“Strange things?” Coleridge asked. “Be specific, please.”
“I can’t see how it’s relevant.”
“This is a murder investigation, miss, and it’s not your place to decide what’s relevant.”
“Well, OK, then. I don’t know what Kelly was doing before she bolted, but I know she’d been feeling pretty wild earlier in the evening. We all had, and still were. I myself was getting close to the point of no return with Jason, or at least I think it was Jason. I hope it was Jason.” She glanced down, and her eyes rested on the little revolving cogs on the cassette tape recorder. She reddened.
“Go on,” said Coleridge.
“Well, after Kelly slid across me and went off, Jazz and I… carried on with our um… canoodling.”
Coleridge caught Hooper smiling at this choice of word and glared at him. There was nothing in his opinion remotely amusing about discussing the circumstances that led up to a girl’s being murdered.
“And that was it, really,” Dervla concluded. “Shortly after that we heard all the commotion, and Jazz went out to see what was going on and who was in the house. I remember that at that point I actually felt relieved at the interruption. It gave me a chance to collect myself and realize what I was doing, just how far I’d let myself get carried away. I was happy that something had occurred to stop the party.”
Dervla stopped herself, realizing how terrible this must sound. “Of course, I felt differently when I realized what had actually happened.”
“Of course. And you don’t know anything about what might have upset Kelly?”
“No, I don’t, but I suppose somebody must have pushed their luck a bit with her, if you know what I mean. I always thought that Kelly was a bit of a tease on top but what my mother would call a ‘nice girl’ underneath. I don’t think she’d have gone all the way in that box.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The other night Hamish followed her out into the nookie hut, but I don’t think he got anywhere… Not that I’m saying anything about Hamish, you understand.”
“Were you aware of anybody following Kelly out of the box last night?”
“No, I was not.”
“You’ve said yourself that you were situated near the entrance. You’re sure you noticed nothing?”
“As I’ve told you, I was occupied at the time. The whole business was rather a giddy affair.”
Later, Coleridge was to ponder Dervla’s choice of words and phrases: “canoodling”, “giddy affair”, as if she was talking about an innocent flirtation at a barn dance rather than an orgy.
After Dervla had completed her interview and returned to the conference room, Coleridge and Hooper discussed her evidence for some time.
“Very mysterious that she had no sensation of the second person leaving the box,” Hooper said.
“Yes,” Coleridge replied. “Unless…”
Hooper finished his sentence for him. “Unless she was the person who left.”
One Winner
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 7.30 p.m.
The door closed behind David. He picked up his guitar from the orange couch and began playing a mournful song. He was the last one in. They’d all come home.
There was never any real question in their minds that they would go on with it. Even as they were driven away from the house in seven separate police cars in the early morning following the murder, they were able to get some idea of the scale of interest that would henceforth be shown in them. The corpse was hardly cold, and yet already the word was out and the whole world was rushing to their door.
By the time they left the police station, without charge, eight hours later, there were over a thousand reporters waiting for them.
A thousand reporters. On a recent trip to Britain the President of the United States had rated only two hundred and fifty.
And once Peeping Tom announced that the seven remaining contestants intended to continue with the game, the media and the public went berserk with excitement. For these were no longer just seven contestants in a TV game show, as Geraldine continued publicly to maintain, they were seven suspects in a murder hunt. The only seven suspects.
All day and all night it seemed as if people could talk about nothing else. Bishops and broadcasting watchdogs deplored the decision as a collapse of moral standards. Opportunistic politicians applauded it as evidence of a more open and relaxed society that was “at ease with its traumas”. The prime minister was invited to comment on the matter during Parliamentary Question Time, and earnestly promised that he would “listen to the people”, attempting, if possible, to “feel their pain” and get back to parliament the moment he had an idea about how they felt.
Many people expressed surprise that the seven contestants were legally free to go back into the house, but of course there was nothing to stop them. Even though it was clear that one of them had murdered Kelly, the police were unable to find evidence to detain any of them. They were all free to go for the time being, free to do what they wanted, and what they wanted, it soon turned out, was to go back into the house.
Efforts were made by concerned individuals to implement the law that states that people cannot profit from media exploitation of their crimes. But what profit? The inmates of the house were not being paid for their efforts. And what crime? Six of the people had not committed one, and the identity of the person who had done it remained a complete mystery. Once he or she was detected, it would of course be possible to prevent them from appearing on television, but until then there was nothing that could be done to restrain any of them.
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 6.50 p.m.
“I say we fahkin’ go for it.”
Garry had been the first to speak. He was a geezer and a hard one at that, and he wasn’t squeamish about using a toilet in which someone had been knifed.
“I’ve been in a lot of bogs with blood on the floor,” he said, thinking to himself that this comment would play rather well on the telly, before he remembered that he was outside the house and for the first time in a month there were no cameras being trained on him. “So I say fahk it, let’s have it large.”
Geraldine had managed to collect all seven of the tired, confused housemates as they left the police station and wrestle them onto a waiting minibus. It had not been easy: the offers of money had burst forth with a roar the moment the station door had opened. Any one of the remaining housemates could have got a hundred thousand for an exclusive interview there and then. Fortunately, Geraldine had brought a megaphone with her and she was entirely unembarrassed about using it. “You’ll do much better if you bargain collectively,” she shouted, “so get on the bus!”
Finally, with the help of the ten huge security men she had brought with her, she managed to get her precious charges inside the vehicle and there they sat like obedient children while the police tried to clear a path for them to depart. Outside, hundreds of cameras were clicking and whirring, microphones were being banged against the windows; the noise of the shouted questions was cacophonous.
“Who do you think did it?” “How do you feel?” “Did she deserve it?” “Was it a sex thing?”
Even inside the bus Geraldine had to use her megaphone to get their attention. She knew what she required of the housemates, and she got right down to telling them.
“Listen to me!” she shouted.
The seven shell-shocked people stared back at her.
“I know you’re all sorry about Kelly, but we have to be practical. Look at what’s going on outside! The entire world’s press have turned up, and for what? Not for Kelly, she’s gone, but for you, that’s who. So think about that for a minute.”