Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“Is it?” Coleridge snapped caustically. “In that case I wonder why the producers never seem to miss a single opportunity to broadcast sex talk or to display breasts.”

“Well, breasts are fascinating too, aren’t they, sir? People like looking at them. I know I do. Besides which, when people go to the real zoo, what do they like looking at most? Monkeys’ bums and rumpo, that’s what.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous at all, sir. If you had the choice of watching two elephants either having their tea or having it off, which would you choose? People are interested in sex. You might as well face it.”

“I think we’re straying from the point.”

“Do you, sir?” said Trisha, who was looking at Hamish’s face on the screen. “I don’t. This house was riddled with sexual tension and that’s got to be relevant, hasn’t it? For instance, just look who Hamish is staring at.”

“It’s impossible to say.”

“You’ll see in the wide shot, it’s coming up next.” Trisha touched the play button on the ancient VCR and, sure enough, the picture cut to a wide shot of the laughing, slightly drunken group lolling about on the couches.

“He’s looking at Kelly now, sir, and then he starts staring at Layla. He’s checking them out. The psychologist on the show says that during the first hours in the house the group will be thinking principally about who they’re attracted to.”

“Now that is a surprise, constable! And there was me imagining that they were thinking about the value of their immortal souls and the definition of God.” Coleridge regretted his outburst. He did not approve of sarcasm and he liked Trisha and valued her as an officer. He knew that she did not speculate idly. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m still having some difficulty getting over my exasperation with these people.”

“That’s all right, sir. They certainly are a bunch of pains. But I do think it’s important that we find out who fancies whom. I mean, in this unique murder environment jealousy has to be a fairly likely motive.”

“Who do you think fancies Woggle, then?” Hooper asked, laughing at the figure who had just appeared on the screen.

Woggle. Real job: anarchist. Star sign: claims to be all twelve.

“I mean, let’s face it,” Hooper continued. “If you were looking for a potential murder victim out of this lot, it would have to be Woggle, wouldn’t it? I mean, that bloke is just asking for it.”

“Any white bloke with dreadlocks is asking for it in my opinion,” Trisha remarked, adding, “Woggle was Geraldine the Gaoler’s private little project, sir.”

“What do you mean by that, constable?”

Trisha was referring to one of the confidential internal policy briefings that she had secured from the Peeping Tom offices on the day of the murder. “He was the only inmate of the house that Peeping Tom actually approached , rather than the other way round. In Geraldine Hennessy’s opinion he was, and I quote, ‘guaranteed good telly. A natural irritant, like the grain of sand in the oyster shell around which a pearl will grow’.”

“Very poetic,” Coleridge remarked. “I must say, it’s a stretch of the imagination to think of Mr Woggle as a pearl, but it takes all sorts, I suppose.”

“She saw him on the lunchtime news on the day of the annual May Day riots, sir.”

“Ah. So he was arrested? Now that is interesting.”

“He wasn’t arrested, sir, he was being interviewed by the BBC. It was Woggle’s claim to fame.”

“I saw that interview you did ’bout anarchy and all that malarkey,” Moon was saying to Woggle, sensing a kindred alternative spirit. “You were fookin’ magic, babe. Double wicked.”

“Thank you, sweet lady,” Woggle replied.

“But what was the story with the medieval jester’s hat? Was it, like, making a point or what?”

“It was indeed making a point, O bald woman. When the so-called wise men have run out of answers it is time to talk to the fools.”

“So they talked to you, then,” said Jazz drily.

“Correctomundo, soul brother.” Woggle flashed what he believed was a smile of devilish subtlety but which, owing to his beard and the state of his teeth, looked like a few broken Polo mints buried in a hair-filled bathroom plug-hole.

“I couldn’t get to work that day,” Kelly complained. “They closed Oxford Street. How’s stopping people doing their shopping going to help anybody?”

Woggle did his best to explain, but his politics were not overburdened with detail or analysis. He seemed to recognize something he called “the system”, and he disapproved of this system in its entirety. “That’s it, really,” he said.

“So what is the system, then?” Kelly asked.

“Well, it’s all that capitalist, global, police, money, hamburger, American, fox-hunting, animal-testing, fascist-groove-thing, isn’t it?” Woggle explained in his dull, nasal monotone.

“Oh, right. I see.” Kelly sounded unconvinced.

“What we need is macrobiotic organic communities interacting with their environments in an atmosphere of mutual respect,” Woggle added.

“What the fahk are you talking about?” Garry enquired.

“Basically it would be nice if things were nicer.”

Once more Inspector Coleridge pressed pause. “I presume Woggle’s antagonism to ‘the system’ does not prevent him from living off it?”

“No, sir, that’s right,” Trish replied. “The one system he truly does understand is the social security system.”

“So the state can keep him fed and watered while he seeks to overthrow it? Very convenient, I must say.”

“Yes, sir, he thinks so too,” said Hooper. “Later on he has a huge row with the rest of them about it because they refuse to celebrate the irony of the fact that the state is funding him, its most bitter enemy.”

“Presumably because they, like the rest of us, have to fund the state.”

“That’s basically their point, yes.”

“Well, I’m delighted to discover that these people and I have at least one opinion in common. This Woggle, any history of fraudulent claims? False addresses? Double-drops, financial skulduggery, that sort of thing? Anything that might make him vulnerable to discovery?”

“No, sir, on that score he’s completely clean.”

There was a brief pause and then, almost uniquely, all three of them laughed. If there was one thing that Woggle wasn’t, it was clean.

“Shit, man,” Jazz observed, aghast. “Haven’t you ever heard of soap?”

Woggle had taken up what was to become his habitual position, crouching on the floor in the room’s only corner, his bearded chin resting on bony knees which he hugged close to his chest, his great horned dirty toenails poking out from his sandals.

Woggle was dirty in a way that only a person who has just emerged from digging a tunnel can be dirty. He had come straight to join the House Arrest team from his previous home, a 200-metre tunnel under the site of the proposed fifth terminal at Heathrow Airport. Woggle had suggested to Geraldine the Gaoler that perhaps he should take a shower before joining the team, but Geraldine, ever watchful for the elements that could be said to make up “good telly”, assured him that he was fine as he was. “Just be yourself,” she had said.

“Who’s that?” Woggle had replied. “For I am the sum of all my past lives and those I have yet to live.”

Woggle stank. Digging tunnels is hard physical work and every drop of sweat that he had sweated remained in the fabric of his filthy garments, a motley collection of old bits of combat gear and denim. If Woggle had worn a leather jacket (which, being an animal liberationist, of course he would never do) he would have looked like one of those disgusting old-style hell’s angels who never washed their Levi’s no matter how often they urinated on them.