Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“So the sheet points towards Jazz, then,” said Hooper.

“Well, perhaps, but we’d expect his presence to be detected more strongly, since he wore the sheet after Geraldine and her team had arrived.”

“Yes, convenient, that, wasn’t it?” Hooper observed drily. “Covers his tracks very nicely, except that if one of the others had worn it too we would expect their presence to show more strongly also. After all, the killer would have been sweating like a pig when he put it on.”

“But all the other three have come up equally.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Which is a bit weird in itself, isn’t it?” said Trish. “Sort of supports the idea that they were all in it, and they had a pact, to divide suspicion.”

“Well, anyway, at least it rules the girls out,” said Hooper.

“You think so?” Coleridge enquired.

“Well, doesn’t it?”

“Only if the sheet under discussion was the one the killer used to hide under, which it probably is, but we can’t be certain. We know that it’s the sheet Jazz grabbed after the Peeping Tom people had entered the house, but can we be sure it was the one that the killer dropped onto the pile when he returned to the sweatbox?”

“Well, it was on top.”

“Yes, but the pile was fairly jumbled, and all the sheets were the same dark colour. More than one sheet may have been on top, so to speak. The tape is not entirely clear.”

“So it doesn’t help us at all, then?” said Trish.

“Well, I think it could strengthen a case; it just couldn’t make one. If there was further evidence against Jazz, this sheet would help, that’s all.”

For six hours the house had been completely empty, the thirty cameras and forty microphones recording nothing but empty rooms and silence. Six hours of nothing, which had been diligently watched by millions of computer-owners all over the world.

It had begun at three o’clock that afternoon when the police arrived and collected all of the housemates, taking them away without explanation. Naturally this caused a sensation. The lunchtime news bulletins were filled with breathless stories of group conspiracies, and halfway round the world, down in the southern hemisphere, newspaper editors preparing their morning editions considered risking pre-emptive headlines announcing “THEYALLDUNNIT!”

The reality made everybody look stupid, particularly the police.

“A tape measure!” said Gazzer as he and the others re-entered the house. “A fahkin’ tape measure! That’s what Constable Plod’s using to catch a killer!”

It had been Trisha’s idea to take all of the housemates down to the Peeping Tom rehearsal house at Shepperton and ask them to walk the journey taken by the killer, thereby enabling a comparison to be made with the number of strides taken on the video. Coleridge had thought it was worth a try, but the results had been disappointing and inconclusive. A tall person might have scuttled, a short one might have stretched. The sheet made it impossible to work out clearly the nature of the killer’s gait, and so the inmates were released without further comment.

Gazzer’s frustration was echoed across the nation. “The fahkin’ FBI have got spy satellites and billion-dollar databases, and what have our lot got? A fahkin’ tape measure!”

Hooper had to ring David’s doorbell for a long time before he could get him to answer it. While he waited on the steps of his apartment building the three or four reporters who were hanging about fired questions at him.

“Are you here to arrest him?”

“Was he in league with Sally?”

“Was it all of them that did it? Was it planned in the sweatbox?”

“Do you accept your incompetence in so far not making an arrest?”

Hooper remained silent until finally he was able to announce his credentials into David’s intercom and gain admittance.

David greeted him at the lift dressed in a suit of beautiful silk pyjamas. He looked tired. He had been home for only three days but he was already heartily sick of the one thing he had gone into the house to get: fame.

“They don’t want me,” he moaned when finally Hooper found himself inside the beautiful flat that David shared with his beautiful cat. “They want the man that bitch Geraldine Hennessy created. A vain, nasty probable murderer. Vain and nasty I can handle, lots of stars are guilty of that, but probable murderer is something of a career no-no. If only that silly girl had not got herself killed. It’s ruined everything for me.” He was entirely unabashed about his take on Kelly’s death.

“You think I’m a right bastard, don’t you?” he continued, making Hooper coffee from his beautiful shiny cappuccino machine. “Because I don’t pretend to forget my own interests and reasons for going into that house now that the girl is dead? Well, excuse me, but I do not intend to add hypocrisy to my many other faults, which seem now to have become a part of the national consciousness. She was a stranger to me, and if she hadn’t been killed I might have had my chance to shine. To show people all the things I have to offer. To be the leading man. Instead it appears that I’ve been cast in the role of villain.”

“And are you a villain?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sergeant! You’re worse than that silly bitch Chloe. If I had killed her do you think I’d be telling you? But, as it happens, I didn’t. What possible motive could I have?”

“Fuck Orgy Eleven.”

David took it well. He clearly had not been expecting this, but he hardly let it show. “Oh, so you know about that, then? Well, all right. I admit it, I’m a porn star. It’s not a crime, but it’s not very classy either, and by some appalling coincidence it turned out that the girl Kelly knew. Yes, of course I was hoping that she would keep quiet about it. But I can assure you, I didn’t feel strongly enough about it to murder her.”

They talked for a little while longer, but David had very little to add to the statement he had made on the night of the murder. Except to expand on his reasons for suspecting Gazzer. “He really truly hated her for what she said about his son, you know. He tried to cover it up a bit, but I know how to spot the signs. I’m an actor, you see…” David’s voice trailed off. His handsome arrogance seemed to evaporate from him and he looked tired. Tired and sad.

Hooper got up to leave, but as he did so he asked one more question. “If Kelly had not been killed,” he said, “if the show had proceeded as they normally do, do you honestly believe that the sort of exposure you or anyone else could get on these things could ever lead to proper work – I mean, as a real actor or whatever?”

“Not really, no, sergeant,” David conceded. “But, you see, I was desperate. Desperate to be a famous actor, certainly, but if I couldn’t have that I was happy to settle for just being famous.”

“Well, you got your wish,” said Hooper. “I hope you enjoy it.”

Outside the building the assembled press pack snapped and barked as he forced his way through to his car.

“It’s Thursday night,” said Andy the narrator, “and time for the housemates to make their nominations for this week’s eviction.”

Again everybody nominated Sally.

“She’s just got so strange,” Jazz said, when Peeping Tom asked him why he’d nominated her. “I mean, she sleeps on her own out in the garden and she’s so intense. It’s a real strain having her around.”

The other four housemates who nominated her all had much the same reason. Moon put it most succinctly. “I’m just sick to death of her being so fookin’ moody…”