Dead Famous

“You can’t arrest him for having fleas,” said Dervla.

“Why not?” Garry interjected. “Should have done it weeks ago.”

Kelly stepped forward and put some apples and biscuits in Woggle’s lap. “In case they don’t feed you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Kelly,” David sneered. “Like you give a toss.”

“He’s a human being,” Kelly protested.

“That’s debatable,” said Jazz, who was over at the kitchen area putting the kettle on and trying to look cool and unconcerned. “I’m young, gifted and black,” his hip, easy stance was saying. “Coppers come through my door every day.” In fact Jazz had never been arrested in his life, but the pose looked great and his standing with the public rocketed.

“We are bearing witness to this arrest,” Dervla said firmly.

“Yes, we are,” Moon added, rather weakly.

Hamish clearly decided that he couldn’t compete and, following his plan that only the noticed get nominated, he got up and went into the boys’ bedroom for a lie-down.

“Sir,” the lead policeman said, “we do not know your name beyond the fact that you are known as Woggle. However, we have strong photographic evidence to suggest that you are the person wanted by Lincolnshire Police in connection with the serious assault of one Lucy Brannigan, a girl of fifteen at the time of the attack.”

The other inmates stopped in their tracks, stunned.

“What? Sexual assault?” Garry asked.

“Come along, sir,” said the policeman.

“I can’t believe it, Woggle,” said Jazz. “I knew you were a dirty disgusting little toe-rag, but I never thought you were a nonce.”

Everybody drew back from the little figure squatting in the corner. Dervla disengaged herself and disappeared into the girls’ bedroom.

Woggle wasn’t having this. “She was a fox-murderer!” he shouted. “An animal-torturer! It was a fair fight and I kicked her in the head. She bloody deserved it, the fascist! If you live by the sword you die by the sword.”

And as if to prove this point the policemen picked Woggle up and carried him away. As they took him, struggling, through the door the blanket fell away to reveal Woggle’s skinny body, still naked and covered in white flea powder.

He looked pathetic. It was the final indignity.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 11.50 p.m.

On the drive home Coleridge attempted to banish Woggle from his mind by listening to Radio 4. The thing about Radio 4 for Coleridge was that no matter what they were talking about he always got caught up in it. He had often found himself sitting in his car outside his house waiting to hear the end of some discussion about crop rotation in West Africa, or some other subject he had never heard of and would never think of again. Even the shipping forecasts made good listening, conjuring up as they did strange emotions and race memories of dark rocky coastlines, furious typhoons and the long lonely watches of the night.

The subject being discussed that night as Coleridge drove home was an economic slump in rural Ireland. The shift of money and young people to the cities, coupled with cuts in European agricultural grants, had left some villages in desperate financial straits. Negative loans and mortgages were forcing many households to the edge of despair. Coleridge’s ears pricked up at the mention of one of the villages worst affected, Ballymagoon. Where had he heard that name recently? he wondered.

It wasn’t until he was opening his second can of beer (and thinking about having a bit of ham with it) that Coleridge remembered. He had read the name on a suspect profile. Ballymagoon was the village in which Dervla was born.

DAY THIRTY-FIVE. 9.30 a.m.

“It’s day fifteen in the house, and after supper, in order to take their minds off Woggle’s arrest, Peeping Tom sets the housemates a topic for discussion,” Andy the narrator intoned portentously. “The topic tonight is their deepest feelings.”

Coleridge stirred his second mug of tea of the working day. Those he had at home did not count.

Trisha bustled in, pulling off her coat.

“You’ve arrived just in time, Patricia,” said Coleridge. “Our suspects are about to discuss that most significant and sublime of all subject matters: themselves.”

“Suspects and victim, sir.”

It was early, and Trisha was not in the mood for Coleridge’s superior tone, besides which, she felt that some respect at least was due to the dead. Coleridge merely smiled wearily.

On the screen Garry had taken the floor. “I’m not going to mess you about,” he said. “I’ve not always been a very nice person.”

“You still ain’t,” Jazz chipped in, but nobody laughed. Instead they all hung on to the intense, caring expressions that they had had assumed when Garry had begun.

Coleridge pressed pause. “You see how none of them share Jazz’s joke? This is confession time. It’s serious stuff. A matter of faith. Garry is worshipping at the altar of his own significance, and Jazz is laughing in church.”

“Sir, if we have to stop every time any of these people annoy you we’ll never get through even this tape.”

“I can’t help it, Patricia. They’ve ground me down.” But Coleridge knew he was being stupid and resolved to make an effort.

Garry began his story. “Like I said, I was a bit of a geezer, you know what I mean? Little bit o’ this, little bit o’ that, dodgy stuff, done some rotten things that I don’t mind admitting I’m not proud of, but at the end of the day, right, I done ’em and that’s me and I can’t change that. Truth is, I wanted it large and I wasn’t too fussed about who I had a go at to get it. You know what I’m saying?”

There were murmurs of sympathy but not very enthusiastic ones.

“I think the truth of the matter was, right,” Garry continued, “I didn’t love myself.”

Now they all nodded earnestly. This they understood. Garry’s other influences – the fighting, the boozing, the dodgy dealing – might have been different from their own, but when it came to that central subject of not quite loving oneself enough, they understood exactly what he meant.

“I know exactly what you fookin’ mean,” Moon said.

“I don’t think I was letting myself in,” Garry continued.

Coleridge’s resolve to keep quiet had lasted less than a minute. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Why do they all talk as if they’re in therapy! Even Garry. Just listen to him! ‘I wasn’t letting myself in.’ What on earth does that mean? He’s a yobbo, for heaven’s sake! Not a sociology graduate! Where do they learn all these ridiculous empty phrases?”

“Oprah, sir.”

“Who?”

Trisha could not tell whether Coleridge was joking. She let it go.

Back in the house, oblivious to how much they would one day annoy a senior police officer, the confessional continued.

“I just know exactly what you mean, I really do,” Moon was saying, “and I think it’s really dead strong of you that you can say it.”

Nourished by the support, Garry pressed on. Loving himself by pretending to hate himself. “Anyway, I was getting into a lot of coke at the time, you know, quite a big habit, doing five hundred notes a week, bosh, straight up my hooter. Yes, please. Thank you very much. We like that. Blowing a grand was nothing to me. Nothing. I’m