Bodies (7 page)

“You mean sex. Policemen always mean sex when they say that.”

“Well, let's start with sex anyway. Are they likely to get themselves into anything dubious morally?”

“Well, there are the ones with the Sunday School morality. That's probably part of the never-growing-up thing. Then there are ones who wouldn't even be able to think on that level—their bodies are
all
they think about, and no abstract idea, however childish, can find a footing. And then there's the ones that work out some kind of 'code' for themselves—the code centering around the needs of their training, the cult of the body, the proper use of the little bits of time they have left over from training, diets, contests, what have you.”

“Which of these types would you say Wayne was?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Didn't know him well enough to say. Rather on a par with his pal Jerry, I would guess, though perhaps not
quite
so staggeringly naive. I would imagine they both are rather in the personal code category, though what kind of code that would be I'm not sure. It might be a question of what they're asked to do, mightn't it?”

“What
are
these people asked to do?” asked Joplin. I think there was a degree of salacious interest in his inquiry. He had never been connected with the Vice Squad. He still thought there was something glamorous and exciting about the wilder reaches of the sex trade.

“That I don't know all that much about,” said Charlie. “Anything I know I've picked up in conversation, and the fact is that the models and the glamour boys don't go in much for conversation. For the models it's a quick workout and off. For the muscle-boys it's practically perpetual workouts, going from weights to expanders to thigh-developers, or whatever. You notice how twitchy poor old Jeremy got, after only five minutes away from it?”

“You've never been asked to do anything . . . dubious yourself, then?”

“No, I have not been asked to flash my prick for the gay mags. If only they knew about me! Actually, I suppose I would do it if the price was right, so I shouldn't be superior.”

“That's one of the things they're asked to do, is it?”

“Sure. And the equivalent for girls. The price for that would be quite a bit higher than for any modeling they might do for
Bodies.
Then there's the fladge market—posing with whips and chains and whatnot—open to both sexes, with lots of permutations. Permutations are important in this thing: you've got male and female, straight and bent, and black and white. Then there are the leather people, the rubber people, the child market.”

“Are all of those still more profitable?” Joplin asked.

“Don't know. Haven't heard that much about it, frankly. My guess is that it's all that bit too way out—fairly small market, so perhaps not quite so rewarding as, say, the queer picture mags.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, films, I believe. Particularly quickies for the video market. Not that I've heard a great deal about them. My guess is that they prefer to employ out-of-work actors. Lots of
them
around, and I'd suspect these model people would tend to be wooden. Ask them to do much more than stand around with a frozen smile on their faces and they'd become an embarrassment. But certainly there
are
porn films being made all the time, and some of the people we're talking about could be involved in them.”

“You think any of these people who posed for Bob Cordle would have been willing to do any of these things that you've been talking about?”

Charlie shook his head emphatically.

“No, no. Certainly not. Sorry if I've given the wrong impression. I was talking very generally. There'd be two reasons why most of the musclemen who are currently in the competitive bodybuilding lark would have fought shy of the things I've been talking about. One is that Sunday School morality I mentioned: it would not have been good clean stuff, nor healthy—not even flashing your prick for the gay mags. Most of them might have looked wistfully at the money, but they would have said no.”

“And the other reason?”

“Well—another aspect of the same thing. The sport is very conscious of its image. It's used to being thought slightly ridiculous. It doesn't want to be thought sleazy as well. It's a clean-cut, clean-minded, clean-living world, the world of bodybuilding—that's the message. No, anyone who starts appearing in, say, sex films, of whatever sort, is going to get seen and talked about. Someone in the sport is going to go along to one of those little cinema clubs—because not
all
of them are really
that
clean-minded—and the word is going to
get around. I don't suppose there is any bodybuilding equivalent of being drummed out of the regiment—your posing briefs being stripped off you at a public ceremony, for example—but I'm pretty sure that sort of activity would do your career no good at all. It would be less dangerous to sell
sex.
What they wouldn't want is to be photographed doing it.”

“I get you.”

“What these people are concerned about above all is titles, publicity, recognition within their own very small world.”

“What you're saying, then, is that by and large these people wouldn't be seen dead—sorry!—pictured in any of the nastier porno publications, or in cheapie sex films?”

Charlie thought for a bit, messing around with the last of his pudding.

“By and large.
There'll always be rogue elephants. And I'm talking about while they're active in the championship world. Remember that that's a pretty short life. When it's over, you've still got a lot of life left, and you've got to find something to do with it. I could imagine that some of them would take on anything that was offered them, after their competing days were over. And I could imagine some who would enjoy it, too. What I was talking about was the active and enthusiastic ones.”

“Like Wayne Flushing?”

“Oh yes. Wayne was both of those things.”

“You mentioned the five percent that you might have trouble with at the gym. I suppose those are mostly the thugs and heavies around the place?”

“Right. And the pimps. Chuckers-out at the clubs, bodyguards to pretty unpleasant characters, types who can be used to lean on respectable citizens, screw protection money out of them. But I don't need to tell you. Obviously you lot have to know the place. Anyway, that type does come into the gym now and then. Mostly they don't make much trouble—not
there
—but trouble is still their business, and it can follow them around.”

“Any of them got any connection with Bob Cordle?”

“I thought this Cordle was a
nice
guy,” protested Charlie. “Everybody said so.”

“So many people say so, that I'm beginning to feel suspicious,” I said.

“Well, I never heard of any connection. But then, I never met Cordle. I'm taking his character on trust. Some of them are just plain
heavy—a work-out once a week doesn't change that. But there are a few he could have used, though it depends on his priorities: along with the body beautiful he'd have to take the mug ugly. They are
not
attractive, these guys, as a rule.”

Charlie was beginning to get restive I could see.

“I got to get back,” he said, drinking the last of his wine.

“Won't young Anatomy Lesson hold the fort for you?”

“Yeah, but I'll have to hand over part of my wages, and my wages are not high.”

I signalled to the proprietor, who was in a huddle with his wife and dark-eyed daughter round the cash desk. The restaurant was now three-quarters empty, the lunch-hour all but over. Charlie had been expansive. I said to him as I settled up the bill:

“Will you keep your ear to the ground? Pass on any whispers?”

“What am I—stool pigeon or Baker Street irregular? I suppose if I
do
hear anything, you know my lunch-hour. But I doubt if I will. They don't talk much, those boys.”

“This thing could just be the something that loosens their tongues,” I said. “I suspect there are a hell of a lot of frightened individuals. Who might they talk to, if not to other people in the gym?”

Charlie spread his hands out again.

“Wives, loved ones, families? Their agent, if they've got one. Have you got a list of the people who posed for
Bodies?”

Joplin drew from his pocket the much-fingered red notebook of Bob Cordle.

“Cordle's list, with Christian names and telephone numbers.”

“You could do worse than ring around and see if any of them have taken unexpected trips out of the capital. Or if any of them sound shifty—you must be used to judging that. I suspect the first instinct of many of them will be to get the hell out of London, or to lie very low indeed. If, of course, they have anything to hide.”

“Good idea,” I said. “You've been a great help. Tell me, is it true you've had a soft spot for the police since they took in your dad, or was that just irony?”

“What's irony? Some kind of vitamin supplement? OK, OK, I know what irony is. He was my stepfather, actually. My real dad's identity is a mystery on a par with the
Mary Celeste.
He—the stepfather—used to knock my mother around something horrible. I started weight training so as to be able to take him on, and I was just about to do it
when you took him for a case of robbery with violence. That's when I decided, against all the evidence, that the police had their uses.”

He raised a hand in farewell.

“At
times,
in
their place, and provided they don't get in my way,” he added.

T
HAT AFTERNOON
I left the interview with Wayne Flushing's father to Joplin. I felt I had done my bit with bereaved nearests and dearests, and I didn't see that the father, who had apparently kicked Wayne out of the house, was likely to know very much about what his son had been doing recently.

Me, I took Charlie's advice, and got on the phone to all the people who were in Bob Cordle's book, or all of them who were available, which was perhaps about one-third of all the names. Most of the others, I suspected were in the middle of their near-perpetual workouts if they were male, or on the streets or in the lecture rooms if they were female. With most of those that answered I chatted, or arranged to have a policeman come around at some other time for a chat. There were only two conversations where my policeman's instinct that Charlie had set such store by told me that something might be up.

The first was when I rang a chap who was down in Cordle's book as Vince.

“Is that Vince?”

“Yes. Who's speaking?”

“I believe you used sometimes to pose for
Bodies
magazine?”

A second's silence, and a definite reserve in the voice when he replied:

“I have done, now and then. Who is this calling?”

“It's the police. My name is Trethowan, and I'm investigating the deaths at the office of
Bodies.”

“I see.”

“No doubt you've heard of them.”

“Yes . . . Terrible tragedy. Quite senseless. Wayne Flushing will be a great loss to the sport.”

The concern that had now entered his voice seemed entirely spurious—an application, like toothpaste on a brush.

“How often have you posed for
Bodies
yourself?”

“Oh, just now and then. Not often.”

“You're a bodybuilder?”

“You might say I was . . . though it never leaves you.”

“But you still pose? As a profession?”

“Well, I suppose . . . Yes, I still pose as a profession.”

“I wonder if I might come round and have a talk with you?”

I had the impression that there were few things that Vince would care for less, but I made an appointment for twelve the next day, and got his full name and address: Vince Haggarty, 52 Dedham Rd., NW2. He said he had nothing he could tell me, which was probably true. It was what he couldn't tell me that interested me. Many people are wary when they find themselves talking to the police, but such a blanket of reserve is unusual.

The other phone call I found intriguing was to a number listed under the name of Denny. It started off unpromisingly.

“They're not ready, and they won't
be
ready till tomorrow afternoon, and that's final, so you can get off my back, right?” said a ripe female voice at the other end.

“I'm sorry. I must have got a wrong number. I wanted to speak to Denny.”

“My fault, love. I thought it was Mr. Schomberg, on at me about the blouses. 'E gets very pushy round about this time of the week, and it gets my goat. Denzil's not 'ere, lovie. 'E's gone up to Scotland, to one of them championships. 'E said 'e didn't know when 'e'd be back.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't expect him to be away,” I improvised.

“No more did I. It wasn't a date 'e'd fixed in advance. It's Aberdeen, and very provincial, and I keep telling Denzil that 'e's in the big time now, and shouldn't bother with this small-time stuff. But a
couple of days ago 'e decided, an' orf 'e went up there. I think 'e should save 'imself, personally.”

“For the big time?”

“O' course. I mean, look at the titles 'e's won, and the cups. 'E's been on the cover of
Fitness Monthly
—lovely picture it was, I 'ung it in my kitchen. It made it all wurf while, seeing my Denny on all the news stands.”

“I bet it would. I say, would it be possible to come round and have a chat with you?”

“I'm always ready for a chat with someone 'oo's interested in Denny's career. Are you in the training business yourself, then?”