Dead Famous

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN. 11.47 p.m.

“Give me your mobile!” Geraldine barked at Fogarty, her voice shrill but steady.

“What… What?” Bob Fogarty’s eyes were fixed on the horrifying crimson vision before him, the knife. The knife in the skull.

“Give me your mobile phone, you dozy cunt!” Geraldine snatched Fogarty’s little Nokia from the pouch at his belt.

But she could not turn it on; her hand was shaking too much. She looked up at the live hot-head that was still impassively recording the scene. “Somebody in the edit suite call the fucking police!… Somebody watching on the Internet! Do something useful for once in your crap lives! Call the fucking police!”

And so it was that the world was alerted to one of the most puzzling and spectacular murders in anybody’s memory or experience: by thousands of Internet users jamming the emergency services switchboards and, failing to get through, calling the press.

At the same time, at the scene of the crime, Geraldine seemed unsure what to do next.

“Is she… dead?” said Pru, who was peering over Fogarty’s shoulder, trying to keep the bile from rising in her throat.

“Prudence,” said Geraldine, “she’s got a kitchen knife stuck through her fucking brain.”

“Yes, but we should check all the same,” stammered Pru.

“You fucking check,” said Geraldine.

But at this point Kelly saved them from further speculation about her state of health by keeling off the toilet seat and falling to the floor. She went head first, pulled forward over her knees by the weight of her own head. This resulted in her butting the floor with the handle of the knife, which buried the blade another inch or two into her head, as if it had been hit by a hammer. It made a sort of creaking sound which caused both Pru and Fogarty to be sick.

“Oh, great. Fucking brilliant,” Geraldine said. “So let’s just throw up all over the scene of the crime, shall we? The police are going to fucking love us.”

Perhaps it was the idea of what people might think of them that led Geraldine to turn once more to the watching cameras. “You lot in the box. Switch off the Internet link. This isn’t a freak show.”

But it was a freak show, of course, a freak show that had only just begun.

“What the fuck’s going on?” It was Jazz, emerging from the boys’ bedroom, a sheet stuck to his honed, toned and sweaty body. What with his sheet and his muscley physique, Jazz looked like Dervla’s fantasy of him, a Greek God startled on Mount Olympus. He could not have looked more ridiculously out of place if he had tried.

Jazz stood on the threshold of the room staring, stunned by the bright lights and the extraordinary and unexpected presence of intruders in a house that he and his fellow inmates had had exclusive use of for weeks.

Dervla appeared behind him. She too had taken up a sheet and looked equally out of place staring at the casually dressed intruders, behind whom was the corpse. It was beginning to look as if a toga party had crashed into a road accident.

Geraldine realized that the situation was about to spiral out of control. She did not like situations that were out of control; she was a classic example of that tired old phrase, “the control freak”. “Jason! Dervla!” she shouted. “Both of you get back in the boys’ bedroom!”

“What’s happening?” Dervla said. Fortunately for them neither she nor Jazz could see into the lavatory. The gruesome sight was blocked from them by the cluster of people at its doorway.

“This is Peeping Tom!” Geraldine shouted. “There has been an accident. All house inmates are to remain in the boys’ bedroom until told otherwise. Get inside! NOW!”

Astonishingly, such was the hostage mentality that had developed amongst the housemates that Jazz and Dervla did as they were told, returning to the darkness of the boys’ bedroom, where the others were emerging from the sweatbox, hot, naked and confused.

“What’s going on?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” Dervla replied. “We’re to stay in here.”

Then somebody in the edit suite took it upon themselves to turn on all the lights in the house. The seven inmates were caught almost literally in the headlights. They stood around the redundant sweatbox blinking at each other, naked, reaching for sheets, blankets, towels, anything to cover their red-skinned, sweaty embarrassment, memories of the previous two wild hours turning their hot red faces still redder. It was as if they were all fourteen years old and had been caught in the process of a mass snog by their parents.

“Oh my God, we look so stupid,” said Dervla.

Outside, Geraldine was taking charge. Later on it was generally agreed that, having got over her shock, she had acted with remarkable cool-headedness.

Having confined the seven remaining inmates to one room, she ordered everybody to retrace their steps and do everything possible to avoid further altering the scene of the crime.

“We’ll stand in the camera run,” she said, “and wait for the cops.”