Bodies (10 page)

“I don't know what you mean,” he said. “I haven't done anything.”

His accent was a careful, classless one, middling in pitch, and slightly anonymous, like his bodily perfection. His mother would have said “I ain't done nothing,” as no doubt Denny did in boyhood, and still might when his back was against the wall. But now it was that neutral “I haven't done anything.” Self-improvement, I thought, cut both ways. At least if he had said “I ain't done nothing” it would have been more truthful. One thing that was clear from his behaviour was that he hadn't done nothing.

“Well,” I said, “you react remarkably guiltily for someone who has nothing on his conscience.”

“That was shock,” he said eagerly. “Coming while I was still keyed
up for the Exhibition. And I've never had anything to do with the police.”

“Really? Grew up in the East End, hang around Soho, and yet you've
never
had anything to do with the police? That's a remarkable virginity to have maintained that long.”

“Who says I hang around Soho? I train in Battersea.”

“Well, you've certainly been to the
Bodies
office, to be photographed by Bob Cordle.”

“What if I have? Most of us have been photographed for
Bodies.
It's no different from being photographed for
Bodybuilding Monthly,
or any of those mags.”

“I didn't say it was. I think you were one of Cordle's favourite models, weren't you?”

He sat thinking, wondering what the best answer would be. It was as if this was a new pose he was holding.

“I posed for him a few times . . . sometimes alone, sometimes with a bird . . . a girl . . . It was all above board. I don't take on anything my agent doesn't recommend.”

“So you never did anything . . . a bit way out? Bob Cordle, just to juggle with one possibility, didn't go in for the small cinema club quickies? Video naughties? Nothing like that?”

“No, he did not. You obviously don't know anything about Bob Cordle. He wouldn't have
touched
that stuff. Bob was a real gent.”

“I'm getting just that bit tired of hearing that Bob Cordle was a real gent. Every time someone says it to me, I get that bit more suspicious.”

“Well, that's your problem, mate, because it's the bleeding truth.” He drew back as if he had blasphemed before a Sunday School class. “Sorry.”

“So all you ever did for Bob Cordle was pose for him for
Bodies
magazine?”

“Right. Clothed. Decent, anyway.”

“But there is, I suppose, other work around, unclothed, indecent?”

Here Denzil patently became more uneasy. It was interesting to see how much more difficult his lack of clothing made it to hide that unease. It was a matter of tensing muscles, which I could not fail to register, but which shirt and trousers would have covered.

“O' course there is. You know that as well as I do, if you're in the police. Doesn't mean I went in for it.”

“Then you didn't?”

“No . . . Doesn't pay to do that stuff . . . Well, I mean, it
pays
. . . so I'm told . . . but it doesn't pay professionally, which is all I care about. Anything a bit off gets you in bad odour with the powers that be in the sport.”

“Tel me a bit about how you earn your money, then? What sort of thing do you do?”

“I don't really earn that much money. It's a simple life, really. You get sort of devoted to the sport.”

“And of course your mother earns.”

“That's right, she does.”

“Still, what about training equipment, special diets, all those pills and medical aids?”

“Oh yes, sure—those things can cost money . . . Well, apart from the posing, I do advertisements.”

“Your mum says you've never been on television.”

“No, I haven't, but there's plenty of other kinds . . . ” He started up. “Here, have you been round badgering my old mum?”

Quick, this Denzil. I summoned up the courage to push him back on to the bench.

“She was in when I called on you,” I said, which was not strictly truthful. “So you've been on posters, pictured in ads in the newspapers, and that kind of thing?”

“That's right. There's a fair bit of that sort of work around. Not as much as if you're a glamour girl, but that's life, isn't it? Unfair. Then there's various sorts of promotional stunts—for the motor show, the boat show, big affairs like that. I don't go much on those games, but they bring in the money.”

“Why don't you go much on them?”

“Interfere with training, don't they? I mean, you can spend hours and hours on them, and that plays havoc with your routines. Anyway, they're not serious. What you might call jokey. I'm serious about the sport, and I think it sort of brings it into disrepute.”

“Ahh. Now, coming back to the other things I mentioned—the sort of thing that would
really
bring the sport into disrepute—”

Denny turned on his bench and fixed me with his blank, blue eyes.

“I told you, I don't know anything about that stuff.”

“You didn't: you said you didn't go in for it. You must know something about it.”

“No, I don't.”

“No idea who goes in for it, who does the filming, who does the recruiting of the actors?”

“No, honest.”

“Come off it, Denny. It's one of the things you boys do. You've only got to pick up the gay mags to know that.”

“Then why don't you go along and ask them?”

“I shall, if necessary. Only they don't like us very much there, understandably, and I'd guess they'll be as cagey as you're being.”

“I'm not being cagey. I don't know.”

“I just don't take that, Denny. Anyway, what I'm looking for is something a bit more serious than a full frontal prick shot for
Fly.
Something quite a lot more serious than that.”

Denny squirmed.

“Well, it's no use coming to me.”

“What I'm looking for is something that would make a big strong chap like you pack up his bags and fly off to Aberdeen the moment he heard about the four corpses in the
Bodies
office.”

“What are you talking about?” Denzil demanded, with an air that approached the self-righteous. “I was giving an Exhibition here.”

“No, you
weren't
giving an Exhibition. You're not even on the posters, except as a last-minute sticker. You volunteered the Exhibition as soon as you heard of the murders. I got
that
out of your old mum—”

“If you've been bullying my mum—”

“It would take a tougher man than me to bully your mum.”

A slow, rather silly grin appeared on Denzil's face.

“Yeah. She's got spunk.”

“More spunk in her little finger than you've got in the whole of that big body.”

“Here—”

“Come on. I want it straight. You practically fainted when I asked what you'd been doing. What was it?”

“Nothing. I told you. You've got it all wrong. Bob Cordle's the last person who'd ever get mixed up in anything . . . dirty.”

“Right—forget about Bob Cordle, then. The moment you heard about the murders at
Bodies
you threw a blue funk and fled up here. Now, I'd be quite justified in taking you in for questioning, just on that alone—”

“You wouldn't!”

“—but let's assume for the moment that Bob Cordle was the spotless gent you and everyone else make him out to be. What follows? Here are a couple of possibilities. The reason you panicked was because you were involved with one of the other people who died. Or because you were involved with something ‘dirty,' as you so vividly
describe it, and you thought it might be raked over in the wake of the
Bodies
affair.”

He sat there, thinking—a process that seemed to come harder to him than for Rodin's young man. Eventually, doubtfully, his voice hoarse, he asked:

“You wouldn't really take me in for questioning?”

“Of course I shall take you in, if I think you have anything to do with the
Bodies
business.”

“It'd ruin me in the sport.”

“What's that to me?”

Hard, Perry, hard! Could you deny poor little Birdie that ecstatic delight that Denzil seemed to arouse among aficionados? Well, yes, I could. Sorry, Birdie: there was no other way. Denzil Crabtree takes some getting through to.

“I'll tell you,” he said, finally.

“I thought you'd decide to do that,” I said.

“But it won't have to come out, will it? If you find it's nothing to do with the killings—and it isn't, honest!—you can keep quiet about my part in it, can't you?”

“If it
is
nothing to do with the
Bodies
affair, we can probably keep the lid on it,” I said cautiously. He seemed to ignore my qualifications, and to be more relieved than he ought to have been.

“I'll tell you, then.” He shifted uneasily on his bench, looked up into my face to see what my expression was, and finding little comfort there looked down again at his thighs. “It's a silly business, and it's the only time I stepped off the straight and narrow. Because normally I just take what my agent offers, and he wouldn't touch a thing like that, I tell you straight . . . Trouble is, the things he
does
touch don't bring in all that much money. Being legit and very occasional.”

“But you needed money?”

“For equipment. Not having a regular job—just the dole, and Supplementary, and that, and what I can pick up from the odd job here and there—it's a tight squeeze sometimes. Normally I can manage, but there was this new type of lat machine I wanted for my gym in the attic—it was just what I needed, just the thing to put the finishing touches, get me into the ultimate shape, and it cost the earth.”

“And you'd been telling people how much you wanted it?”

“Well,” he said uncertainly, “I suppose so. Mates at the gym, and that.”

“And quite by chance someone approached you?”

“Yes. How did you know? It was quite out of the blue.”

“Out of the blue movies, more like. Sorry, I interrupted. Just tell me what happened.”

“It was about a month ago. I was coming away from a posing session at an advertising agency's studio in Wardour Street. For some North Country ale, though I never touch alcohol in point of fact, on principle. Well, so I was walking through Soho, and I met up with a mate, and we went for a drink—”

“Who was the mate?”

“Well . . . it was Wayne Flushing, actually. He was coming out of Jim's Gym. But he's got nothing to do with this. Nothing at all . . . Anyway, we went to this pub, because pubs in Soho are often useful, and you can make lots of contacts there—”

“Don't I know it,” I said feelingly.

“—and while Wayne was up at the bar, getting fill-up bitter lemons for both of us, this man approached—”

“Someone you knew?”

“Oh no.”

“What was he like?”

“Small . . . dark . . . a bit of a paunch.” Denny's words had all the air of a slow-thinking improvisation.

“Hmm. All right. Go on.”

“Anyway, he said: Did I want to make a lot of money in a dead easy way? And when I said that at that particular moment in time I did, he said wait behind when Wayne went.”

“Which you did?”

“Yes. Said I wanted another. I think Wayne was a bit suspicious, because you can have just so many bitter lemons. Anyway, I stayed behind, and this chap, this little chap, came up again, and he offered me good money if I'd take part in this film . . . ”

I sighed.

“I see. How much, and what was the kink?”

“Four hundred. And there wasn't any kink. It was straight sex with a gorgeous model, he said. And he said the sex could be . . . what's the word . . . faked.”

“Simulated?”

“That's it.”

“That must have been a great relief.”

“Here, you're not taking this seriously.”

“So far it's not a patch on
Sons and Lovers.
Be glad I'm not pigeonholing it with Grimm's Fairy Tales. So you jumped at the idea, did you?”

“No. I didn't. It's the sort of thing you just don't do, if you're in this business.”

“So what convinced you? He upped the fee, I suppose?”

“Well, there was that. But I told him I couldn't have my face used. It would be recognized and known, by someone or other in the business. And he said it could be arranged, though he downed the fee again, because of the technical difficulties that would involve. He said this was going to be one of several . . . bits, like episodes, in a film called
Copulations.
And this one they would shoot mostly from behind, or cut it off at the neck if they used front shots—see what I mean?”

“Oh yes. That was the expendable bit of you.”

“Well, yes,” he said, looking up at me again, doubtfully. I don't think Denny appreciated me. “Anyway, I made more conditions, like that I wanted to know as little about the thing as possible. I said I wanted to be taken to the studio in a blindfold, and that.”

“Why on earth did you stipulate that?”

“I just wanted to know as little as possible about it. Just . . . do it, like, and take the money and go. I mean, just in case someone thought they recognized my body—because it's very well-known—and officials of the sport started asking questions. They can catch you out, can't they?”

“I should think it very likely they could. You didn't specify that the cameramen should be blindfolded too?”

“No, I didn't think of that,” he said regretfully.