“I’d have known anyway,” Geraldine replied pompously. “Those idiot proles in there might manage to manipulate each other, possibly even the public, but not me, mate.”
“You think you would have guessed she was lying even if you didn’t know?”
“Of course I would. That woman’s never been near a mental hospital in her life. She’s watched too many films, that’s all. People don’t scream and shriek in those places. If they do they get sedated pretty fucking sharpish, let me tell you, and the only grabbing and touching that goes on is by the nurses. Mental hospitals are quiet at night. All you can hear is weeping, shuffling and wanking.”
For a moment Geraldine had a faraway look in her eye. To her assembled staff she seemed almost human. The next moment she was herself again. “Right, package all that stuff up. I’m not using it now, I’m concentrating on Woggle. Besides, I’m not having some bald cunt like Moon influencing the public this early on. I influence the public, not the bloody inmates. Keep it, though. Could be useful later.”
“What, you mean put it in out of sequence?” Fogarty was taken aback.
“Maybe,” replied Geraldine. “Who’d notice the difference?”
“But… but the time codes on the video… They’d be out of sequence. We couldn’t adjust them.”
“Of course you can, you silly arse. They’re just numbers on a screen, you can change them. Just go into the Apple menu and dig out the control panel.”
“I know how to do it, Geraldine,” Bob Fogarty replied coldly. “I meant we couldn’t do it morally, professionally.”
“Our moral and professional duty is to provide good telly to the public, who pay our wages. We are not fucking anthropologists, we are entertainers, mate. Turns. We work on the end of the pier along with the illusionists, the mystics, the magicians, the hypnotists and all the other cheating shysters who make up this great business we call show. Now stick the whole thing in a separate file and hide it somewhere.”
The team said no more, working on in silence, hoping that if Geraldine did want to do something as outrageous as broadcasting house events out of sequence it would not be them whom she instructed to do it. Back on the screens the attention of the editing team was drawn by a flurry of bras and knickers. The girls were getting ready for bed.
“Nipple-watch!” shouted Geraldine. “Jump to it.”
They all had their styles. Sally got into bed in her T-shirt and knickers. Kelly allowed the occasional flash as she whipped off her shirt and dived into bed. Moon was happy to wander about in front of the infra-red cameras entirely naked. Layla and Dervla were the most coy: both put on long nighties before removing their underwear. When Geraldine saw this on the first night she had made a mental note to catch both of these prudes out at some point, in the showers, probably, or perhaps the pool, and put their nipples out in the Sunday night special compilation. She wasn’t having hoity-toity little scrubbers like them holding back on the flesh. What did they think they were on telly for?
The atmosphere in the bedroom was sombre. On previous nights the girls had laughed and giggled as they got into their beds, but on this occasion there was silence. Moon’s revelations had rocked them all. Not just because it had been such a sad and shocking tale, but also because her distress would so obviously appeal to the public’s sympathy and give her the edge when eviction time came. It was very strange to have to remember all the time that every conversation was a conversation between rivals who were competing against each other for the affection of the public.
Then Moon spoke. “Oh, by the way, girls,” she said. “All that stuff I just told you. That were rubbish, by the way. Sorry.”
There was another moment’s silence.
“What!” Layla, who rarely shouted, was furious.
“Don’t worry about it, love,” Moon said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “I were ’aving a laugh. Take me mind off me septic nipple.”
“You said you’d been abused!”
“Well, everybody says they’ve been abused these days, don’t they?” Moon replied. “Blimey, if you look at the posters them charities put out, apparently every fookin’ kid in the country’s getting touched up on a more or less continual basis.”
“What’s your game, Moon?” said Dervla with barely controlled fury.
“Told you. Just thought I’d have a laugh,” Moon said. “Plus, I thought our Sally was getting a bit too serious, hopping into Kelly a bit strong about fookin’ loonies, that’s all.”
“You rotten bitch,” said Layla.
“You cow,” said Kelly.
“That was a pretty low trick, Moon,” said Dervla. “I don’t think sexual abuse is a very funny subject.”
“Well, it passed the time, didn’t it?” Moon said. “’Night.”
There was another long pause. Finally Kelly broke the silence. “So were you telling the truth about your breast implants, then?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, couldn’t do without me kajungas, could I? I reckon they help me with me balance when I’m on the trapeze.”
As peace once more descended upon the room, Dervla thought she heard Sally sob.
DAY THIRTY-THREE. 5.10 p.m.
It had been six days since the murder, and Sergeant Hooper and his team continued with the huge task of trawling through the vast archive of unseen Peeping Tom footage. Searching diligently for any hint of an incident that might have turned somebody’s mind to murder. It was gruelling work even for Hooper, who was a big House Arrest fan, fitting their audience profile and advertiser expectations perfectly. Hooper was the opposite of Coleridge, a very modern copper, a hip, mad-for-it, bigged-up, twenty-first-century boy with baggy trousers, trainers, an earstud and a titanium Apple Mac Powerbook. Hooper and his mates never missed any of the various reality TV shows, but even he was being ground down by the task he now faced. Fortunately not all seven hundred and twenty hours a day of camera activity were available to the police, the vast bulk of it having been discarded on a daily basis by the Peeping Tom editors. But there were still hundreds of hours left, and watching it was like watching paint dry. Worse, at least paint did eventually dry. This lot seemed to stay wet for ever.
Hamish picking his nose again… Jazz scratching his bum.
The girls doing their yoga, again.
Garry doing more press-ups.
Garry doing chin-ups on the doorframes.
Garry running on the spot…
Hooper was beginning to despise the people in the house, and he did not want to. Quite apart from the fact that he did not think it would help him in his detection work, in a way these were his people. They had similar interests and ambitions, a similar honest conviction that they had a right to be happy. Hooper did not want to start thinking like Coleridge. What was that man like? Always banging on about the housemates having no sense of “duty” or “service” or “community”. As if wanting to have it large made you an enemy of society.
Nonetheless, they were seriously beginning to wear him down. It was just that they never did anything, and, more irritatingly, they never thought anything. That most defining of all human characteristics, the capacity for abstract thought, was pressed solely into the service of… of… Nothing.
Hooper cursed inwardly. He was even beginning to think like Coleridge.
And of clues to a murder there were none.
Until Trisha spotted something.
Not much, but something.
“Have a look at this, sergeant,” she said. “Arsey little moment between Kelly the slapper and David the ponce.”
“Arsey, constable? Slapper? Ponce?” Hooper replied, in Coleridge’s schoolmasterly tone, and they both smiled grimly at the thought of the linguistic strictures under which they were obliged to work.