Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“He could have done it inside the box,” said Hooper thoughtfully. “Why didn’t he do it in the box?”

“Or she,” Coleridge reminded Hooper, “or she. We refer to the murderer as a he for convenience’s sake but we must never ever forget that it could be a woman.”

“Yes, all right, sir, I know. But what I’m saying is that nobody would have known, if he or she had done it inside the box, if a hand had reached out in the darkness holding a small knife, which the murderer could easily have sneaked in with him. It would have been relatively simple to just slit a throat in the dark and wait until people smelt blood, or felt it. By the time anybody realized that the warm stuff flowing all over them wasn’t sweat they’d all have been drenched in it. Maybe that’s what he planned.”

“There was no small knife in the box when we searched it, or in the room.”

“Well, sir, if he’d suddenly decided to follow the victim to the toilet instead, he could have put it back in the kitchen drawer when he got the bigger one.”

“I don’t think so, sergeant. How could he have been sure of his kill in that darkness? Whether he’d stabbed the right person and whether he’d finished the job properly? Chances are it would have been a terrible mess. He would have just cut off a nose or something, or somebody else’s nose, or his own fingers.”

“Well, he had to do it some time. How would he have known that a better chance was going to emerge?”

“He didn’t know, but he was waiting. If the chance hadn’t come, my guess is that he would have carried on waiting.”

“For how long? Until his prey got voted out and escaped him altogether?”

“Ah, but he or she knew that the prey hadn’t been nominated that week, giving at least eight days’ grace.”

“All I’m saying,” the sergeant insisted, “is that if I was desperate to kill somebody in that house, I would have reckoned a crowded, darkened sweatbox, inside which everybody was drunk, to be about the best shot I was going to get.”

“Well, the drinking is a factor, surely. I suppose he knew that people would have to start going to the lavatory at some point.”

“He couldn’t be certain.”

“No, he couldn’t be certain of anything. However and whenever he chose to do it, this was always going to be a risky sort of murder.”

Coleridge looked at the time code on the video. They had pressed pause at 11.38. He knew that when he pressed play the code would tick over to 11.39 and Kelly Simpson would emerge from the sweatbox to take what would be the final brief walk of her life.

Kelly Simpson, so young, so excited, so certain of her splendid fun-filled destiny, gone into that stupid, pointless house to die. In Coleridge’s mind there appeared the image of how she had been on that very first day in the house, jumping into the pool with excitement, shrieking about how “wicked” it all was. And wicked was without doubt the word, because the time was now 11.38 on Kelly’s last day in the house, and in a few more minutes she would be in a pool once more. A pool of her own blood.

“The point I’m making, sir,” Hooper pressed on, “is that if he was planning to kill her, which we have presumed he was, then he must have been considering the possibility of doing her inside the sweatbox. He could not have known for certain that she would go to the loo, or that he would be able to conceal his identity when he followed her into it.”

Coleridge stared at the screen for a long time. Difficult to believe that there were eight people in that foolish little plastic construction. “Unless the catalyst for the murder did not occur until after they had entered the box,” he mused. “Unless whatever it was that made the killer want Kelly dead did not occur until moments before she ran to the toilet, and in fact he ran after her in an act of spontaneous fury.”

“Or fear,” Hooper added.

“Yes, that’s right. Or fear. After all, since none of these people knew each other before they entered the house…”

“Or so we have been told, sir.” This remark came from Trisha, who had just returned with a round of teas.

“Yes, that’s right, constable, so we have been told,” said Coleridge. “We have been working on the theory that the catalyst that provoked the murder must have taken place at some point between the housemates entering the house and their entering the box. But of course something terrible might have happened once they were inside the box.”

“Well, it would certainly explain why the people at Peeping Tom have no idea about a motive,” Trisha conceded, sugaring Coleridge’s tea for him.

“It would indeed. And this situation was after all developing into an orgy.”

Coleridge pronounced the word “orgy” with a hard “g”. Hooper wondered whether he did it deliberately and rather thought he must.

“Quite a volatile environment, I should imagine. An orgy,” Coleridge continued.

“Are you suggesting a rape, sir?” said Trisha. “That someone forced themselves upon Kelly and then killed her in order to avoid the consequences?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a rape turned into a murder.”

“But the others? We’ve talked to them all. They didn’t notice anything. I mean, you simply could not keep a thing like that quiet.”

“Couldn’t you? In that environment? Besides, consider the possibility that they were all conspirators. That they were all covering up for the one who actually did the dirty work.”

“You mean perhaps they all wanted Kelly dead?”

“Perhaps,” said Coleridge. “It would certainly explain the startling lack of evidence in any of their statements.”

“You think that perhaps she had something on them, that she knew something about them all?”

Coleridge accepted his mug of tea from Trisha without looking at her. Instead he continued to stare at the box on the screen. He was imagining something very ugly. “Or because they’d all done something to her,” he said finally.

“Some kind of group abuse?” Hooper said. “A gangbang?”

Coleridge wanted to tell Hooper to use some other more suitable term, but he knew that there wasn’t one. For the umpteenth time he pressed play and 11.38 ticked over to 11.39. Kelly emerged from the sweatbox.

Geraldine was thrilled. Thrilled and very excited.

When asked to describe the scene later to the police, everyone who had been in the box with her that night commented on just how happy had been her mood. Almost hysterical, one or two of them had said.

And well Geraldine might have been happy. It was clear to them all as they watched the grey, translucent plastic box almost begin to throb that her plan was working and that real sex truly was on the cards. They had been in the box for just half the allotted four hours, and there had clearly already been some quite specific erotic activity, and it seemed certain that there would be more.

The shouts and shrieks and smart-alec comments of the first rush of embarrassed excitement had died down, and now only murmurs and whispers could be heard. The people inside the box were clearly very drunk and very disoriented after their two hours of sweating and writhing in the complete darkness of their little plastic hut.

Clearly anything might happen. And of course it did.

It was about ten minutes after Jazz’s voice had been heard suggesting a touching game in which people were to attempt to identify each other in the darkness that the plastic flaps at the entrance to the sweatbox parted, and Kelly emerged.

“Aye aye,” said Geraldine. “Piss break.”

Bob Fogarty winced and concentrated on his monitors.