Dead famous

by Ben Elton

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘Hennessy playing Kelly sits on the lavatory and now, across the replica living area, in the boys’ bedroom, where a small sweatbox has been constructed — a sweatbox built to exactly the same specifications for construction and positioning that were later given to the housemates — a cloaked figure emerges. Your accomplice in the drama, Ms Hennessy. The figure crosses the living area, picks up a knife and bursts into the lavatory, raising his sheet behind him to block the camera’s view. He then makes two plunging movements. A clever bit of deception that, Ms Hennessy: two blows, the first a miss hit, giving the impression that what occurred was a desperate improvisation rather than a cold and cunning deception. One single death blow might have appeared just too pat. Then, having left a sheet over you, hunched up on the lavatory, your accomplice goes back across the little stage at Shepperton and gets back into the replica sweatbox.’

  ‘Who? Who was the accomplice?’ Gasped Chloe.

  ‘Why, Bob Fogarty, of course. It could only be Bob Fogarty, the man who made such a heavy-handed point of hating Ms Hennessy, a man with video-editing skills equal to your own, Ms Hennessy. Because I put it to you, Geraldine Hennessy, that the world never saw Kelly murdered! That dark event remains unrecorded. It is the tape that you and Fogarty made at Shepperton that was played that night and which has so absorbed the interest of the public ever since! Your construction of a murder that had yet to happen and which you and he dropped into edit mix at the point at which the real Kelly entered the lavatory. I have taken some advice on this matter and have been told that the opening of the door would be a good point at which to switch the tapes. From that moment on, you and all the people in the monitoring bunker were watching the tape you had made and not the actual feed from the cameras. You yourself have boasted that computer time codes can easily be falsified, and with you and Fogarty working together it was a simple matter to switch your television monitors over to playing the tape.’ Geraldine tried to speak, but no sound came. The floor manager did what all floor managers do and brought her a plastic cup of water.

  ‘Now that Kelly was in the lavatory, although you of course could no longer see her, you used the remote-controlled lock that you yourself had insisted on having installed and sealed the lavatory door, trapping poor Kelly and thus insuring yourself against the possibility of her completing her lavatorial functions before you could get to her. You then excused yourself from the monitoring bunker, saying that like the girl on the screen you too needed to spend a penny, and you rushed off to do your terrible deed!’ There was sensation in the studio and, of course, across the globe. Seldom can any television performer have had so attentive an audience. All over the world pans boiled dry, dinners burned and babies’ cries went unheeded. There was no talk of cutting to an ad break now.

  ‘Go on,’ sneered Geraldine.

  ‘What am I supposed to have done then?’

  ‘You ran under the moat, along the connecting tunnel, I imagine having first grabbed for yourself a strategically placed smock. I feel certain that somewhere there is an incinerator in London that could tell a tale of a blood-stained coverall. You ran into the corridor and from there you made your way into the boys’ bedroom. Once inside the house you grabbed a sheet from the top of the pile that you had instructed the housemates to place outside the sweatbox. That polythene construction in which the people you see standing here tonight were sweating with drunken lust—’

  ‘Not me, I’d been evicted,’ Layla piped up, but Coleridge swept on.

  ‘You covered yourself with the sheet, emerged into the living area and went to get the knife, pausing briefly at the kitchen cupboard to take out the predictions envelope, tear it open and put its contents inside a new but identical envelope. It was then, of course, that you added your extra note, predicting a second murder. No one saw any of this, of course, because the editors were watching the video that you and Fogarty had made a month before, a video on which Kelly Simpson was sitting peacefully on the lavatory, and for the time being no other figures were to be seen. There was the live cameraman to consider,of course, but Larry Carlisle had been instructed to cover the lavatory door and wait for Kelly. This is why Carlisle claimed a much shorter time had elapsed after Kelly went to the lavatory before the killer emerged, because the figure he saw rush past him in a sheet was you, the real killer. Meanwhile, in the monitoring bunker, your accomplice Fogarty and the editing team were still watching a peaceful house in which a lone girl was sitting on the lavatory. You, Ms Hennessy, would be back in the monitoring bunker before your tape revealed a besheeted figure entering the lavatory.’ There were gasps and applause from the audience.

  ‘Unreal,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Mental. Absolutely mental. Just totally wicked.’ Geraldine remained aloof and silent, seemingly held at bay by the three cameras pointing at her.

  ‘But I’m getting ahead of myself,’ said Coleridge.

  ‘Poor Kelly Simpson is still alive…Although only for a few more moments. The door to the lavatory springs open, unlocked at the appointed time by your colleague in the bunker, you burst in on the unsuspecting girl, but you do not find her as you had hoped, sitting on the lavatory as per your impersonation on the video you had made. No, she is kneeling in front of the lavatory, being sick. This is no good — everything must be as it is on the tape: the girl must die sitting and, most importantly, she cannot have been sick because she is not seen being sick on your tape. You grab her, you spin her round, she no doubt thinks that someone has come to help her, but no, you’ve come to kill her. With admirable coolness you stab her first in the neck and then, deploying the full force of your passion, your strength and your greed, you bury the blade in her skull, working quickly, knowing that seconds count. You flush the toilet and clean the vomit from the bowl. You do a good job, Ms Hennessy, but not quite good enough. A few tiny flecks are left on the seat. Then, and at this point I can only gasp at your icy cool, you clean out the dead girl’s mouth. Did you have a cloth? Toilet paper would have stuck to her teeth. Your shirt cuff, perhaps? I don’t know, but crucially I do know that in doing what you did you marked the dead girl’s tongue! Kelly was only seconds dead and so could still bruise, unfortunately for you, Ms Hennessy. You could not, of course, clear the vomit from the back of her mouth and her throat, but you had done your best, a best which was very nearly good enough. But time is short, Kelly is bleeding. If she bleeds too much on you, you’re done for. Quickly you place the corpse in the same sitting position that you yourself took on your tape. You put a second sheet on top of the dead girl and, covering yourself once more in your own sheet, you leave the lavatory. Again, Larry Carlisle sees the besheeted figure exit the lavatory minutes before the editors do, because on their screens still nothing has happened yet; on their screens Kelly Simpson is still alive! I applaud you, Ms Hennessy, you designed the process so that Larry Carlisle’s story concurred exactly with what was seen in the monitoring bunker. It was only the timings that you could not fix.’ Once more there were murmurs of appreciation in the studio.

  ‘Now you run, back through the living area and into the boys’ bedroom,’ Coleridge said, his voice rising, ‘pausing only to take the sheet you have been using to cover yourself and quickly wipe it round all of the boys’ beds in order that a confusion of skin cells and other DNA matter will be present on it. Perhaps you wore gloves and a hair scarf? I don’t know, since at the time I was too stupid to consider the possibility of testing for anyone other than the people who had been in the sweatbox.’ There were cries of ‘No!’ At this. Coleridge was the hero of the hour and the audience would not hear a word said against him, even by himself.

  ‘You go back into the corridor,’ Coleridge continued, ‘you run through the tunnel, hide your coverall and arrive back in the monitoring bunker just in time to see your identical version of the murder take place on screen. You have created the perfect alibi: you’re sitting safely and prominently with your editors when the murder takes place, so nobody could su
spect you. The murder, like everything that happens on these so-called ‘reality’ programmes, was built in the edit, it was nothing more than television ‘reality’.’ Coleridge paused momentarily for breath. He knew that shortly he must bring on his ghost.

  ‘All that remained for you to do then, Ms Hennessy, was to switch your viewing monitors back from showing your video to the genuine reality of the live camera feed. This, I imagine, was a big test. Was Fogarty ready with his altered time codes? Had you placed the sheet on Kelly’s body exactly as it was in your Shepperton video? If you had, then the switchover would be smooth. If you hadn’t, there would be a jump of position. Once more I congratulate you, Ms Hennessy. I’ve watched the tape many times and even now I’m only half sure I can tell where you make the switch, and of course you never imagined that anybody would be looking for such a thing.’

  ‘That’s because there’s nothing to look for. There was no switch, you utter cunt} I didn’t kill her and you know it. You’ve made this up because you’re too fucking thick to work out which one of those sad bastards standing beside you actually did it!’ Editors worldwide taking live sound and vision from Peeping Tom struggled to activate their bleeper machines.They all missed it; they had been too absorbed in what Coleridge was saying. Geraldine’s string of obscenities went out to the world, a genuine moment of reality TV. Coleridge did not look at Geraldine. He looked past her to the back of the studio, where once more Hooper silently gave him the thumbsup. He knew that the time had come to introduce Banquo’s ghost to the feast.

  ‘Ah, but Ms Hennessy,’ Coleridge said, ‘I do not make these accusations lightly. I have proof, you see, because I have the evidence of your other murders.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Let them shake their gory locks at you, Ms Hennessy! Let them point their bloody fingers.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you silly old cunt!’ Said Geraldine. A slightly bashful look flickered across Coleridge’s face.

  ‘Perhaps I have been slightly indulgent in my language. I should of course say your other murder preconstructions} Because you see, Ms Hennessy, it occurred to me that you could not possibly have known who it was who would leave the sweatbox in order to go to the toilet that night. It was a virtual certainty that somebody would, of course, and it was on that assumption that your whole murder plan was based. But you could not know who. I reasoned therefore that for your plan to work you would need to have recorded your scenario featuring not just poor Kelly but at the very least all of the other girls, so that when a girl, any of the girls, emerged and headed for the lavatory, you could activate the appropriate tape and go and kill her. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of this investigation. I have found many possible motives for killing Kelly, but not one of them is remotely relevant, because she died by pure chance. She was murdered simply because she was the second girl to go to the toilet. Ah! I hear you say. Second? Why second? Surely Sally went to the lavatory at the very beginning of the evening? Why was she not murdered? I shall tell you why: because since entering the house Sally had dyed and cut her hair Sally’s dark mohican had become no more than a red tuft, a fact which definitely saved her life, for had you not altered your looks. Sally, then you, not Kelly, would have died, and your murder would have looked like this!’ And with a nod and a wave which quite frankly he enjoyed, Coleridge gestured to the technicians in the editing box that he was ready. Pru, who had been acting under instructions from Trisha, pressed the cue button which she had hastily marked ‘Sally’. And to the astonishment of the entire world the naked figure of Sally, but Sally with her old mohican haircut, could be seen entering the toilet, or at least it easily could be Sally. Being a high, overhead shot, all that could really be seen were flashes of bare female limb, in this case tattooed, and of course the distinctive top of the head. The girl who could be Sally then sat on the toilet, put her head in her hands and was murdered by the same person in the sheet in exactly the same way that Kelly had been.

  ‘Oh my God,’ the real Sally murmured, suddenly aware of how close she had come to death. Now the screen flickered and a second video was shown. This time it was the bald pate of Moon that was viewed from overhead entering the toilet. Again the sheeted figure stole across the living area, took up the knife and acted out the murder.

  ‘Fookin’ hell!’ Moon shrieked.

  ‘Are you saying that if I’d gone for a piss…?’

  ‘Indeed I am, miss,’ Coleridge replied.

  ‘Indeed I am. Interesting, isn’t it, how Geraldine Hennessy selected women with such particular heads of hair, or in your case. Moon, lack of it.’ Now the distinctive raven hair of Dervla was seen entering the toilet and, of course, the story was the same. Finally, to everybody’s surprise, the beaded ringlets of Layla appeared, and once more the murder was enacted.

  ‘Oh yes, Layla was there too,’ said Coleridge, ‘Layla with her blond beaded braids. For how could Geraldine Hennessy have known before the series began who it was that would be evicted?’ Again there was applause.

  ‘All those girls were played by you, Ms Hennessy,’ Coleridge shouted, pointing his finger at Geraldine, who was now beginning to look rather worried, ‘as I have no doubt the digital enhancement of the tapes will prove!’

  ‘I told that fucking swine Fogarty to burn those tapes!’ Geraldine shrieked. Banquo’s ghost had done its work, Geraldine knew that the game was up. Further deception was pointless. Coleridge had her tapes. Except, of course, he didn’t have them, because he had had tricked her. Fogarty had burnt the tapes, as he was currently trying to tell her, shouting at the soundproofed walls of the little viewing gallery into which Trisha had taken him, from where he had watched the whole thing on a monitor.

  ‘I did burn the tapes! I did, you silly cow!’ He shouted at the screen, tears of terror welling up in his eyes.

  ‘He’s tricked you. He made those tapes himself.’

  ‘I made them, actually,’ Trisha told Fogarty rather proudly. The and Sergeant Hooper out at Shepperton this afternoon. Hell of a rush to get back…I hated wearing that bald wig — it really pulls at your hair when you take it off.’ Trisha had had a good day. It had meant being naked in front of Sergeant Hooper, of course, but in fact this had brought about a happy and unexpected result. Hooper had been much taken with Trisha naked and had instantly asked her to go out with him.

  ‘Sorry, sarge. I’m gay,’ she replied and so finally she said it and she had felt much better ever since. Down on the studio floor Coleridge arrested Geraldine in front of hundreds of millions of people. Finest hours rarely get any finer.

  ‘So what if I did kill her?’ Geraldine shrieked.

  ‘She got what she wanted, didn’t she? She got her fame! That’s all any of them wanted. They’re desperate, all of them. They probably would have gone through with it even if they’d known what I was planning, the pathetic cunts’. Ten to one chance of dying, nine to ten chance of worldwide fame? They’d have grabbed it! That was my only mistake! I should have got their fucking permission.’

  DAY SIXTY-THREE. 10.30 p.m.

  Because of Coleridge’s moment of theatre, the final eviction show overran by half an hour, and half an hour after that, exactly one hour late, owing to his forgetting that the clocks had gone forward, Woggle blew up the house.

  ‘Ha ha, you witches and you warlocks, how about that?’ Woggle shouted, emerging from his escape tunnel as the last bits of brick and wood descended. Woggle had planned for this to be the crowning moment of the eviction show, the moment when he, Woggle, showed his contempt for the lot of them and upstaged all their petty egos by destroying the house at the very apex of Peeping Tom’s party. However, because of his error, most of his hoped-for audience were making their way to their cars when the bomb went off. Geraldine, the principal target of his revenge, did not see it all because she was in the back of a sealed police van on her way into custody. Coleridge saw it, though, and judged it a good effort and, on the whole, justified. However, this did not stop h
im from arresting Woggle for jumping bail.

  DAY SIXTY-THREE. 11.00 p.m.

  When Coleridge got home he was delighted to find that his wife had watched it all.

  ‘Very theatrical, dear, not like you at all.’

  ‘I had to do something, didn’t I? I had no proof. I needed to trick her into a public confession and to do it tonight. That was all.’

  ‘Yes, well, you did very well. Very very well indeed, and I’m just glad we don’t have to watch any more of that appalling programme. Oh, by the way, someone called Glyn phoned, from the am-dram society. He said he’d been meaning to phone for ages. He was terribly complimentary about your audition, said that you had done a brilliant reading, which apparently blew him away, and that on reflection he wants you to play the lead after all.’ Coleridge felt a thrill of eager anticipation. The lead! He was to give the world his Macbeth after all. Of course Coleridge wasn’t stupid. He knew that he had only got the part because he had been on television. But why not? If everybody else could play the game, why couldn’t he? Fame, it seemed, did have its uses.

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  Introdution

  NOMINATION

  DAY TWENTY-NINE. 9.15 a.m.

  DAY THIRTY. 7.00 a.m.

  DAY THIRTY. 9.15 p.m.

  DAY ONE. 4.15 p.m.

  DAY THIRTY 9.20 a.m.

  DAY ONE. 4.30 p.m.

  DAY THIRTY. 9.45 a.m.