Dead Famous

that dreadful house without first being arranged, manipulated and packaged by the producer. Nothing, ladies and gentleman, not even murder most foul. Therefore let us be quite clear about this. The murderer was… you, Geraldine Hennessy!” Coleridge pointed his finger and the cameras swung around to follow its direction.

For once Geraldine found herself at the wrong end of the lens.

“You’re out of your mind!” Geraldine gasped.

“Am I? Well, I think you’d know something about that, Ms Hennessy.”

Trisha entered the editing box carrying a plastic bag filled with video tapes. She went up to Bob Fogarty and whispered in his ear.

“I can’t leave now,” Fogarty protested.

“I can cover it,” said his assistant, Pru, eagerly. All her life she had longed for just such a chance.

“I’m afraid I must insist, sir,” said Trisha, whispering once more into Fogarty’s ear.

Fogarty rose from his seat, took up his family-sized bar of milk chocolate, and left the editing box.

Pru took over the controls. “Camera four,” she said. “Slow creep in on Coleridge.”

Down on the stage the object of this command was in full flow.

“Perhaps you will allow me to explain,” Coleridge said. “First let us consider motive.” Coleridge was standing tall now, strong and commanding. This was not just because his performance muscles, which had for so long lain dormant, were flexing themselves, but also because he knew that success could only come with confidence. She had to believe that the game was up.

“Well, a motive is simple enough, it’s the oldest one of the lot. Not hate, not love, but greed. Greed, pure and simple. Kelly Simpson died to make you rich, Ms Hennessy. The whole media establishment expected series three of House Arrest to be a failure. The Woggle affair drew attention to you, certainly, but it was Kelly’s death that turned your show into the biggest television success story in history, as you knew it would! Can you deny it?”

“No, of course not,” Geraldine said. “That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

Geraldine was alone now on the studio floor. The happy throng of excited young audience members and studio staff had drawn back to form a large circle. Geraldine stood in the middle of this, like a lioness at bay, the focus of that vast room, three big studio cameras hovering around her, for all the world like great hunting animals of prey.

Beyond them, still standing on the stage with Chloe and the eight housemates, was Coleridge, returning Geraldine’s defiant stare. “You have been clever, Ms Hennessy, brutally, fiendishly clever. I do believe your finest hour, perhaps, was allowing the early profits from the worldwide interest that Kelly’s murder produced to be given away. Oh yes, that certainly made me wonder, when your editor, Bob Fogarty, told us of your fury at the missed opportunity, a million lost? Perhaps two? And then, I thought, what a small price to avoid suspicion falling immediately upon your shoulders, as since then you have milked hundreds of millions of dollars from your ghoulish crime.”

“Now you be careful, chief inspector,” Geraldine said. “You’re on live television here. The whole world is watching while you make a fool of yourself.” The mention of money had put the spirit back into Geraldine. Coleridge’s accusation had certainly been a shock, but she could not imagine on what grounds he was going to base it, let alone prove it. Meanwhile, the House Arrest drama continued and the profits kept on mounting.

“You may bluster all you wish, Ms Hennessy,” Coleridge replied, “but I intend to prove that you are the murderer and then I intend to see you punished under the full majesty of the law. Let me say now that I knew even on the night of the crime that things were not as they appeared. Despite your impressive efforts, there was just so much that was wrong. Why was it that cameraman Larry Carlisle, the only person to witness the cloaked murderer follow Kelly to the lavatory, thought that the killer had emerged only two minutes after Kelly left the sweatbox, while the people watching on video could see very well from their machines that it had been more like five?”

“Larry Carlisle has been proved to -”

“Not a very reliable witness, I accept that, but on this occasion I suggest reliable enough. Otherwise, why was it that the blood which flowed from Kelly’s wounds seemed to accumulate so very quickly? The doctor was surprised, and so was I. Who would have thought the young girl to have so much blood in her, to paraphrase the Bard. A great deal of blood to flow in the two minutes that was supposed to have passed between the murder and your arriving on the scene, Ms Hennessy, but not so much if you reckon on the five minutes that Carlisle thought had passed.”

“Not all blood flows at the same speed, for fuck’s sake!” Geraldine barked, forgetting for a moment that she was on live television.

“Then there was the vomit,” said Coleridge. “Kelly had been drinking heavily, and she rushed to the lavatory in a mighty hurry, didn’t she? But according to what we saw, when she arrived she simply sat down. More curious still, even though the lavatory bowl had clearly been scrubbed clean, the lavatory seat had a few flecks of vomit on it. Vomit which has been confirmed as having emanated from Kelly. How could this be? I asked myself. Watching the tape again I can see that Kelly does not throw up, she merely sits… and yet I know that she was sick. I have vomit from her mouth, I have her vomit from the lavatory seat. Without doubt this is a girl who ran into the lavatory, knelt before it and was sick. Yet when I watch the tape, she just sits down.”

Up in the studio editing box, Pru was having the gig of her life. She had taken over the controls of the edit box and, working live and entirely off-script, she had first managed to ensure perfect camera coverage of the scene unfolding down in the studio, barking cool clear instructions to the shocked team of operators. And now she excelled herself by managing to dial up footage of the murder tape and drop it into the broadcast mix as Coleridge spoke. Once more viewers around the world watched the familiar footage of Kelly entering the toilet and sitting down, this time seeing it in an entirely new and mystifying context.

Down on the studio floor the thrilling confrontation continued.

“Next I come to the matter of the sound on the tapes that were recorded during the murder. In the earlier part of the evening much of what was said inside that grim plastic box was clearly audible, and, I might add, little of it did any of the people you see standing on this stage much credit.”

Coleridge turned to the eight ex-housemates. “Really, you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re not animals, you know.”

“It wasn’t me!” Layla protested like an anxious school child. “I’d been evicted, I wasn’t there!”

Such was the authority of Coleridge’s performance that, instead of telling him to mind his own business, the other seven housemates, even Gazzer, blushed and stared unhappily at their feet.

“But I’m straying from the point,” Coleridge admitted, “which is that while Kelly remained in the sweatbox we could hear what was being said, but from the moment that Kelly entered the lavatory the sound becomes vague, a mere cacophony of murmuring. Why? Why could we no longer make out any of the voices?”

“Because they were all too pissed, of course, you stupid -” Geraldine bit her lip. She knew he had no proof. She had no need to lose her cool.

“I don’t think so, Ms Hennessy. Seven people do not simultaneously begin to mumble in unison. What had happened? Why had the sound changed? Was it because the sound that I could hear on the tape of the murder was not the sound that was being generated in the sweatbox? Could it be that the person who made that tape did not wish for any discernible voices to be heard from the box during the murder because she did not know who it was who was going to be killed? Strange it would be indeed if the voice of the victim could still be heard in the sweatbox after her death. Was this the reason that the sound on the murder tape was so revealingly anonymous?”

Geraldine remained silent.

“Let us leap forward for a moment in time, to when the note predicting the second murder was discovered. Oh, what a fine sensation that made. But for me, Ms Hennessy, that note was the absolute proof I needed to convince me that the murder was not committed by a housemate.”