Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘And she was closest to the exit in the sweatbox,’ Trisha added.

  ‘The least that she’s been guilty of is withholding evidence, and I intend to make sure that she regrets it,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘Well, of course, sir, but we think Carlisle is the issue,’ said Trisha.

  ‘Dervla was his motive. He wanted desperately to be the one who helped her to win, and he was convinced that Kelly stood in the way.’

  ‘You think his desire for her to win could be a strong enough motive for murder?’

  ‘Well, he’s pathologically obsessed with her, sir, we know that. And you only have to look at the tapes he made to see how weird and warped that love is. Surely it’s possible that this aching, gnawing proximity to the object of his affections totally unbalanced him.’

  ‘Love is usually the principal motive in crimes of passion,’ Hooper chipped in, quoting Coleridge himself, ‘and this was clearly a crime of passion.’

  ‘Do you remember what happened to Monica Seles, sir, the tennis player?’ Said Trisha eagerly.

  ‘Exactly what we’re suggesting happened here. A sad, besotted psycho fan of her rival Steffi Graf stabbed Seles in the insane belief that such an action would advance Graf ‘s career, and that Graf would thank him for it.’

  ‘Yes,’ conceded Coleridge.

  ‘I think the example is relevant.’

  ‘But consider this, sir,’ Hooper jumped in.

  ‘Not only did Larry Carlisle have the motive, he had the opportunity.

  ‘You think so?’ Said Coleridge.

  ‘Well…Almost the opportunity.’

  ‘In my experience opportunities for murder are never ‘almost’.’

  ‘Well, there’s one bit we can’t work out, sir.’

  ‘I look forward to hearing you admit that to a defence lawyer,’ Coleridge observed drily, ‘but carry on.’

  ‘Until now we’ve all been working on the assumption that the murderer was one of the people in the sweatbox.’

  ‘For understandable reasons, I think.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but consider the case against Carlisle, who was even closer to the victim. First of all he sees Kelly emerging from the boys’ bedroom and sweeping naked across the living area towards the toilet. Carlisle captures this moment beautifully and gets complimented from the monitoring box for his efforts. Now Kelly disappears into the toilet and Carlisle is instructed to cover the door in the expectation of getting more good nude material when she emerges.’

  ‘But she doesn’t emerge.’

  ‘No, because he kills her, sir. It could so easily have been him. Put yourself in his shoes, the shoes of a besotted man, a man who from the very beginning has been risking his job, his future in the industry, his marriage — don’t forget, sir, Carlisle is married with children. He’s been risking everything for the love of Dervla—’

  ‘A love that’s mirrored by his hatred of Kelly,’ Trisha chipped in.

  ‘Look at this, sir.’ She had brought a large folder into the room with her, the sort of folder that an artist or graphic designer might use to keep their portfolio of work in. Inside it were a series of photographs that the people at Forensic had taken of their work on the tunnel side of the two-way mirror. In the first photo it was impossible to make anything out. All that could be seen was a streaky, dusted surface where a finger had clearly traced numerous letters on top of one another. Then Trish produced a second copy of the photograph, and then a third, on which the relevant experts had struggled to make sense of the mess; here in different-coloured translucent pastel shades they had followed different sentences, sometimes getting a clear reading, sometimes making informed guesses.

  ‘Look at that one, sir,’ said Kelly, pointing to a sentence that was traced out in red.

  ‘Not very nice, is it?’

  DAY TWENTY-SIX. 8.00 a.m.

  The bitch Kelly still number one. Don’t worry my darling. I will protect you from the cocksucking whore.’ Dervla reached forward to the mirror and angrily rubbed out the words. She had come to dread brushing her teeth in the morning. The messages had been getting steadily angrier and uglier, but she could say nothing about it for fear of revealing her own complicity in the communication. Of course, she no longer encouraged him, she no longer spoke to the mirror, and had wracked her brains to think of a way of telling the man on the other side to stop. The only idea that she had had was singing songs with vaguely relevant lyrics.

  ‘I don’t wanna to talk about it’.

  ‘Return to sender.’

  ‘Please release me, let me go.’ But the messages kept coming. Each one uglier than the last.

  ‘J swear to you my precious, I’d kill her for you if I could.’

  DAY FORTY-FIVE. 3.10 p.m.

  I’d kill her for you if I could,’ ‘ Coleridge read out.

  ‘Well, that’s pretty damning, isn’t it?’

  ‘So there he is,’ Hooper pressed on eagerly.

  ‘The man who wrote that message, standing with his camera pointing at the toilet door, knowing that the object of his hatred is inside. What does he do? He locks his camera in the position he has been told to maintain, creeps back along Soapy corridor, up Dry, through the wall hatch into the boys’ bedroom, picks up a sheet from outside the sweatbox, emerges from the bedroom covered in it, and the rest we know. It’s Carlisle we see cross the living area to pick up the knife from the kitchen drawer, Carlisle who bursts in on Kelly, and Carlisle who murders her.’

  ‘Well…’ Said Coleridge warily.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say, sir. I know, I know. What about the bedroom? It’s covered by cameras too…’

  ‘It had occurred to me, yes,’ Coleridge answered.

  ‘If he’d entered the room from Dry and gone and picked up a sheet at the sweatbox we would have seen it and we didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, and not only did we not see it, but what we did see was a person emerge from the sweatbox and pick up the sheet.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but only on video. No one who was in the sweatbox recalls a second person leaving it. Therefore either one, some or all of them are lying.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘ Unless the video is lying. Carlisle is a trained camera operator. We know from his extraneous activities that his interest in the tools of television is not merely professional. Is there some way that he could have corrupted the evidence of the hot-head camera in the bedroom? The imaging of the figure emerging into the sheet is pretty unclear. Trisha and I have been wondering if he could have somehow frozen the picture being broadcast for a few moments—’

  ‘After all, the image had remained unchanged for hours already,’ Trisha interrupted.

  ‘Is it possible that he somehow looped a few seconds or simply paused it for long enough to cross the room to the sweatbox?’

  ‘After which it would all happen in real time as we saw it,’ Hooper concluded.

  ‘He would have had to pull the same trick on the way back,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘We saw the murderer return to the sweatbox, don’t forget.’

  ‘I know. There are a lot of problems with the theory,’ pressed Hooper, ‘but don’t forget, sir, that Carlisle was very hazy about the timings of when the events happened. Do you remember that he claimed that only two minutes had passed from when Kelly went to the toilet to when the killer emerged from the bedroom, while everybody in the monitoring bunker said it was five, which was proved on the time code. And he claimed that as much as five minutes passed after the killer had re-emerged until the murder was discovered, whereas in fact it was only two. Again the people in the box and the actual time code all concurred. Those are big discrepancies, sir, but understandable ones, of course, if it was actually Carlisle who committed the murder. Anybody might imagine that two minutes was five and that five was two if they had spent those minutes killing someone with a kitchen knife.’

  ‘Yes,’ conceded Coleridge.

  ‘I think they might. I suggest you speak to the relevant bof
fins in order to see how these remote cameras might be interfered with. And of course we’d better have another word with Miss Nolan.’

  DAY FORTY-SIX. 2.30 p.m.

  The sight of Dervla being escorted from the house by the police for the second time in one day caused a sensation both outside and in. Surely this must mean that she was now the number-one suspect? Geraldine could scarcely contain her delight.

  ‘The fucking cops are flogging our show for us,’ she crowed.

  ‘Just when everybody thought Loopy Sal’ done it, they nick the virgin princess twice Fuck me sideways, it’s brilliant. But we have to make plans. A lot of moolah’s riding on this. If they don’t give us Dervla back we’ll cancel this week’s eviction, all right? Can’t lose two of the cunts in one week, just can’t afford it. A week of this show is worth more money than I can count!’ Hamish and Moon were up for eviction this week, but if Dervla went it seemed that they would get a reprieve. The nominations had been the most relaxed since the relatively calmer days of Woggle and Layla. With Sally gone there had been a general lifting of the gloom, besides which Sally was a prime suspect for having committed the murder, so her absence had made the house feel safer. It felt safer no longer, of course. There had been shock and fear at Dervla’s second removal by the police.

  ‘Fookin’

  ‘ell, I thought I were all right with her,’ said Moon.

  ‘We’ve been sharing a fookin’ bedroom! I lent her a jumper.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jazz.

  ‘The cops are fishing, that’s all.’

  ‘Just because you fancy her don’t mean she ain’t a mad knife- woman, Jazz,’ Garry said. Jazz didn’t reply.

  DAY FORTY-SIX. 4.00 p.m.

  Dervla’s lip quivered. She was trying not to cry.

  ‘I thought if I told you I knew the scores you’d suspect me.’

  ‘You stupid stupid girl!’ Coleridge barked.

  ‘Don’t you think that lying to us is probably the best way to engender our suspicion?’ Dervla did not reply. She knew that if she did she really would cry.

  ‘Lying to the police is a criminal offence. Miss Nolan,’ Coleridge continued.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would matter.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It was only between him and me, and he was on the outside! I didn’t think it would matter.’ Now Dervla was crying.

  ‘Right, well, you can start telling the truth now, young lady. You were, I take it, aware at all times of your standing with the public, and of Kelly’s?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘What would you say was Larry Carlisle’s attitude towards Kelly?’

  ‘He hated her,’ Dervla replied.

  ‘He wanted her dead. That was why I tried to stop him sending me messages. His tone changed so completely. It was vile. He called her some terrible things. But he was on the outside. He couldn’t have…’

  ‘Never you mind what he could and couldn’t do. What we’re concerned about here, my girl, is what you did.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ Coleridge stared at Dervla. He thought of his own daughter, who was not much older than the frightened girl sitting opposite him.

  ‘Are you going to charge me?’ Dervla asked in a very small voice.

  ‘No, I don’t think there’d be much point,’ said Coleridge. Dervla had not been under oath when she had given her statement and she had been under stress. Coleridge knew that any half- decent brief could make a convincing case that she had simply been confused when she gave her evidence. Besides, he had no wish to charge her. He knew the truth now and that was all he was interested in. And so Dervla went back into the house.

  DAY FORTY-SEVEN. 11.00 a.m.

  The days dragged by in the house and the tension remained unrelenting. Every moment they expected either word of an arrest from the outside, as Geraldine had promised, or another visit from the police to take one of the remaining housemates into custody. But nothing happened. They cooked their meals and did their little tasks, always watching, always wondering, waiting for the next development. Occasionally a genuine conversation would bubble up out of the desultory chats and interminable silences that now characterized most of the house interaction, but these moments never lasted long.

  ‘So who believes in God, then?’ Jazz asked as they all sat round the dining table, pushing their Bolognese around their plates. Jazz had been thinking about Kelly, and about heaven and hell, and so he asked his question.

  ‘Not me,’ said Hamish, ‘I believe in science.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Garry agreed, ‘although religion is good for kiddies, I think. I mean, you’ve got to tell them something, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m quite interested in Eastern religions,’ said Moon.

  ‘For instance, I reckon that Dalai Lama is a fookin’ ace bloke, because with him it’s all about peace and serenity, ain’t it? And at the end of the day, fair play to him because I really really respect that.’

  ‘What sort of science do you believe in, then, Hamish?’ Dervla asked.

  ‘The Big Bang Theory, of course, what else?’ Hamish replied pompously.

  ‘They have telescopes so powerful nowadays that they can see to the very edges of the universe, to the beginning of time. They know to within a few seconds when it all began.’

  ‘And what was there before it all began, then?’ Asked Moon.

  ‘Ah,’ said Hamish.

  ‘You see, everybody asks that.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Yeah, Hamish,’ Jazz taunted.

  ‘What was there before?’

  ‘There was nothing there before,’ said Hamish loftily.

  ‘Not even nothing. There was no space and no time.’

  ‘Sounds like in here,’ Jazz replied. Took all that, Hamish, it’s bollocks.’

  ‘It’s science. Moon. They have evidence.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re arguing about,’ said Dervla.

  ‘It seems to me that accepting the Big Bang theory or any other idea doesn’t preclude the existence of God.’

  ‘So do you believe in him, then?’

  ‘Well, not him. Not an old man with a big beard sitting in a cloud chucking thunderbolts about the place. I suppose I believe in something, but I don’t hold with any organized religion. I don’t need some rigid set of rules and regulations to commune with the God of my choice. God should be there for you whether you’ve read his book or not.’ Coleridge and Trisha had caught this conversation on the net. The House Arrest webcast played constantly in the incident room now.

  ‘I should have arrested that girl for obstruction,’ he said.

  ‘There’s one young lady who could do with a few more rules and regulations.’

  ‘What’s she done now?’ Said Trisha.

  ‘I thought you liked her.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Patricia, did you hear her? ‘The God of my choice.’ What kind of flabby nonsense is that?’

  ‘I agreed with her, actually.’

  ‘Well, then, you’re as silly and as lazy as she is! You don’t choose a god, Patricia. The Almighty is not a matter of whim! God is not required to be there for you You should be there for him.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you think, sir, but—’

  ‘It is also what every single philosopher and seeker after truth in every culture has believed since the dawn of time, constable! It has always been commonly supposed that faith requires some element of humility on the part of the worshipper. Some sense of awe in the smallness of oneself and the vastness of creation! But not any more! Yours is a generation that sees God as some kind of vague counsellor! There to tell you what you want to hear, when you want to hear it, and to be entirely forgotten about in- between times! You have invented a junk faith and you ask it to justify your junk culture!’

  ‘Do you know what, sir? I think if you’d been around four hundred years ago you’d have been a witch-burner.’ Coleridge was taken aback.

>   ‘I think that’s unfair, constable, and also unkind,’ he said. The brief conversation around the dinner table had died out as perfunctorily as it had begun, and the housemates had returned to the uncomfortable contemplation of their own thoughts. What could possibly be going on out there? They speculated endlessly, but they did not know. They were cut off, at the centre of this mighty drama and yet playing no part in it. Not surprisingly, they had begun to turn detective, conjuring up endless theories in their own minds. Occasionally they took their thoughts to the confession box.

  ‘Look, Peeping Tom,’ said Jazz on one such occasion.

  ‘This is probably really stupid. I never even thought to say anything about it till now, I just think maybe I ought to say it so you can tell the police, and then it’s done, right? Because I reckon it ain’t nothing anyway. It’s just I was in the hot tub with Kelly and David. I think it was about the beginning of the second week and Kelly whispered something in David’s ear that freaked him out. I think she said, ‘I know you,’ and he didn’t like it at all. It did his head in big time. Then she said the weirdest thing. I don’t know what, but I think she said, pardon my French, ‘Fuck Orgy Eleven’, and he was polaxed, man. That, he did not like.’

  ‘Great,’said Hooper, who had now joined Trisha at the computer. Inn ‘Two weeks staring at those bloody tapes. We wrestle one piss- poor clue out of the whole thing, and now it turns out this bastard knew about it all along anyway.’

  ‘Well, at least he left it till now to tell us,’ said Trisha, ‘and gave you the satisfaction of working it out for yourself.’

  ‘I’m thrilled.’ Hooper may not have been thrilled, but everybody else was, because it took the press, who were also monitoring the Internet, all of five minutes to find out what Fuck Orgy Eleven was, and of course who Boris Pecker was. The news of this juicy development hit the papers the following morning, to the delight of the legions of House Arrest fans. David’s downfall was complete.