Ben Elton - Dead Famous

This offer pretty much clinched it, the prospect of being rich and famous being enough inducement for anyone.

“Just one extra thing,” said Dervla. “If the police make an arrest on the outside – you know, David or whoever – you have to tell us, OK? We can’t be the only people in the country who don’t know.”

“Fine, whatever, I promise, absolutely,” said Geraldine, thinking to herself that she would have to give that one some thought.

The morning after Sally’s attempted suicide Coleridge was forced for the first time to allow a public statement to be issued, something which he believed to be no part of the police’s responsibilities. But Sally was out of danger, and the world press wanted to know whether the police intended to arrest her.

“No,” Coleridge said, reading laboriously from prepared notes, “there are no plans to arrest Miss Sally Copple for the murder of Miss Kelly Simpson, for the obvious reason that there is absolutely no evidence against her. Her own statements regarding a hereditary disposition towards murder and the fear that she might have done it while in a trance do not constitute grounds for an arrest. The investigation continues. Thank you and good day.”

After he had retreated into the building, Hooper and Trisha joined him.

“So what do you think, then, sir?” Hooper asked. “I mean, I know we have no proof, but do you think Sally did it?”

“I don’t,” Trisha said quickly, causing both Hooper and Coleridge to look at her curiously.

“I don’t think she did it either, Patricia,” said Coleridge. “And I don’t think she did not do it either.”

Coleridge was of course a show-off in his small way, and he enjoyed the confused looks that this little paradox engendered. “I know she did not do it,” he said. “The killer is without doubt still in place.”

Dervla’s little secret finally began to unravel when Coleridge started to view Geraldine’s “bathroom tapes”, the hoarded compilation of flesh-revealing shots that she was saving for an X-rated Christmas video.

“She just seems to love brushing her teeth,” Coleridge observed.

Geraldine had retained quite a lot of footage of Dervla’s dental hygiene routine, because this was the point of the day when quiet and reserved Dervla was at her most sexy and coquettish. Not just because she was either in her underwear or a wet T-shirt or a towel, having just had her shower, but also because standing at the mirror, particularly in the early weeks, she seemed so jolly and full of fun, smiling and winking at her reflection in the glass. It was almost as if she was flirting with herself.

“She’s not like that when she does her teeth in the evening,” Coleridge remarked.

“Well, maybe she’s a morning type of person,” said Hooper. “So what? She’s not the first girl to smile at her reflection.”

Coleridge flipped the switch on a second VCR machine, a rather complicated new one that he had only partly mastered. He had been able to convince the bureaucrats who administered his budget that the nature of the evidence he had at his disposal justified the hiring of a great deal of video and TV equipment. His only problem now was that it was so very complicated. Hooper could work it all, of course, and made no secret of displaying his superiority.

“What I could to for you, sir, is upload the tapes from the VCR onto digital format in my camcorder, bung it across a flywire into the new iBook they gave us, chop up the relevant bits and crunch it down via the movie-making software, export it to a Jpeg file and email it straight to you. You could watch it on your mobile phone when you’re stuck at traffic lights if we get you a WAR”

Coleridge had only just learned how to use the text message service on his phone. “I do not have my phone on when I am in my car, sergeant. And I hope that you don’t either. You’ll be aware, of course, that using one when driving is illegal.”

“Yes, sir, absolutely.”

They returned to the job in hand. Coleridge had lined up a moment of tape from a discussion that the group had had on day three about nominations.

“I’m at my most vulnerable to nomination in the mornings,” Dervla was saying, “because that’s when I’m going to snap at people and hurt their feelings. I’m crap at mornings, I just don’t want to talk to anyone.”

Coleridge turned off his second machine and returned to the tape showing Dervla brushing her teeth.

“She may not like talking to anyone,” Coleridge observed, “but she certainly likes talking to herself.”

On screen Dervla winked again into the mirror and said, “Hallo, mirror, top of the morning to you.”

“Now watch her eyes,” Coleridge said, still staring intently at the scene. Sure enough, on the screen Dervla’s sparkling green eyes flicked downwards and remained on what must have been the reflection of her belly button for perhaps thirty seconds.

“Maybe she’s contemplating her navel, sir. It’s a very cute one.”

“I’m not interested in observations of that kind, sergeant.”

Now Dervla’s eyes came up again, smiling, happy eyes. “Oh, I love these people!” she laughed.

“This tape is from day twelve, the morning after the first round of nominations,” Coleridge said. “You’ll recall that nobody nominated Dervla, although, of course, she’s not supposed to have any idea about that.”

Hooper wondered whether Coleridge was onto something. Everybody knew that Dervla was in the habit of laughing and talking to herself before the bathroom mirror. It had always been seen as rather an attractive, fun habit. Could there be more to it than that?

“Look, I’ve had some of the technical boffins make up a tooth-brushing compilation,” said Coleridge.

Hooper smiled. Only Coleridge thought you needed “boffins” to edit a video compilation. He himself made little home movies on his PowerBook all the time.

Coleridge put in his compilation tape and together they watched as time and again Dervla dropped cryptic little comments at her reflection in the mirror before brushing her teeth.

“Oh God, I wonder how they see me out there,” she said. “Don’t kid yourself, Dervla girl, they’ll all love Kelly, she’s a lovely girl.”

Coleridge switched off the video. “What were Dervla’s chances of winning the game at the point when Kelly was killed?”

“The running popularity poll on the Internet had her at number two,” Hooper replied, “as did the bookies, but it was pretty irrelevant, because Kelly was number one by miles.”

“So Kelly was Dervla’s principal rival in terms of public popularity?”

“Yes, but of course she couldn’t have known that. Or at least she’s certainly not supposed to.”

“No, of course not.”

Once more Coleridge pressed play on the video machine that held his toothbrushing compilation.

“I wonder who the public loves most?” Dervla mused archly to herself. Moments later her eyes flicked downwards.

Coleridge picked up the phone. It was Hooper, calling from the Peeping Tom production office. He sounded pleased.

“I’ve got the duty log here, sir. You remember Larry Carlisle?”

“Yes, the operator who was working in the camera runs on the night of the murder?”

“That’s the one. Well, he’s been a busy boy, seems to have taken advantage of the fact that a number of people stopped working on the show out of boredom. He’s done twice as many shifts as anyone else, often eight hours on, eight hours off. Loves the show, can’t seem to get enough of it. And, what’s more, he’s covered the bathroom on almost every morning so far. If Dervla’s chatting through the mirror to anyone, she’s chatting to Larry Carlisle.”