Identity crisis, p.1
Identity Crisis, page 1
Identity Crisis
Ben Elton
Contents
1. #NotHerFault
2. Number Cruncher
3. Professional Confessional
4. #ProudMeninist
5. ‘Can We Please Not Talk About the Fucking Referendum?’
6. #DontBookBedsFromBigots
7. A Smooth Operator
8. Love, Spelled L-U-V
9. Harnessing the Zeitgeist
10. The Body in the Drawer
11. They’ll Make Flirting Illegal Next!
12. Never Mind the Bollocks
13. #NotOK
14. Storms Gather on Love Island
15. A Pronoun By Any Other Name
16. Woke-Up Call
17. A Kiss Is Just a Kiss
18. #NoShadeOfGrey
19. Dead Famous
20. I am Latifa
21. The Fishing Fleet
22. To Zie or Not to Zie
23. TERF Witch
24. Mixed Motives
25. Kiss Chase
26. Just Another Battle of Britain
27. Hate Island
28. Changing Hashtags in Midstream
29. Troll in a Pond
30. Good Old-fashioned Date
31. The Fallen Women
32. EARF (Extremely Annoyed Radical Feminist)
33. Further Storms on Love Island
34. Dead Popular
35. Not a CHUT
36. Soppy Bastard
37. Latifa’s Mum
38. Phoenix Rising
39. Out of the Closet
40. A Girl’s Got to Do
41. Remember Her?
42. Remember Her Too
43. Without a Clue
44. Remembering Her. And Her. And Her and Her.
45. Too Many Victims, Not Enough Suspects
46. Fallen Hero
47. Innocent Troll
48. Great Britain Rebranded (Again)
49. Trollskis
50. Christian Martyrs
51. Not a Very Colourful Rainbow
52. In Russia Without Love
53. Oppressive Relationship
54. Waiting on a Train
55. Crisis Management
56. The Dots and How to Join Them
57. Oppressed CGHs (Cisgender Heterosexuals)
58. Joined-up Dots
59. Guilty As Charged
60. In Bed With the Devil
61. The List Gets Longer
62. Bunter’s Sunlit Uplands
63. Groundhog Corpse
64. Mixed Emojis
65. Expanding the Team
66. Reaching Out to an Old Friend
67. Girls’ Night Out
68. Stake Out
69. Setting the Trap
70. The End of a Relationship
71. How It Ended
72. Afterwards
About the Author
Ben Elton’s multi-award-winning career as both performer and writer encompasses some of the most memorable and incisive comedy of the past thirty-five years. In addition to his hugely influential work as a stand-up comic, he was co-writer of TV hits The Young Ones and Blackadder and sole creator of The Thin Blue Line and Upstart Crow. He has written fifteen major bestsellers, including Stark, Popcorn, Inconceivable, Dead Famous, High Society, Two Brothers and Time and Time Again, three West End plays and three musicals, including global phenomenon We Will Rock You. He has written and directed two feature films, Maybe Baby and Three Summers, and wrote the screenplay of the film All Is True, directed by Kenneth Branagh.
He is married and has three children.
Also by Ben Elton
Stark
Gridlock
This Other Eden
Popcorn
Blast from the Past
Inconceivable
Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty
Dead Famous
High Society
Past Mortem
The First Casualty
Chart Throb
Blind Faith
Meltdown
Two Brothers
Time and Time Again
Upstart Crow
For my wife Sophie and our children, Bert, Lottie and Fred
1. #NotHerFault
Detective chief Inspector Michael Matlock watched himself with the queasy distaste that always overtook him when he was required to review his media appearances. He could never quite get used to how old he looked. That the craggy-faced, fifty-something behind the microphone was actually him.
It wasn’t that he hated how he looked. In fact, privately, he thought he wasn’t so bad. Still lean, still sharp. Still rock ’n’ roll. People said he was a bit like The Edge from U2 but that was probably only because he wore the same type of woolly hat as The Edge did. And you couldn’t wear a woolly hat in a police press briefing anyway. Not an indoors briefing.
You just had to admit you were going bald.
‘The victim’s name was Sammy Hill,’ Matlock was saying. ‘A young woman, who was assaulted and killed some time shortly after midnight while crossing Conway Park.’
He could hear himself doing a telephone voice for the occasion. Trying to reinstate his ts and stop his glottal. As if somehow his natural Kilburn High Road accent lacked sufficient gravitas for the appalling message it was his duty to deliver. How did you give the news nobody wanted to hear? What words or tone could possibly speak to the sadness and the fury that the people watching would be feeling? The utter frustration at the horrible inevitability of it all. How many similar announcements had he made over the years? A lifetime of police work and nothing ever changed.
‘This was a brutal murder. A vile and senseless act. And we want to assure the public that we are doing all we can to catch the perpetrator. However, in the meantime there is a killer on the loose, and while we can’t rule out the possibility that Sammy knew her attacker, the current indications are that this was a random assault. A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
The assistant deputy commissioner tapped a key on his laptop. The image froze. Matlock had been in the process of drawing breath but looked as if he was howling. Like the figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Except he wasn’t that bald and he didn’t have his hands over his ears.
But he was that appalled. And he was that confused.
Funny how the freeze frame seemed to tear away his mask, capturing the fearful anger and agonized impotence previously hidden by his forced tone and official manner. Matlock had felt just like the man in The Scream at that press conference. It was how he felt at all of them. He was only human after all.
‘“Wrong place at the wrong time”?’
The assistant deputy commissioner spoke slowly. Coldly. Matlock sensed he was in trouble, although he couldn’t think why.
‘Yeah. Very sad, sir,’ Matlock said, for want of any other reply.
‘What did you mean?’
‘What did I mean?’
‘“Wrong place wrong time.” What did you mean?’
Matlock felt a little surge of anger. He wanted to say, ‘Duh!’ like his partner Nancy’s teenage daughter was always saying to him. He wanted to say that it was bloody obvious what he meant. That this poor woman’s space on earth had been the subject of a cataclysmic random intervention. As if a meteor had fallen on her from the sky. That life was appalling and brutal and completely, cosmically unfair. That the grim and terrible truth was it could have happened to any woman. That an innocent life had crossed paths with a wicked and psychotic one.
‘I was emphasizing the random nature of the attack, sir,’ Matlock replied quietly. ‘I’m pretty certain it’s not a domestic. It looks to me like this killer chanced on his victim. Five minutes either way and it would have been another girl. I think it’s important the public is aware of that.’
‘That’s not what I’m asking, Matlock.’
‘Then I don’t know what you are asking, sir.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ And he really didn’t. Matlock had simply no idea where this was going.
‘Conway Park is a public park, isn’t it?’ the assistant deputy commissioner asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And as far as I know there’s no curfew in this country.’
‘Curfew? Not that I’d heard.’
The assistant deputy commissioner’s fragile calm exploded. ‘Then how the hell do you explain telling the public that this woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time? You massive, massive prat!’
Massive prat? Did he really just say that? When had assistant deputy commissioners started talking like school kids? When prime ministers had, Matlock supposed.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘as I say, I wasn’t speaking literally. I was trying to indicate the random nature of …’
The assistant deputy commissioner tapped his keyboard again and the silently screaming image of anger and confusion on the screen shuddered back into life, resuming once more the mask of a steady, calm, dependable policeman.
‘Unfortunately we have to presume that this man may likely strike again. Therefore I appeal to all women in the area to be extra vigilant. Plan your journey home, where possible avoiding under-populated areas. Consider travelling in pairs …’
Another hand tapped the keyboard. One with bright-red-polished fingernails. ‘Jesus, Mick! It sounds like you’re saying it was her fault.’
Oh, fuck. He got it now.
Janine Treadwell was Scotland Yard’s senior press and media liaison officer. Mick Matlock
‘Is that really what you think?’ she asked him.
‘Yes!’ the assistant deputy commissioner snapped. ‘Is that who you are?’
‘Look. I just wanted to …’
But it had clearly been a rhetorical question.
‘Is it, though?’ the assistant deputy commissioner went on, revelling in the opportunity to display his enlightened credentials. ‘Are you the sort of person who believes that this young woman shouldn’t have been in the park at all?’
‘No! I just—’
‘This woman was not responsible for her own assault, Mick,’ Janine said. ‘Her attacker was.’
Her kinder tone was, if anything, more painful for Matlock than the assistant deputy commissioner’s self-righteous display. She was right. Of course she was. He felt bad for his stupid choice of words and embarrassed that she didn’t think he even understood his mistake.
‘Yes, Janine, I absolutely do know that, but—’
‘And yet!’ the assistant deputy commissioner interrupted, almost shouting now, ‘you just went on the television and told half the population of this country that if they don’t want to get murdered they should steer clear of public parks after dark because otherwise they’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What century are you living in?’
Matlock didn’t try to explain further. He really should have phrased it better. ‘Sorry,’ he said and, turning to Janine, ‘I imagine the press department’s going to be dealing with quite a bit of stick over this.’
‘I’m afraid we are.’
‘It was a stupid thing to say.’
‘Little bit,’ Janine agreed.
‘Horribly, horribly tone deaf,’ the assistant deputy commissioner added piously.
Matlock stared at his commanding officer. The posturing little shit was revelling in it. He wasn’t thinking about Sammy Hill at all. He was thinking about letting everybody know what a thoroughly wonderful person he was.
‘Can I get back to my investigation now?’ Matlock asked. ‘I was on my way to view the body when I got called in.’
‘The investigation? God, no,’ the assistant deputy commissioner snapped. ‘Not until this utter screw-up has completed its spin cycle.’
Matlock turned and left. He’d made a mistake, and he knew it, but he still couldn’t be bothered to talk to a senior police officer who used the term ‘spin cycle’ in any other context than when doing the laundry.
He returned to the Situation Room. Matlock loved his Situation Room. He loved the tension, the buzz. The sense of shared purpose. The flickering screens, the clattering keyboards. Phones ringing. Kettles boiling. Brains whirring. This was where they took care of business. Where they got the job done. Protecting the innocent. Punishing the guilty. Scotland Yard CID, the heart of the city. This was where they were going to catch the psychotic bastard who murdered Sammy Hill.
‘You’re trending, boss,’ Detective Sergeant Barry Taylor said, looking up from his phone. ‘You’re actually number one! #NotHerFault.’
There was a good-natured round of applause.
Matlock gave a little bow. It never helped to show your crew that you were rattled. But he was rattled. He read the Guardian. He knew that language and attitudes were changing. And he absolutely thought that was a good thing. It was just so easy to get it wrong.
‘’Fraid it’s all a bit negative,’ Taylor went on. ‘People can’t believe you said that girl shouldn’t have been in the park in the first place.’
‘I did not say—’
‘You said she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, boss,’ Taylor reminded him, with a broad smile. ‘What part of that sentence am I not getting?’
‘It’s a turn of phrase, Barry. What about context? Doesn’t anybody do context any more?’
‘No, boss,’ Detective Constable Sally Clegg chipped in. ‘Nobody does context. You need to get used to that.’
Taylor and Clegg were Matlock’s closest colleagues. His basic team. They were a good contrast, the two of them. Taylor was brash and confident, a bit of a ‘lad’ but with sufficient charm and intelligence to get away with it (usually). Clegg was less obviously self-assured but with a strong core – she needed one: she was the youngest and most junior in their team and, of course, female. CID was no longer exclusively a man’s world but women remained very much in the minority.
‘Wow.’ Taylor frowned. ‘This is bad.’
‘What? What’s bad?’ Matlock asked.
‘The Mayor of London’s calling on you to either apologize or resign. The actual mayor. He’s tagged it #RapeIsAMaleProblem.’
‘Rape? Who said anything about rape? We haven’t said anything about rape.’
Taylor shrugged. ‘Looks like he just assumed.’
Matlock’s phone pinged. It was a text from Nancy: What the fuck have you done? You’re on the news.
Matlock turned on the office TV. BBC News 24. He was all over it. Various representatives of women’s groups and crisis centres, plus MPs from both sides of the House were unanimous in their condemnation of his despicably ‘tone-deaf victim blaming’.
‘The overwhelming majority of rapes and sexual assaults are carried out by men,’ the male MP for the constituency in which Conway Park was located stated firmly. ‘If we want to protect women then it is male attitudes and choices that we need to be questioning.’
Suddenly Matlock was angry. He knew that, in the broader scheme of things, the MP was making a valid point, but it was a socio-political one and this was a murder investigation. Was he seriously suggesting that the safety of his female constituents would be better served if the police appealed to murderers and rapists to consider their choices? ‘That is just bloody mad,’ he said. ‘It’s also dangerous.’
‘Come on, boss,’ Taylor said gleefully. ‘Patriarchal entitlement is the root cause of female vulnerability.’
He was quoting from a recent set of police guidelines and enjoying watching his chief get tied up in knots over what he himself considered to be ‘PC madness’.
‘Well, it is, Barry,’ Clegg said angrily. ‘What the fuck else would it be? We don’t beat ourselves up, you know.’
‘Here we go,’ Taylor said, with mock weariness.
‘You’re right, Sally,’ Matlock said. ‘Patriarchal entitlement absolutely is the root cause of female vulnerability. It has been since the first caveman dragged a woman into his cave by the hair. And wishing that wasn’t the case isn’t going to make it happen.’
‘Please don’t say that in your statement, boss,’ Clegg replied. She was fond of her boss, and really hoped he wouldn’t dig himself in any deeper.
‘Say what?’
‘That men are cavemen and women need to just get over it.’
‘That is not what I said … Statement? What bloody statement?’
‘Well, they’re going to have you make a statement obviously. You’ll have to go full mea culpa.’
‘I’m not going to apologize for anything – and I certainly shan’t be making any statement. I’ve got a murder to investigate.’
Clegg and Taylor looked at him with weary pity.
‘Of course you’ll be making a statement, boss,’ Clegg said. ‘What century are you living in?’
‘Since you ask, Sally, I’m thinking of relocating to the twentieth. For a start the music’s better.’
2. Number Cruncher
‘I write algorithms.’ Malika Rajput was explaining to her mother, Nasreen, for the umpteenth time what she actually did.
‘I know you’ve told me before, darling, but what are algorithms again?’
Malika sighed. ‘Mathematical equations that take a problem, ask it a series of questions in the most efficient possible manner and produce a solution.’
‘A mathematical equation can ask questions?’
Malika’s mother would never really get it.
What Nasreen Rajput did get, however, was that her daughter, who had only graduated the previous summer, now had a highly paid job in London. A city that, like the rest of the country, was in deep financial crisis but which was nonetheless too expensive for almost anybody to live in.
‘It’s wonderful that we can meet for lunch like this, dear, with you back in London. So many of the girls you were at school with have whizzed off all over the country. Abroad too. Looking for “gigs” apparently. I’m still in touch with some of the mothers and they hardly see their girls at all. Just Skype. Like we did when you were hidden away in Oxford. We’re so lucky. The only one of your old crowd I’ve heard about who managed to find work in town is Sally. You remember Sally Clegg?’
