Ben Elton - Dead Famous

“So, tell me, Patricia,” he said. “What are your thoughts? Do you think this information about Sally is significant – I mean, to our murder inquiry?”

“Well, sir, it certainly explains Sally’s touchiness about mental health. But on the whole I’m tempted to say that this puts her more out of the frame than into it. I mean, now we know why she said what she said the night she quarrelled with Moon.”

“Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you, constable, although it must be admitted that the similarity between Sally’s mother’s crime and the crime committed in the house is a pretty nasty coincidence. Anyway, whatever we might think, I doubt that the press will consider Sally exonerated if they ever get hold of this.”

Mrs Copple was awoken by the ringing of the telephone. Almost at the same time her doorbell began to sound. By seven thirty there were forty reporters in her front garden and her life was ruined.

“sally’s the one. just ask her mum” was the most pithy of the headlines.

“The press always find out everything,” Coleridge said sadly when Trisha told him what had happened. “They’re much better than us. Nothing can ever be kept from them. They don’t always publish, but they always know. They’re prepared to pay, you see, and if you’re prepared to pay for information, somebody will always be found to give it to you in the end.”

“Housemates, this is Chloe, can you hear me?”

Yes, they could hear her.

“The fifth person to leave the Peeping Tom house will be…”

The traditional pause…

“Sally!”

In that moment Sally made a little bit of TV history by becoming the first evictee from a programme of the House Arrest type not to shout “Yes!” and punch the air in triumph as if delighted to be going.

Instead she said, “So everybody out there thinks I did it too.”

“Sally,” Chloe continued, “you have ninety minutes to say your goodbyes and pack your bags and then we’ll be back to take you to your appointment with live TV!”

Sally went over to the kitchen area and made herself a cup of tea.

“I don’t think you did it, Sally,” said Dervla, but Sally only smiled.

Then she went into the confession box. “Hallo, Peeping Tom,” she said.

“Hallo, Sally,” said Sam, the soothing voice of Peeping Tom.

In the monitoring bunker Geraldine crouched close to the monitor, pen and pad in hand, ready to give Sam her lines. She knew she must play this one very carefully. Dangling before her was the prospect of some very good telly indeed. The result turned out to be even better than she had hoped.

“I expect by now the press have found out about my mum,” said Sally. “How she’s been held at Ringford Hospital for the last twenty years.”

“Horrible place,” whispered Geraldine, “the worst loony bin of the lot.”

“Ever since Kelly died I’ve been wondering,” said Sally. “Could I have done it? Is there some way I could have gone into a sort of trance? Got into the sweatbox and turned into my mother? I know that my mum told me she couldn’t remember a thing about when she did it, and when the police talked to me I couldn’t really remember even being in the sweatbox. So perhaps I did it and can’t remember that either? Was I in a box inside a box? My own black box? To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think it was me. Paranoid schizophrenics don’t cover their tracks, wear sheets and avoid getting even one drop of blood on themselves. I think it was too good to have been me. I don’t think I could commit the perfect murder. I know my mother didn’t when she killed my father… but it could have been me. I have to accept that. I just can’t remember.”

“Fu-u-u-ucking hell,” Geraldine breathed. “This is fa-a-a-a-abulous.”

“One thing I do know,” said Sally, “is that everybody will think it was me and that I’ll never escape that as long as I live. It’s obvious that the police haven’t got a clue. They’ll probably never arrest anyone, so for the rest of my life I’ll be seen as the black dyke nutter who murdered Kelly. Therefore, I’ve decided to make the rest of my life as short as possible.”

And with that Sally produced a kitchen knife from within the sleeve of her shirt. She had palmed it when she had made herself a cup of tea.

When Chloe went back on air she was able to announce yet another dramatic exit from the house. Not live as planned, because Sally had departed an hour earlier in an ambulance, her attempted suicide having been watched live on the Internet all over the world. She had managed to stab herself twice in the chest before Jazz burst into the confession box, having been alerted to do so by Peeping Tom.

Nobody yet knew whether she would survive her wounds or not.

Chloe explained all of this to the viewers, and promised a regular update throughout the show. “I’m afraid that we cannot show you the footage of Sally’s final, brilliant, heartfelt, totally honest and spiritual visit to the confession box, because apparently suicide is a crime and our legal people are worried that some authoritarian government office or other might attack us for showing you the truth . Right! I mean how fascist is that? Apparently you’re not grown up enough to see what’s actually going on in this world, which is so all about mind control and Brave New 1984-type stuff, which is not what Sally wanted at all!”

It was not a vintage performance, but Chloe’s autocue had been hastily assembled. The message was clear enough. Any attempt to stop Peeping Tom from exploiting the anguish of a deeply disturbed young woman was an outrageous infringement of the civil liberties of the viewer.

Chloe was able to show the public the footage of Jazz’s heroic and dramatic entrance into the confession box, when he managed to grab Sally’s hand and wrest the knife from her grasp. After that she introduced a compilation of footage of Sally’s brilliant weeks in the house.

Peeping Tom would of course have liked to cut live to the house to show the reactions of the other housemates to Sally’s horrifying act, but sadly they couldn’t, because Geraldine was currently in the house conducting a crisis negotiation with the remaining inmates. Trying to persuade them to carry on with the show.

“We can’t, we just can’t,” Dervla was saying. “Not now. People will think we’re absolute ghouls.”

Even as the Peeping Tom nurse had been rushing along the corridor under the moat in order to help Sally, the other inmates had been clamouring to leave. This would be financially disastrous for Peeping Tom, of course, particularly after such a dramatic crowd-pleaser as Sally’s attempted suicide. They stood to lose tens, possibly hundreds of millions of pounds.

“You’re wrong, Dervla, you’re wrong,” Geraldine said. “They love you out there, they admire your courage, they respect you, and if you have the guts to see this through they’ll respect you even more. Nobody thinks any of you five killed Kelly, they all think it was Sally, and it probably was. She just about confessed to it before she stabbed herself. In a way that’s kind of an end to the whole murder thing, isn’t it? Now all you lot have to do is sit out the rest of the game.”

“No way,” said Dervla. “I want out.”

“Me too,” said Jazz, still shaking violently from his encounter with Sally.

The others agreed. They had had enough.

In the end Geraldine offered the inducement that she had been expecting to have to use much earlier. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m doing pretty well out of all this, I won’t deny it. There’s no reason why you lot shouldn’t profit too. How about this? The prize is currently half a million. What if we double it and guarantee the other four a lump too… let’s say a hundred grand for the next one out, two hundred for the one after that, three hundred for whoever comes third, and four hund… No, half a mill for the runner-up? How about that? Not bad moolah for sitting on your arses for another few weeks, eh? If you agree now, the minimum all of you will make is a hundred grand.”