Dead famous by Ben Elton

Author:Ben Elton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Detective and mystery stories, Reality television programs, Television series, Mystery & Detective, Humorous, British Broadcasting Corporation, Reality television programs - England - London, Fiction, Fiction - General, Murder - Investigation, Humorous stories, Suspense, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), General, General & Literary Fiction, Mystery fiction, Modern fiction, Television serials, Television serials - England - London
ISBN: 9780552999458
Publisher: Black Swan
Published: 2002-09-23T12:00:00+00:00

DAY TWENTY-NINE. 8.00 p.m.

Having spent the day reviewing the footage from the very first day in the house, Coleridge and Hooper turned once more to the tape of the night of the murder. The same images that Geraldine, the Peeping Tom production team and 47,000 Internet subscribers had watched live less than forty-eight hours before. Those same strange, fuzzy, bluish-grey pictures that the night-sight cameras had transmitted from the boys’ bedroom. A bedroom that seemed innocent and empty, entirely normal, save for the weird-looking plastic box in the middle of the room, a box which they knew contained eight drunk, naked people, the only evidence of whom were the strange bulges that seemed to undulate against the polythene walls from time to time. It was an eerie and depressing sight for the two policemen, knowing as they did that one of those living bulges was shortly to die.

‘He could have done it inside the box,’ said Hooper thoughtfully.

‘Why didn’t he do it in the box?’

‘Or she,’ Coleridge reminded Hooper, ‘or she. We refer to the murderer as a he for convenience’s sake but we must never ever forget that it could be a woman.’

‘Yes, all right, sir, I know. But what I’m saying is that nobody would have known, if he or she had done it inside the box, if a hand had reached out in the darkness holding a small knife, which the murderer could easily have sneaked in with him. It would have been relatively simple to just slit a throat in the dark and wait until people smelt blood, or felt it. By the time anybody realized that the warm stuff flowing all over them wasn’t sweat they’d all have been drenched in it. Maybe that’s what he planned.’

‘There was no small knife in the box when we searched it, or in the room.’

‘Well, sir, if he’d suddenly decided to follow the victim to the toilet instead, he could have put it back in the kitchen drawer when he got the bigger one.’

‘I don’t think so, sergeant. How could he have been sure of his kill in that darkness? Whether he’d stabbed the right person and whether he’d finished the job properly? Chances are it would have been a terrible mess. He would have just cut off a nose or something, or somebody else’s nose, or his own fingers.’

‘Well, he had to do it some time. How would he have known that a better chance was going to emerge?’

‘He didn’t know, but he was waiting. If the chance hadn’t come, my guess is that he would have carried on waiting.’

‘For how long? Until his prey got voted out and escaped him altogether?’

‘Ah, but he or she knew that the prey hadn’t been nominated that week, giving at least eight days’ grace.’

‘All I’m saying,’ the sergeant insisted, ‘is that if I was desperate to kill somebody in that house, I would have reckoned a crowded, darkened sweatbox, inside which everybody was drunk, to be about the best shot I was going to get.

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