Dead Famous

DAY FOURTEEN. 10.45 p.m.

“I’m fookin’ coming with yez,” said Moon.

David and Moon stormed into the confession box together, where David made it clear that he had drawn the same conclusion that Layla had done earlier in the evening.

“You’ve betrayed us, Peeping Tom,” he said. “You know we did our best with Woggle. But we saw the ba

“It’s not a question of betrayal,” Peeping Tom replied, Peeping Tom being Geraldine, of course, who was frantically scribbling down her replies and handing them to her “voice”, a quiet, gentle, soothing lady named Sam, who normally did voiceovers for washing-up liquid commercials.

“The public have simply seen something in Woggle that they find attractive,” the soothing voice continued.

“They find him attractive because that’s how you must have made him look!” David snarled. “I’m a professional, I’m in the business, I know your tricks. Well, let me tell you I’ve had enough! I didn’t come in here to be manipulated and made a fool of. I want out. You can get me a taxi because I’m leaving,” he said.

“Me fookin’ too!” added Moon. “And I reckon the rest’ll go too, and then all you’ll be left with is the plague pit with Woggle in it. It’s fookin’ obvious you’re taking the piss.”

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 10.25 p.m.

Hooper pressed pause. “This is very interesting, sir. None of this stuff was ever broadcast. I had absolutely no idea that the inmates were so sussed out to what was going down.”

“Sussed out to what was going down?”

“It means…”

“I know what it means, sergeant. I’m not an imbecile. I was just wondering if you’d given any thought at all to how ugly it sounds?”

“No, sir, actually I hadn’t. Would you like me to hand in my warrant card for using inelegant sentences in the course of an investigation?”

DAY FOURTEEN. 10.46 p.m.

“Walking out would be very foolish. You would be sacrificing the chance of wi

“I don’t care,” David said. “Like I said, I know this business. We’re just a bunch of stooges to Woggle’s fu

“Me fookin’ neither,” said Moon.

There was another pause while Peeping Tom considered a reply. “Give us two days,” the soothing voice said finally. “He’ll be out.”

“Two days?” David replied. “Don’t lie to me. There isn’t another eviction for a week.”

“Give us two days,” Peeping Tom repeated.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 10.30 p.m.

“That’s amazing,” said Trisha. “Geraldine He

“The sly bitch!” Hooper agreed. “She said she got sent those clippings anonymously.”

“Kindly explain what you’re talking about and please don’t refer to our witnesses as bitches.”

“None of what we’ve just seen was broadcast, sir. We’ve only seen it because we impounded the tapes.”

“I’m amazed it wasn’t wiped,” Hooper added.

“That’ll be Fogarty. He hates Geraldine He

“What are you talking about?” Coleridge demanded once more.

“You must be the only person in the country who doesn’t know, sir. Woggle was wanted by the police. But it only emerged on day fifteen. It’s obvious now that Geraldine He

DAY FIFTEEN. 9.00 p.m.

“I simply ca

“It was so not all about Woggle,” Layla protested. “There were nine other people in that house – interesting, strong, spiritual, beautiful people. It has fallen to me to speak up for all of us. We have spent our time under House Arrest interacting, talking, loving, hugging, being irritated and inspired by each other. Woggle, on the other hand, spent his time in the house being a dirty and unreasonable slob and spreading disease, and it is so not all about him.”

But as far as the public were concerned it was, and that morning even more so, because that was the morning that Geraldine put her Woggle policy into drastic reverse.

The sensational news became public about halfway through Layla’s press conference, and as it swept through the room Layla saw the interest in her and anything she might have to say diminish very rapidly to zero.

Geraldine had had to act, and act quickly. Woggle had been a colossal success, but he was now in danger of being an even more colossal failure. If the other inmates walked out now, as they were perfectly entitled to do, Peeping Tom would be left in default of seven more weeks of nightly television that it was contracted to deliver to the network. Peeping Tom would be bankrupted. Which was why Geraldine sent the old press clippings of the photo of Woggle kicking the girl to the police.

The incident had happened four years previously, and Woggle had looked quite different. He had been a little chunkier and had a pink Mohican haircut, but if you looked closely at the large nose and the bushy eyebrows and the spider’s web tattooed on the man in the picture’s neck, there was no doubting that it was Woggle. Actually Geraldine had been surprised that the papers had not dug it up themselves, but since Woggle had never been caught or identified it would have taken a good memory for faces to recall four years previously, when the photo had been splashed across all the front pages with the headline “WHO ARE THE ANIMALS?”

It had been a hunt-saboteur operation that got out of hand. Woggle and a number of fellow Saabs had invaded a ke

But, on occasion, it was. Although as Woggle and his old animal-liberationist colleagues sometimes pointed out, “We’re only ever violent to humans.” Like most zealots, Woggle had his dark, intolerant side, and while he valued the wellbeing of dumb creatures and even insects most highly, he was singularly unconcerned about his fellow man. Therefore when he had found himself confronted by a stable hand wielding a rake, he waded in and whacked her. The fact that she was only fifteen and weighed less than he did did not concern him. Chivalry was not an issue when it came to defending foxes. As far as Woggle was concerned, if you were a fox-murderer, or an associate of fox-murderers, you had sacrificed your right to any consideration. It did not matter if you were small and blonde and cute, you were fair game and deserved what you got. And this girl was small, blonde and cute, which was why, when the newspapers were choosing between the horrific images of violence taken by the master’s wife from the upstairs window of her farmhouse, there had been no contest. It was an image that briefly shocked a nation: the jolly blonde pony-tailed cutie in gumboots and a Barbour jacket spread out on the ancient cobbles of the stable yard with blood in her hair, while the ugly, crusty, pierced, punk thug lashed out at her with his great steel-capped boots. It had been a public relations disaster for the Saabs, compounded by the fact that the fifteen-year-old in question was a dog-mad, fox-loving member of the RSPCA who regularly petitioned the local hunt to switch to the drag method.