had been neatly broken, he shook Dervla’s hand and said, “Fair play to you, girl,” and the nation applauded him for it.
Inside, of course, Garry was seething. To have been duffed up by a bird, a
Watching Garry’s efforts to make up with Dervla on the police computer, Hooper did not believe a word of it. “He hates her. She’s number one on our Garry’s hate list,” he said.
“The place that Kelly used to occupy,” Trisha mused. “And Kelly, of course, got killed.”
They had all forgotten about the predictions envelope, and there was eager anticipation as Jazz solemnly opened it and they all dipped in. The whole thing reminded them of a happier, more innocent time in the house.
Peeping Tom had supplied some wine and there was much laughter as all the wrong predictions made six weeks earlier were read out.
“Woggle reckoned he’d be the only one left,” said Jazz.
“Fook me, Layla picked herself to win the whole thing!” laughed Moon.
“Listen to David!” shrieked Dervla. “‘I believe that by week seven I will have emerged as a healing force within the group.’”
“In your dreams, Dave!” Jazz shouted.
The laughter died somewhat when they came to Kelly’s prediction. Moon read it out, and it was a moment of pure pathos.
“‘I think that all the others are great people. I love them all big time and I shall be made up if I am still around by week seven. My guess is I’ll be out on week three or four.’”
There was silence as they all realized how right Kelly had been.
“What’s that one, then?” Moon asked, pointing at a piece of paper that had not yet been read out.
Hamish turned it over. It was written in the same blue pencil that Peeping Tom had provided to everybody but the handwriting was a scrawled mess, as if somebody had been writing without looking and also with their left hand. This, the police handwriting expert was later to confirm, was indeed how the message had been written.
“What does it say?” asked Moon.
Hamish read it out. “‘By the time you read this Kelly will be dead.’”
It took a moment for it to dawn on them just what had been said.
“Oh, my fook,” said Moon.
Somebody had known for certain that Kelly would die. Somebody had actually written out the prediction. It was too horrible to imagine.
“There’s more. Shall I read it?” Hamish asked after a moment.
They all nodded silently.
“‘I shall kill her on the night of the twenty-seventh day.’”
“Oh my God! He knew!” Dervla gasped.
Still Hamish had not finished. There was one final prediction in the note. “‘One of the final three will also die.’”
“Oh, my God,” Moon gasped. “No one’s touched that envelope in six fookin’ weeks. It could have been any of us wrote that.”
DAY FORTY-NINE. 12.05 a.m.
Woggle had taken to sleeping in his tunnel. He felt safe there. Safe from all the people who did not understand him. Safe to dig away at his hate. Planting it deeper with every blow of his pick. Watering it with his sweat.
Occasionally at night he would emerge to get water and to steal food. But more and more he existed entirely underground. In his tunnel.
The tunnel that he had dug to take his revenge.
Dig, dig, dig.
He would show them. He would show them all.
One evening, when the time had nearly come for what he had to do, Woggle took his empty sack and crept from his tunnel once more, but this time his mission was not for food. This time he made his way to a squat in London where he had once lived, a squat occupied by anarchists even stranger and more stern in their resolve than he was. These anarchists Woggle knew had the wherewithal to make a bomb.
When Woggle crept back to his tunnel just before the morning light the sack he carried was full.
DAY FORTY-NINE. 7.30 p.m.
Hamish was evicted in the usual manner, but nobody noticed very much. Try as Chloe might to drum up some interest in his departure, all anybody wanted to talk about was the sensational news that another murder was to take place.
The whole world buzzed with the news that one of the final three would die.
“It’s curious, isn’t it?” Coleridge said, inspecting the ugly scrawled note that lay in Geraldine’s office in a plastic evidence bag.
“It’s fucking chilling, if you ask me,” said Geraldine. “I mean, how the hell would he have known he was going to be in a position to do Kelly on day twenty-seven? I hadn’t even had the idea for the sweatbox then. Besides, he might have been evicted by then. I mean, he couldn’t get back into the house, could he? And what about this stuff about killing one of the last three? I mean, nobody knows who the last three will be. It’s up to the public”
“Yes,” said Coleridge. “It is all very strange, isn’t it? Do you think there’ll be another murder, Ms Hennessy?”
“Well, I don’t really see how there can be… On the other hand, he was right about Kelly, wasn’t he? I mean, the predictions envelope was put in the cupboard at the end of week one. There’ve been cameras trained on that cupboard ever since. There is no way it could have been interfered with. Somehow the killer
“It would certainly seem so.”
At that point Geraldine’s PA entered the office. “Two things,” said the PA. “First, I don’t know how you did it, Geraldine, but you did. The Americans have agreed to your price of two million dollars
“And the second thing?” asked Geraldine.
“Not such good news. Did you see Moon in the confession box? They want a million each, right now, up front, to stay in the house for another moment.”
“Where’s my cheque book?” said Geraldine.
“Isn’t that against the rules?” Coleridge asked.
“Chief inspector, this is a
“Oh yes, I was forgetting. I suppose that’s true.”
“And this show,” Geraldine crowed triumphantly, “goes right down to the wire.”
