Dead Famous

DAY SIXTY-THREE. 9.30 p.m.

And so it came to the end game.

The killer’s last chance to kill, and Coleridge’s last chance to catch the killer before the whole edifice of House Arrest was broken up and scattered. Every instinct he possessed informed Coleridge that if he did not make an arrest that evening the killer would escape him for ever.

Yet how could he make an arrest? He had no evidence. Not yet, anyway.

Coleridge was not the only one feeling frustrated. The viewing public felt the same way; the final eviction show was almost over and so far nothing much had happened. The largest television audience ever assembled were watching what was proving to be the biggest non-event in the history of broadcasting.

It was not as if Peeping Tom had not put in the effort. All the ingredients were in place for a television spectacular. There were fireworks, weaving searchlights, rock bands, three separate cherry pickers for three separate trips across the moat. The world’s press was there, the baying crowds were there. Chloe the presenter’s wonderful breasts were there, almost entirely on display as they struggled to burst free from the confines of her pink leather bra.

Perhaps most intriguingly of all, five out of the six previous evictees were also there. All of the suspects had returned to the scene of the crime.

In fact the ex-housemates were obliged to come back for the final party under the terms of their contracts, but they would probably have come anyway. The lure of fame remained as strong as ever, and with the exception of Woggle, who had jumped bail, Peeping Tom had assembled them all. Even Layla had made the effort and spruced herself up, as had David, Hamish, Sally (who got a huge cheer when she entered, walking slowly but on the way to recovery), and Moon.

After the opening credit music, played live on this special occasion by the month’s number-one boy band, who performed on an airship floating overhead, the cameras cut live to the last three people in the house. The sense of expectation in the audience was huge. They had been assured by the mystery killer that one of the three people that they could see on the huge screen was going to die.

But it didn’t happen. The bands played, people cheered, Kelly’s old school choir sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” in her honour, and one by one the final three were voted out of the house, but nobody was killed at all.

First came Garry. “Yeah, all right! Fair play! Big it up! Respect!”

Then Dervla. “I’m just glad it’s over and I’m not dead.”

And finally Jazz. “Wicked.”

Jazz had been the favourite to win ever since his dramatic intervention to save Sally’s life in the confession box. Dervla’s kickboxing attack on Garry had closed the gap considerably, but it could not make up for the fact that people knew she had been cheating, and so Jazz emerged a clear and popular winner. Garry was nowhere, having been losing ground all week.

And that was it. They were all out of the house, safe and sound, and no matter how much the viewing public might wish it, it seemed unlikely that any of the three finalists, grinning with happy relief and holding onto their cheques, was going to leap on to one of the others and murder them.

The whole thing was rapidly coming to a close. A deeply sugary tribute to Kelly in words and music had been played, giving the impression that she had been a sort of cross between Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. Elton John had provided the music which further increased this impression. And now Chloe was doing her wind-up speech, making appropriate comments about how awesome and wicked it all was, and trying not to look too disappointed that nothing more exciting had happened.

Inspector Coleridge stood beside Geraldine in the studio. He was trying to look indulgent and relaxed, but he kept looking over his shoulder to glance at the big door at the back of the studio. He was waiting for Hooper and Patricia to appear, but so far there had been no sign of them. He knew that if they did not come in the next few moments and provide him with the proof he needed, the killer would escape.

“Well, you were right,” said Geraldine grudgingly. “Nobody did get killed. You know, I really thought the bastard might pull it off. I suppose it was stupid, but he did do such an extraordinary job the first time round. Either way, it makes no difference to me. The show was pre-sold.” She looked at her watch. “Fifty-three minutes so far, that’s a hundred and six million dollars. Very nice, very nice indeed.”

Geraldine addressed Bob Fogarty in the control box via her intercom: “Bob, give Bimbo Chloe a message to wind it up as slow as she dares, words of one syllable, please. When she’s finished, replay the Kelly tribute and then stick on the long credits, every second is money.”

Coleridge looked at the door once more: still no sign of his colleagues. It was all about to slip away from him. He knew that somehow he must delay the end of the show. Banquo’s ghost would only work on air. There had to be a feast. Macbeth’s confusion would mean nothing if it happened in private.

“Hold on a minute, Ms Hennessy,” he said quietly. “I think I can earn you a few more million dollars.”

Geraldine knew a sincere tone of voice when she heard one. “Keep the cameras rolling!” she barked into her intercom, “and tell my driver to wait. What’s on your mind, inspector?”

“I’m going to catch the Peeping Tom killer for you.”

“Fuck me.”

Even Geraldine was surprised when Inspector Stanley Spencer Coleridge asked if it would be possible for him to be given a mike.

A hand-held microphone was quickly thrust into his hand, and then to everyone’s complete surprise Coleridge stepped up onto the stage and joined Chloe. All over the world and in every language under the sun, the same question was asked: “Who the hell is that old guy?”

“Please forgive me, Chloe… I’m afraid I don’t know your surname,” Coleridge said, “and I hope that the public will forgive me also if I trespass for a moment on their time.”

Chloe stared about her wildly, wondering where the security men were, seeing as a senior citizen appeared to be making a stage invasion.

“Run with it, Chloe,” the floor manager whispered at her through her earpiece. “Geraldine says he’s kosher.”

“Oh, right. Wicked,” said Chloe in an unconvinced voice.

Everybody stared at Coleridge. He had never felt such a fool, but he was desperate. There was still no sign of Hooper and Patricia. He knew that he would have to stall. He looked out at the sea of expectant, slightly hostile faces. He tried not to think of the hundreds of millions more that he could not see but who he knew were watching. He fought down his fear.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Chief Inspector Stanley Coleridge of the East Sussex Police, and I am here to arrest the murderer of Kelly Simpson, spinster of the parish of Stoke Newington, London Town.” He had no idea where the “spinster” bit had come from except that he knew he must spin it out, spin it out at all costs. He had absolutely no idea how long he would have to stall.

Once the sensation caused by his opening remark had died down, Coleridge turned and addressed the eight ex-housemates, who had been assembled by Chloe on the podium. The eight people whose faces he had stared at for so long. The suspects.

“This has not been an easy case. Everyone in the world has had a theory, and motives there have been aplenty. A fact that has caused my officers and myself some considerable confusion over the last few weeks. But the identity of this cruel killer, that despicable individual who saw fit to plunge a knife into the skull of a beautiful, innocent young girl, has remained a mystery.”

Something rather strange was happening to Coleridge. He could feel it deep in the pit of his stomach. It was a new sensation for him, but not an unpleasant one. Could it be that he was enjoying himself? Perhaps not quite that. The tension was too great and the possibility of failure too immediate for enjoyment, but he certainly felt… exhilarated. If he had had a moment to think, he might have reflected that circumstance had granted him that thing which he most craved and which his local amateur dramatic society had so long denied him: an audience and a leading role.

“So,” said Coleridge, addressing the camera with the red light on top, presuming correctly that this was the live one. “Who killed Kelly Simpson? Well, in view of the wealth of suspicion that has been visited upon various innocents, I think it fair to begin by clearing up who definitely did not kill Kelly Simpson.”

“This bloke’s a natural,” Geraldine whispered to the floor manager. She was deeply impressed with this new side of Coleridge’s character, and well she might have been, for every minute that he spoke was earning her an extra two million dollars.

Spin it out. Spin it out, Coleridge thought to himself, a sentiment which Geraldine would have applauded wholeheartedly.

“Sally!” Coleridge said, turning dramatically to face the eight suspects. “You were the victim of a terrible coincidence. Your poor mother’s suffering, which you had hoped would remain a private matter, has become public knowledge. You have anguished over your fears that the curse that blighted your mother’s life might also have blighted yours. You’ve tortured yourself with the question Did I Kill Kelly? Was your true personality revealed in the darkness of that black box?”

Sally did not answer. Her eyes were far away. She was thinking of her mother sitting in the terrible little room where she had sat for most of the last twenty years.

“Let me assure you, Sally, that never for one moment did I imagine that the killer was you. You had not the ghost of a motive save family history, and the coincidence of that history repeating itself in so exact a manner is so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. Many families have some mental disorder in their line… Why, the producer of this very show could say as much, couldn’t you, Ms Hennessy?”

“Eh?” said Geraldine. She was enjoying Coleridge’s performance hugely, but had not expected to be drawn into it.

“I gather from interviews my officers have held with your staff that on the two occasions when both Sally and Moon spoke about life inside mental hospitals you remarked quite clearly that it was not like that at all. You in fact explained clearly what it was like. I can only presume that you yourself have some experience?” Coleridge glanced once more at the studio door. No sign. Spin it out.

“Well, as it happens you’re right.” Geraldine spoke into the boom mike, which had hastily descended above her head, the studio crew having reacted according to their instincts. “My mum was a bit of a fruitcake herself, Sally, and my dad, as it happens, so believe me, I sympathize with the outrageous prejudice you have had to put up with.”

“A sentiment that does you great credit,” Coleridge said. “Particularly since medical opinion informs me that when both a person’s parents suffer serious mental instability, their offspring has a thirty-six per cent chance of inheriting their challenges.”

Geraldine did not much like having her family’s linen so publicly washed, but at two million dollars a minute she felt she could put up with it.

Coleridge turned once more to the suspects. “So, Sally, I hope that you can learn from this terrible experience that you need not fear the burden of your past. You did not kill Kelly Simpson, but you were very nearly killed yourself, as I intend to show.”

This comment was greeted with gasps from the audience, which Coleridge did his best to milk.

“Now, what about the rest of you? Did Moon kill Kelly? Well, did you, Moon? You’re a wicked liar, we know that from the tapes. The public never saw you make up a history of abuse in order to score cheap points against Sally, but I did, and it occurred to me that a woman who could invent such grotesque and insensitive deceits might lie about pretty much anything, even murder.”

The cameras turned on Moon.

“Extreme close up!” shouted Bob Fogarty from the control box.

Moon was sweating. “Now just a fookin’…”

“Please, if we could try to moderate our language,” Coleridge chided. “We are on live television, after all. Don’t upset yourself, Moon. If there were as many murderers as there are liars in this world we should all be dead by now. You did not kill Kelly.”

“Well, I know that,” said Moon.

“Nobody has really known anything during this investigation, Moon. Heavens, even Layla has come under suspicion.”

The cameras swung to face a shocked Layla.

“What?”

“Oh yes, such was the apparent impossibility of the murder that at times it seemed possible to imagine that you had wafted in through an airvent on that grim night. After all, everybody saw Kelly nominate you in that first week and then hug and kiss you goodbye. That must have hurt a proud woman like you.”

“It did,” said Layla, “and I’m ashamed to say that, when I heard about the murder, for a moment I was glad Kelly died. Isn’t that terrible? I’ve sought counselling now though, which is helping a lot.”

“Good for you,” said Coleridge. “For let us be quite clear: there is no circumstance or situation in our world today that cannot benefit from counselling. You were simply being selfish, Layla, that was all, but I’m sure that somewhere you can find somebody to tell you that you had a right to be.” Coleridge was being deeply sarcastic, but the crowd did not get it and applauded him, assuming, as did Layla, that Coleridge’s comment was a love-filled Oprah moment of support.

“Layla was long gone by the time Kelly died,” Coleridge continued, “but Garry wasn’t, were you, Gazzer? So how about you? Did you kill Kelly? You certainly wanted to kill her. After the whole country saw her teach you a few home truths about, the responsibilities of fatherhood there was no doubt you had a motive. Wounded pride has been a cause for murder many times in the past, but on the whole I suspect that you don’t care quite enough about anything to take the sort of risk this killer took. But what about you, Hamish? Only you know what passed between Kelly and yourself the night you reeled drunkenly together into that little cabin. Perhaps Kelly had a story to tell, but, if she did, fortunately for you we’ll never hear it. Did you wish her silenced as you sat together in that awful sweatbox? Did you reach out a hand to stop her mouth?”

Hamish did not answer, but just glared at Coleridge fiercely, biting his lip.

“Perhaps you did, but you didn’t kill her. Now then, what about David?” Coleridge turned his gaze to the handsome actor, whose face was still proud and haughty despite all that he’d been through. “You and Kelly also shared a secret. A secret you hoped to keep hidden, and with Kelly’s death you thought it safe.”

“For heaven’s sake, I didn’t…”

“No, I know you didn’t, David. Sadly for you, though, because of her death and the subsequent investigation, the world has discovered your secret anyway and, like her, I doubt now that you will ever achieve your dream.”

“Actually, I’ve had some very interesting offers,” said David defiantly.

“Still acting, David? I recommend you try facing up to the truth. In the long run life is easier.”

As David glared at him Coleridge looked once more at the door at the back of the studio. There was still no sign of Hooper and Patricia. How long could he keep on stalling? He was running out of suspects.

“Dervla Nolan, I have always had my doubts about you,” said Coleridge, turning to her and pointing his finger dramatically.

Once more the focus of the cameras shifted.

“Have you now, chief inspector?” Dervla replied, her green eyes flashing angry defiance. “And why would that be, I wonder.”

“Because you played the game so hard. Because you have a rogue’s courage and risked it all by communicating with the cameraman Larry Carlisle through the mirror. Because you were closest to the entrance of the sweatbox and could have left it without anybody else’s knowing. Because you needed money desperately. Because you had been told that, with Kelly dead, you would win. Not a bad circumstantial case, Ms Nolan. I think perhaps a good prosecuting lawyer could make it stick!”

“This is just madness,” said Dervla. “I loved Kelly, I really…”

“But you didn’t win, did you, Dervla?” Coleridge said firmly. “Jazz won. In the end, good old Jazz was the winner. Everybody’s friend, the comedian, the man who was also in the key position in the sweatbox and could have left it without being noticed! The man whose DNA was so prominent on the sheet that the murderer used. The man who so conveniently covered his tracks by putting the sheet back on after the murder. Tell me, Jazz, do you honestly think that you would have won if Kelly had not died?”

“Hey, just a minute,” Jazz protested. “You ain’t trying to say that…”

“Answer my question, Jason. If Kelly had survived that night, the night she brushed past you in the sweatbox and someone followed her out in order to kill her, would you have won? Would that cheque you are now holding not have had her name on it?”

“I don’t know… Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“No, Jazz, you’re right. It doesn’t mean that you killed her, and of course you didn’t. Because none of you did.”

The sensation that this statement caused was highly gratifying. Coleridge’s emotions were torn. Part of him, the main part, was in absolute torment, desperately awaiting the arrival of his colleagues. An arrival which if put off much longer would be useless anyway. But there was another part of Coleridge, and that was Coleridge the frustrated performer: this part was loving every minute of his great day.

“You are all innocent,” he repeated, “for it is a fact that no one who shared the sweatbox with Kelly on the night she died killed her!”

“It was Woggle, wasn’t it?” Dervla shouted. “I should have guessed! He hated us all! He took revenge on the show!”

“Ah ha!” shouted Coleridge. “Woggle the tunneller! Of course! Everybody’s mistake in this investigation – my mistake – was to presume that the murder was committed by a person who was a housemate at the time. But what of the ex-housemates - not Layla, but Woggle! How simple for a committed anarchist like him, a saboteur, an expert underground tunneller, to break into the house and take his revenge on the show, and in particular on the girl who nominated him and then insulted him with a tofu and molasses comfort cake!”

The studio erupted. All around the world the press lines jammed. So Woggle had done it after all, the evil kicker of teenage girls had surpassed even his previous levels of brutality.

“Of course it wasn’t Woggle!” said Coleridge impatiently. “Good heavens, if that highly distinctive fellow had popped up through the carpet I think we would have noticed, don’t you? No, let’s stop looking for opportunity and start to consider motive. What are the common motives for murder? I suggest that hate is one. Hatred drives people to kill, and my investigations have discovered that there was one truly hate-filled relationship souring the Peeping Tom experience, and it did not fester inside the house. It was the hatred that Bob Fogarty, the senior series editor, felt for Geraldine Hennessy, the producer!”

Coleridge pointed above the heads of the audience to the darkened window situated high in the wall at the back of the studio. “Behind that window sits the Peeping Tom editing team,” Coleridge continued, “and they are led by a man who believes that his boss, Geraldine Hennessy, is a television whore! He said as much to one of my officers. Bob Fogarty claimed that Hennessy’s work represented a new low in broadcasting, she had ruined the industry he loved and that he longed for her downfall! But! He did not kill Kelly.”

Coleridge could detect a tiny edge of impatience in the crowd. He knew that he could not play the trick he was playing for much longer. The spin was running out. But it no longer mattered. Coleridge was smiling, for at the back of the studio he saw the big door open and Hooper steal through it. Hooper gave Coleridge the briefest of thumbs-up signals.

Geraldine did not see the smile spreading across Coleridge’s face. She was too busy smiling herself because, glancing down at her watch, she worked out that the mad policeman had been on the stage for five and a half minutes and had therefore earned her an extra eleven million dollars, and clearly the idiot had not finished yet.

The smile was about to be wiped from Geraldine’s face.

“So!” said Coleridge dramatically. “We know now who did not kill Kelly Simpson. Let us come to the real business at hand and establish who did kill her. Nothing happened in that dreadful house without first being arranged, manipulated and packaged by the producer. Nothing, ladies and gentleman, not even murder most foul. Therefore let us be quite clear about this. The murderer was… you, Geraldine Hennessy!” Coleridge pointed his finger and the cameras swung around to follow its direction.

For once Geraldine found herself at the wrong end of the lens.

“You’re out of your mind!” Geraldine gasped.

“Am I? Well, I think you’d know something about that, Ms Hennessy.”

Trisha entered the editing box carrying a plastic bag filled with video tapes. She went up to Bob Fogarty and whispered in his ear.

“I can’t leave now,” Fogarty protested.

“I can cover it,” said his assistant, Pru, eagerly. All her life she had longed for just such a chance.

“I’m afraid I must insist, sir,” said Trisha, whispering once more into Fogarty’s ear.

Fogarty rose from his seat, took up his family-sized bar of milk chocolate, and left the editing box.

Pru took over the controls. “Camera four,” she said. “Slow creep in on Coleridge.”

Down on the stage the object of this command was in full flow.

“Perhaps you will allow me to explain,” Coleridge said. “First let us consider motive.” Coleridge was standing tall now, strong and commanding. This was not just because his performance muscles, which had for so long lain dormant, were flexing themselves, but also because he knew that success could only come with confidence. She had to believe that the game was up.

“Well, a motive is simple enough, it’s the oldest one of the lot. Not hate, not love, but greed. Greed, pure and simple. Kelly Simpson died to make you rich, Ms Hennessy. The whole media establishment expected series three of House Arrest to be a failure. The Woggle affair drew attention to you, certainly, but it was Kelly’s death that turned your show into the biggest television success story in history, as you knew it would! Can you deny it?”

“No, of course not,” Geraldine said. “That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

Geraldine was alone now on the studio floor. The happy throng of excited young audience members and studio staff had drawn back to form a large circle. Geraldine stood in the middle of this, like a lioness at bay, the focus of that vast room, three big studio cameras hovering around her, for all the world like great hunting animals of prey.

Beyond them, still standing on the stage with Chloe and the eight housemates, was Coleridge, returning Geraldine’s defiant stare. “You have been clever, Ms Hennessy, brutally, fiendishly clever. I do believe your finest hour, perhaps, was allowing the early profits from the worldwide interest that Kelly’s murder produced to be given away. Oh yes, that certainly made me wonder, when your editor, Bob Fogarty, told us of your fury at the missed opportunity, a million lost? Perhaps two? And then, I thought, what a small price to avoid suspicion falling immediately upon your shoulders, as since then you have milked hundreds of millions of dollars from your ghoulish crime.”

“Now you be careful, chief inspector,” Geraldine said. “You’re on live television here. The whole world is watching while you make a fool of yourself.” The mention of money had put the spirit back into Geraldine. Coleridge’s accusation had certainly been a shock, but she could not imagine on what grounds he was going to base it, let alone prove it. Meanwhile, the House Arrest drama continued and the profits kept on mounting.

“You may bluster all you wish, Ms Hennessy,” Coleridge replied, “but I intend to prove that you are the murderer and then I intend to see you punished under the full majesty of the law. Let me say now that I knew even on the night of the crime that things were not as they appeared. Despite your impressive efforts, there was just so much that was wrong. Why was it that cameraman Larry Carlisle, the only person to witness the cloaked murderer follow Kelly to the lavatory, thought that the killer had emerged only two minutes after Kelly left the sweatbox, while the people watching on video could see very well from their machines that it had been more like five?”

“Larry Carlisle has been proved to -”

“Not a very reliable witness, I accept that, but on this occasion I suggest reliable enough. Otherwise, why was it that the blood which flowed from Kelly’s wounds seemed to accumulate so very quickly? The doctor was surprised, and so was I. Who would have thought the young girl to have so much blood in her, to paraphrase the Bard. A great deal of blood to flow in the two minutes that was supposed to have passed between the murder and your arriving on the scene, Ms Hennessy, but not so much if you reckon on the five minutes that Carlisle thought had passed.”

“Not all blood flows at the same speed, for fuck’s sake!” Geraldine barked, forgetting for a moment that she was on live television.

“Then there was the vomit,” said Coleridge. “Kelly had been drinking heavily, and she rushed to the lavatory in a mighty hurry, didn’t she? But according to what we saw, when she arrived she simply sat down. More curious still, even though the lavatory bowl had clearly been scrubbed clean, the lavatory seat had a few flecks of vomit on it. Vomit which has been confirmed as having emanated from Kelly. How could this be? I asked myself. Watching the tape again I can see that Kelly does not throw up, she merely sits… and yet I know that she was sick. I have vomit from her mouth, I have her vomit from the lavatory seat. Without doubt this is a girl who ran into the lavatory, knelt before it and was sick. Yet when I watch the tape, she just sits down.”

Up in the studio editing box, Pru was having the gig of her life. She had taken over the controls of the edit box and, working live and entirely off-script, she had first managed to ensure perfect camera coverage of the scene unfolding down in the studio, barking cool clear instructions to the shocked team of operators. And now she excelled herself by managing to dial up footage of the murder tape and drop it into the broadcast mix as Coleridge spoke. Once more viewers around the world watched the familiar footage of Kelly entering the toilet and sitting down, this time seeing it in an entirely new and mystifying context.

Down on the studio floor the thrilling confrontation continued.

“Next I come to the matter of the sound on the tapes that were recorded during the murder. In the earlier part of the evening much of what was said inside that grim plastic box was clearly audible, and, I might add, little of it did any of the people you see standing on this stage much credit.”

Coleridge turned to the eight ex-housemates. “Really, you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re not animals, you know.”

“It wasn’t me!” Layla protested like an anxious school child. “I’d been evicted, I wasn’t there!”

Such was the authority of Coleridge’s performance that, instead of telling him to mind his own business, the other seven housemates, even Gazzer, blushed and stared unhappily at their feet.

“But I’m straying from the point,” Coleridge admitted, “which is that while Kelly remained in the sweatbox we could hear what was being said, but from the moment that Kelly entered the lavatory the sound becomes vague, a mere cacophony of murmuring. Why? Why could we no longer make out any of the voices?”

“Because they were all too pissed, of course, you stupid -” Geraldine bit her lip. She knew he had no proof. She had no need to lose her cool.

“I don’t think so, Ms Hennessy. Seven people do not simultaneously begin to mumble in unison. What had happened? Why had the sound changed? Was it because the sound that I could hear on the tape of the murder was not the sound that was being generated in the sweatbox? Could it be that the person who made that tape did not wish for any discernible voices to be heard from the box during the murder because she did not know who it was who was going to be killed? Strange it would be indeed if the voice of the victim could still be heard in the sweatbox after her death. Was this the reason that the sound on the murder tape was so revealingly anonymous?”

Geraldine remained silent.

“Let us leap forward for a moment in time, to when the note predicting the second murder was discovered. Oh, what a fine sensation that made. But for me, Ms Hennessy, that note was the absolute proof I needed to convince me that the murder was not committed by a housemate.”

“Why, babe?”

Coleridge almost jumped. He had forgotten that Chloe was standing beside him. Throughout his speech she had been attempting, not very subtly, to remain in shot, and she now made a play to really get involved. Chloe felt she had a right, she was the presenter of the show, after all.

“Why, Chloe? Because it was utterly ridiculous, that’s why. Impossible, a transparent piece of theatre. None of the contestants could possibly have known at the end of week one when and how Kelly Simpson would die. Even if they had been planning to kill her it is quite absurd to think that they would have been able to see into the future in such detail and be assured that an opportunity would arise on the twenty-seventh day. So how did that note come to be among the predictions in the envelope? An envelope which we had seen the housemates fill and seal on day eight? Clearly someone from the outside had put that prediction note there, put it there at the time that they killed Kelly. That note was a little extra piece of drama that you could not resist, Ms Hennessy. You were desperate to maximize your price for footage of the final week, and yet you knew that with each passing day the murder grew colder and with each eviction the chances of the killer still being in the house lessened. Hence your absurd, ridiculous note, a note which fooled the world but which served only to convince me that there definitely would not be another murder.”

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, babe.” It was Chloe again, delighted to have another chance to get into the action. “They’ve asked me from the box to ask you to tell us how she did it. I mean we’ve got as much time as you like, but the problem is that we’re live and at some point we have to cut to an ad break, but we do all really really want to know.”

“Justice has its own pace, miss,” said Coleridge grandly. He was grimly aware that he had no proof. If he was to gain a conviction then he needed a confession, and only Banquo’s ghost, only a set of shaking gory locks, could get him that. The time had to be right, the killer had to sweat.

“Fine, babe,” said Chloe. “They say it’s cool. Respect. Whatever.”

“Surely you must all have guessed how she did it anyway?” said Coleridge. “I mean, isn’t it obvious?”

The sea of blank faces in the audience was most gratifying.

“Ah, but of course, I was forgetting. You have not had the privilege as I have of visiting Shepperton Studios, a place where an exact replica of the house exists. A place where Geraldine Hennessy made a video recording. A recording of a murder that was yet to happen.” Coleridge had abandoned all pretence at quiet reserve. He was an actor now, an actor in a smash hit.

“One dark night shortly before the House Arrest game began, Geraldine Hennessy crept onto the set of her replica house. With a crank and a clang she turned on the studio lights and activated the remote cameras that would shortly thereafter be installed in the real house. She also pushed one manual camera into position in front of the lavatory door, where she locked it off, just as a month or so later she would instruct Larry Carlisle to do. Then Ms Hennessy stripped naked and put on a dark wig, a wig that was the colour of Kelly Simpson’s hair. She then entered the replica lavatory, where she was recorded by the only camera in the room, high above and behind her. Swiftly she sat down and put her head into her hands, not a difficult deception to pull off – the foreshortening quality of an overhead camera angle would make any differences in height and figure an irrelevance, and, when looked at from almost directly above, one hunched figure on a lavatory looks much the same as another. So, a month or so before it actually happened, Kelly’s final trip to the lavatory had been… I can’t say reconstructed – I’d therefore better say preconstructed.”

Coleridge was having a wonderful time. Banquo’s ghost was waiting in the wings, Macbeth (perhaps he should say Lady Macbeth) stood before him in all her arrogance; all he had to do now was bring her to the point where her spirit collapsed, and he truly believed he could do it. In thirty-five years of dedicated and usually successful police work, Coleridge could never have been said to have shone. But on this night, as he neared the end of his long career, he was sparkling.

“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 suspect 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 thumbs-up. 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. “Me 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.”