Dead Famous

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 3.40 a.m.

The housemates were being held in the Peeping Tom boardroom, situated on the upper floor of the production complex across the moat from the house. The seven tired, scared young people had been taken there after being questioned briefly at the scene and then allowed to shower and dress. Now they had all been sitting together for over an hour, and the truth of the night’s terrible event had well and truly sunk in.

Kelly was dead. The girl with whom they had all lived and breathed for the previous four weeks, and with whom they had all been groping and laughing only a few hours before, was dead.

That was the second most shocking thing any of them had ever in their lives been forced to try to come to terms with.

The most shocking thing of all was the self-evident fact that one of them had killed her.

The penny had dropped slowly. At first there had been much weeping and hugging, expressions of astonishment, confusion, sadness and solidarity. They had felt as if they were the only seven people in the world, bonded by a glue that no outsider would ever understand. It was all so strange and confusing: the four weeks of isolation and game-playing, then the mad, drunken excess of the sweatbox, the sudden onrush of raw sexual energy that had taken them all by surprise… and then the death of their comrade and the house suddenly full of police. That had almost been the strangest thing of all. To find their house, the place where nobody could enter and none could leave save by a formal and complex voting procedure, full of police officers! Of course, they had been intruded on before, when Woggle was arrested, but that had been different. The housemates had remained in the majority, in some way in control. This time they had been reduced to a huddled little ghetto in the boys’ bedroom, pleading to be allowed to wash themselves.

All this common and unique experience had at first served to create a gang mentality for the seven surviving housemates… Jazz, Gazzer, Dervla, Moon, David, Hamish and Sally.

But as they sat together around the big table in the Peeping Tom boardroom, rapidly sobering up, that solidarity had begun to evaporate like the alcohol in their systems. To be replaced by fear, fear and suspicion. Suspicion of each other. Fear that they themselves might be suspected.

One by one Coleridge saw them, these people who were shortly to become so familiar to him. And with each brief interview the depressing truth became clearer. Either six of them genuinely knew nothing, or they were each protecting all the others, because none of them had anything to say to him that shed any light upon who had left the sweatbox in order to kill Kelly.

“To be honest, officer,” Jazz told Coleridge, “I could not have told you what was up and what was down inside that box, let alone where the exit was. It was totally dark, man. I mean totally. That was the point of it. We’d been in there two hours, and we were just so pissed, I mean, completely -”

“How did you know it was two hours?” Coleridge interrupted.

“I didn’t know, I heard since. Man, I would not have known if it was two hours, two minutes or two years. We was out of it, floating, zombied, brain-fucked to the double-max degree, and we was getting it on! I was getting it on! Do you understand? Four weeks without so much as a touch of a woman, and suddenly I was getting it on. Believe me, man, I wasn’t thinking about where no exit was. I was happy where I was.”

This was the common theme of the majority of the interviews. Each of them had been utterly disoriented inside that box, losing all concept of space and time, and contentedly so, for they had been enjoying themselves.

“It was so fookin’ hot in there, inspector,” Moon assured him, “and dark, and we were drunk. It was like floating in space or summat.”

“Did you notice anybody leave?”

“Maybe Kelly?”

“Maybe?”

“Well, I didn’t even know where the entrance was by then. At the end of the day, I don’t think anybody knew fook all about anything, to be quite honest. But I did feel a girl suddenly moving, like, amongst us all… and quite quickly, which was a bit of a surprise because we were all so chilled.”

“You were chilled?” Coleridge thought he must have misheard. He wanted things to be clear for the tape.

“The witness means relaxed, sir,” Hooper interjected.

“Whatever the witness means, sergeant,” Coleridge snapped, “she can mean it without your leading her to it. What did you mean, miss?”

“I meant relaxed.”

“Thank you. Please continue.”

“Well, I think that maybe after I felt the girl move there was like a little waft of cooler air. I think maybe I realized that somebody was going for a piss or whatever, but quite frankly, at the end of the day, I weren’t that bothered. I mean I were giving somebody – I think it were Gazzer – a blow-job at the time.”

Interview after interview told the same story: varying degrees of sexual activity plus the idea that someone, probably a girl, had scrambled over them shortly before the game was brought to an abrupt halt. They each remembered this moment because it had rather jarred the “chilled” atmosphere that had developed.

“And this movement happened quite suddenly?” Coleridge asked each of them. They all agreed that it had, that there had been a sudden flurry of limbs and soft warm skin, followed by the faintest waft of cooler air. With hindsight it was clear that this must have been Kelly rushing off to the lavatory.

“Could anybody have sneaked off after her?” Coleridge asked them. Yes, was the reply, they all felt strongly that in the cramped, crowded darkness and confusion of it all, it would have been possible for a second person to follow Kelly out of the sweatbox unnoticed.

“But you yourself were unaware of it.”

“Inspector,” said Gazzer, and he might have been speaking for them all, “I wasn’t aware of anything.”

Sally’s were the only recollections that differed substantially from the norm. When she appeared Coleridge had been taken aback. He had never seen a woman whose arms were completely covered in tattoos before and he knew that he would have to try not to let it prejudice his view of her.

“So you were not involved in the sexual activity?” Coleridge asked.

“No. I decided to try and use the exercise to improve my understanding of other cultures,” Sally replied. “I found a corner of the box, ignored what the others were doing and concentrated on recreating the consciousness of a Native American fighting woman.”

Coleridge could not stop himself from reflecting that to the best of his knowledge all the Native American fighting had been done by men, but he decided to let it go. “You didn’t want to join in the, um, fun?” he asked.

“No, I’m a dyke, and all the other women who were in that box are straight, or at least they think they are. Besides, I had to concentrate on something other than them, you see. I had to concentrate.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like dark, confined spaces. I don’t like getting into black boxes.”

“Really? Is this something you have much experience of?”

“Not for real, no. But in my head I imagine it all the time.”

Coleridge noted that the cigarette Sally held in her hand was shaking. The column of smoke rising above it was jagged. Like the edge of a rough saw. “Why do you imagine dark boxes?”

“To test myself. To see what happens to me when I go there.”

“So on being confronted by a real physical black box, you decided to use it as a test of your mental strength.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And did you pass the test?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about what happened in that box. It just totally weirded me out and so I went somewhere else in my head.”

And press her though he might, Coleridge could get nothing more out of Sally.

“I’m not holding out on you,” she protested, “I swear. I liked Kelly. I’d tell you if I knew something, but I don’t remember anything at all. I don’t even remember being there.”

“Thank you, that’ll be all for now,” Coleridge said.

As Sally was leaving she turned at the door. “One thing, though. Anything Moon tells you is a lie, all right? That woman wouldn’t know the truth if it stuck a knife in her head.” Then she left the room.

“Do you think she was trying to tell us Moon did it?” Hooper said.

“I have no idea,” Coleridge replied.

Both David and Hamish struck Coleridge as evasive. Their statements were much the same as Garry’s, Jason’s and Moon’s had been, but they seemed less frank, more guarded.

“I couldn’t tell you where Kelly was in the box,” said Hamish. “I know I was feeling up one of the girls, but to be honest I couldn’t tell you which.”

Something about his manner struck Coleridge as jarring. Later on, when discussing it with Hooper, the sergeant admitted that he had felt the same way. They had both interviewed enough liars to be able to spot the signs. The defensive body language, the folded arms and squared shoulders, the body pushed right back in the seat as if preparing for attack from any side. Hamish was probably lying, they thought, but whether it was a big lie or a little one they could not tell.

“You’re a doctor, it says here,” Coleridge observed.

“I am,” said Hamish.

“I would have thought that a doctor might have been a little more aware. After all, there were only four women in that darkness. You’d known them all for a month. Are you seriously telling me that you were groping one of them and had no idea which?”

“I was very drunk.”

“Hmmm,” said Coleridge after a long pause. “So much for doctors and their sensitive hands.”

Coleridge would have known that David was an actor without having to refer to Peeping Tom’s notes. There was something mannered about his expressions of grief; not that this meant he wasn’t sorry, but it did mean he was conscious of how he was presenting his sorrow. The pauses before he spoke were too long, the frank manly eye contact a little too frank and manly. He smoked a number of cigarettes during his interview, but since he clearly did not inhale it struck Coleridge that the cigarettes were props. He held them between his thumb and forefinger, his hand cupped around the burning end which pointed towards his palm. Not a very practical way to hold a cigarette, Coleridge thought, but it certainly gave an impression of anguish. When David wasn’t looking earnestly into Coleridge’s eyes, he was staring intently at his cupped cigarette.

“I loved Kelly. We were mates,” he said. “She was such a free and open spirit. I only wish I’d known her better. But I certainly was not aware of her in the box. To be honest, Dervla would be more my type if I’d been fishing, but I’m afraid I was too drunk and disoriented to take much interest in anyone.”

It was all so vague, so confused. Coleridge inwardly cursed these scared, bewildered young people. Or he cursed six of them, at any rate. The murderer he could only grudgingly respect. Six people had been present when the murderer left the box and also when he returned and yet they had all been too damned drunk and libidinous to notice.

Only Dervla, to whom he spoke last, was clearer in her recollection. This was of course Coleridge’s first experience of Dervla, but immediately he liked her. She seemed to be the steadiest of the bunch, intelligent but also giving the impression of being frank and open. He found himself wondering what madness had moved a nice, clever girl like her to get involved with an exercise as utterly fatuous as House Arrest in the first place. He could not understand it at all, but then Coleridge felt that he no longer understood anything very much.

Dervla alone seemed to have been relatively aware of her surroundings during those last few minutes in the sweatbox. She recalled that when the agitated girl had made her hurried exit, she herself must have been close to the flaps, for she had definitely felt the waft of cooler air. She was also quite certain that the figure she felt slide across her and exit through the flaps had most definitely been Kelly.

“I felt her breasts slide across my legs, and they were big, but not as big as Sally’s,” she said, reddening at the thought of the scene that she must be conjuring up in the minds of the detectives.

“Anything else about her?” Coleridge asked.

“Yes, she was shaking with emotion,” said Dervla. “I know that I felt a real sense of tension, almost of panic”

“So she was upset?” Coleridge asked.

“I’m trying to remember what I thought at the time,” Dervla said. “Yes, I think I thought she was upset.”

“But you don’t know why.”

“Well, a lot of strange things were happening inside that box, inspector, things that would be embarrassing enough to recall in the morning without having to relate them to police officers.”

“Strange things?” Coleridge asked. “Be specific, please.”

“I can’t see how it’s relevant.”

“This is a murder investigation, miss, and it’s not your place to decide what’s relevant.”

“Well, OK, then. I don’t know what Kelly was doing before she bolted, but I know she’d been feeling pretty wild earlier in the evening. We all had, and still were. I myself was getting close to the point of no return with Jason, or at least I think it was Jason. I hope it was Jason.” She glanced down, and her eyes rested on the little revolving cogs on the cassette tape recorder. She reddened.

“Go on,” said Coleridge.

“Well, after Kelly slid across me and went off, Jazz and I… carried on with our um… canoodling.”

Coleridge caught Hooper smiling at this choice of word and glared at him. There was nothing in his opinion remotely amusing about discussing the circumstances that led up to a girl’s being murdered.

“And that was it, really,” Dervla concluded. “Shortly after that we heard all the commotion, and Jazz went out to see what was going on and who was in the house. I remember that at that point I actually felt relieved at the interruption. It gave me a chance to collect myself and realize what I was doing, just how far I’d let myself get carried away. I was happy that something had occurred to stop the party.”

Dervla stopped herself, realizing how terrible this must sound. “Of course, I felt differently when I realized what had actually happened.”

“Of course. And you don’t know anything about what might have upset Kelly?”

“No, I don’t, but I suppose somebody must have pushed their luck a bit with her, if you know what I mean. I always thought that Kelly was a bit of a tease on top but what my mother would call a ‘nice girl’ underneath. I don’t think she’d have gone all the way in that box.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The other night Hamish followed her out into the nookie hut, but I don’t think he got anywhere… Not that I’m saying anything about Hamish, you understand.”

“Were you aware of anybody following Kelly out of the box last night?”

“No, I was not.”

“You’ve said yourself that you were situated near the entrance. You’re sure you noticed nothing?”

“As I’ve told you, I was occupied at the time. The whole business was rather a giddy affair.”

Later, Coleridge was to ponder Dervla’s choice of words and phrases: “canoodling”, “giddy affair”, as if she was talking about an innocent flirtation at a barn dance rather than an orgy.

After Dervla had completed her interview and returned to the conference room, Coleridge and Hooper discussed her evidence for some time.

“Very mysterious that she had no sensation of the second person leaving the box,” Hooper said.

“Yes,” Coleridge replied. “Unless…”

Hooper finished his sentence for him. “Unless she was the person who left.”

One Winner