Dead Famous

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 4.15 p.m.

“The public did find Woggle revolting,” Bob Fogarty said, fishing a semi-melted square of chocolate out of his foaming plastic cup, “but they just loved him for it, and by the time episode eleven was over, he’d become a national hero. It was so deceitful and unfair, I felt ashamed. I complained to that bitch Geraldine, but she said it came with the job and that cunts like me had forfeited our right to have principles.”

Once more Trisha had gone to the editing bunker in an effort to try to bridge the gap between what the public had seen and what had actually happened. It seemed just possible to her that the clue to solving the murder might lie in understanding how this trick was worked.

After all, everybody had seen the murder.

Fogarty sucked noisily on his chocolate. Trisha watched his mouth with growing distaste.

“That cow knew very well that she had been wickedly skewing public sympathy away from the main group and towards Woggle right from the start.”

“So when the attack on him came, shown in the context Geraldine had made you create, it looked absolutely damning?”

“It certainly did, and the nation went potty, as I’m sure you know. I told Geraldine that we were giving Woggle too much of the running. I mean, quite apart from the fact that we were seriously demonizing nine relatively innocent people, we were also turning the show into a one-trick pony, which in my humble opinion was not good telly at all in the long term. Geraldine knew that, of course, but the footage was just irresistible. It made the other boys look like absolute bastards. Awful. Like something out of “Lord of the Flies”