“Very mysterious that she had no sensation of the second person leaving the box,” Hooper said.

“Yes,” Coleridge replied. “Unless…”

Hooper finished his sentence for him. “Unless she was the person who left.”

One Winner

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 7.30 p.m.

The door closed behind David. He picked up his guitar from the orange couch and began playing a mournful song. He was the last one in. They’d all come home.

There was never any real question in their minds that they would go on with it. Even as they were driven away from the house in seven separate police cars in the early morning following the murder, they were able to get some idea of the scale of interest that would henceforth be shown in them. The corpse was hardly cold, and yet already the word was out and the whole world was rushing to their door.

By the time they left the police station, without charge, eight hours later, there were over a thousand reporters waiting for them.

A thousand reporters. On a recent trip to Britain the President of the United States had rated only two hundred and fifty.

And once Peeping Tom announced that the seven remaining contestants intended to continue with the game, the media and the public went berserk with excitement. For these were no longer just seven contestants in a TV game show, as Geraldine continued publicly to maintain, they were seven suspects in a murder hunt. The only seven suspects.

All day and all night it seemed as if people could talk about nothing else. Bishops and broadcasting watchdogs deplored the decision as a collapse of moral standards. Opportunistic politicians applauded it as evidence of a more open and relaxed society that was “at ease with its traumas”. The prime minister was invited to comment on the matter during Parliamentary Question Time, and earnestly promised that he would “listen to the people”, attempting, if possible, to “feel their pain” and get back to parliament the moment he had an idea about how they felt.

Many people expressed surprise that the seven contestants were legally free to go back into the house, but of course there was nothing to stop them. Even though it was clear that one of them had murdered Kelly, the police were unable to find evidence to detain any of them. They were all free to go for the time being, free to do what they wanted, and what they wanted, it soon turned out, was to go back into the house.

Efforts were made by concerned individuals to implement the law that states that people cannot profit from media exploitation of their crimes. But what profit? The inmates of the house were not being paid for their efforts. And what crime? Six of the people had not committed one, and the identity of the person who had done it remained a complete mystery. Once he or she was detected, it would of course be possible to prevent them from appearing on television, but until then there was nothing that could be done to restrain any of them.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT. 6.50 p.m.

“I say we fahkin’ go for it.”

Garry had been the first to speak. He was a geezer and a hard one at that, and he wasn’t squeamish about using a toilet in which someone had been knifed.

“I’ve been in a lot of bogs with blood on the floor,” he said, thinking to himself that this comment would play rather well on the telly, before he remembered that he was outside the house and for the first time in a month there were no cameras being trained on him. “So I say fahk it, let’s have it large.”

Geraldine had managed to collect all seven of the tired, confused housemates as they left the police station and wrestle them onto a waiting minibus. It had not been easy: the offers of money had burst forth with a roar the moment the station door had opened. Any one of the remaining housemates could have got a hundred thousand for an exclusive interview there and then. Fortunately, Geraldine had brought a megaphone with her and she was entirely unembarrassed about using it. “You’ll do much better if you bargain collectively,” she shouted, “so get on the bus!”

Finally, with the help of the ten huge security men she had brought with her, she managed to get her precious charges inside the vehicle and there they sat like obedient children while the police tried to clear a path for them to depart. Outside, hundreds of cameras were clicking and whirring, microphones were being banged against the windows; the noise of the shouted questions was cacophonous.

“Who do you think did it?” “How do you feel?” “Did she deserve it?” “Was it a sex thing?”

Even inside the bus Geraldine had to use her megaphone to get their attention. She knew what she required of the housemates, and she got right down to telling them.

“Listen to me!” she shouted.

The seven shell-shocked people stared back at her.

“I know you’re all sorry about Kelly, but we have to be practical. Look at what’s going on outside! The entire world’s press have turned up, and for what? Not for Kelly, she’s gone, but for you, that’s who. So think about that for a minute.”

While the seven housemates thought about it the minibus began to edge its way through the roaring sea of journalists.

“Why did you people get into this thing in the first place?” Geraldine continued. “Why did you write to Peeping Tom?”

They were confused: there had been so many reasons given at the start of the whole business. “To really stretch myself as a person…” “To explore different aspects of who I am…” “To discover new horizons and life adventures…” “To provide a goal, and to be a role model.”

They had all known the codes, the things that they were supposed to say. The new language of pious self-justification. All rubbish, of course, and Geraldine knew it. She knew why they had applied to be on Peeping Tom, and no amount of pretentious New Age waffle could disguise it. They had done it to get famous and that was why Geraldine knew that they would all go back into the house.

The bus was finally pulling away from the mob at the police station, and the motorbike photographers were beginning their pursuit, weaving in and out of the traffic, oblivious to their own safety or anybody else’s, intoxicated by the hunt.

“So,” Geraldine barked, “let’s leave aside for a moment the issue of who kill… of how poor Kelly died, and consider the opportunity that her sad demise has opened up for you people. I am talking about fame beyond frontiers, beyond your wildest dreams. This show will be broadcast worldwide, no question about that. By the time you come out of our house your faces will be recognizable in every town, village and home on the planet. Think about that. If you guys split up now the story’s over in a week, you’ll all make a few quid talking about Kelly to the papers and that’ll be it. But if you stick together! If you go back into the house together! You’ll be the biggest story on earth day after day after day.”

“You mean people will be watching to try to work out which one of us killed Kelly?” Dervla said.

“Well, that certainly,” Geraldine conceded. “But the police are trying to work that out anyway, so you might as well make a profit out of it. Besides, there’s so much more to this, the human angle of how you all cope with the tragedy, with each other. Believe me, this is a century-defining definition of what constitutes good telly.”

Geraldine could see that they were all still struggling with the terrifying and bewildering change in their circumstances.

Sally spoke up in a sad small voice, a voice no one had heard her use before. “I thought that maybe it would be nice just to go home for a bit.”

“Exactly!” Geraldine exclaimed. “That’s what I’m saying.”