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thoughtfully.
    ‘A lot of failed ambition for both of them. It could be relevant.’
    ‘Not for Layla, sir, surely? She got chucked out before the murder happened.’
    ‘I am aware of that, sergeant, but seeing as how we don’t know anything at all it behoves us to investigate everything.’ Hooper hated the fact that he worked under a man who used words like ‘behoves’.
    ‘This girl Layla’s resentment and feelings of inadequacy could have found some resonance in the group. She may have been the catalyst for somebody else’s self-doubt. Who knows, sometimes with murder it’s entirely the wrong person that gets killed.’
    ‘Eh?’ Said Hooper.
    ‘Well, think about it,’ Coleridge explained.
    ‘Suppose a man is being taunted by his girlfriend about his powers in bed. Finally he storms out into the dark night and on his way home a stranger steps on his heel. The man spins round and kills the stranger, whereas really he wanted to kill his girlfriend.’
    ‘Well, yes, sir, I can see that happening with a random act of anger, but the murder happened long after Layla left…’
    ‘All right. Suppose you have a group of friends, and A has a dark, dark secret which B discovers. B then begins to spread the secret about and this gets back to A, but when A confronts B, B convincingly claims that the blabbermouth is in fact C. A then kills C, who actually knew nothing about it. The wrong person gets killed. In my experience there are usually a lot more people involved in a murder than the culprit and the victim.’
    ‘So we keep Layla in the frame?’
    ‘Well, not as an actual murder suspect, obviously. But before she left that house it is entirely possible that she sowed the seed that led to murder. Let’s move on.’ Trisha pressed play and the camera panned across from Woggle to settle on the tenth and final housemate.
Dervla . Real job: trauma therapist. Star sign: Taurus.
    She was the most beautiful, everybody agreed that, and the most mysterious. Quiet and extremely calm, it was never easy to work out what was going on behind those smiling green Irish eyes. Eyes that always seemed to be laughing at a different joke from the rest of the group. By the time of the murder Dervla had been the bookies’ number-two favourite to win the game, and she would have been number one had Geraldine Hennessy not occasionally and jealously edited against her, making her look stuck-up when in fact she was merely abstracted.
    ‘So what’s a trauma therapist when it’s at home, then?’ Garry asked. He and Dervla were stretched out beside the pool in the pleasant aftermath of the morning’s champagne.
    ‘Well, I suppose my job is to understand how people react to stress, so that I can help them to deal with it.’ Dervla replied in her gentle Dublin brogue.
    ‘That’s why I wanted to come on this show. I mean, the whole experience is really just a series of small traumas, isn’t it? I think it’ll be very interesting to be close to the people experiencing those traumas and also to experience them myself.’
    ‘So it’s got nothing to do with winning half a million big ones, then?’ Dervla was far too clever to deny the charge completely. She knew that the nation would almost certainly be scrutinizing her reply that very evening.
    ‘Well, that would be nice, of course. But I’m sure I’ll be evicted long before that. No, basically I’m here to learn. About myself and about stress.’ Coleridge was so exasperated that he had to make himself another mug of tea. Here was this beautiful, intelligent woman, to whom he was embarrassed to discover he found himself rather attracted, with eyes like emeralds and a voice like milk and honey, and yet she was talking utter and complete rubbish.
    ‘Stress! Stress!’ Coleridge said, in what for him was almost a shout.
    ‘Not much more than two generations ago the entire population of this country stood in the shadow of imminent brutal occupation by a crowd of murdering Nazis! A