Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘Perhaps you did, but you didn’t kill her. Now then, what about David?’ Coleridge turned his gaze to the handsome actor, whose face was still proud and haughty despite all that he’d been through.

  ‘You and Kelly also shared a secret. A secret you hoped to keep hidden, and with Kelly’s death you thought it safe.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I didn’t…’

  ‘No, I know you didn’t, David. Sadly for you, though, because of her death and the subsequent investigation, the world has discovered your secret anyway and, like her, I doubt now that you will ever achieve your dream.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve had some very interesting offers,’ said David defiantly.

  ‘Still acting, David? I recommend you try facing up to the truth. In the long run life is easier.’ As David glared at him Coleridge looked once more at the door at the back of the studio. There was still no sign of Hooper and Patricia. How long could he keep on stalling? He was running out of suspects.

  ‘Dervla Nolan, I have always had my doubts about you,’ said Coleridge, turning to her and pointing his finger dramatically. Once more the focus of the cameras shifted.

  ‘Have you now, chief inspector?’ Dervla replied, her green eyes flashing angry defiance.

  ‘And why would that be, I wonder.’

  ‘Because you played the game so hard. Because you have a rogue’s courage and risked it all by communicating with the cameraman Larry Carlisle through the mirror. Because you were closest to the entrance of the sweatbox and could have left it without anybody else’s knowing. Because you needed money desperately. Because you had been told that, with Kelly dead, you would win. Not a bad circumstantial case, Ms Nolan. I think perhaps a good prosecuting lawyer could make it stick!’

  ‘This is just madness,’ said Dervla.

  ‘I loved Kelly, I really…’

  ‘But you didn’t win, did you, Dervla?’ Coleridge said firmly, ‘Jazz won. In the end,good old Jazz was the winner. Everybody’s friend, the comedian, the man who was also in the key position in the sweatbox and could have left it without being noticed! The man whose DNA was so prominent on the sheet that the murderer used. The man who so conveniently covered his tracks by putting the sheet back on after the murder. Tell me, Jazz, do you honestly think that you would have won if Kelly had not died?’

  ‘Hey, just a minute,’ Jazz protested.

  ‘You ain’t trying to say that…’

  ‘Answer my question, Jason. If Kelly had survived that night, the night she brushed past you in the sweatbox and someone followed her out in order to kill her, would you have won? Would that cheque you are now holding not have had her name on it?’

  ‘I don’t know…Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I killed her.’

  ‘No, Jazz, you’re right. It doesn’t mean that you killed her, and of course you didn’t. Because none of you did.’ The sensation that this statement caused was highly gratifying. Coleridge’s emotions were torn. Part of him, the main part, was in absolute torment, desperately awaiting the arrival of his colleagues. An arrival which if put off much longer would be useless anyway. But there was another part of Coleridge, and that was Coleridge the frustrated performer: this part was loving every minute of his great day.

  ‘You are all innocent,’ he repeated, ‘for it is a fact that no one who shared the sweatbox with Kelly on the night she died killed her!’

  ‘It was Woggle, wasn’t it?’ Dervla shouted.

  ‘I should have guessed! He hated us all! He took revenge on the show!’

  ‘Ah ha!’ Shouted Coleridge.

  ‘Woggle the tunneller! Of course! Everybody’s mistake in this investigation — my mistake — was to presume that the murder was committed by a person who was a housemate at the time. But what of the ex-housemates — not i’’)) Layla, but Woggle! How simple for a committed anarchist like him, a saboteur, an expert underground tunneller, to break into the house and take his revenge on the show, and in particular on the girl who nominated him and then insulted him with a tofu and molasses comfort cake!’ The studio erupted. All around the world the press lines jammed. So Woggle had done it after all, the evil kicker of teenage girls had surpassed even his previous levels of brutality.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t Woggle!’ Said Coleridge impatiently.

  ‘Good heavens, if that highly distinctive fellow had popped up through the carpet I think we would have noticed, don’t you? No, let’s stop looking for opportunity and start to consider motive. What are the common motives for murder? I suggest that hate is one. Hatred drives people to kill, and my investigations have discovered that there was one truly hate-filled relationship souring the Peeping Tom experience, and it did not fester inside the house. It was the hatred that Bob Fogarty, the senior series editor, felt for Geraldine Hennessy, the producer!’ Coleridge pointed above the heads of the audience to the darkened window situated high in the wall at the back of the studio.

  ‘Behind that window sits the Peeping Tom editing team,’ Coleridge continued, ‘and they are led by a man who believes that his boss, Geraldine Hennessy, is a television whore! He said as much to one of my officers. Bob Fogarty claimed that Hennessy’s work represented a new low in broadcasting, she had ruined the industry he loved and that he longed for her downfall! But! He did not kill Kelly.’ Coleridge could detect a tiny edge of impatience in the crowd. He knew that he could not play the trick he was playing for much longer. The spin was running out. But it no longer mattered. Coleridge was smiling, for at the back of the studio he saw the big door open and Hooper steal through it. Hooper gave Coleridge the briefest of thumbs-up signals. Geraldine did not see the smile spreading across Coleridge’s face. She was too busy smiling herself because, glancing down at her watch, she worked out that the mad policeman had been on the stage for five and a half minutes and had therefore earned her an extra eleven million dollars, and clearly the idiot had not finished yet. The smile was about to be wiped from Geraldine’s face.

  ‘So!’ Said Coleridge dramatically.

  ‘We know now who did not kill Kelly Simpson. Let us come to the real business at hand and establish who did kill her. Nothing happened in that dreadful house without first being arranged, manipulated and packaged by the producer. Nothing, ladies and gentleman, not even murder most foul. Therefore let us be quite clear about this. The murderer was…You, Geraldine Hennessy!’ Coleridge pointed his finger and the cameras swung around to follow its direction. For once Geraldine found herself at the wrong end of the lens.

  ‘You’re out of your mind!’ Geraldine gasped.

  ‘Am I? Well, I think you’d know something about that, Ms Hennessy.’ Trisha entered the editing box carrying a plastic bag filled with video tapes. She went up to Bob Fogarty and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I can’t leave now,’ Fogarty protested.

  ‘I can cover it,’ said his assistant, Pru, eagerly. All her life she had longed for just such a chance.

  ‘I’m afraid I must insist, sir,’ said Trisha, whispering once more into Fogarty’s ear. Fogarty rose from his seat, took up his family-sized bar of milk chocolate, and left the editing box. Pru took over the controls.

  ‘Camera four,’ she said.

  ‘Slow creep in on Coleridge.’ Down on the stage the object of this command was in full flow.

  ‘Perhaps you will allow me to explain,’ Coleridge said.

  ‘First let us consider motive.’ Coleridge was standing tall now, strong and commanding. This was not just because his performance muscles, which had for so long lain dormant, were flexing themselves, but also because he knew that success could only come with confidence. She had to believe that the game was up.

  ‘Well, a motive is simple enough, it’s the oldest one of the lot. Not hate, not love, but greed. Greed, pure and simple. Kelly Simpson died to make you rich, Ms Hennessy. The whole media establishment expected series three of House Arrest to be a failure. The Woggle affair drew attention to you, certainly, but it was Kelly’s death that turned your show i
nto the biggest television success story in history, as you knew it would! Can you deny it?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Geraldine said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I killed her.’ Geraldine was alone now on the studio floor. The happy throng of excited young audience members and studio staff had drawn back to form a large circle. Geraldine stood in the middle of this, like a lioness at bay, the focus of that vast room, three big studio cameras hovering around her, for all the world like great hunting animals of prey. Beyond them, still standing on the stage with Chloe and the eight housemates, was Coleridge, returning Geraldine’s defiant stare.

  ‘You have been clever, Ms Hennessy, brutally, fiendishly clever. I do believe your finest hour, perhaps, was allowing the early profits from the worldwide interest that Kelly’s murder produced to be given away. Oh yes, that certainly made me wonder, when your editor. Bob Fogarty, told us of your fury at the missed opportunity, a million lost? Perhaps two? And then, I thought, what a small price to avoid suspicion falling immediately upon your shoulders, as since then you have milked hundreds of millions of dollars from your ghoulish crime.’

  ‘Now you be careful, chief inspector,’ Geraldine said.

  ‘You’re on live television here. The whole world is watching while you make a fool of yourself.’ The mention of money had put the spirit back into Geraldine. Coleridge’s accusation had certainly been a shock, but she could not imagine on what grounds he was going to base it, let alone prove it. Meanwhile, the House Arrest drama continued and the profits kept on mounting.

  ‘You may bluster all you wish, Ms Hennessy,’ Coleridge replied, ‘but I intend to prove that you are the murderer and then I intend to see you punished under the full majesty of the law. Let me say now that I knew even on the night of the crime that things were not as they appeared. Despite your impressive efforts, there was just so much that was wrong. Why was it that cameraman Larry Carlisle, the only person to witness the cloaked murderer follow Kelly to the lavatory, thought that the killer had emerged only two minutes after Kelly left the sweatbox, while the people watching on video could see very well from their machines that it had been more like five?’

  ‘Larry Carlisle has been proved to..’

  ‘Not a very reliable witness, I accept that, but on this occasion I suggest reliable enough. Otherwise, why was it that the blood which flowed from Kelly’s wounds seemed to accumulate so very quickly? The doctor was surprised, and so was I. Who would have thought the young girl to have so much blood in her, to paraphrase the Bard. A great deal of blood to flow in the two minutes that was supposed to have passed between the murder and your arriving on the scene, Ms Hennessy, but not so much if you reckon on the five minutes that Carlisle thought had passed.’

  ‘Not all blood flows at the same speed, for fuck’s sake!’ Geraldine barked, forgetting for a moment that she was on live television.

  ‘Then there was the vomit,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘Kelly had been drinking heavily, and she rushed to the lavatory in a mighty hurry, didn’t she? But according to what we saw, when she arrived she simply sat down. More curious still, even though the lavatory bowl had clearly been scrubbed clean, the lavatory seat had a few. Flecks of vomit on it. Vomit which has been confirmed as having:, emanated from Kelly. How could this be? I asked myself. Watching the tape again I can see that Kelly does not throw up; she merely sits…And yet I know that she was sick. I have vomit from her mouth, I have her vomit from the lavatory seat. Without doubt this is a girl who ran into the lavatory, knelt before it and was sick. Yet when I watch the tape, she just sits down.’ Up in the studio editing box, Pru was having the gig of her life. She had taken over the controls of the edit box and, working live and entirely off-script, she had first managed to ensure perfect camera coverage of the scene unfolding down in the studio, barking cool clear instructions to the shocked team of operators. And now she excelled herself by managing to dial up footage of the murder tape and drop it into the broadcast mix as Coleridge spoke. Once more viewers around the world watched the familiar footage of Kelly entering the toilet and sitting down, this time seeing it in an entirely new and mystifying context. Down on the studio floor the thrilling confrontation continued.

  ‘Next I come to the matter of the sound on the tapes that were recorded during the murder. In the earlier part of the evening much of what was said inside that grim plastic box was clearly audible, and, I might add, little of it did any of the people you see standing on this stage much credit.’ Coleridge turned to the eight ex-housemates.

  ‘Really, you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re not animals, you know.’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ Layla protested like an anxious school child.

  ‘I’d been evicted, I wasn’t there!’ Such was the authority of Coleridge’s performance that, instead of telling him to mind his own business, the other seven housemates, even Gazzer, blushed and stared unhappily at their feet.

  ‘But I’m straying from the point,’ Coleridge admitted, ‘which is that while Kelly remained in the sweatbox we could hear what was being said, but from the moment that Kelly entered the lavatory the sound becomes vague, a mere cacophony of murmuring. Why? Why could we no longer make out any of the voices?’

  ‘Because they were all too pissed, of course, you stupid — ’ Geraldine bit her lip. She knew he had no proof. She had no need to lose her cool.

  ‘I don’t think so, Ms Hennessy. Seven people do not simultaneously begin to mumble in unison. What had happened? Why had the sound changed? Was it because the sound that I could hear on the tape of the murder was not the sound that was being generated in the sweatbox? Could it be that the person who made that tape did not wish for any discernible voices to be heard from the box during the murder because she did not know who it was who was going to be killed. Strange it would be indeed if the voice of the victim could still be heard in the sweatbox after her death. Was this the reason that the sound on the murder tape was so revealingly anonymous?’ Geraldine remained silent.

  ‘Let us leap forward for a moment in time, to when the note predicting the second murder was discovered. Oh, what a fine sensation that made. But for me, Ms Hennessy, that note was the absolute proof I needed to convince me that the murder was not committed by a housemate.’

  ‘Why, babe?’ Coleridge almost jumped. He had forgotten that Chloe was standing beside him. Throughout his speech she had been attempting, not very subtly, to remain in shot, and she now made a play to really get involved. Chloe felt she had a right, she was the presenter of the show, after all.

  ‘Why, Chloe? Because it was utterly ridiculous, that’s why. Impossible, a transparent piece of theatre. None of the contestants could possibly have known at the end of week one when and how Kelly Simpson would die. Even if they had been planning to kill her it is quite absurd to think that they would have been able to see into the future in such detail and be assured that an opportunity would arise on the twenty-seventh day. So how did that note come to be among the predictions in the envelope? An envelope which we had seen the housemates fill and seal on day eight? Clearly someone from the outside had put that prediction note there, put it there at the time that they killed Kelly. That note was a little extra piece of drama that you could not resist, Ms Hennessy. You were desperate to maximize your price for footage of the final week, and yet you knew that with each passing day the murder grew colder and with each eviction the chances of the killer still being in the house lessened. Hence your absurd, ridiculous note, a note which fooled the world but which served only to convince me that there definitely would not be another murder.’

  ‘Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, babe.’ It was Chloe again, delighted to have another chance to get into the action.

  ‘They’ve asked me from the box to ask you to tell us how she did it. I mean we’ve got as much time as you like, but the problem is that we’re live and at some point we have to cut to an ad break, but we do all really really want to know.’

  ‘J
ustice has its own pace, miss,’ said Coleridge grandly. He was grimly aware that he had no proof. If he was to gain a conviction then he needed a confession, and only Banquo’s ghost, only a set of shaking gory locks, could get him that. The time had to be right, the killer had to sweat.

  ‘Fine, babe,’ said Chloe.

  ‘They say it’s cool. Respect. Whatever.’

  ‘Surely you must all have guessed how she did it anyway?’ Said Coleridge.

  ‘I mean, isn’t it obvious?’ The sea of blank faces in the audience was most gratifying.

  ‘Ah, but of course, I was forgetting. You have not had the privilege as I have of visiting Shepperton Studios, a place where an exact replica of the house exists. A place where Geraldine Hennessy made a video recording. A recording of a murder that was yet to happen.’ Coleridge had abandoned all pretence at quiet reserve. He was an actor now, an actor in a smash hit.

  ‘One dark night shortly before the House Arrest game began, Geraldine Hennessy crept onto the set of her replica house. With a crank and a clang she turned on the studio lights and activated the remote cameras that would shortly thereafter be installed in the real house. She also pushed one manual camera into position in front of the lavatory door, where she locked it off, just as a month or so later she would instruct Larry Carlisle to do. Then Ms Hennessy stripped naked and put on a dark wig, a wig that was the colour of Kelly Simpson’s hair. She then entered the replica lavatory, where she was recorded by the only camera in the room, high above and behind her. Swiftly she sat down and put her head into her hands, not a difficult deception to pull off the foreshortening quality of an overhead camera angle would make any differences in height and figure an irrelevance,and, when looked at from almost directly above, one hunched figure on a lavatory looks much the same as another. So, a month or so before it actually happened, Kelly’s final trip to the lavatory had been…I can’t say reconstructed — I’d therefore better say ‘reconstructed.’ Coleridge was having a wonderful time. Banquo’s ghost was waiting in the wings, Macbeth (perhaps he should say Lady Macbeth) stood before him in all her arrogance; all he had to do now was bring her to the point where her spirit collapsed, and he truly believed he could do it. In thirty-five years of dedicated and usually successful police work, Coleridge could never have been said to have shone. But on this night, as he neared the end of his long career, he was sparkling.