Bodies (14 page)

“How should I know? I tell you, I know as little about that crap as it's possible to know. Through the magazines they pose for, maybe. Perhaps they'd hear about them on the Soho grapevine.”

“Through Bob Cordle?”

“Not if they told him what it was for. He was the straightest bloke in the world, was Bob.”

“One of nature's gentlemen?”

“Oh, absolutely. He wouldn't have touched anything in the porn
line. He'd have felt like me about that. Straight as a die, he was, and generous? He'd have given you the top brick off the chimney.”

I sighed, rather as the Devil must have sighed at all those hosannas and hallelujahs during his time among the upper angels. Still, I had to admit that Bob Cordle wasn't the only perfect gentleman and parfit knight around in the body game. By his own account, Todd Masterman must have run him pretty close. It was quite edifying to learn how right the Romans were about the healthy mind going with the healthy body. Funny I'd never noticed it before.

I
DROVE BACK
thoughtfully to the Yard, where I found, not to my surprise, that nothing of interest had turned up while I'd been away. Garry Joplin was around, having been doing routine slog among Susan Platt-Morrison's circle—slog that had turned up little to the purpose. I decided to take him along on my next call.

“Two always looks more impressive than one,” I said, “though whether I'm really going to get anywhere by overawing him, I don't know.”

“Overawing who?”

“Phil Fennilow. I've really got very little concrete out of my two blokes today, but I can't delay any longer confronting him with Denny Crabtree's evidence. Whether he knew it or not, and I can't make up my mind about that, the place was being used to make porn films.”

“It wasn't being used to make porn films when they were all shot,” pointed out Joplin, as we drove towards Windlesham Street. “He was doing perfectly routine shots for
Bodies.”

“I don't think that makes any difference. The hard porn element is part of the equation, whether or no. We know that one at least of his models had been approached about that kind of work. I want to find
out whether Cordle was doing this with Phil's knowledge—perhaps with Phil looking after the distribution—or whether it was a bit of freewheeling private enterprise on Cordle's part . . . Here we are.”

The police had long ago packed up their powders and pastes and cameras, and had left the
Bodies
office in its usual state, as a dingy oasis in the multi-lingual bustle of Soho. By now it was late afternoon, and Strip à la Wild West was beginning to attract the odd customer, urged in by a commissionaire-cum-bouncer. Soon the blanks would be firing and the whips cracking. The stairs up to the studio and Phil Fennilow's office were grimy, the lino in places worn through to show the wood of the staircase. When we got to the top, however, I realized that all was not quite as usual.

From Phil's office, which I had snooped around on the first day of the case, was coming the sound of voices, and then a woman's laugh, shrill but whole-hearted. Phil didn't laugh—I couldn't imagine Phil laughing—but perhaps he took the cigarette out of his mouth for a moment to smile. The tones of the voices suggested they were old friends, and easy in each other's company. I walked forward and knocked on the door. Phil poked his head round when he opened it, blinked at us through his thick glasses, and then ushered us both in.

“These are the cops I told you about,” he said. “This one's the big chief.”

The wielder of the laugh was a woman in her sixties, thin to the point of scrawniness, with oranged hair, beaky nose, and red talony fingernails. The general effect, though, was vital rather than horrendous, for her whole body had an electric charge, a brisk humanity, which I had heard coming through the laugh. She was expensively dressed, in clothes that suggested flair if not style. They boldly married purple and green, and the combination made it quite inevitable that you noticed her.

“Mrs. Wittgenstein,” murmured Phil.

She shook my hand and Garry's, and noticed immediately my reaction to the name.

“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?”