Jazz went to get it. “Chinese,” he said, returning with the bags.
It was the only word uttered in the house until long after they had finished the food.
Finally David broke the silence. “So one of us killed Kelly?”
“So it would fookin’ seem,” Moon replied.
There was silence again.
There was silence also in the monitoring bunker as the hours ticked by.
Late that night Inspector Coleridge slipped into the box and sat down beside Geraldine. He wanted to see for himself how the show was put together. When he spoke Geraldine actually jumped.
“You know that if I could have stopped you carrying on with this, I would.”
“I don’t see why you would want to,” Geraldine replied. “How many policemen get the chance to watch their suspects in the way you’re doing? Normally when no charges are pressed the prey is gone, off covering its tracks and hiding its secrets. If this lot are holding onto any secrets, then they’d better keep them pretty close.”
“I would have liked to stop you on moral grounds. The whole country is watching your programme because they know that one of the people on it is a murderer.”
“Not just that, inspector, as if that wasn’t good enough telly in itself,” Geraldine replied gleefully. “They’re also watching because there is always the chance that it might happen again.”
“That possibility had occurred to me.”
“And I can assure you that it’s occurred to our little gang of wannabes. How good is that?”
“Murder is not a spectator sport.”
“Isn’t it?” Geraldine asked. “All right, then. If you didn’t have to watch this because you’re investigating it, would you still watch it? Come on, be honest, you would, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well, then, you’re even more boring than I thought you were.”
Silence descended as they watched the housemates clearing away the debris of their meal.
“Why are they doing it, do you think?” Coleridge asked.
“Why do you think? To get famous.”
“Ah yes, of course,” said Coleridge. “Fame.”
“Fame,” he thought, “the holy grail of a secular age.” The cruel and demanding deity that had replaced God. The one thing. The only thing, it seemed to Coleridge, that mattered any more. The great obsession, the all-encompassing national focus, which occupied 90 per cent of every newspaper and 100 per cent of every magazine. Not faith, but fame.
“Fame,” he murmured once more. “I hope they enjoy it.”
“They won’t,” Geraldine replied.
DAY TWENTY-NINE. 6.00 p.m.
Coleridge sat in the larger of the two halls in the village youth centre awaiting his turn among all the other hopefuls. He was very, very tired, having been up for most of the previous two nights investigating a real live “murder most foul”.
Now he was in the realms of fiction, but the words of the great “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech, one of his favourites, seemed to be draining from his mind.
He tried to concentrate, but people kept asking him about the Peeping Tom murder. It was understandable, of course – the whole affair was colossal news, and they all knew that Coleridge was a senior policeman. He would not have dreamt of telling them about his direct association with the crime. “I expect my colleagues will do their best,” he said, trying to fix his mind on being a poor player about to strut and fret his hour upon the stage.
To Coleridge’s great relief his picture had not been shown on any of the news broadcasts during the day, and he did not expect it to be in the morning papers either. He simply did not look enough like a “top cop” to warrant inclusion. When the press did print a photo it was of Patricia, there being nothing they liked more than a comely “police girl”.
Finally, it was Coleridge’s turn to audition, and he was called into the smaller room in order to perform before Glyn and Val’s searching gaze. He gave it everything he had, even managing the ghost of a tear when he got to “out, brief candle”. There was nothing like the murder of a twenty-one-year-old girl to remind a person that life truly was a “walking shadow”.
When he had finished, Coleridge felt that he had acquitted himself well.
Glyn seemed to think so too. “That was lovely. Absolutely lovely and very moving. You clearly have great depth.”
Coleridge’s hopes soared, but only for a moment.
“I always think that Macduff is the key role in the final act,” said Glyn. “It’s a small part, but it needs a big actor. Would you like to play it?”
Trying not to let his disappointment show, Coleridge said that he would be delighted to play Macduff.
“And since you won’t have many lines to learn,” Val chipped in chirpily, “I presume I can put you down for scenery-painting and the car pool?”
DAY TWENTY-NINE. 9.30 p.m.
Episode twenty-eight of House Arrest went out in an extended ninety-minute special edition on the evening following the day after the murder. It should have been episode twenty-nine that night, but there had been no show on the previous evening, partly out of respect and partly because the inmates of the house had spent all day at the police station.
All except one inmate, who was in the morgue.
The special edition show included the lead-up to the murder and the murder itself. There was a tasteful ten-second edit for the actual moment when the sheet rose and fell, a pointless precaution, since it had been aired endlessly on the news anyway. Also included in the show was the return of the housemates into the house in order to bring the chronology up to date. The whole thing was generally considered to have been very good telly indeed. Straight after the broadcast, and by way of absolving themselves from all criticism and responsibility, the network aired a live discussion programme about the morality of their having continued to broadcast the show at all. Geraldine Hennessy appeared on the discussion, along with various representatives of the great and the good.
“I fear that what we have just watched was depressingly inevitable,” said a distinguished poet and broadcaster. Distinguished, as Geraldine would point out to him afterwards in hospitality, principally for appearing on discussion programmes.
“Reality television, as it is called,” drawled the distinguished broadcaster, “is a return to the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome. What we are watching is conflict, conflict between trapped and desperate antagonists who compete for the approval of the baying crowd. Like the plebeians of old, we raise and lower our thumbs to applaud the victor and condemn the vanquished. The only difference is that these days we do it via a telephone poll.”
Geraldine shifted in her seat. She hated the way supposed intellectuals leeched off popular culture while loftily condemning it.
“Personally,” the distinguished broadcaster continued, “I am astonished that it has taken so long for murder to become a tactic in these entertainments.”
“Yes, but does that justify its being broadcast?” the shadow minister for home affairs leapt in, angry that the discussion had been underway for over two minutes and that he had yet to speak. “I say most definitely not. We have to ask ourselves what sort of country we wish to live in.”
“And I would agree with you,” said the distinguished poet, “but will you have the courage to deny the mob? The public must have its bread and circuses.”
Geraldine swallowed an overwhelming desire to unleash a four-letter tirade and resolved to be reasonable. That was, after all, why she had come on the show. The last thing she needed at this crucial moment in her career was to be taken off the air. “Look,” she said. “I don’t like what has happened here any more than you do.”