Dead famous (35 page)
Authors: Ben Elton
Tags: #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - General, #Reality television programs - England - London, #Detective and mystery stories, #Reality television programs, #Television series, #Mystery & Detective, #Humorous, #British Broadcasting Corporation, #Humorous stories, #Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), #Fiction, #Fiction - General, #Murder - Investigation, #Modern fiction, #Mystery fiction, #General & Literary Fiction, #Suspense, #General, #Television serials, #Television serials - England - London
‘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.
B
ecause 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 him from arresting Woggle for jumping bail.
DAY SIXTY-THREE. 11.00 p.m.
W
hen 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
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