Dead famous (10 page)

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 10.00 a.m.

W
hile various junior officers went off to run the phrase ‘Far corgi in heaven’ around the Internet and through various voice decoders, Coleridge and his inner team put David to one side for a moment and returned to the subject of Woggle.

‘It seems to me that, for all that the public knew, there really was only one housemate in week two,’ Coleridge said, glancing through the digest of the broadcast edits that Trisha and her team had prepared for him.

‘Woggle, Woggle, Woggle and once more Woggle.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Trisha replied.

‘Briefly he became a sort of mini national phenomenon. Half the country were talking about him and the other half were asking who was this Woggle bloke that everybody was talking about. Don’t you remember it?’

‘Very vaguely, constable.’

‘The more revolting he got and the more he denied that he was revolting the more people loved him. It was a sort of craze.’

‘I’ll never forget when they showed him picking the fleas out of his dreadlocks,’ remarked another constable.

‘We were in the pub and it was on the telly; everybody just sort of gasped. It was soooo gross.’

‘Gross if you were watching it. Pretty unbearable if you were living with it,’ said Trisha.

‘Those fleas nearly brought the whole thing to a halt there and then. Shame they didn’t, really, then nobody would have got killed.’

‘And we wouldn’t have to watch this torturous drivel,’ said Coleridge.

‘Didn’t those sadists at Peeping Tom offer them any flea powder?’

‘Yes, they did, but Woggle refused to use it. He said that his fleas were living creatures, and while he didn’t much like the itching he had no intention of murdering them.’

‘Good lord,’ Coleridge observed.

‘An abstract opinion! A moral point of view. I’d given up all hope.’

‘Well, it wasn’t abstract to the housemates, sir. And Woggle’s flea debate gripped the nation.’

DAY TEN. 3.00 p.m.

W
oggle was sitting in his corner ringed by the other housemates.

‘My fleas are forcing you to address your double standards,’ Woggle protested.

‘Would you hunt a fox?’

‘Yes, I fucking would,’ said Garry, but the others had had to admit that they would not, David, Layla and Moon even to having been vaguely active in the most recent anti-hunting campaigns.

‘Fox-hunting is an abomination,’ David said with his usual air of quiet superiority.

‘Yet you would hunt my fleas,’Woggle said.

‘Explain to me the difference between a fox and a flea.’ Clearly nobody really knew where to start.

‘Well…’ Said Kelly, slightly nervously, ‘foxes are cute and fleas aren’t.’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Kelly,’David snapped.

‘She is not being silly,’ said Woggle.

‘She has articulated a universal truth, for it is the shame of humankind that we judge the value of a life in aesthetic terms. That which we find beautiful we nurture, that which we find ugly we destroy. Oh, cursed are we, the human virus that infects this perfect planet.’ David had clearly had enough of this. He wasn’t having the moral high ground pulled from under him.

‘Foxes do very little harm. Hunting them is a sport, not a necessity, that is what makes it despicable and utterly unacceptable to decent modern people living in twenty-first-century New Britain.’

‘Pox-hunters say foxes do lots of harm. They say that foxes are vermin,’ Woggle replied.

‘I deny their claims.’

‘Where’d you live, then, Dave?’ Asked Gazzer, who was always interested in a wind-up.

‘On a farm?’

‘I live in Battersea,’ David replied angrily.

‘But that’s not the…’ Gazzer and Jazz laughed at David’s discomfort, which made David furious. He loathed the way people pretended that you had to live in the country to understand anything about foxes.

‘This is a serious debate,’ he snapped.

‘It is not about cheap point-scoring.’ Woggle agreed with him and pressed his advantage.

‘The difference between foxes and my fleas, comrade, is that my fleas irritate you and foxes don’t. But the fascist farmers and the Nazi hunters claim that foxes irritate them. They claim that foxes eat the chickens and terrorize the hedgerows.’

‘I absolutely refute their claims,’ David insisted, ‘but the point is anyway—’

‘The point is, 0 Adolf of the insect kingdom, the point is, Herr Hitler, that, whether foxes are rural terrorists or not, I would not kill them just as I would not kill my fleas, bite me though they will. This is because I am a morally developed individual, whilst you, on the other hand, are a vicious murdering bastard hypocrite scumbag member of the Gestapo who should be letterbombed.’ Woggle’s thin nasal voice had become firm; he obviously meant what he was saying. He actually leapt to his feet.

‘Your concern for animal welfare,’ Woggle shouted, the flesh around his bushy eyebrows suddenly glowing red, ‘goes exactly as far as the point where your own interests are threatened, and no further. You are just like the tens of millions of vile scum in this country who would ban fox-hunting and seal-clubbing but happily gorge themselves on factory-bred fried chicken and mutated beefburgers! If you would hunt my fleas I suggest you do so with due self-knowledge. I suggest you wear a red coat, 0 Genghis Khan, and blow a bright horn. I suggest that you smear the blood of my dead fleas on the faces of your young after the kill and have a party to celebrate with stirrup cup served in beakers carved from the hooves of slaughtered stags! For you are no better than Lord Blood Sport of Bastardshire, David! You, who profess to care so much, are in fact the self-appointed Master of the Peeping Tom flea hunt!’ The curious thing was that when Woggle’s flea rant was broadcast at the end of the first week of House Arrest, most people watching managed to find common ground with what he said. The anti-fox-hunters, of course, welcomed their most prominent ever national spokesman, while the country sports people hailed a man who forced urban animal activists to confront the selective nature of their agendas. Woggle was like the Bible: everybody claimed he proved their point. And people just loved him. Suddenly it was as if Woggle was the nation’s pet dog, dirty, smelly and intrusive, but somehow rather loveable. If the nine other inmates of the house had had any idea of the extent of Woggle’s popularity outside the house they would not have done what they did. But sealed off as they were from the outside world, they never dreamt that this flea-ridden crusty who could not sit down without leaving a stain was becoming a hero. It wasn’t fair, of course. Geraldine knew that it wasn’t fair, but not surprisingly she didn’t care. Geraldine knew that nobody could have lived with Woggle and put up with it. The fact was that the other nine inmates had been incredibly tolerant; most people would probably have killed Woggle already. But, like life, television is not fair and Geraldine, having unwittingly created a national craze, was happy to edit towards it. She therefore chose not to broadcast the patient and fairly considerate efforts that the housemates made to persuade Woggle to wash his clothes, clear up after himself and above all to deal with his fleas. She did not show how Kelly brought him blankets in the night and Dervla ensured that his dietary requirements were included on the house shopping lists. She showed only moments of the lengthy discussions that Garry, Jazz and Woggle had about football, a passion they all shared. No, Geraldine cut straight to the day when Garry, Jazz, David and Hamish leapt on Woggle as he lay in the garden and forcibly stripped him, burnt his clothes and covered his writhing, protesting form with flea powder.

DAY ELEVEN. 7.30 p.m.

T
he incident occurred on the second Thursday under House Arrest, the day of the first nominations. The Peeping Tom rules were pretty much the same as all the similar shows that had gone before it. Each week, each of the housemates was asked to secretly nominate two people for eviction. The two most nominated people were then subjected to a public telephone vote to decide who should be thrown out of the house. In order to allow people a chance to get to know each other there had been no voting in the first week and therefore day eleven was the first nomination day. The nominating took place in the afternoon, and in the evening the public got to see who had nominated whom, before the cameras cut live to the house to show the housemates being told who would be up for eviction on the following Sunday. Once this live moment of broadcasting was over, and everyone’s face had been studied for traces of relief, glee, spite, etc., the rest of the evening’s show returned to the usual round-up of the day’s activities in the house. The first thing that the public saw on that eleventh night of House Arrest was the nominations. All but one of the housemates voted for Woggle. The strange thing was that the housemate who did not vote for Woggle was not Woggle, because even Woggle voted for Woggle, which was a first for any reality TV show.

‘I am voting for myself to be evicted from this house,’ Woggle droned into the confession box camera, ‘because I absolutely and entirely reject this highly divisive and gladiatorial system which is based on the inherently hierarchical principle that society must produce winners and losers, a principle aimed at the inevitable consequence of the emergence of a single oligarch, which is, let us be quite clear about this, nothing less than fascism. I therefore offer myself up as a sacrifice in protest against the transparently cinical deployment of a spurious democratic process in order to undermine genuine democracy. My other vote is for Jason, because his deodorants block my sinuses.’ After this astonishing display, which could only endear Woggle further to his adoring public, the other nominations seemed rather dull by comparison. David voted for Woggle and also Layla, because he thought Layla was an irritating and pretentious pseud. Kelly voted for Woggle and also Layla, because she thought that Layla looked down on her. Jazz voted for Woggle and also Sally, because he found Sally’s pious attitude to being a lesbian irritating. Hamish voted for Woggle and also David, because he thought he’d have a better chance with the women with David out of the way. Layla voted for Woggle and also David, because she thought David was an irritating and pretentious pseud. Garry voted for Woggle and also Layla, because he thought she was a snob. Moon voted for Woggle and also Garry, because she thought he was a fookin’ sexist twat. Sally voted for Woggle and also Moon, because of what Moon had said about the mentally ill. Dervla voted for David and for Layla, because she was sick of their bickering. Dervla would have voted for Woggle. She certainly wanted Woggle out of the house — she was no more immune to him than anybody else was. But unlike the rest of the housemates, Dervla knew how popular Woggle was with the public. The mirror had told her. It was a constant theme of the messages. Woggle stood at number one, Kelly at number two and Dervla was stubbornly placed third.

‘Be nice to Woggle. People love him,’ the message-writer had said on the morning after Dervla had confronted Woggle over the hair on the soap. Since that time, Dervla had been careful to follow the advice. When the nominations were announced on live television Woggle was acting very strangely. He was sitting in his usual corner but he had covered himself in a blanket and was swaying softly beneath it. He was humming to himself, almost keening. The other nine housemates sat on the couches.

‘This is Chloe,’ the announcement said. Chloe was the ‘face’ of House Arrest, the girl who worked the studio chats.

‘The two housemates nominated for eviction this week are…in alphabetical order…Layla and Woggle.’ Everybody tried not to show it, but the relief was palpable. Only four more days and Woggle would be gone. Even Layla was not unduly worried. Although hurt that she had been the other nominee, she knew that she would live to fight another day, because, like most of the others, she simply could not imagine the public not voting Woggle out. Surely they must find him as revolting as the housemates did. Dervla, of course, knew better.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR. 4.15 p.m.

T
he public did find Woggle revolting,’ Bob Fogarty said, fishing a semi-melted square of chocolate out of his foaming plastic cup, ‘but they just loved him for it, and by the time episode eleven was over, he’d become a national hero. It was so deceitful and unfair, I felt ashamed. I complained to that bitch Geraldine, but she said it came with the job and that cunts like me had forfeited our right to have principles.’ Once more Trisha had gone to the editing bunker in an effort to try to bridge the gap between what the public had seen and what had actually happened. It seemed just possible to her that the clue to solving the murder might lie in understanding how this trick was worked. After all, everybody had seen the murder. Fogarty sucked noisily on his chocolate. Trisha watched his mouth with growing distaste.

‘That cow knew very well that she had been wickedly skewing public sympathy away from the main group and towards Woggle right from the start.’

‘So when the attack on him came, shown in the context Geraldine had made you create, it looked absolutely damning?’

‘It certainly did, and the nation went potty, as I’m sure you know. I told Geraldine that we were giving Woggle too much of the running. I mean, quite apart from the fact that we were seriously demonizing nine relatively innocent people, we were also turning the show into a one-trick pony, which in my humble opinion was not good telly at all in the long term. Geraldine knew that, of course, but the footage was just irresistible. It made the other boys look like absolute bastards. Awful. Like something out of Lord of the Flies.9

DAY ELEVEN. 1.45 p.m.

T
he housemates had been called into the confession box to make their nominations in alphabetical order, therefore Woggle had gone in last.

‘What’s he doing in there?’ Jazz said, after a minute or two had passed.

‘I hope he’s died and rotted,’ David replied.

‘He wouldn’t have to die to rot, he’s rotting already,’ said Gazzer.

‘We’ll be doing him a favour,’ Jazz concluded.

‘Saving him from himself.’ To Jazz, the worst thing on earth would be to be filthy. He lived to preen. When Woggle finally emerged from the little room, the boys were lying in wait.

‘Afternoon, fellow humanoids,’ said Woggle, wandering out into the garden.

‘Happy summer solstice.’ Without a word, they jumped him. Hamish and Jazz held him down while Garry and David pulled off his ancient combat trousers.

‘What’s going on?’ He shouted, but the boys were too intent on their mission to reply. Woggle’s skinny legs kicked about, glaring white in the bright sunlight. He was wearing filthy old Y-fronts with a hole in them where one of his balls had worn the cloth away. As he struggled with his attackers both balls fell through this hole. It didn’t look funny, it looked sad and pathetic.

‘No, no! What’re you doing!’ Woggle yelled, but still the boys ignored him. They had drunk the last of the house cider and were feeling righteous. This had to be done. Woggle had it coming to him. You could not just give people fleas and then expect them to do nothing about it.

‘Get them pants off him, they’ll be infested too!’ Jazz shouted.

‘I ain’t touching them,’ Garry replied.

‘Nor me,’ said Hamish.

‘Fuck this,’ said Jazz and, letting go of Woggle for a moment, he ran to the chicken coup and grabbed the gloves they used to clean out the birds. When he returned, Woggle had managed to twist himself round so that when Jazz pulled his underpants off him his bony white arse was on view to the cameras. Next they pulled off his shirt, ripping the buttons as they did so, and finally they wrenched Woggle’s filthy string vest up over his head. Now Woggle was naked. A struggling, shrieking, pale, bony little creature with a great mop of dreadlocks and his beard flying and flapping in the summer sun.

‘This is assault! I am being defiled! Get off me!’ He shouted.

‘I’m being assaulted and defiled by your fleas!’ Hamish cried, speaking for them all.

‘My fucking armpits are bleeding.’ There was a barbecue at the back of the house and the boys had already cranked it up in preparation for the attack. Jazz threw Woggle’s clothes and his sandals onto the fire. There was a strange fizzing sound.

‘Fuck me!’ He cried.

‘I can hear the fleas popping!’

‘Not popping, screaming!’ Woggle shouted.

‘Let’s shave his head!’ Shouted David.

‘He’s bound to have lice.’

‘No,’ said Jazz firmly.

‘You can’t mess with a man’s barnet, even Woggle’s.’

‘Fascists!’ Shouted Woggle, but his voice degenerated to a cough as Garry and Hamish began dousing him in flea powder. For a few moments they were all engulfed in a great cloud, and when they had finished Woggle was a luminous ghostly white from head to toe. Even his hair and beard were white as snow. They left Woggle prostrate and naked in the middle of the lawn. As he turned briefly towards one of the garden cameras,flesh-coloured lines began to streak his death-white face as the tears sprang from his eyes.