“Is she… dead?” said Pru, who was peering over Fogarty’s shoulder, trying to keep the bile from rising in her throat.

“Prudence,” said Geraldine, “she’s got a kitchen knife stuck through her fucking brain.”

“Yes, but we should check all the same,” stammered Pru.

“You fucking check,” said Geraldine.

But at this point Kelly saved them from further speculation about her state of health by keeling off the toilet seat and falling to the floor. She went head first, pulled forward over her knees by the weight of her own head. This resulted in her butting the floor with the handle of the knife, which buried the blade another inch or two into her head, as if it had been hit by a hammer. It made a sort of creaking sound which caused both Pru and Fogarty to be sick.

“Oh, great. Fucking brilliant,” Geraldine said. “So let’s just throw up all over the scene of the crime, shall we? The police are going to fucking love us.”

Perhaps it was the idea of what people might think of them that led Geraldine to turn once more to the watching cameras. “You lot in the box. Switch off the Internet link. This isn’t a freak show.”

But it was a freak show, of course, a freak show that had only just begun.

“What the fuck’s going on?” It was Jazz, emerging from the boys’ bedroom, a sheet stuck to his honed, toned and sweaty body. What with his sheet and his muscley physique, Jazz looked like Dervla’s fantasy of him, a Greek God startled on Mount Olympus. He could not have looked more ridiculously out of place if he had tried.

Jazz stood on the threshold of the room staring, stunned by the bright lights and the extraordinary and unexpected presence of intruders in a house that he and his fellow inmates had had exclusive use of for weeks.

Dervla appeared behind him. She too had taken up a sheet and looked equally out of place staring at the casually dressed intruders, behind whom was the corpse. It was beginning to look as if a toga party had crashed into a road accident.

Geraldine realized that the situation was about to spiral out of control. She did not like situations that were out of control; she was a classic example of that tired old phrase, “the control freak”. “Jason! Dervla!” she shouted. “Both of you get back in the boys’ bedroom!”

“What’s happening?” Dervla said. Fortunately for them neither she nor Jazz could see into the lavatory. The gruesome sight was blocked from them by the cluster of people at its doorway.

“This is Peeping Tom!” Geraldine shouted. “There has been an accident. All house inmates are to remain in the boys’ bedroom until told otherwise. Get inside! NOW!”

Astonishingly, such was the hostage mentality that had developed amongst the housemates that Jazz and Dervla did as they were told, returning to the darkness of the boys’ bedroom, where the others were emerging from the sweatbox, hot, naked and confused.

“What’s going on?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” Dervla replied. “We’re to stay in here.”

Then somebody in the edit suite took it upon themselves to turn on all the lights in the house. The seven inmates were caught almost literally in the headlights. They stood around the redundant sweatbox blinking at each other, naked, reaching for sheets, blankets, towels, anything to cover their red-skinned, sweaty embarrassment, memories of the previous two wild hours turning their hot red faces still redder. It was as if they were all fourteen years old and had been caught in the process of a mass snog by their parents.

“Oh my God, we look so stupid,” said Dervla.

Outside, Geraldine was taking charge. Later on it was generally agreed that, having got over her shock, she had acted with remarkable cool-headedness.

Having confined the seven remaining inmates to one room, she ordered everybody to retrace their steps and do everything possible to avoid further altering the scene of the crime.

“We’ll stand in the camera run,” she said, “and wait for the cops.”

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 6.00 a.m.

Six hours later, as Coleridge left the scene of the crime, the light was beginning to break on an unseasonably grim and drizzly morning.

“Murder weather,” he thought. All of his homicide investigations seemed to have taken place in the rain. They hadn’t, of course, just as his boyhood summer holidays had not all been bathed in endless cleansing sunshine. None the less, Coleridge did have a vague theory that atmospheric pressure played a tiny role in igniting a killer’s spark. Premeditated murder was, in his experience, an indoor sport.

From beyond the police barriers hundreds of flashbulbs exploded into life. For a moment Coleridge wondered who it might be that had caused such a flurry of interest. Then he realized that the photographs were being taken of him. Trying hard not to look like a man who knew he was being photographed, Coleridge walked through the silver mist of half-hearted rain and flickering strobe light towards his car.

Hooper was waiting for him with a bundle of morning papers. “They’re all basically the same,” he said.

Coleridge glanced at the eight faces splashed across every front page, one face set apart from the others. He had just met the owners of those faces. All but Kelly, of course. He had not met her, unless one could be said to have met a corpse. Looking at that poor young woman curled up on the toilet floor, actually stuck to it with her own congealed and blackened blood, a kitchen knife sticking out of the top of her head, Coleridge knew how much he wanted to catch this killer. He could not abide savagery. He had never got used to it; it scared him and made him question his faith. After all, why would any sane God possibly want to engineer such a thing? Because he moved in mysterious ways, of course; that was the whole point. Because he surpasseth all understanding. You weren’t meant to understand. Still, in his job it was hard sometimes to find reasons to believe.

Sergeant Hooper hadn’t enjoyed the scene much either, but it was not in his nature to ponder what purpose such horror might have in God’s almighty plan. Instead he took refuge in silly bravado. He was thinking that later he would tell the women constables that Kelly had looked like a Teletubby with that knife coming out of the top of her head. It was the same thought that Geraldine had had. Fortunately for Hooper he never ventured such a remark within Coleridge’s hearing. Had he done so he would not have lasted long on the old boy’s team.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 2.35 a.m.

They had received the call at one fifteen, and had arrived at the scene of the crime to take over the investigation by two thirty. By that time, probably the biggest mistake of the case had already been made.

“You let them wash?” Coleridge said, in what was for him nearly a shout.

“They’d been sweating in that box for over two hours, sir,” the officer who had been in charge thus far pleaded. “I had a good look at them first and had one of my girls look at the ladies.”

“You looked at them?”

“Well, blood’s blood, sir. I mean, it’s red. I would have spotted it. There wasn’t any. I assure you we had a very good look. Even under their fingernails and stuff. We’ve still got the sheet, of course. There’s a few drops on that.”

“Yes, I’m sure there is, the blood of the victim. Sadly, though, we do not have a problem identifying the victim. She’s glued to the lavatory floor! It’s the killer we’re looking for, and you let a group of naked suspects in a knife-attack wash!”

There was no point pursuing the matter further. The damage was done. In fact, at that point in the investigation Coleridge was not particularly worried. The murder had been taped, the suspects were being held, all of the evidence was entirely contained within a single environment. Coleridge did not imagine that it would be long before the truth emerged.