Dead famous (7 page)

DAY THIRTY-TWO. 9.20 p.m.

O
ne wall of the incident room had become known as ‘the Map’. On it Trisha had affixed photographs of the ten housemates, which she had then connected by a great mass of crisscrossing lines of tape stuck to the plaster with Blu-Tack. On the strips of tape Trisha and her colleagues had written short descriptive sentences such as ‘attracted to’, ‘loathes’, ‘had row about cheese’, and ‘spends too long in the toilet’. Hooper had attempted to recreate Trisha’s map on his computer, using his photo scanner and untold gigabytes of three- dimensional graphic-arts software programming. Sadly the project defeated him and a little bomb kept appearing and telling him to restart the computer. Soon Hooper was forced to slink back to the drawing pins and Blu-Tack along with everybody else. Now Coleridge was standing in front of the map solemnly contemplating the ten housemates and the ever-growing web of interconnecting relationships.

‘Somewhere,’ he said, ‘somewhere in this dense mass of human intercourse must lie our motive, our catalyst for a murder.’ He spoke as if he were addressing a room full of people, but in fact only Hooper and Trisha were there, everybody else having long since gone home. They had decided that the evening’s subjects for discussion would be Layla the beautiful ‘hippie’ and David the dedicated actor. On one of the tapes that connected their two photographs Trisha had written: ‘Friends for first day or two. Turned sour.’

‘So what was this early friendship based on?’ Coleridge asked.

‘It can’t have been much if it went sour so quickly.’

‘Well, they have lot in common,’ Trisha replied.

‘They’re both vegans and obsessed with diets and dieting, which seems to have formed a bond between them. On the very first evening they had a long and rather exclusive conversation about food-combining and stomach acids. I’ve lined up the tape.’ Sure enough, when Trisha pressed play there on the screen were David and Layla, set slightly apart from the rest of the group, having the most terrific meeting of minds.

‘That is so right,’ said Layla.

‘Isn’t it?’ David agreed.

‘But it’s amazing how many people still think that dairy is healthy.’

‘Which it so isn’t.’

‘Did you know that eggs killed more people in the last century than Hitler?’

‘Yes, I think I did know that, and wheat.’

‘Ugh, wheat! Don’t get me started on wheat!’ Now the sombre tones of Andy the narrator intruded briefly.

‘David and Layla have discovered that they have a lot in common: they both miss their cats dreadfully.’’

‘Pandora is the most beautiful and intelligent creature I have ever met,’ David explained, ‘and sadly I include human beings in that statement.’

‘I so know what you mean,’ Layla replied. Trisha stopped the tape.

‘Fogarty the editor told me they got very excited about David and Layla that night. They thought that they might even troll off to the nookie hut and have it off there and then, but all that happened was a shoulder massage.’

‘But they were definitely friends?’ Coleridge asked.

‘I think it’s more that they hated everybody else. Looking at the tapes, it’s pretty obvious that they thought themselves a cut above the others. On the first day or two the cameras often caught them exchanging wry, superior little glances. Peeping Tom broadcast them, too. The public hated it. David and Layla were the absolute least popular people in the house.’

‘But of course they didn’t know this.’

‘Well, there’s no way they could have done. They were sealed off. In fact, watching them you get the impression that they think people will love them as much as they love themselves. Particularly him.’

‘Yes, David certainly is a cocky one,’ Coleridge mused.

‘Arrogant almost beyond belief, in fact, in his quiet, passiveaggressive sort of way.’ Hooper was surprised to hear Coleridge using a term as current and overused as passive-aggressive, but there was no doubt that the phrase summed up David exactly. They looked at David on the screen and stared into his soft, puppy-dog eyes. All three were thinking the same thing.

‘It would certainly take a very confident person to believe that they could get away with what our murderer got away with,’ said Coleridge.

‘No one with the slightest self-doubt would ever have attempted it.’ He returned to the theme of friendship.

‘So familiarity quickly took its toll on David and Layla’s closeness. Like many a friendship too eagerly begun, it had no staying power.’

‘That’s right,’ said Trisha.

‘It started going wrong with the cheese and went downhill from there.’

‘They were too alike, I reckon,’ said Hooper.

‘They got in each other’s way. They wanted the same role in the house, to be the beautiful and sensitive one. It all fell irrevocably to pieces over Layla’s poem.’

DAY FIVE. 9.00 p.m.

T
he row began with the best intentions. David had suggested, in an attempt to engineer a rapprochement between himself and Layla (and hence avoid her nominating him), that since he was trained and practised in the art of recitation perhaps he should learn one of Layla’s poems and recite it for her. Layla had been touched and flattered and because there were no papers or pens allowed in the house David had set to learning the poem orally directly from the author.

‘Lactation,’ said Layla.

‘That’s very, very beautiful,’ said David.

‘It’s the title,’ Layla explained.

‘I understand,’ said David, nodding gently, as if the fact that ‘Lactation’ was the title required a heightened level of perception to come to terms with.

‘Shall we take it two lines at a time?’ Layla asked. By way of an answer David closed his eyes and put his hands together at the fingertips, his lips gently touching his index fingers. Layla began.

‘Woman. Womb-an. Fat, full, belly, rich with girl child. Vagina, two-way street to miracles.’ ‘ David breathed deeply and repeated the first two lines of Layla’s poem. It was clear from his manner that he thought Layla would be amazed and thrilled to have her words lent wings by such a richly liquid and subtle voice. If she was, she hid it well.

‘Actually, that first line is meant to be very upbeat, joyful,’ Layla said.

‘You’re being too sombre. I always say it with a huge smile, particularly the words ‘girl child’. I mean, think about it, David, doesn’t the thought of a strong, spiritual woman’s belly engorged with a beautiful girl child just make you want to smile?’ David was clearly aghast.

‘Are you giving me direction, Layla?’ He asked.

‘No, I just want you to know how to say it, that’s all.’

‘The whole point about getting an actor to work on a piece of writing, Layla, is in order to get another artist’s interpretation of it. An actor will find things in a poem that the author did not even know were there.’

‘But I don’t want the things that aren’t there, I want the things that are.’ David seemed to snap.

‘Then you’d better recite it yourself,’he said, jumping angrily to his feet.

‘Because quite frankly it stinks. Apart from the repulsive imagery of fat, engorged female stomachs, from, I might add, a woman with less flesh on her than a Chupa Chups stick, I am a professional actor and I simply will not take direction from an amateur poet! Particularly after I have paid her the enormous compliment of actually taking an interest in her pisspoor work!’ And with that David headed outside for a dip in the hot spa.

DAY THIRTY-TWO. 10.15 p.m.

V
ery short fuse. Master David,’ Coleridge observed thoughtfully.

‘Short enough for murder, do you think?’ Rewinding slightly and freezing on David’s furious face, it did seem possible.

‘He certainly looks like he wants to murder her,’ said Hooper.

‘But of course it wasn’t Layla that ended up getting killed, was it?’

‘As we have discussed endlessly, sergeant. If the motive were obvious our killer would be awaiting trial right now. All we can hope to find is the seed from which a murder will grow.’ Hooper informed Coleridge as briskly as he dared that he was aware of this.

DAY FIVE. 9.15 p.m.

A
fter David had left the room, Layla did indeed take his advice and recite the poem herself, grinning like a baboon with a banana wedged sideways in its mouth throughout. Jazz, Kelly, Dervla and Moon listened respectfully, and when it was over, they all said that they thought it was very, very good. Woggle opined from his corner that poetry was merely an effort to formalize language and as such indicated a totalitarian mindset.

‘Words are anarchists. Let them run free,’ he said. But the others ignored him, something that they had learned to do as much as possible, while counting the minutes to nomination day.

‘That was the business, that poem, Layles. It was dead wicked, that, so fair play to yez,’ Moon said in her Mancunian accent, which seemed to be getting thicker by the day.

‘Did you notice my red lipstick?’ Layla gushed. They all had.

‘Some anthropologists believe that women paint their lips red in order to make their mouths reminiscent of their vaginas.’

‘Steady on, girl,’ said Gazzer from over by the kettle.

‘Just had my dinner.’

‘They say that women do it to make themselves more attractive to men, but I do it as a celebration.’

‘Of what?’ Jazz asked innocently.

‘Of my vagina.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Any time you want someone to help you celebrate it, Layles,’ said Garry.

‘Sherrup, Garry,’ said Moon.

‘It’s not about fookin’ blokes, it’s about being’ a strong and spiritual woman, in’t it, Layles?’

‘Yes, it is. Moon, that’s exactly what it’s about.’ Kelly was still a bit confused.

‘Well, I don’t get what these anthropologists are on about. Why would any girl want to have a face like a fanny?’ Layla had to think about this for a moment. She had never been asked before. People she knew just tended to nod wisely and ask if there was any more guacamole.

‘I don’t think they mean exactly like one. It’s just an impression of genitalia in order to steer the male towards procreation.’

‘Oh, right, I see,’ said Kelly.

‘It’s why female monkeys turn their bottoms pink. If they didn’t they would have died out as a species long ago. Trust the woman to find a way.’ Everybody nodded thoughtfully.

‘Did you know that monkeys have star signs?’ Said Moon.

‘Yeah. This mystic went to London Zoo and did horoscopes for all the advanced primates, and do you know what? She got them all bang on, their personalities and everything. It were fookin’ weird.’

DAY SEVEN. 8.00 a.m.

F
or the previous day or two Dervla had made a point of always being the first up in the morning so that she might have the shower room to herself. On this occasion, however, she found Moon had beaten her to it, not because Moon had suddenly transformed herself into an early riser, but because she was only just on her way to bed.

‘I’ve been sat up all night reading that Red Dragon book Sally brought in. You know, the first one with Hannibal Lecter in it. Fookin’ amazing, I were fookin’ terrified. I reckon that’s the scariest kind of murder that, when there’s no fookin’ reason for it except that the bloke’s fookin’ mad for topping people, you know, a serial psycho.’ Dervla waited while Moon brushed her teeth and staggered off to bed.

‘Wake me if I’m missing out on any food,’ Moon said as she left the bathroom. Now Dervla was alone, standing before the basin mirror in her underwear. She sensed movement behind the mirror. The housemates were occasionally aware of the people behind the mirrors: there were tiny noises and at night sometimes, when the lights in the bedrooms were off, shapes could vaguely be made out through the mirrors. Dervla knew that her friend had come to meet her.

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,’ she said, as if having a private joke with herself, ‘who’ll be the winner of us all?’ She pretended to laugh and put some toothpaste on her brush. None of the editors watching could have imagined that she was talking to anyone. Soon the writing appeared, just as it did every morning. Ugly ungainly letters. The messenger was clearly having to write backwards and perhaps, Dervla thought, at arm’s length. Woggle number one with public,’ said the message. She nearly blew it. She nearly blurted Woggle’s name out loud she was so surprised to discover that he was in the lead. Fortunately she stayed cool, allowing her eyes to flick downwards only momentarily. Her anonymous informant completed his message.

‘Kelly 2. You 3,’ it said, and then, ‘Good Luck XXX.’ Dervla finished brushing her teeth and washed her face. So she was running third. Not bad out of ten. It was certainly a surprise that Woggle was so popular, but when she thought about it she supposed he must have a lot of novelty value. It would soon wear off. Kelly was much more of a threat. She was a lovely girl. Dervla liked her. Clearly the public did too. Never mind, Dervla thought to herself, there were eight weeks to go yet. A lot could happen in nine weeks and surely Kelly couldn’t stay so happy and so sunny for ever. Before leaving the bathroom Dervla wiped the words off the mirror and blew a little kiss at her reflection. She thought that her friend the cameraman might appreciate a small friendly gesture.

DAY THIRTY-TWO. 11.35 p.m.

C
oleridge tiptoed from the kitchen into the living room with his second can of beer. Upstairs his wife was asleep. She had been asleep when he’d arrived home and would still be asleep when he left the house again at six the following morning. She had left Coleridge a note pointing out that although they lived in the same house she had not actually set eyes on him for three days. Coleridge searched out a Biro and scribbled, ‘I haven’t changed,’ beneath his wife’s message. The note would still be there the next night, only by then Mrs Coleridge would have added ‘more’s the pity’. She didn’t mean it, she liked him really, but, as she often remarked, it’s easy to think fondly of somebody you never see. Coleridge had brought home with him the Peeping Tom press pack relating to week one in the house. On the front was attached a photocopied memo written on Peeping Tom notepaper. It was headed ‘Round-up of housemates’ /files/10/63/77/f106377/public/press profiles at day eight.’ The writer had been admirably succinct.

• Woggle is the nation’s pet. Mega-popular.
  
• David is the bastard. Hated.
  
• Kelly has phwoar factor. Popular.
  
• Dervla is an enigmatic beauty. Popular.
  
• Layla is highly shaggable but a pain. Disliked.
  
• Moon is a pain and not even very shaggable. Disliked.
  
• Gazzer and Jazz liked. (Not by feminists and intellectuals.)
  
• Sally, not registered much. When has, disliked. (Note: gay community think S. an unhelpful stereotype. Would have preferred a fluffy poof or lipstick lez.)
  
• Hamish not registered.
  

Coleridge leafed through the clippings. Most of them confirmed the Peeping Tom memo. There was, however, some discussion about the fact that House Arrest Three was defying expectations and performing much better than had been predicted.

‘The saggy souffle rises!’ One headline said, referring to its prediction of the previous week that souffles do not rise twice, let alone three times. This was news to Coleridge, who had not realized that when the third series of House Arrest had been announced there had been much speculation that the reality show bubble had already burst. Coleridge had presumed that this sort of show was a guaranteed success, but he was wrong. The press clippings revealed that many shows conceived in the heady days when it seemed that any show with a loud and irritating member of the public in it was a guaranteed winner had failed to live up to their promise. And at the start of week one the new series of House Arrest was confidently expected to be a big failure. But it had defied all the grim expectations, and after seven shows had been broadcast it was already doing as well as its two predecessors. Nobody was more surprised about this than Geraldine herself, something that she freely admitted when she appeared on The Clinic, a hip late-night chat show, in order to promote week two. Coleridge slipped the video into his home VCR and instantly found himself struggling to reduce the volume as the screaming, blaring frenzy of the opening credits filled his living room and no doubt shot straight upstairs to where his wife was trying to sleep.

‘Big up to yez,’ said the hip late-night girl, welcoming Geraldine on to the programme.

‘Cracking first week in the house. We like that.’

‘Top telly that woman!’ Said the hip late-night guy.

‘Respect. Fair play to yez.’

‘Go, Woggle, yeah!’ Said the girl.

‘We so like Woggle.’

‘He da man.’ said the guy.

‘Who da man?’

‘He da man,’ said the girl.

‘Woggle, he da man!’ There was much cheering at this. The public loved Woggle.

‘Amazing,’ said Geraldine when the cheering had died down.

‘I mean, I thought he would be interesting and stir things up a bit, but I never realized he’d strike such a chord with the viewers.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s like a sort of pet, isn’t he?’ Said the girl.

‘Like Dennis the Menace, or Animal from the Muppets or whatever.’

‘I mean, you wouldn’t want to live with him yourself, but it’s top fun watching other people do it, big time!’

‘Woggle, he da man!’

‘Da top man. Respect! But the whole show is totally wicked,’ the guy added quickly, ‘so fair play to all of the posse in the house!’

‘Respect!’

‘Kelly’s my girl! Ooojah ooojah!’

‘You would fancy Kelly!’ Said the girl, punching her partner in the ribs.

‘Dervla’s easily the most beautiful.’

‘Dervla’s beautiful, that is true, and she melts my ice cream big time, so fair play to her for that, but Kelly, well, Kelly has…Something special.’

‘Big knockers?’

‘What can I tell you? It’s a boy thing.’ The boys in the audience let it be known that they agreed with this sentiment.

‘And don’t we so hate David?’ Said the girl.

‘We so do hate him.’

‘We so do not, not hate him,’ added the guy. There was much booing at the mention of David’s name, and the show’s producer dropped in a shot taken directly from the live Internet link to the house. David was sitting crosslegged on the floor playing his guitar, clearly thinking himself rather beautiful. There was more booing and laughter at this.

‘Sad or what?’ Shrieked the hip girl. Sipping his beer and watching all of this, three and a half weeks after it had been recorded, Coleridge was struck by how astonishingly brutal it was. The man on the screen had absolutely no idea that he was being jeered and ridiculed. It was as if the country had turned into one vast school playground with the public as bully.

‘All right, that’s enough of that,’ said the guy, clearly having an attack of conscience.

‘I’m sure his mum likes him.’

‘Yeah. Big up to David’s mum! But can you please tell him to cut that hair?’

‘And to stop playing that guitar!’ The interview passed on to the unexpected success of the third series so far.

‘So you defied the snooties and the sneerers, and the show’s a huuuuugge hit,’ said the guy, ‘which is quite a relief, Geri, am I right? Tell me I’m right.’

‘You are so right,’ said Geraldine, ‘and if I wasn’t a bird I’d say my balls were on the line with this one. I’ve sunk every penny I have into it. My savings and all of my severance pay from when I left the BBC. I’m the sole director of Peeping Tom Productions, mate, so if it fails I haven’t got anybody to blame but me.’

‘Gutsy lady!’ The girl enthused.

‘We like that! Respect!’

‘Too right I’m a gutsy lady, girl,’ said Geraldine.

‘I gave up a cushy job as controller of BBC1 to do the House Arrest thing, and everybody expected this third series to fall on its arse.’

‘Yeah, Geri, you really went out on a limb leaving the Beeb,’ the hip late-night guy said.

‘I know your name has often been mentioned as a possible future Director General.’

‘Yes, I think they wanted to offer it to me,’ she said, ‘but stuff that, I’m a programme maker, I ain’t spending my day kissing politicians like Billy here’s arse. I ain’t grown up yet.’ The camera pulled out to reveal Billy Jones, who was the other guest on The Clinic, and who was smiling indulgently. Billy was the Minister for Culture and had agreed to appear on The Clinic as part of the government’s strategy to reach out to youth.

‘I regret greatly that I shan’t be having my arse kissed by a ady so charming as you, Geraldine,’ Billy Jones said, and got a laugh.

‘So, Billy,’ said the girl, turning to him with a serious expression on her face.

‘How do you rate House Arrest, then? Top telly or pile of poo?’

‘Oh, House Arrest is so top telly,’ said the Minister of Culture.

‘No way is it a pile of poo.’

‘And what about people who say that telly is dumbed down? That we need more, I don’t know, history programmes and classic drama-type stuff?’

‘Well, certainly there is a place for history-type stuff and all that classic drama malarkey, but at the end of the day politicians, teachers and social workers need to be listening to young people, because I don’t think, right, that history and stuff is really very relevant to what young people are interested in today.’

‘Big up to that,’ said the hip latenight guy.

‘We like that!’

‘Because at the end of the day,’ Billy continued, ‘what politicians and teachers and stuff need to do is connect with what kids are really into, like the Internet. We think that the Internet and the web are terribly important, and of course these wicked experiments in reality TV like House Arrest.’ By the time the show was ending and the final band was being introduced, Coleridge had fallen asleep. He woke up to the vision of a sweating American skinhead wearing only board shorts and 90 per cent tattoo coverage shouting ‘I’m just a shitty piece of human garbage,’ at the screen. He decided it was time to go to bed. Geraldine had had a lucky escape with her show, that was clear. By rights, it seems, it should have been a flop. David, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. He was the fall guy, the national joke, and Geraldine had made him so. If David had known this, Coleridge reflected, he might have been tempted to take some kind of revenge on Peeping Tom, but of course he could not have known, could he?