Dead Famous

DAY FORTY-FIVE. 12.00 noon

“Oh my God, I think I’m going to be sick. I really do think I’m going to be sick.”

Coleridge was showing Dervla some of the contents of the camcorder that he had taken from Larry Carlisle. Stacked up beside the VCR were seventeen similar mini-cassettes, retrieved by the police from Carlisle’s home.

“You seem to have become something of an addiction for this man,” Coleridge said. “Viewing his tape collection, it looks like he simply could not get enough of you.”

“Please don’t. It’s horrible, horrible.”

There was so much of it. Hours and hours of tape. Close-ups of Dervla’s lips when she talked, when she ate, her eyes, her ears, her fingers, but most of all, of course, her body. Carlisle had recorded virtually every single moment that she had spent in the bathroom from day three onwards, becoming ever more practised at gaining close-ups of any intimate area that had been carelessly revealed to him.

Often in the shower the weight of the water had pulled at Dervla’s sodden knickers, revealing the top of her pubic hair and, when she turned round, an inch or so of the cleft of her bottom. Carlisle had clearly lived for these moments, and he zoomed in to extreme close-up whenever the opportunity arose.

“I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid,” Dervla said, her voice choking with disgust and embarrassment. “Of course, I should have guessed why he was being so encouraging towards me, but I had no idea… I…”

Dervla, normally so strong, so self-assured, contemplated the creepily silent dislocated images of her own body on the screen, a body rarely viewed whole but broken up into intrusive, intimate close-ups, and she wept. The tears ran down her face as the soapy water on the screen ran down her stomach and her thighs.

“Did you get messages in the mirror every day?”

“Not every day, but most days.”

“What did they say?”

“Oh, nothing very startling. ‘How are you?’ That kind of thing. ‘You’re doing great’.”

“So he talked about the game.”

“Well, not in any great detail. He was writing backwards in condensed steam, after all.”

“Did he ever mention Kelly?”

“No.”

It was a fool’s lie.

“Actually, yes, I think he did mention her,” Dervla said quickly.

“Yes or no, Miss Nolan?”

“I just said yes, didn’t I? Sometimes… a little… he mentioned them all.”

Half a lie. Was that any better? Or worse?

“I don’t know why he sent me messages,” she added. “I never asked him to.”

“He’s in love with you, Miss Nolan.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“He loves you, Dervla, and that is something that you are going to have to deal with, because I doubt that what he has done is going to get him any kind of prison sentence. When you come out of the house he’ll be waiting for you.”

“You really think so?”

“That’s my experience of obsessives. They can’t just turn it off. You see, he thinks you love him back. After all, you’ve been flirting with him for weeks.”

“I haven’t…” But even as she said it Dervla knew that denial was pointless. “I… just sort of fell into it,” she continued. “It was a laugh, a game. It’s so boring in that house. The same dull stupid people that you can’t even really get to like because you’re in competition with them. You’ve no idea… And then there was this jokey thing going on, just for me. I had a secret friend on the outside who wished me luck and told me I was doing all right. You can’t imagine how weird and insecure it is in that house, how vulnerable you feel. It was nice to have a secret friend.”

Dervla looked at the screen on which Larry Carlisle’s tape was still playing. She was in the shower again, her hand inside the cups of her sodden bra, soaping her breasts, the shape of her nipples clearly visible. “Can we turn that off, please?”

“I want you to see this next bit.”

The image on the screen flickered and changed to the girls’ bedroom. It was night and all the girls appeared to be asleep.

“My God, he had a nightsight on his camcorder!” Dervla gasped.

“I’m afraid to say, my dear, that this man did not miss anything.”

On the screen Dervla was lying in bed. It had clearly been a hot night, as she was covered by only a single sheet. She was asleep, or so it seemed until her eyes opened for a moment and flickered about the room. Now the camera panned down from her face to her body. It was possible to make out Dervla’s hand gently moving beneath the sheet, moving downwards to below her waist, the outline of her knuckles standing out against the cotton as her fingers moved gently beneath it. The camera returned to focus once more on Dervla’s face: her eyes were closed but her mouth was open. She was sighing with pleasure.

Sitting in Coleridge’s office, Dervla turned deep crimson with angry embarrassment. “Please!” she snapped. “This isn’t fair.”

Coleridge switched off the tape. “I wanted you to see and to know just how little respect this man has had for you. You and he have been partners of sorts. You are partners no longer.”

Dervla felt scared. “Surely, inspector, you can’t really be thinking that there’s any connection between this silly lark and… and… Kelly’s death?”

Coleridge waited for a moment before replying. “You said his messages mentioned Kelly?”

“Well, yes, they did but…”

“What did they say?”

“They said… they said that people liked her and that they liked me. They liked us both.”

“I see. And did he ever tell you who they liked more? Your ranking, so to speak.”

Dervla looked the chief inspector in the eye. “No. Not specifically.”

“So you did not know that prior to Kelly’s death you were in second place after her.”

“No, I did not.”

“Just remind me once more, Miss Nolan. How much is the prize worth for the winner of this game?”

“Well, it’s gone up since, but at the time of the murder it was half a million pounds, chief inspector.”

“How are things at your parents’ farm in Ballymagoon?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I believe your parents are in danger of losing their farm and family home. I was wondering how all that was going. How they were taking it, so to speak.”

Dervla’s face turned cold and hard. “I don’t know of late, inspector. I’ve been inside the house. But I imagine they’ll survive. We’re tough people in our family.”

“Thank you. That will be all, Miss Nolan,” Coleridge said. “For the moment.”