The nation didn’t think that Garry was the murderer either. He was one of their favourites. Gazzer the Geezer had been amongst the early tabloid tips to win the game before it had turned into a real-life whodunit, and he rarely topped the poll when the media considered the identity of the killer.
Coleridge smiled to himself, a sad, rather superior smile. The only sort of smile he seemed able to muster these days. The nation did not really know Gazzer. They thought they did, but they didn’t. They had been given only his best bits, his chirpy one-liners, his unnerving ability to spot what he thought to be a snob or a clever dick, the relentless and gleeful way he wound up the snooty, self-important Layla. And the bold chunky penis end that had once been glimpsed peeping out from beneath his running shorts. An image that had immediately found its way onto T-shirts sold at Camden Lock market.
“Cyclops! In your bed!” Garry had shouted as if addressing a dog, before relocating the offending member, “Sorry, girls, it’s just I don’t wear no pants, see. They make my love furniture sweaty.”
That was all the nation saw of Garry, just bite-sized chunks of honest, no-nonsense, common-sense geezer, and on the whole they liked him for it.
On the screen, Garry, like the video editor who had created the tape that Coleridge was watching, had noted Layla’s doubtful response to his homily on racial characteristics and, sensing the reaction of a snob and a clever dick, had decided to press his point.
“It’s true!” he protested, laughing at Layla’s discomfort. “I know you ain’t supposed to say it, but bollocks to fucking political correctness. I’m paying Jazz a compliment. Blacks are faster and stronger and that’s a proven fact. Look at boxing, look at the Olympics. Fuck me, the white blokes ought to get a medal for having the guts to compete at all! It’s even worse with the birds. You seen them black birds run? Half a dozen bleeding ebony amazons charge past the finishing tape in a pack and then about ten minutes later a couple of bony-arsed gingers from Glasgow turn up.”
Bold stuff: bold, provocative and controversial.
“Yes, but that’s because…” Layla stuttered, knowing she must refute these appalling sentiments.
“Because fucking what?”
“Well… because black people have to turn to sport on account of the fact that other opportunities in society are closed off to them. That’s why they’re disproportionately over-represented in physical activities.”
Now Jazz chipped in, but not to support Layla. “So what you’re saying, right, is that in fact a load of white geezers could actually beat us blacks at running and boxing and stuff like that if only they wasn’t so busy becoming doctors and prime ministers? Is that it, Layles?”
“No!”
“You’re the fucking racist, girl, that is disgusting!”
Layla looked as if she was going to cry. Garry and Jazz laughed together. No wonder the nation preferred them to her. A large section of the viewing public saw Gazzer and Jazz as their representatives in the house. Jovial, no bullshit, down-to-earth blokes. Top lads, diamond geezers. But how would the nation feel, Coleridge wondered, if it had to suffer them twenty-four hours a day? Suffer them as the other inmates did? Day after day, week after week, with their unabashed arrogance bouncing off the walls and ceiling. How irritating would that be? How much might someone secretly hate them? Enough to attack either of them in some way? Enough to force one or both of them onto the defensive? Enough to provoke them to murder?
But people didn’t murder each other because they found each other irritating, did they? Yes. As a matter of fact, in Coleridge’s experience, they did. Irritation was the commonest motive of all. Sad, petty, human disputes blown up suddenly and unintentionally into lethal proportions. How many times had Coleridge sat opposite some distraught family member as they struggled to come to terms with what they’d done because of irritation?
“I couldn’t stand him any more. I just snapped.”
“She drove me to it.”
Most murders took place in a domestic situation between people who knew each other. Well, you couldn’t get a much more domestic situation than House Arrest, and by the time of the murder the inmates knew each other very well, or at least knew the bits of each other that were on show, which is all anybody ever knows about anyone. These people did virtually nothing but talk to and about each other every waking moment of the day and night.
Perhaps one of them really had simply become irritating enough to get themselves killed?
But they were all irritating. Or at least they were to Coleridge. Every single one of them, with their toned tummies and their bare buttocks, their biceps and their triceps, their tattoos and their nipple rings, their mutual interest in star signs, their endless hugging and touching, and above all their complete lack of genuine intellectual curiosity about one single thing on this planet that was not directly connected with themselves.
Inspector Coleridge would happily have killed them all.
“Your problem is you’re a snob, sir,” said Sergeant Hooper, who had been watching Coleridge watch the video and had followed his train of thought as surely as if Coleridge had had a glass head. “Why the hell would anybody want to be a train driver these days anyway? There aren’t any train drivers as a matter of fact, just some bloke that pushes the start button and goes on strike every now and then. It’s hardly a noble calling, is it? I’d much rather be a TV presenter. Frankly, I’d rather be a TV presenter than a copper.”
“Get on with your work, Hooper,” said Coleridge.
Coleridge knew that they all laughed at him. They laughed at him because they thought he was old fashioned. Old fashioned because he was interested in things other than astrology and celebrity. Was he the last man on earth interested in anything other than astrology and celebrity? Things like books and trains? He was only fifty-four years old, for heaven’s sake, but as far as most of his officers were concerned he might as well have been two hundred. To them Coleridge was just so weird. He was a member of the Folio Society, a lay minister, he never failed to visit a war memorial on Armistice Day, and he grew plants from seeds rather than buying them ready-made from a garden centre.
The fact that it had fallen to Coleridge to watch the entire available footage of House Arrest. To sit and watch a group of pointless twenty-somethings living in a house together and subjected to constant video surveillance was a cruel joke indeed. It was safe to say that under normal circumstances there was no other show in the history of television that Coleridge would have been less inclined to watch than House Arrest.
Coleridge gripped the handle of the proper china mug he insisted on using despite the fact that it required washing up. “When I want your opinion, Hooper, on train drivers or any other subject for that matter, I shall ask for it.”
“And I will always be happy to oblige, sir.”
Coleridge knew that the sergeant was right. Who could blame today’s youth for its lack of sober ambition? In the days when little boys wanted to grow up to be train drivers they had wanted to grow up to be the master of a vast machine. A fabulous spitting, steaming, snarling, living beast, a monster in metal that required skill and daring to handle, care and understanding to maintain. Nowadays, of course, technology was so complex that nobody knew how anything worked at all except Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking. The human race was out of the loop, to employ a phrase he often heard Hooper using. No wonder all young people wanted was to be on television. What else was there to do? He stared wearily at the huge piles of video tapes and computer disks that seemed to fill most of the room.