Bodies

by Robert Barnard

  “Yes, isn’t it ridiculous? I’d never have made a philosopher’s wife, and I was born a Cohen. Call me Greta.”

  “The proprietor,” murmured Phil, who seemed to have shrunk into an even less blooming state in his boss’s vital presence.

  “Ah,” I said. “I wondered what the financial set-up was.”

  “Thought maybe Phil owned it himself, and was coining it in, did you? Not on your life! I’m the one who’s coining it in.” She let out that laugh again. “I keep Phil on very short commons. He’d only spend a rise on more cigarettes. Look at him! Listen to that cough! Can you imagine a worse editor for Bodies? I’d give him the sack and find me some healthy glamour boy to do the job if he wasn’t so marvellous at it.”

  They seemed to be on terms of affectionate chaff. Phil took out a cigarette and lit it from the butt of his last.

  “Did you start the magazine?” Garry asked Mrs. Wittgenstein. Garry was always interested in people with a gift for money.

  “My late husband. He had a flair for identifying areas that the big chain magazine publishers weren’t serving. So I’ve got a whole chain of little mags: Pigeon for the pigeon-fancier; Seventy-Eight for the collector of old records; Match-Box; Medal—oh, all sorts of little hobbies and things we cater for. Some of them I’ve started myself. None of them makes quite as much money as Bodies, though.”

  “The nearest thing to a universal interest?” I suggested.

  “It certainly seems to knock match-box collecting into a cocked hat,” she agreed cheerfully. “It was my late husband’s idea—or his and Phil’s, really. Cooked it up over a meal at Bloom’s in Golders Green—though poor old Sam was no more Orthodox than I am. Bodies went well right from the start, and gradually it built up a sort of family audience. I’d be the poorer without it, I can tell you. Phil and I, by the way, were just wondering what to do about these—they’ve just come from your mob.”

  She gestured towards the desk. On it were the last photographs taken by Bob Cordle. I had seen them before, but I took them up and looked at them again. This was only a selection. There had been an enormous number from the session, confirming what I had been told about Wayne Flushing being a less than proficient performer in this branch of his trade. Susan Platt-Morrison seemed to get things right by instinct, but beside her Wayne, as often as not, presented a stodgy or an embarrassed image. He was like an amateur actor who had every physical qualification for the part he was playing but no acting talent. The crucial shots were the last two or three. In these one saw dawning bewilderment, then fear, in the eyes of Susan, even as she held her pose, while Wayne, characteristically slower, seemed to register something abnormal only in the final shot. The second after that was taken, the first shot that killed Bob Cordle must have rung out, Susan must have made that pathetic effort to shield her body, and Wayne started towards the attacker.

  “Those are the ’ottest pictures we’ve ever had,” said Phil, taking one up regretfully and shaking his head. “And we can’t use them.”

  “No?”

  “No. It would be in terrible taste.”

  “Terrible,” I agreed. “But is that necessarily—?”

  “We’re not that sort of magazine,” said Greta firmly. “Whatever you may think. We’re not sensational. If we started in that direction we’d become something entirely different, and we wouldn’t keep our old subscribers. If I’d wanted us to become a high-price mucky mag, I’d have gone in that direction long ago. We’ve always tried to go about supplying this particular market with a certain amount of taste, kept it low-key . . . ”

  “Some of the readers regard the regular models as friends,” confirmed Phil. “They’d ’ate to see us capitalize on their last moments. They’d be disgusted.”

  “But it’s only the last two or three that are sensational in any way.”

  “Yes, we did think we might use one from early on in the session as a full-page memorial to Wayne and Susan. Do it in style, edge it in black, an’ all that. They’d posed for us quite often before, after all. I’d write a tasteful piece about them both, to go on the facing page. I didn’t know much about either of them, to tell you the truth, but that sort of stuff pretty well writes itself. There’ll be something on the editorial page about the murders, but the rest of the mag will be as usual.”

  “And what about those last pictures?”

  Over Phil’s face there crept an expression that combined foxiness and embarrassment.

  “We thought we’d sell them to the Daily Grub.”

  Greta Wittgenstein saw I wanted to laugh, so she laughed for me.

  “Don’t be so mealy-mouthed about it, Phil,” she screamed. “Of course we’ll sell them to the Daily Grub! We’ll make the earth. They’ve already offered three thousand for them, and I bet I can get them up to five! We may have to show good taste, but it’ll be the day when they do.” Suddenly she went silent and brushed her hand over her face, as if wiping her merriment away.

  “What a subject to laugh about, eh?” she went on, after a moment, “When they’re dear old Bob Cordle’s last photographs. What a lovely man—a man I’d happily have married, if he’d had the good sense to ask me. If he’d been free I’m not sure I wouldn’t have asked him.”

  “What was so wonderful about him?” I asked, feeling that this was one person whose judgment I might trust.

  “So warm, and quiet, and kind, and everything for other people, and nothing at all for himself. You don’t get many like that these days. It’s not a breed that seems to be encouraged. But I tell you, when one does turn up, he warms your heart.”

  She took her coat from a hook on the door, opened her bag and adjusted her flamboyant make-up, then took out her car keys and prepared to be off.

  “I’ll leave you three to it. I must be away to Much Sleeping in the Wold.”

  “You don’t live in London?”

  “No. I shook the dust of Golders Green off my feet. I got the idea that all that kosher food was looking at me reproachfully. And I thought in a village I’d stand out more. I really prefer to stand out. Hence the move to Lincolnshire.”

  I thought she definitely would stand out in Lincolnshire.

  “Pick whichever shot you like for Bodies,” she said to Phil. “Above all, make it dignified. Treat it as a crisis for the magazine, and write it as if you were editor of The Times. One of the pre-Murdoch editors of The Times. As to the new photographer, I don’t know anything about that. Pick out two or three, get some samples of their work, and we’ll talk it over and perhaps interview them. ’Bye!”

  And she clattered off down the stairs.

  “Salt of the earth!” said Fennilow, as he stubbed out his cigarette. He was about to reach for another when he was seized by a racking cough, and his hand moved reluctantly away from his pocket. “Straight as a die. You can trust anything she says—including the bit about keeping me on short commons,” he added ruefully.

  “I’m glad to get the ownership of the magazine straightened out,” I said. “I did rather think it was probably you who was stashing away the notes. I gather, though, that she leaves the day-to-day running of the business to you?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And the letting of the studio, and that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, broadly speaking. She’d expect to be informed.”

  “Did you inform her when you let it to Bob Cordle that the studio would be used for making pornographic films?”

  Phil looked very angry, and reached automatically for his cigarettes.

  “I’ve told you before, there wasn’t nothing like that. We’ve got a reputation to consider—practically a family magazine we are, like she said. We’d never ’ave touched anything dubious or nasty. We’ve been over all this before.”

  “So we have. Still, the fact is, I’m beginning to get evidence that the studio has been used in the evenings to make films that are far from family entertainment. I think the evidence is reliable.”

  Phil sat down and drew on his fag
.

  “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it of Bob Cordle.”

  “What precisely was the financial arrangement with Bob Cordle concerning the studio?”

  “I’ve told you. I let it out to him—acting for Mrs, Wittgenstein, of course—certain times of the week. Other days it would be free, so that if we wanted to use it for other photographers (we didn’t only use Bob, though he was our main one) we could. While Bob had it, he did what work he liked—some days his own, some days work for us. Anything he took for Bodies he sold to us in the usual way.”

  Was I mistaken, or did I detect the slightest beginnings of an attempt to distance himself from Bob Cordle?

  “So on certain days the studio was entirely at his disposal?”

  “Yes, or parts of days.”

  “Wednesdays, for example?”

  “His from twelve o’clock on.”

  “Including evenings?”

  “If he wanted it. I don’t think he ever did. He finished in the early evening as a rule, and after that it’d be empty.”

  “You say this from your own knowledge?”

  Phil paused, and coughed.

  “Well, no. I’m never ’ere at nights, am I?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I’m a strictly nine till five man. Or more like nine-thirty to four-thirty. I’m never ’ere at nights.”

  “Never stay up in town for theatre or cinema?”

  “What would I do that for?”

  I sighed.

  “All right, skip it. What it amounts to is that you just assume it’s empty at nights.”

  “Yes . . . Yes. I’d ’ave thought it would ’ave come up in conversation with Bob, if ’e’d been using it regular at night.”

  “Not if he was using it for something he wouldn’t want you to know about.”

  “No . . . I can’t believe it of Bob.”

  “What about props, if the place is used for filming?”

  “There’s a box-room, with the things Bob sometimes used.”

  “Including a bed?”

  “There’s definitely a couch. Sometimes he’d pose one of the girls on it for Bodies.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Phil found the key on his ring, and we went out together. He opened a door on the landing. A musty, dusty little box-room it was, with a great deal of photographic impedimenta, with another pile of drapes, all sorts of frames, doubtless to fix cameras on to, and a sofa—a striped, modern job, that looked rather like an Observer Special Offer. Garry and I went in and fiddled about with it. It opened out to form a bed. What is more, it opened out very easily to form a bed.

  “Right,” I said, leading the way back to the office. “At least we know this place holds the first requirement, if bed films were to be made here.”

  “Pretty elementary bed films, surely,” Garry Joplin said.

  “Have you been to these scruffy little members-only cinemas?”

  “No, actually,” said Garry, looking vaguely ashamed.

  “Elementary is what they are. Filmed on a shoestring, if not a G-string. Anything as elaborate as a set is a rarity. This sofa, the chair in there, the fireplace—nothing more was needed. Two or three evenings’ filming and he’d have a nice little half-hour porno movie.”

  “Can I say something?” came the voice of Phil from behind us.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve told you I’ve never been ’ere in the evening, so I can’t confirm what you’re suggesting, nor yet give it the lie. On the other ’and, I often ’ave to call Bob on the phone of an evening. Arrangements for next day, problems with reproducing ’is pictures. I’ve never rung and found ’im out.”

  He looked at me triumphantly.

  “That’s not conclusive,” I said.

  “He’s a ’ome bird, Bob. Ask ’is wife ’ow often ’e was out at night. I bet she’ll say once in a blue moon.”

  “Wives’ testimony is not very valuable,” I said. But I must admit that little worms of doubt were crawling an inch or two further forward. And suddenly, with those doubts, a question or connection that had been bothering me all day suddenly presented itself fully formed in my brain. I looked at Phil thoughtfully.

  “You say—everybody says, till I’m tired of it—that Bob Cordle was the soul of generosity, a top-brick-off-the-chimney fellow, is that right?”

  “ ’E was,” said Phil, almost belligerently. “And if you weren’t so bleedin’ cynical, you’d accept it, when everybody tells you so.”

  “Cynicism goes with the job,” I said. “I’d have thought it might have gone along with the body trade as well, but it seems naïveté’s more the thing there. I marvel how you all manage to keep your innocence. But I’ll take the uncynical line for once. Good old Bob was always helping people—right?”

  “Right.”

  “Doing free publicity shots for actresses, and helping some of the bodybuilders who are over the hill?”

  “ ’E did. Well known for it.”

  “Including one, I gather from his wife, who wanted to go into the photography business?”

  “That’s right. It’s like sportsmen—it’s a short career, and at the end of it you’ve got a life to lead and a living to earn. This chap Bob helped, ’e was a chap who was on our cover—oh, three, maybe four years ago.” Phil went over to a rickety shelf in a corner of the room, and took down a couple of files. “When this bloke decided to go into photography, pro photography, like, Bob didn’t regard ’im as a potential rival, not a bit of it. ’E was marvellous to ’im, coaching ’im, selling ’im old cameras cheap, showing ’im all the little tricks. Bob was like that: if you appealed to ’im for ’elp, ’e could never do too much for you. Wait a bit—this is the number . . . ”

  He took the issue out of the file and brought it over. Smiling out at us, but not showing his teeth, was a large, well-muscled man in briefs, one arm around a blonde in a bikini.

  “Vince Haggarty,” I said.

  “That’s right. ’E ’asn’t got any of Bob’s flair, but of course ’e’s got marvellous connections in the business. ’E’s one of the people I’m going to suggest to Mrs. Wittgenstein to take over Bob’s job.”

  “As your principal photographer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Will you take a piece of advice?”

  “O’ course, if it’s good.”

  “I shouldn’t,” I said. “I really shouldn’t.”

  Chapter 13

  AT LONG LAST I was beginning to get the idea, perhaps a delusive one, that the case was making some progress. How these new illuminations were going to help in solving the murder was, however, less than clear: so far it seemed to be more a matter for the Vice Squad than the Murder Squad. My suspicions had transferred themselves from the dead to the living, which in some ways seemed less than an advance: as long as it seemed to me that Bob Cordle was involved in the mucky film lark, it was possible to form several scenarios about the whys and wherefores of his death. If he wasn’t, those scenarios had to be discarded, without anything very obvious to put in their place. My suspicions about the living, however, were gaining a degree of substance, and I felt sure that somewhere in these murky waters, among this human flotsam and jetsam, the answer would be found.

  So far my reconstruction went like this: Vince Haggarty had been helped to launch himself on a professional photography career by Bob Cordle. This Vince had carefully not mentioned to me, which in itself suggested he was operating at the murkier end of the market. When I had called on him (rather earlier than I had appointed, I remembered) he had covered up the equipment he had in cases around the room with his girlfriend’s ethnic drapes and wall-hangings. Bob Cordle’s generosity had extended to giving him the run of the Bodies studio on days when he had hired it, since he himself had no need of it after early evening. Whatever he may have used it for in the first days of his new career, after a time Vince had repaid that generosity by shooting blue movies there—almost certainly without Cordl
e’s knowledge. He, no doubt, was one of those characters that Bob Cordle, if he found himself let down, would never help twice. But in this case the once had done for Bob. I had by now put aside my professional cynicism and admitted that everyone had probably spoken the truth about Bob Cordle’s basic decency.

  Thus far my conjecture was fairly confident. I firmed it by ringing Nellie Cordle and hearing from her that Vince was indeed the man whom her husband had helped on his way to a career in photography. She was not sure about loaning him the studio, but she thought Bob might have mentioned that. It would be just like him.

  Beyond that conjecture I had various more nebulous ideas, which I was going to have to test. There was also the interesting question of the position in all this of Todd Masterman. The conversation Charlie had overheard opened up all sorts of possibilities for that self-proclaimed Mr. Clean. Was he the impresario of the whole thing? Did he merely tip off the film-makers about possible performers? Or was he perhaps quite innocent—the victim, like Cordle, of my professional cynicism, the object of quite fanciful suspicions?

  After consideration I put that last possibility to one side: he had conspicuously omitted to mention to me Vince’s career as a photographer—had, after an initial hiccup, gone along with the idea of his still making a living from posing. That did not argue for innocence.

  The next question was how to find out precisely what they were up to. I needed something hard on them, if I was to get anything out of them about the connection between their activities and the Bodies shooting—about which I had only the most nebulous theories. Whatever they were doing, it was doubtless not being done at present at the Windlesham Street studio—would never be done there again. But there was this hungry market of video-owners and shady-cinema-goers, avid for novelty. Maybe there was a lull in their activities at the moment, but they would start up again as soon as they felt safe, I had no doubt. The question was, how best to gain entry to their rather special little world.

  I thought about that a lot, and the next morning I rang up Charlie.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, to my request for a confab. “The usual place?”