“The public! The public, they’re worse than us! At least we get paid to bully these people. The public do it for fun. They know they’re watching ants getting burnt under a magnifying glass, but they don’t care. They don’t care what we do to them, how we prod them, as long we get a reaction.” Fogarty stared angrily at the screen upon which Kelly was still frozen. “The people in that house think that they’re in a cocoon. In fact it’s a redoubt. They’re surrounded by enemies.”
DAY TWENTY. 6.15 p.m.
“It’s two-fifteen,” said Andy the narrator, “and after a lunch of rice, chicken and vegetables cooked by Jazz, Sally asks Kelly to help her dye her hair.”
Geraldine stared at the screen showing various camera angles of Kelly applying shampoo to Sally’s mohican haircut prior to dyeing it.
“A new low,” mused Geraldine. “I thought Layla’s cheese was our nadir but I reckon watching some great lump of a bird getting her hair washed has got to plumb new and unique depths in fucking awful telly, don’t you? Fuck me, in the early days of TV they used to stick a potter’s wheel on between the programmes. Now the potter’s wheel is the fucking programme.”
Fogarty gritted his teeth and continued with his tasks. “What shot do you want, Geraldine?” he enquired. “Kelly’s hands on her head? Or a wide?”
“Put Sally up on the main monitor – the close-up of her face, through the mirror. Run the whole sequence, right from where she bends down over the basin.”
Fogarty punched his buttons while Geraldine continued her reverie. “Tough time for us, this. Eviction night tomorrow but no eviction. That cunt Woggle has deprived us of our weekly climax. We are in a lull. A low point, a stall. The wind is slipping out of our fucking sails, Bob. The Viagra pot is empty and our televisual dick is limp.”
Andy the narrator emerged from the voiceover recording booth to get a cup of herbal tea. “Perhaps I could tell them what everyone had for pudding,” he suggested. “David made a souffle, but it didn’t really rise. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it?”
“Get back in your box,” said Geraldine.
“But Gazzer didn’t finish his, and I think David was a little bit offended.”
“I said, get back in your fucking box!”
Andy retreated with his camomile.
“Always trying to grab himself a few more lines, that bastard. I’ve told him, if he does one more beer ad voiceover he’s fucking out. I’m going to get a bird to do it next time, anyway… Stop it there!”
Fogarty froze the image of Sally’s face. Dribbles of shampoo foam ran down her temples; Kelly’s fingertips could be made out at the top of the screen. Sally’s hand was at her mouth, frozen in the moment of inserting a segment of tangerine into it.
“Run it on, but mute the sound,” Geraldine instructed.
They studied Sally’s silent countenance for a few moments, as her jaw moved about, her lips pursed and her cheeks became slightly sucked in, then the lips parted a fraction and the tip of her tongue licked them.
“Very nice,” Geraldine observed. “I love a bit of muted mastication, the editor’s friend. Right, chop the tangerine off the front and run that sequence mute under Kelly’s dialogue about finding head massage sensual.”
Fogarty gulped before replying. It really seemed as if this time he had had enough. “But… but, Kelly made that comment to David while they were having the rice, chicken and vegetables that Jazz cooked. If we drop it over Sally’s face it will look as if… as if…”
“Ye-es?” Geraldine enquired.
“As if she’s getting a thrill out of massaging Sally’s head!”
“While Sally,” Geraldine replied, “with her grinding jaw and tense cheeks, sucky-sucky lips and little wet tongue tip, is positively creaming her gusset, and we, my darling, have got what can only be described as a half-decent lezzo moment.”
The silence in the monitoring bunker spoke loudly of the unease felt by Geraldine’s employees. Geraldine just grinned, a huge, triumphant grin, like a happy snarl.
“We are in a ratings trough, you cunts!” she shouted. “I’m paying your wages here!”
DAY TWENTY-TWO. 6.10 p.m.
“Such a shame there was no eviction last night,” the young woman was saying. “The last one was terrific, although I was sorry to see Layla go. I mean I know she was pretty pretentious, but I respected the integrity of her vegetarianism.”
“Darling she was a poseur, a complete act, I hated her,” said the man, a rather fey individual of about thirty.
Chief Inspector Coleridge had been listening to them chat for about five minutes, and did not have the faintest idea who or what they were talking about. They seemed to be discussing a group of people that they knew well, friends perhaps, and yet they appeared to hold them in something approaching complete contempt.
“What do you think about Layla going, then?” said the man, whose name was Glyn, turning finally to Coleridge.
“I’m afraid I don’t know her,” Coleridge answered. “Is she a friend of yours?”
“My God,” said Glyn. “You mean you don’t know who Layla is? You don’t watch House Arrest?”
“Guilty on both counts,” said Coleridge, attempting a little joke. He knew that they knew he was a policeman.
“You simply do not know what you’re missing,” said Glyn.
“And long may that remain the case,” Coleridge replied.
It was an audition evening at Coleridge’s local amateur dramatic society. Coleridge had been a member of the society for over twenty-five years and had attended thirty-three such evenings previous to this one, but he had never yet been offered a lead. The nearest he had got was Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady, and that was only because the first choice had moved to Basingstoke and the second choice got adult chicken pox. The next production of the society was to be Macbeth, and Coleridge really and truly wanted to play the killer king.
Macbeth was his favourite play of all time, full of passion and murder and revenge, but one glance at Glyn’s patronizing, supercilious expression told Coleridge he has as much chance of playing Macbeth as he had of presenting Britain’s next entry for the Eurovision song contest. He would be lucky to score a Macduff.
“Yes, I am intending a very young production,” Glyn drawled. “One that will bring young people back into the theatre. Have you seen Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet?”
Coleridge had not.
“That is my inspiration. I want a contemporary, sexy Macbeth. Don’t you agree?”
Well, of course Coleridge did not agree. Glyn’s production would run for three nights at the village hall and would play principally to an audience that wanted armour and swords and big black cloaks.
“Shall I read, then?” he asked “I’ve prepared a speech.”
“Heavens, no!” Glyn said. “This isn’t the audition, it’s a prelim chat. A chance for you to influence me, give me your feedback.”
There was a long pause while Coleridge tried to think of something to say. The table that divided him from Glyn and Val was a chasm. “So when is the actual audition?” he finally said.
“This time next week.”
“Right, well, I’ll come back then, shall I?”
“Do,” said Glyn.
DAY TWENTY-THREE. 3.00 p.m.
Sally was not yet satisfied with her new bright-red mohican hair.