Bodies (8 page)

“Only in a small way, very small. Would twenty minutes be all right?”

“O' course. Mr. Schomberg can go whistle for 'is bleeding blouses. It's Twenty Mayburn Crescent, just off the Old Kent Road. You can't miss it.”

I parked the police car some way away from the house, then walked up to No. 20 which was part of a brick terrace of houses, most of which had been mutilated by the owners in different ways in the name of improvement. Denzil's mother had had double glazing put in, and a large window in the attic suggested she had got an extra bedroom up there, or perhaps a training studio for Denny. The front apron of garden was a mass of weeds. When I rang the doorbell, the door was soon opened by a squat, energetic little figure in black, who filled the space of the lower half of the door.

“ 'Ullo. You the bloke what rang? Come on in. I'm Mrs. Crabtree. 'Ilda to me friends. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I would indeed.”

“Well, come on through. I've got one on.”

She led me into a tiny front room, where it seemed that every inch of floor and table space was covered with blouses—finished, tacked together, or merely in parts. Around the room were dummies of both sexes, some of them also wearing blouses over their smooth anatomical anonymities. On the table was a heavy electric sewing machine, warm from use.

“Wait a mo'. I'll move that. Give us a bit of space for the cups.”

“Let me do it,” I said, gallantly springing forward. “Since your son isn't here to do it for you.”

“Oh, I wouldn't let Denny do it. I couldn't let 'im strain 'isself in that way. Anything can happen, you know, when you've got a body as fine-tuned as Denny's is.”

“I see. Awkward,” I said. I looked to see if there was any irony behind her words. There was not. She let me lift the machine to the floor. Clearly she did not feel that my body was worth the same protective concern.

“Awkward it
is,
sometimes,” Mrs. Crabtree went on, fussing around the table. “Any little thing may go—strain a muscle or a ligament, put a joint out, graze the skin. And it
shows
when you're posing. I can see it myself when I go to watch and cheer 'im on. Denny has to be very, very careful. And I'm careful for 'im.”

She bustled off to the kitchen and came back with two cups of tea. Then she hopped through the blouses again and returned after a minute with the front page of
Fitness Monthly
for December the previous year. She put it down reverently on the table between us.

“That's my Denzil, o' course. I'n't it a lovely body, eh?”

Denzil, in briefs, was posing with a busty female model over a piece of gymnastic equipment. There seemed to be a total lack of erotic charge between them, considering the acres of bare flesh, but that was no doubt part of the clean image that the body-builders promoted. Denny, in fact, looked about as
living
as a Fascist war memorial. I looked from his body to his mother's: she was resting heavy breasts on the table, having tucked her stumpy legs under it. Her face was puffy and veined from drink, but there was a mad sparkle in her eyes. When all was said and done, hers was the body with force and personality.

She misunderstood my gaze.

“Wondering where 'e gets it from, are you?” she cackled. “I don't wonder! Mind you, I 'ad a good enough body in my time. You lose it though, don't you? I know I 'ave. But it was 'is father, really, made Denzil the man 'e is. Lovely body, 'is father 'ad. Fine figure of a man, everybody said so. An out an out rotter, mind you, but a fine figure of a man.”

“What did he do?”

“Army. Regimental Sergeant Major. 'Oly terror on the parade ground.
And
orf, come to that. Couldn't keep 'is 'ands orf the girlies. I got 'im because I was preggers with Denzil, and 'e couldn't wriggle out of it, once I'd gorn to 'is commanding officer. 'E'd wriggled out from under scores o' times, but 'e didn't get away from me. Mind you, 'e got his own back, over the years, one way or another.”

“I suppose Denzil admired him?”

“Well, 'e was still quite young when 'e died. I've bin a widow now nigh on twenty years, praise the Lord. It's my belief it was the girlies
was 'is undoing. Shot, 'e was, in Cyprus. But all that trouble was dying down by then, an' it's my belief it was a husband or a boyfriend or a father wot did it. I always told 'im 'e'd get 'is fingers burnt one day, but I didn't anticipate that big a cornflagration.”

She roared with laughter at what was obviously a repertory joke.

I put a step wrong with my next question.

“Does Denny take after his father like that?”

She choked her laughter back, looked daggers at me, and puffed out her cheeks indignantly.

“ 'E does
not
. 'E's the cleanest-living boy you could ever imagine. Pure, I'd call 'im. 'E could 'ave 'is pick, o' course: they'd come running the moment 'e snapped 'is fingers, if
I
know women. But 'e don't snap them.”

“Why not?”

“Because 'e's not like 'is dad. 'E was a real leering satire, was my Bert, by the end. But my Denzil's got other things on 'is mind. A body like 'is is a precious gift. A terrible responsibility, like owning a piece of fine furniture. You got to live up to a body like that.”

She talked of it as if it were a vocation. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was Denzil's substitute for faith.

“So what Denzil spends most of his time at is keeping in shape, I suppose?”

“ 'Course 'e does. 'E 'as to. A fine body like that's like a garden: a full-time occupation.”

“He hasn't got a job?”

“When would 'e find time to do a job? I earn enough to keep us both. An' o' course he gets a bit of pocket money from the odds and ends of modelling 'e does. There's people as'll pay good money for a picture of a body like my Denny's!”

“I'm sure there are. Who does he model for, mostly?”

“Oh, mostly that poor Bob Cordle from
Bodies.
My Denny's been full-page spread in there more than once.
In
colour. We was both ever so upset at 'im being shot like that. My Denny said 'e was a lovely man. Salt of the earth, that's what Denny said. I never sin 'im so upset at when 'e reads in the papers how 'e'd bin done in.”

“Could Denny think of any reason for the killings?”

“No, 'e couldn't. We talked it over, tea-time, when it was in the hevening papers. Went quite white under 'is tan, my Denny did, when 'e saw the 'eadlines. It was like Cordle was a sort of second father to 'im. My Denny was all sort of bewildered. 'E said 'e just couldn't imagine 'oo could 'ave done it.”

“Does Denzil model for anyone else, apart from Cordle?”

“Oh yes, 'course 'e does. 'E's got a sort of agent as gets 'im dates—
and
takes a commission on them.”

“You've no idea what sort of work this is, who the employers are?”

“Well, it's modelling, advertisements, that sort of thing. Though I've never seen my Denny on the telly. It's been my dearest wish, and it's never happened yet. 'E'd be marvellous advertising muesli, or one of them beef extract drinks, but 'e's never done it yet. I blame the agent. 'E can't be doing 'is job. I'd get on to 'im if I was Denny, but 'e's too shy. Never likes pushing 'isself into the limelight, my Denny.”

Which seemed a bit rich, considering that Denny was currently rippling his pectorals for the inhabitants of Aberdeen, and no doubt doing it under the bright lights.

“Did Denny decide to go to Aberdeen before or after he heard of Bob Cordle's death?”

“After. 'E got up from the tea table and 'e phoned 'is agent, and they chewed it over for a bit and 'e decided to go up. 'E said there wasn't any first-rate material going up there, and these provincials got a bit sore if there wasn't anything but the local bodies everyone knew about. What's it to you anyway?”

This last question came out suddenly, and I realized that questions about my interest in her Denny must have been nagging for some time in the background of her mind.

“Actually I'm a police officer. I'm investigating the murders at the
Bodies
office.”

She stood up in outrage, and snatched the half-full cup of tea from in front of me.

“A bleedin' pleece officer? Then I tell you what you've done, my lad, and that's got in 'ere under false pretences.” (This was uncomfortably close to the truth. Trust a cockney to know her rights and to distrust the police force.) “By rights I ought to complain about you to higher up. 'Stead of which, you can just get out o' my 'ouse this minute. Come on. Beat it.”

I began a somewhat nervous and certainly undignified retreat.

“What was your Denny doing on the night of the murders?”

“The bloomin' idea! Trying to incinerate my Denny had anything to do with that! In 'is own 'ouse, too! He was 'ere. All bleedin' day, 'e was 'ere. I can vouch for every minute, because you can 'ear 'is bleedin' bumps when 'is weights 'it the floor o' the attic. Right? Got it? Now get the 'ell out of this 'ouse. Nothing you can do'll make me
alter one jot from what I've just said.” She opened the door, “ 'Op it, copper!”

I didn't believe her, but I was morally at a disadvantage.

“Well, thank you for your help,” I said sheepishly.

“I'd've cut me right arm orf, sooner than 'elp you if I'd know you was a copper.”

As I retreated up the road she screwed up her face for a final insult “For all you're so big, you'll never 'ave a body like my Denny's. Fancy a man o' your age running to fat already.”

I imagined the eyes of all the terrace watching me, and assessing my body in relation to Mrs. Crabtree's Denzil's. When I got into the car I had trouble with my seatbelt, so I fear she was right. As I drove off I got on to Scotland Yard by radio and asked for details of the next flight to Aberdeen. There's this to be said for the oil boom. It's made it a hell of a lot easier to get to Aberdeen. If Denny had wanted to get away from it all, he'd have done better to choose Donegal. I found I could drive straight to Heathrow and get on a plane. I wondered whether Denny would have been competing and incommunicado all day. If so, my visit might come, as I wanted it to, as an unpleasant surprise.

T
HE VENUE
for the North of Scotland Bodybuilding Championships was the Alexandra Hall, a minor bam of a place inconveniently far from the centre of Aberdeen. Having clocked into a hotel with breathtaking room prices (one of the less happy consequences of the oil boom), I took a taxi out there, and as there was three-quarters of an hour to go, I scouted round for a bit. It was a hall that looked as if it was used for any and every thing, as the occasion arose, and was therefore probably without regular staff. This did not argue for bodybuilding being in itself a lucrative sport, if sport it be. The rather
ad hoc
nature of the arrangements had its advantages for me, however. I found a door at the back of the hall, and at the door there was no attendant or stage door keeper. I lingered around it for a while, and saw a heavy young man carrying a sports bag wander in. I decided there could be nothing against my doing the same.

Conditions, I suspected, were less than ideal. What the chorus line of an amateur
Hello, Dolly
would have felt about them I do not know, but here we had a collection of very large and fairly mobile young men (and some not inconsiderable young women), and pressure of space was felt, and commented upon. In rooms and corridors they were flexing and posing, smiling he-man smiles and he-woman
smiles, and some were having all-over oilings at the hands of friends, a process which certainly made the place seem unbearably small and close. Here and there one encountered the odd, bluff camaraderie, but for the most part they seemed quiet, solitary people, totally absorbed in their own bodies and their preparations for displaying them. At the end of a corridor, in a small room to himself, I saw what I judged to be the best body there: tanned to a suspiciously even milky-coffee colour, beautifully proportioned, and being displayed in all its induced perfection through a series of poses that each seemed to increase the self-absorption of the face above all that muscle. The young man seemed to be removed on to a cloud nine of contemplation.

I recognized the face as that of Denny Crabtree.

I decided to let him be until after the contest, or show, or whatever it was. I turned and edged my way through calves and biceps and pectorals elegantly exhibited, and out into suburban Aberdeen.

Out there things were beginning to hot up. I pushed my way round to the front of the hall again, and through a crowd chatting and laughing and greeting each other. This lot was a good deal merrier than the lot backstage, and perhaps knew each other from sports field or gym. Women were definitely in a minority, but a fair sprinkling of wives and girlfriends there were, some apparently tagging along, others seemingly enthusiastic followers, even cognoscenti. Many of the men were husky enough, but they did not seem to have reached the level of narcissistic self-contemplation of the people inside. I edged my way into the foyer of the hall and up to the box office. It was staffed by a spotty youth, and the seat plans and ticket arrangements seemed improvised and a little chaotic.

“Have you got any tickets?”

“There's no' much wi' a guid view. You're verra late. Och there's one return—a single in row sehven.”

“That'll do fine. I'll take it.”

So I passed from the tatty foyer into the hall itself, part of a genial, hailing-and-shoving crowd: there were the hearty young men, and their girls, there was a contingent of over-the-hill athletes, there were women on their own—some enthusiasts, some, it seemed, merely making a point—some obvious pairs of homosexuals, some discreet pairs of homosexuals, and the odd lonely man with or without his grubby raincoat. It seemed a pretty good-humoured gathering.