, all right. I admit it, I’m a porn star. It’s not a crime, but it’s not very classy either, and by some appalling coincidence it turned out that the girl Kelly knew. Yes, of course I was hoping that she would keep quiet about it. But I can assure you, I didn’t feel strongly enough about it to murder her.’ They talked for a little while longer, but David had very little to add to the statement he had made on the night of the murder. Except to expand on his reasons for suspecting Gazzer.

  ‘He really truly hated her for what she said about his son, you know. He tried to cover it up a bit, but I know how to spot the signs. I’m an actor, you see…’ David’s voice trailed off. His handsome arrogance seemed to evaporate from him and he looked tired. Tired and sad. Hooper got up to leave, but as he did so he asked one more question.

  ‘If Kelly had not been killed,’ he said, ‘if the show had proceeded as they normally do, do you honestly believe that the sort of exposure you or anyone else could get on these things could ever lead to proper work — I mean, as a real actor or whatever?’

  ‘Not really, no, sergeant,’ David conceded.

  ‘But, you see, I was desperate. Desperate to be a famous actor, certainly, but if I couldn’t have that I was happy to settle for just being famous.’

  ‘Well, you got your wish,’ said Hooper.

  ‘I hope you enjoy it.’ Outside the building the assembled press pack snapped and barked as he forced his way through to his car.

  DAY THIRTY-NINE. 7.00 p.m.

  It’s Thursday night,’ said Andy the narrator, ‘and time for the housemates to make their nominations for this week’s eviction.’ Again everybody nominated Sally, ‘She’s just got so strange,’ Jazz said, when Peeping Tom asked him why he’d nominated her.

  ‘I mean, she sleeps on her own out in the garden and she’s so intense. It’s a real strain having her around.’ The other four housemates who nominated her all had much the same reason. Moon put it most succinctly.

  ‘I’m just sick to death of her being so fookin’ moody…’ And then there was the little matter that they were all quite clearly scared of her. Of course, besides these negative thoughts they all added that they loved Sally and that she was a top girl. The other person nominated was Garry, his sick jokes having by this time begun to grate on the inmates.

  ‘I mean, I love him, of course,’ said Dervla, ‘but if he does that screeching noise from Psycho one more time when I go to the toilet…’

  ‘He’s a diamond geezer,’ Jazz assured the camera, ‘but putting ketchup on Moon’s neck while she was having a kip was totally out of order. I mean, he’s brilliant, I love him, but you know what? At the end of the day I’m sick of him.’ When the nominations were announced Sally said nothing. She sat and stared into the distance for about half an hour before retreating to what had once been thought of as the nookie hut. Garry assured everybody that he was happy to stay or go.

  ‘At the end of the day I’ve got a top life out there. I’ve got my little lad, I’m looking forward to going to the pub. I’m happy to crack on and big it up. Long as none of you lot stick a knife in my head before I get a chance to snuggle up on that couch with Chloe.’ Later on that evening Sally returned to the living area, and when she spoke it was to nobody in particular.

  ‘You all think I did it, don’t you?’ She said.

  ‘And you know what? Maybe I did.’ In the monitoring bunker Geraldine did a little dance.

  ‘Thank you, Sally, you gorgeous fat dyke, you! Out lines do not get any better than that. Stick it on the end, Bob, and bang to credits, then when the credits are over, play it again…’Maybe I did.’ Sufuckingperb!’

  DAY FORTY. 8.15 p.m.

  Tnsha had gone to see Sally’s mother, a nervous, worried woman, who had been expecting her.

  ‘I wondered how long it would take you people to get to me, and after what Sally said on the telly I knew you’d be here this morning.’

  ‘Tell me about Sally,’ Trisha said.

  ‘Well, you obviously know that my late husband and I were not her birth parents.’

  ‘Yes, we knew Sally was adopted.’

  ‘Ever since the murder happened I haven’t been able to sleep,’ she said, staring down at her teacup.

  ‘I know exactly what Sally will be thinking, I know it. She’ll be worrying that people will think that it was her, because of…But you can’t pass mental illness on, can you? Well, it isn’t likely anyway. I’ve asked doctors, they’ve told me.’

  ‘What was wrong with Sally’s mother?’

  ‘Paranoid schizophrenia, but I don’t really know what that means. They seem to use these terms so often these days. Sally found out two years ago last Easter. I don’t think adopted kids should be allowed to find out about where they came from. They never used to be. Adoption meant a completely new beginning, your new family was your
family. These days they act as if adoptive parents are just caretakers. They’re not real, they’re not birth.’

  ‘Is that what Sally said to you?’ Trisha asked.

  ‘That you weren’t a real parent?’

  ‘Well, she loved me, I know that, so she certainly never meant to hurt me. But she used to talk all the time about wanting to find her birth mother, her blood, as she put it. It broke my heart. I’m her real mother, aren’t I? That was the deal.’

  ‘So she found out that her mother had been a mental patient?’

  ‘Well, I told her. I thought better coming from me than from some bloody librarian at the Public Records Office.’

  ‘Is that why Sally was adopted? Because of her mother’s mental instability?’

  ‘You really don’t know, do you? You actually don’t know.’ Mrs Copple was surprised. ‘inc.

  ‘We don’t know much at all, Mrs Copple. That’s why we’ve come to you.’

  ‘Oh dear. I don’t want to tell you. If I do you’ll suspect her, but you can’t inherit what that woman had, at least it’s not likely. I’ve talked to doctors. I’ve looked it up on the net.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Copple, I’d much rather talk about this here with you now, at your home.’ It was a gentle threat, heavily veiled but effective.

  ‘Her mother was in prison. She killed someone…With a knife. That’s why Sally was put up for adoption.’

  ‘What about the father? Couldn’t he have had her?’

  ‘It was Sally’s father who her mother killed.’

  DAY FORTY-ONE. 2.15 p.m.

  Trisha did everything she could to keep Sally’s sad past a secret. She knew that if it came out Sally would be crucified in the press. Being aware of what leaky places police stations are, she asked to see Coleridge privately to explain her findings.

  ‘There’s no suggestion of abuse or provocation,’ Trisha said.

  ‘By all accounts Sally’s father was a decent sort of man, if rather weak. Her mother was just pathologically unbalanced, and one night she just flipped.’

  ‘Why did she get prison?’ Coleridge asked.

  ‘It seems obvious that the woman was ill.’

  ‘Senile judge? Incompetent defence? Who knows, but the prosecution managed to get her tried as a sane defendant. Maybe it was because she was black. This was twenty years ago, remember. Anyway, she got life for murder in the first degree.’

  ‘But appealed, of course.’

  ‘Of course, and won, but sadly not before she’d stabbed two other inmates in Holloway with a sharpened canteen spoon. After that she went to a hospital for the criminally insane, where she still lives. Sally had been born shortly before her father was killed, and I imagine that these days they might have established some link with postnatal depression or whatever, but then they just banged her up and left her. She’s thoroughly institutionalized now, apparently. Sally found out a couple of years ago and went to see her. Shook her up quite a bit.’

  ‘Well, it would do. Does Sally have any mental problems?’

  ‘Yes, depression and plenty of it, right back to puberty. Been on numerous prescriptions and hospitalized once. The adoptive mother thinks it must have all been bound up with working out that she was gay, but I don’t know about that, it certainly never…’ Trisha was about to say that it had never bothered her, that at the age of fourteen when she had finally worked out that she was a lesbian it had in fact been an enormous relief, explaining as it did the abject confusion that she had been experiencing in her relationships with both boys and girls. But she decided to leave the sentence hanging. Now was not the time.

  ‘Whatever the reason. Sally has definitely had problems with depression, and of course ever since she found out about her mother she’s been worrying that she’s going the same way.’

  ‘And what’s the likelihood of that? I mean in medical terms?’

  ‘Well, she’s more likely to flip than, say, you or I, but the chances only become truly significant if both parents were sufferers. Then some doctors say it rises to nearly forty per cent.’

  ‘What on earth were these appalling Peeping Tom people doing letting a serial depressive with a family history of mental illness into their grotesque exercise in the first place?’

  ‘They claim that they didn’t know, sir, and I believe them. Sally didn’t tell them, and they would have had to dig pretty deep to find out, what with medical confidentiality and all that. It’s not as if Sally’s considered dangerous at all. I only found out because her mother told me.’ Coleridge leaned back in his chair and sipped at his little paper cup of water. It had been Hooper who had led the movement to get a water cooler installed in the incident room. Coleridge had resisted it fiercely, believing the whole business to be just another example of everybody these days wanting to look like Americans. However, now that the thing had been installed, he rather liked to be able to sip at clear cold water while he ruminated, and it had helped him to cut down on tea.

  ‘So, tell me, Patricia,’ he said.

  ‘What are your thoughts? Do you think this information about Sally is significant — I mean, to our murder inquiry?’

  ‘Well, sir, it certainly explains Sally’s touchiness about mental health. But on the whole I’m tempted to say that this puts her more out of the frame than into it. I mean, now we know why she said what she said the night she quarrelled with Moon.’

  ‘Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you, constable, although it must be admitted that the similarity between Sally’s mother’s crime and the crime committed in the house is a pretty nasty coincidence. Anyway, whatever we might think, I doubt that the press will consider Sally exonerated if they ever get hold of this.’

  DAY FORTY-TWO. 7.00 a.m.

  Mrs Copple was awoken by the ringing of the telephone. Almost at the same time her doorbell began to sound. By seven thirty there were forty reporters in her front garden and her life was ruined.

  ‘sally’s the one. Just ask her mum’ was the most pithy of the headlines.

  ‘The press always find out everything,’Coleridge said sadly when Trisha told him what had happened.

  ‘They’re much better than us. Nothing can ever be kept from them. They don’t always publish, but they always know. They’re prepared to pay, you see, and if you’re prepared to pay for information, somebody will always be found to give it to you in the end.’

  DAY FORTY-TWO. 7.30 p.m.

  Housemates, this is Chloe, can you hear me?’ Yes, they could hear her.

  ‘The fifth person to leave the Peeping Tom house will be…’ The traditional pause…

  ‘Sally!’ In that moment Sally made a little bit of TV history by becoming the first evictee from a programme of the House Arrest type not to shout ‘Yes!’ And punch the air in triumph as if delighted to be going. Instead she said, ‘So everybody out there thinks I did it too.’

  ‘Sally,’ Chloe continued, ‘you have ninety minutes to say your goodbyes and pack your bags and then we’ll be back to take you to your appointment with live TV!’ Sally went over to the kitchen area and made herself a cup of tea.

  ‘I don’t think you did it. Sally,’ said Dervla, but Sally only smiled. Then she went into the confession box.

  ‘Hallo, Peeping Tom,’ she said.

  ‘Hallo, Sally,’ said Sam, the soothing voice of Peeping Tom.

  In the monitoring bunker Geraldine crouched close to the, monitor, pen and pad in hand, ready to give Sam her lines. She knew she must play this one very carefully. Dangling before her was the prospect of some very good telly indeed. The result turned out to be even better than she had hoped.

  ‘I expect by now the press have found out about my mum,’ said Sally.

  ‘How she’s been held at Ringford Hospital for the last twenty years.’

  ‘Horrible place,’ whispered Geraldine, ‘the worst loony bin of the lot.’

  ‘Ever since Kelly died I’ve been wondering,’ said Sally.

  ‘Could I have done it? Is there some way
I could have gone into a sort of trance? Got into the sweatbox and turned into my mother? I know that my mum told me she couldn’t remember a thing about when she did it, and when the police talked to me I couldn’t really remember even being in the sweatbox. So perhaps I did it and can’t remember that either? Was I in a box inside a box? My own black box? To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think it was me. Paranoid schizophrenics don’t cover their tracks, wear sheets and avoid getting even one drop of blood on themselves. I think it was too good to have been me. I don’t think I could commit the perfect murder. I know my mother didn’t when she killed my father…But it could have been me. I have to accept that. I just can’t remember.’

  ‘Fu-u-u-ucking hell,’ Geraldine breathed.

  ‘This is fa-a-a-aabulous.’

  ‘One thing I do know,’ said Sally, ‘is that everybody will think it was me and that I’ll never escape that as long as I live. It’s obvious that the police haven’t got a clue. They’ll probably never arrest anyone, so for the rest of my life I’ll be seen as the black dyke nutter who murdered Kelly. Therefore, I’ve decided to make the rest of my life as short as possible.’ And with that Sally produced a kitchen knife from within the sleeve of her shirt. She had palmed it when she had made herself a cup of tea.

  DAY FORTY-TWO. 9.00 p.m.

  When Chloe went back on air she was able to announce yet another dramatic exit from the house. Not live as planned, because Sally had departed an hour earlier in an ambulance, her attempted suicide having been watched live on the Internet all over the world. She had managed to stab herself twice in the chest before Jazz burst into the confession box, having been alerted to do so by Peeping Tom. Nobody yet knew whether she would survive her wounds or not. Chloe explained all of this to the viewers, and promised a regular update throughout the show.