Ben Elton - Popcorn

He had no choice. He desperately needed the air time.

Thirty years before, when he had joined the police, Cornell had not done so in order to turn into a showbiz tart. But that was what had happened. He, who as a boy had dreamt of catching crooks, now spent half his time having lunch with them. In fact he had become one himself. His actions were no longer governed by the need to uphold justice as laid down by law. They were governed by the necessity of balancing the various social and political consequences of whatever action he took. He wasn’t a cop any more, he was a politician – and a crooked one at that. All city officials were, whether they liked it or not, because the whole sad, crumbling edifice was built on lies and halftruths. Nobody could tell it straight any more because there was no straight to tell. Every group, be it defined racially, financially, geographically, sexually, by religion or by choice of knitwear, had its own truth. And that truth was diametrically opposed to everyone else’s truth. More than that, it was threatened by everyone else’s truth. The city was out of control and the police chief’s number one job, like that of every politician, was to persuade people it wasn’t.

For that he needed profile. He needed air time.

And today he was going to get it. The chopper landed and Cornell stepped masterfully and purposefully into a barrage of clicking cameras. He was a general in a war zone, and beyond the cameras he could see the might of his army manoeuvring into position. It felt good. This was a dream come true. Suddenly, when he had least dared to hope for it (which is to say, three months before the city elections), Cornell had a real, one hundred per cent macho, shitkickin’, buttwhippin’, asskissin’ siege to deal with. A genuine proper piece of highrolling, highoctane, highprofile police work, which above all, above double all, above all and hallelujah, was race free ! A racefree crime! In election year! Chief Cornell thanked his stars. He thanked his God. He would have happily conceded that somewhere in his youth or childhood he must have done something good, because all his Christmases (or holiday seasons, as the city now referred to them) had come at once. For the first time in a long time he was dealing with a crime of citywide, statewide, national and international significance in which race was not an issue. He had never dared to dream he would see its like again.

Chief Cornell was himself black. He had experienced plenty of racism in his life and he hated it. But his particular private and current hatred of racism was to do not with his colour but with his job. He was the city’s top cop. He was proud of that and he wanted to do a good job, but racism, from whichever hue it emanated, had made that impossible. Proper police work was no longer an option available to him. Every day he encountered what appeared to be openandshut cases. The man killed the woman, the gang beat the guy. Simple, it would seem, but no, then it turns out that the main protagonists are of different races and suddenly the openandshut case turns into an impenetrable maze in which what people actually do is irrelevant. What matters is what the jury, and ultimately the public, feel about it.

But now, glory of glories, he had a racefree case. Victims and villains were the same colour. Imagine, Chief Cornell thought, if those had been black or Asian punks in there, shooting white Playboy centrefolds and holding little white girls hostage. Absolutely everything about the case would be different. Nearly as bad would be if the director or the model had been black and the punks white. Either way, the case would already be a political football, there would be pickets and protestors at the gates. It did not bear thinking about.

But the chief’s luck was in. Fate had delivered to him the perfect case in which to do, and above all be seen to do, a bit of proper policing, and by hell, Hades, glory and damnation, he was going to make the most of it.

Unfortunately for Chief Cornell, there was another chief on the scene and he was equally excited. Brad Murray, Chief of NBC News and Current Affairs, recognized the Delamitri siege as probably the sexiest bit of news and current affairs it had ever been his extreme good fortune to preside over.

‘If this one wasn’t true,’ Murray remarked to his gorgeous power PA as they stepped off their own helicopter, ‘I’d never have dared to invent it.’

But it was true, and what was more the principal villain appeared to understand the central and overriding principle of news and current affairs: that the most important element in any drama is television.

In an armoured police command vehicle the two chiefs met: an irresistible force and an immovable object. Their quarrel was over who should put the call through to Bruce Delamitri’s house and open up negotiations with the villains. Understandably, Chief Cornell felt that it was a matter for the authorities. Chief Murray, however, reminded Cornell that Wayne Hudson had called the networks, not the cops, and had been most specific that he wanted to talk to a top news man.

A decade earlier, Cornell might have had a couple of his constables throw the NBC guy off the truck but not now. Not with elections looming, not with a city perpetually on edge. The police chief knew he had to cooperate with the media every bit as much as they had to cooperate with him, and so a compromise was reached. Having instructed AT amp;T to block all incoming calls to the Delamitri mansion (every acquaintance Bruce had in LA was of course trying to call him), the two chiefs agreed that they would call Wayne together, on a party line.

As it happened, they need not have bothered arguing about it because Wayne did all the talking anyway.

‘OK, shut up and listen up,’ he barked into the phone, without even bothering to enquire who was calling. ‘This is Wayne Hudson, the Mall Murderer. Now me and my baby are in control here, you understand? We got Bruce Delamitri, we got Brooke Daniels, who is an actress by the way – you tell your reporters that, you hear? Also we got Bruce’s wife and their daughter, Velvet, who is as cute as a button and will make very good TV, whatever I decide to do with her. Now you just give me a number right now where I can call you back when I’m ready with my demands.’

Police Chief Cornell gave the number, and having done so began to try and negotiate. He was, after all, trained in this type of thing.

‘OK, Wayne,’ he said. ‘I think you want to make a deal.’

‘What I want is for you to shut the fuck up, OK?’ said Wayne. ‘I will talk to you when I’m ready, and when I do it will be me that says what’s what. Understand? You know what I’m capable of. Don’t call back now. Meantime, you have a nice day.’

The police chief and the NBC chief put their respective phones down and looked at each other.

‘Guess we’ll have to wait, Chief,’ said the cop. ‘Maybe this would be a good time for them to put a little makeup on me?’

‘You got it, Chief,’ said the newsman.

Inside the house, Wayne too had replaced the receiver.

‘What did you mean about me being good TV?’ Velvet asked, her voice understandably rather shaky. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘It’s OK, baby,’ said her mother, though it clearly wasn’t. ‘Are you holding us hostage?’

Wayne poured himself another drink; he felt he’d earned it. Scout was still sipping at her first crème de menthe. She was not a big boozer.

‘In a manner of speaking, you’re hostages,’ said Wayne. ‘Basically, what I got here is a plan.’

‘ Wayne ’s had a plan right from the start,’ Scout said proudly.

‘What plan?’ Bruce was angry. He shouted at Wayne, ‘What are you talking about?’