Bodies (2 page)

The important thing that I registered, though, was that
Bodies
was pretty much the same today as when I had last seen it, ten or twelve years before. Why alter a winning formula? It was not now, anymore than it had been then, an indecent publication. Unless there was a dark undercurrent somewhere along the line that I was too naive to have detected, it seemed to be by and large a perfectly healthy product.

Which was more than you could say for Phil Fennilow. He must finally have heard me moving about in his office, because suddenly the door into the side room opened, and there he was.

“Oh my Gawd, I feel rotten,” he wheezed. “Where's me fags?”

It didn't seem the time, though it was certainly the place, to preach the virtues of non-smoking. I pointed to a packet of a tipless brand on his desk.

“You look as if you could do with a drink,” I said. “Got any?”

“There's some brandy somewhere,” said Phil. “Try one of the lower drawers.”

I found it, a very dusty bottle. That wasn't one of Phil's vices, then. I poured him a drink in a rather greasy glass, not wanting to disturb any evidence there might be in the washroom. Phil didn't notice the dirt. He drank it down in a succession of increasingly large sips. As he did so, I watched him. He wasn't, it must be said, a very prepossessing sight. His fingers were deeply stained with nicotine, his shirt hung limply on a hollow-chested body, and his cheeks were hollow too, with an unhealthy yellow tinge to them. His teeth looked as if they had not been bared to a dentist in decades, and his eyes were dull behind his thick spectacles. All in all, as an advertisement for the advice he peddled, he was a dead loss. But perhaps, like so many great editors, he represented his typical reader.

“Oh my Gawd,” he said again, and was immediately doubled up by a hacking cough. “It's the shock.”

“You found them, I believe?”

“ 'Course I bleeding found them. 'Orrible. Gave me the screaming ab-dabs.”

“Could you tell me about it?”

“S'pose I got to, some time or other.”

So, sitting down at his desk, and dragging deeply on his cigarette, he did tell me—pretty much as I've told it to you already, though I've added the odd aspirate here and there. When he got to the point where he opened the studio door, I asked:

“You saw—what?”

“All them bleeding bodies, o' course.”

“You recognized them?”

“I didn't stop to recognize them. I just ran.”

“Who do you think they were?”

He considered for a moment, and actually shuddered.

“Well, I assumed it was Bob by the camera nearest to the door. Bob Cordle.”

“What is Bob like?”

“Nice bloke. Lovely bloke—”

“Phys
ically.”

“Oh—well, fairly short, got a bit of a pot on him . . . starting to bald . . . ”

“Sounds like Bob Cordle,” I said, making a note. “Know any of the others?”

“There was another by the cameras, wasn't there?”

“That's right.”

“That could be Dale 'Erbert. Young lad. Bob used to let him string along, partly as helper, partly to learn the trade. He was a sort of unemployed student, see.”

“Lanky lad, about twenty?”

“That's it . . . Poor little bugger. 'E didn't 'ave much of a life, did 'e?”

“What about the others? The models?”

“Didn't see, mate. Wasn't close enough. 'E was face dahn, anyway, so I couldn't see. And she was sort of turned away. I didn't go into the room, see. Well, who bleeding well would? Like a bloody morgue, it was.”

My experience of morgues was that they were at least well-conducted places. Still, I could well imagine that any civilian, faced with the sight of Phil's studio, would have obeyed that first instinct to run.

“So you've no idea who he was planning to use as models last night?”

“No, mate. Could have been anyone. 'Course, he had his favourite regular models—so it could have been Cindy, or Melissa, or Mary Jane . . . And the bloke might have been Ted, or Clive . . . ”

“Did he keep a notebook of names?” I interrupted.

“Yes. Always had it with him. Then if one let him dahn, 'e'd get on the blower to someone else. You'll probably find it on him now.”

“Right, I'll look. Tell me about that studio through there. Is it just used for taking the photographs for
Bodies?”

“Oh no. We're only a monthly, and we like to take a lot of our shots outdoors, if we can. More 'ealthy, like. So there was plenty of free capacity, as you might say. The arrangement was basically that I leased it out to Bob. He used it for his own work mainly on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and Friday afternoons. Other times—like Wednesday afternoons—he used it for our work. He paid me rent, of course—gentleman's agreement.”

“What exactly was his own work?”

“What are you lookin' so suspicious for?” I didn't know I had been. Phil was sharp. “It wasn't anything sordid, I can tell you that, and if you'd've known Bob you'd never 'ave got the idea. No, a lot of the
people he meets in this business need publicity shots. Quite a few of the girls are dancers, actresses, that sort of thing. They need stacks of photos for agents and producers—different poses, different moods, you know how it is. And some of the men do stage work as well, and some are professional bodybuilders. So there was always a call for other sorts of photographic material—the sort of thing we wouldn't be interested in. Particularly as he was very tasteful, was Bob. Perfect gent in every way.”

“The Sir Galahad of the zoom lens,” I said, not bothering to conceal my skepticism.

“Sarky, aren't you? Well, he was, and all 'is pals will say the same.”

“And were his models always similarly perfect ladies and gents?”

“No-o-o. No, you couldn't say that—in the nature of things that wouldn't be likely, would it? Some of the girls was on the game, at least part-time. We wouldn't use anyone
tarty,
that wouldn't be right for the image, but if they was good models we couldn't be too sniffy about their other activities.”

“And the men?”

“Well, some of
them
was on the game too, to be frank. Or there'd be the odd nightclub bouncer, sportsman, bodyguard, that kind of thing. The sort of person who's making a living doing a bit of this and a bit of that.”

“Ye-e-es. Sometimes on the borders between the legal and the criminal, I suppose.”

“That's your business, ain't it? It wasn't our duty to run along and inform on them.”

“No, no—I'm just trying to get the picture. Now, what do you think happened yesterday?”

“Christ, mate, I shudder to think. I'm trying to shove it out of my mind. Thank God that's for you to find out.”

“What I meant was, he was doing work for you in the evening, was he?”

“That's right. Wednesday afternoons and early evenings (for the convenience of models with nine to five jobs) he was always doing stuff for
Bodies.
Thursday mornings he was never in, which is what made me suspicious in the first place.”

“The bodies look as if they have been dead some hours. Say, provisionally, they were killed some time during that session. How long were you here into the session?”

Phil Fennilow coughed, and then put another fag in.

“Till abaht quarter to five.”

“Did you see him?”

“ 'Eard 'im,” he said. “ 'Eard 'im arrive about half three, or maybe closer to four.”

“You were here in this office?”

“That's right. I was doing the advice column.”

“That's mostly medical advice, isn't it?”

“Partly.” He became all defensive. “I've got this doctor pal I ring up. Anyway, I've done it so long now I know most of the answers. I'm a sort of common law doctor.”

“I see. And you heard Bob Cordle arrive. Did you speak to each other?”

“He shouted ‘ 'Afternoon, Phil,' same as usual, and I shouted back. We'd always have a good old confab when he was going through the shots for the next issue, and now and again we'd go to the Green Man and have a drink, but otherwise, he'd go 'is way, and I'd go mine.”

“Did you hear other people arrive?”

“Yes . . . yes, I think so. But that was normal, see—routine. I didn't take particular notice. There was other people there when I left.”

“Ah—you heard them?”

“Yes. Well, I heard
him
talking to them.”

“What was he saying?”

Phil considered again.

“Something like: ‘Put your chin up, darling, then your bos'll show up better.' Again, routine, like I say.”

“A woman, then. No indication of a man being there?”

“No, but he could easily have been there already. Or of course Bob could have had several sessions lined up. The chap could have come along later, or Bob could have had a solo session with the girl, then an entirely different couple come along later.”

“In which case I'd definitely like to find the girl . . . ”

“Sometimes the sessions only lasted an hour. They were pretty experienced models, some of them.”

“But I suppose you and he were always on the lookout for new bodies?”

“Oh yes. Then it would take longer. Some of them would just stand there grinning like they was in a 'oliday camp snapshot. 'E was very good with that kind . . . patient.”

“And of course a
touch
of amateurism doesn't go amiss with
Bodies,
does it? It's part of the appeal.”

“Well, yes, in a way. We aim to give the feeling of one big 'appy
family. Like it's a sort of game that everybody can join in. See, lots of blokes like fat girls, so we always 'ave a fat girl somewhere in the issue. Makes 'em feel wanted. The idea is that all bodies are attractive in their way.”

I was politely refraining from looking skeptically at his own body when Phil, who had been recovering somewhat, suddenly looked at me hard.

“ 'Ere,” he said, “ 'aven't I seen you before? 'Ad a confab with you somewhere?”

“That's right,” I said, getting up. “Well, they must be finishing in there. I think I'll go and have a look.”

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK
to the door of the studio, near to the head of the stairs, it was clear that the first burst of energy in this particular investigation was coming to an end. The crowd of police was thinning out, and the atmosphere was far less hectic. Soon the scientists would have done their job, and I could begin the investigation proper: data being on record, one could get to the heart of the matter, people. I looked at those four bodies, still in place: the chalk marks around them, and the tape measures left on the floor, somehow made their deaths unreal, reduced their humanity. They looked like models posing for a forensic science lecture.

I stood at the door and had a word with the newly created Inspector Joplin, one of the youngest in the force, and a bright, sharp, noticing type. I had left him in charge of the studio, to collate all the early information.

“Anything solid?” I asked.

“Some very solid bodies,” he replied, nodding his head inwards to the corpses. “But before you have a look at them, will you come and cast your eye at the stairs?” He led me to the top of them, and we looked down towards the door, open on to Windlesham Street.
“Now, first, the technical people think the place was cleaned yesterday.”

“They should take a look at Phil Fennilow's office,” I said.

“Ah, but that's a bit different, isn't it? There's lots of people don't like their offices being touched, and I can imagine that Mr. Fennilow is the sort that has his own messy methods. But the studio is in a way the door to the outside world, isn't it? The models see it, and the readers see it in the photographs. It seems to have been kept pretty clean, on an obvious level—floors washed, window-ledges and mantelpiece wiped over—that sort of thing. There's just a very light coating of dust, such as you always get in these old buildings.”

“Right. And I take it the same is true of the stairs?”

“We think so, though there's rather more dust on them, from the street. The door's open much of the day, apparently. Now—most of these footprints are a bit of a jumble—they've been done today by our men, of course, a lot of them. It's easy enough to eliminate us, and Fennilow, and the four stiffs upstairs . . . and that leaves three or four prints unaccounted for. Nothing surprising in that, and you'll get details of all of them, naturally. But the prints that rather interested me were
those.”

He pointed to an impression in the dust six steps down, where it was coming away from the jumble of prints in the middle of the stairs. It was a solid, well-defined print.

“Rather as if he stopped,” I said.

“That's what I thought. Stopped and listened, perhaps.”

“And he was going from the centre, towards the staircase wall, to see if he could see in through the studio door.”

“Right,” said Joplin. “Which at that point, depending on his height, he probably could do. Then he starts again—see there's another right-hand shoe on the fourth down, a left one on the third. He's keeping to the wall, you notice.”

“But these are a bit lighter, aren't they? Faster?”

“They are, and so are those across the little passageway until . . .
here.
We're willing to bet that's the same shoe.”

He pointed to a smudged and partial impression in the doorway of the studio.

“And inside?”

“Nothing. If that was our man—or woman—they just shot them up, and left. There are one or two marks that we think are him charging downstairs.”