“Please forgive me, Chloe… I’m afraid I don’t know your surname,” Coleridge said, “and I hope that the public will forgive me also if I trespass for a moment on their time.”
Chloe stared about her wildly, wondering where the security men were, seeing as a senior citizen appeared to be making a stage invasion.
“Run with it, Chloe,” the floor manager whispered at her through her earpiece. “Geraldine says he’s kosher.”
“Oh, right. Wicked,” said Chloe in an unconvinced voice.
Everybody stared at Coleridge. He had never felt such a fool, but he was desperate. There was still no sign of Hooper and Patricia. He knew that he would have to stall. He looked out at the sea of expectant, slightly hostile faces. He tried not to think of the hundreds of millions more that he could not see but who he knew were watching. He fought down his fear.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Chief Inspector Stanley Coleridge of the East Sussex Police, and I am here to arrest the murderer of Kelly Simpson, spinster of the parish of Stoke Newington, London Town.” He had no idea where the “spinster” bit had come from except that he knew he must spin it out, spin it out at all costs. He had absolutely no idea how long he would have to stall.
Once the sensation caused by his opening remark had died down, Coleridge turned and addressed the eight ex-housemates, who had been assembled by Chloe on the podium. The eight people whose faces he had stared at for so long. The suspects.
“This has not been an easy case. Everyone in the world has had a theory, and motives there have been aplenty. A fact that has caused my officers and myself some considerable confusion over the last few weeks. But the identity of this cruel killer, that despicable individual who saw fit to plunge a knife into the skull of a beautiful, innocent young girl, has remained a mystery.”
Something rather strange was happening to Coleridge. He could feel it deep in the pit of his stomach. It was a new sensation for him, but not an unpleasant one. Could it be that he was enjoying himself? Perhaps not quite that. The tension was too great and the possibility of failure too immediate for enjoyment, but he certainly felt… exhilarated. If he had had a moment to think, he might have reflected that circumstance had granted him that thing which he most craved and which his local amateur dramatic society had so long denied him: an audience and a leading role.
“So,” said Coleridge, addressing the camera with the red light on top, presuming correctly that this was the live one. “Who killed Kelly Simpson? Well, in view of the wealth of suspicion that has been visited upon various innocents, I think it fair to begin by clearing up who definitely did not kill Kelly Simpson.”
“This bloke’s a natural,” Geraldine whispered to the floor manager. She was deeply impressed with this new side of Coleridge’s character, and well she might have been, for every minute that he spoke was earning her an extra two million dollars.
Spin it out. Spin it out, Coleridge thought to himself, a sentiment which Geraldine would have applauded wholeheartedly.
“Sally!” Coleridge said, turning dramatically to face the eight suspects. “You were the victim of a terrible coincidence. Your poor mother’s suffering, which you had hoped would remain a private matter, has become public knowledge. You have anguished over your fears that the curse that blighted your mother’s life might also have blighted yours. You’ve tortured yourself with the question Did I Kill Kelly? Was your true personality revealed in the darkness of that black box?”
Sally did not answer. Her eyes were far away. She was thinking of her mother sitting in the terrible little room where she had sat for most of the last twenty years.
“Let me assure you, Sally, that never for one moment did I imagine that the killer was you. You had not the ghost of a motive save family history, and the coincidence of that history repeating itself in so exact a manner is so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. Many families have some mental disorder in their line… Why, the producer of this very show could say as much, couldn’t you, Ms Hennessy?”
“Eh?” said Geraldine. She was enjoying Coleridge’s performance hugely, but had not expected to be drawn into it.
“I gather from interviews my officers have held with your staff that on the two occasions when both Sally and Moon spoke about life inside mental hospitals you remarked quite clearly that it was not like that at all. You in fact explained clearly what it was like. I can only presume that you yourself have some experience?” Coleridge glanced once more at the studio door. No sign. Spin it out.
“Well, as it happens you’re right.” Geraldine spoke into the boom mike, which had hastily descended above her head, the studio crew having reacted according to their instincts. “My mum was a bit of a fruitcake herself, Sally, and my dad, as it happens, so believe me, I sympathize with the outrageous prejudice you have had to put up with.”
“A sentiment that does you great credit,” Coleridge said. “Particularly since medical opinion informs me that when both a person’s parents suffer serious mental instability, their offspring has a thirty-six per cent chance of inheriting their challenges.”
Geraldine did not much like having her family’s linen so publicly washed, but at two million dollars a minute she felt she could put up with it.
Coleridge turned once more to the suspects. “So, Sally, I hope that you can learn from this terrible experience that you need not fear the burden of your past. You did not kill Kelly Simpson, but you were very nearly killed yourself, as I intend to show.”
This comment was greeted with gasps from the audience, which Coleridge did his best to milk.
“Now, what about the rest of you? Did Moon kill Kelly? Well, did you, Moon? You’re a wicked liar, we know that from the tapes. The public never saw you make up a history of abuse in order to score cheap points against Sally, but I did, and it occurred to me that a woman who could invent such grotesque and insensitive deceits might lie about pretty much anything, even murder.”
The cameras turned on Moon.
“Extreme close up!” shouted Bob Fogarty from the control box.
Moon was sweating. “Now just a fookin’…”
“Please, if we could try to moderate our language,” Coleridge chided. “We are on live television, after all. Don’t upset yourself, Moon. If there were as many murderers as there are liars in this world we should all be dead by now. You did not kill Kelly.”
“Well, I know that,” said Moon.
“Nobody has really known anything during this investigation, Moon. Heavens, even Layla has come under suspicion.”
The cameras swung to face a shocked Layla.
“What?”
“Oh yes, such was the apparent impossibility of the murder that at times it seemed possible to imagine that you had wafted in through an airvent on that grim night. After all, everybody saw Kelly nominate you in that first week and then hug and kiss you goodbye. That must have hurt a proud woman like you.”
“It did,” said Layla, “and I’m ashamed to say that, when I heard about the murder, for a moment I was glad Kelly died. Isn’t that terrible? I’ve sought counselling now though, which is helping a lot.”
“Good for you,” said Coleridge. “For let us be quite clear: there is no circumstance or situation in our world today that cannot benefit from counselling. You were simply being selfish, Layla, that was all, but I’m sure that somewhere you can find somebody to tell you that you had a right to be.” Coleridge was being deeply sarcastic, but the crowd did not get it and applauded him, assuming, as did Layla, that Coleridge’s comment was a love-filled Oprah moment of support.