Dead Famous

DAY FORTY-NINE. 10.00 a.m.

It was eviction day, but many long hours would have to pass before the excitement of the evening. As usual the Peeping Tom production team had been racking their brains trying to think of things for the housemates to do. It wasn’t that interest in the show was waning, far from it. House Arrest remained the single most watched show on the planet. Geraldine had just brokered a worldwide distribution deal for the following week’s footage of US$45 million. It was more a matter of professional pride. Peeping Tom knew that it was running a freak show, but, freak show or not, it was still a television programme and they were responsible for it. The general feeling at the production meetings was that some artistic effort was required, if only for form’s sake. The week’s task had been a success. Geraldine had challenged the housemates to create sculptures of each other, and this inspired thought, with all its possibilities for psychological analysis, had provoked an incident of genuine spontaneous drama. An incident that once more confounded the sceptics who thought that House Arrest had run out of shocks.

The trouble started when Dervla returned from her second visit to the police station. She was tired and upset after her grilling from Coleridge. Then there had been all the gawpers and reporters outside the house, screaming at her, asking if she had killed Kelly, and if it had been a sex thing. And finally there had been the looks of doubt and suspicion on the faces of her fellow housemates when she re-entered the house. Even Jazz looked worried.

All in all, she was in no mood for jokes, so when she noticed that Garry had placed a kitchen knife in the hand of his half-finished representation of her, she flipped.

“You bastard!” Dervla screamed, white with fury. “You utter, utter bastard.”

“It was a fahking joke, girl!” said Garry, laughing. “Joke? Remember them? After all, you are the coppers’ favourite, love!”

At which point Dervla slapped him across the face with such force that Garry toppled backwards over the orange couch.

“Fahk that!” said Garry, leaping up, tears of pain and anger in his eyes. “Nobody slaps the Gaz, not even a bird, all right? I intend to give your arse a right proper spanking, you nasty little Paddy bitch!”

“Oi,” said Jazz, and leaped forward with the intention of intervening, but this act of chivalry turned out to be unnecessary. Dervla did not need any help, for as Garry advanced upon her, fists clenched, intent upon mayhem, she spun round upon one foot and in a single smooth movement planted the other one firmly into Garry’s face.

He fell to the ground instantly, blood gushing from his nose.

“Blimey,” said Geraldine in the monitoring bunker.

Dervla had been practising kickboxing since she was eleven and was by now a master at it, but she never told anybody if she could help it. She had discovered early on that once people knew, it was all they ever wanted to talk about. People were always asking for demonstrations and asking earnest questions: “OK, say if three, no, four blokes, with baseball bats, jumped you from behind, could you take them out?”

On the whole Dervla had kept her special skill private. Now, however, the world knew and frankly she didn’t care. She realized that she had a score to settle, and that it had nothing to do with Garry.

Suddenly weeks of pent-up fear and rage exploded within her. Dervla knew that lurking not ten feet from her was almost certainly the message-writer, Larry Carlisle, the agent of her recent distress. Ignoring Garry, who was crumpled up on the floor howling in pain, Dervla turned to face the mirrors on the wall. “And if you’re out there, Carlisle, you disgusting little pervert, that’s exactly what you’ll get if you come within a hundred miles of me when I get out of this house. You made the police suspect me, you bastard! So you just leave me alone or I’ll kick your fucking head off and pull your balls out through your neck!”

“Wow,” said Geraldine in the monitoring bunker. “Is he going to have some explaining to do when he gets home.”

Thus it was that the affair of the perving cameraman unexpectedly entered the public domain, giving Peeping Tom yet another day of high drama. Carlisle was sacked, of course, but Dervla, who should by rights have also been kicked off the show for conniving with him, was allowed to stay.

“Dervla did not solicit these messages, nor did she welcome them,” said Geraldine piously, which was complete rubbish, of course, but the press did not care because nobody wanted to remove Dervla from the mix, particularly now that she had suddenly become so interesting. Particularly after Geraldine broadcast a selection of Carlisle’s private footage of Dervla in the shower.

All of that excitement, however, had been some days before, and the voracious public appetite for surprises now needed feeding again. The hours until eviction would have to be filled. Geraldine decided to dig out the predictions package.

“Peeping Tom has instructed the housemates to open the ‘predictions’ package, which they had all been a part of preparing at the end of week one,” said Andy the narrator. “The package has lain untouched at the back of the kitchen cupboard since the day it was produced.”

“Uh’d fugodden all abah did,” said Garry, who was still nursing a swollen nose. Garry had decided to accept his surprise beating at Dervla’s hands in good part and let it be known both to her and in the confession box that there were no hard feelings on his side. “At the end of the day,” he said through his bloody sinuses, “if you get bopped you get bopped. No point crying about it. In fact, getting hit by a bird is good for me and has made me more of a feminist.”

Garry was not stupid. There was a big difference between the hundred grand that the next person out would get and the million that would go to the winner. He wanted to stay in the game while the money grew, and he guessed that sour grapes would not help his cause at all. Therefore, once the doctor had treated his nose, which had been neatly broken, he shook Dervla’s hand and said, “Fair play to you, girl,” and the nation applauded him for it.

Inside, of course, Garry was seething. To have been duffed up by a bird, a small bird, on live TV. It was his worst nightmare. He’d never be able to show his face down the pub again.

Watching Garry’s efforts to make up with Dervla on the police computer, Hooper did not believe a word of it. “He hates her. She’s number one on our Garry’s hate list,” he said.

“The place that Kelly used to occupy,” Trisha mused. “And Kelly, of course, got killed.”

They had all forgotten about the predictions envelope, and there was eager anticipation as Jazz solemnly opened it and they all dipped in. The whole thing reminded them of a happier, more innocent time in the house.

Peeping Tom had supplied some wine and there was much laughter as all the wrong predictions made six weeks earlier were read out.

“Woggle reckoned he’d be the only one left,” said Jazz.

“Fook me, Layla picked herself to win the whole thing!” laughed Moon.

“Listen to David!” shrieked Dervla. “‘I believe that by week seven I will have emerged as a healing force within the group.’”

“In your dreams, Dave!” Jazz shouted.

The laughter died somewhat when they came to Kelly’s prediction. Moon read it out, and it was a moment of pure pathos.

“‘I think that all the others are great people. I love them all big time and I shall be made up if I am still around by week seven. My guess is I’ll be out on week three or four.’”

There was silence as they all realized how right Kelly had been.

“What’s that one, then?” Moon asked, pointing at a piece of paper that had not yet been read out.

Hamish turned it over. It was written in the same blue pencil that Peeping Tom had provided to everybody but the handwriting was a scrawled mess, as if somebody had been writing without looking and also with their left hand. This, the police handwriting expert was later to confirm, was indeed how the message had been written.

“What does it say?” asked Moon.

Hamish read it out. “‘By the time you read this Kelly will be dead.’”

It took a moment for it to dawn on them just what had been said.

“Oh, my fook,” said Moon.

Somebody had known for certain that Kelly would die. Somebody had actually written out the prediction. It was too horrible to imagine.

“There’s more. Shall I read it?” Hamish asked after a moment.

They all nodded silently.

“‘I shall kill her on the night of the twenty-seventh day.’”

“Oh my God! He knew!” Dervla gasped.

Still Hamish had not finished. There was one final prediction in the note. “‘One of the final three will also die.’”

“Oh, my God,” Moon gasped. “No one’s touched that envelope in six fookin’ weeks. It could have been any of us wrote that.”