Bodies

by Robert Barnard

  Maria’s account, as we first talked it over, largely confirmed what Leonides had told me. One thing she refused to say, though, and it was vital: she denied vigorously that Nikos had killed the people in the Bodies studio. She sat there beside her headmistress, looking hardly more than ten, yet with the light of obstinacy in her eyes. Nikos had loved her and she had loved him. He had killed himself because of the horrible things she had done. But he had not killed the people in the Bodies studio. She did not know who had, but she knew he had not.

  “Let’s go over it again,” I said, wearied by her hard, repetitive denials, which were absolute in a final, childish way. “You got to know Vince Haggarty through the kids in the café?”

  “Yes,” she replied, looking straight at me and not at the headmistress. “And the man he worked with. A horrible man called Mick. And he kept using these kids in films, and paying them money . . . lots of money . . . And one day Vince and Mick were in the café, and Mick asked if there wasn’t anything that I wanted terribly badly, and I said a new dress for the Christmas party. And he said perhaps it could be arranged.”

  “And when they offered you money to be in a film, you said yes?”

  “Yes. And they said they’d introduce me to the nice man who’d be in the film with me.”

  “So you met him before the filming, did you?”

  “Oh yes . . . Or I don’t think I could have done it. We met one evening in the café, and then the others went off to film, and we walked down to Trafalgar Square, and sat there talking, and then we went to another café, and he bought me a wonderful fruit sundae there. He was so nice . . . I thought he was nice . . . ”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “He told me about himself, and how he lived. He was a sportsman—a sort of weightlifter, I think—and how he gave his whole life to the sport. He told me about his father, who was in the army and was killed, and about this wonderful mother he has, who helps him enormously. And he told me about all the training he has to do in the gym, hour after hour . . . ”

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “He didn’t want to. He said I was to call him ‘Chuck,’ but I thought that was silly, because he wasn’t American. Anyway, when he went up to the counter to get me another Coke, I looked into his sports bag, and there was a label saying ‘Denzil Crabtree,’ and I called him ‘Denny’ after that, and he thought I must have heard Vince or Mick call him that, so he let me go on.”

  “Then soon afterwards you went to the studio and made the film?”

  “Yes.” The eyes dropped, and the hand went out to the headmistress’s.

  “Had they told you what . . . what you’d have to do?”

  “No,” she spat out violently. “Of course they hadn’t. I’d never have done it if they had. They said I just had to take my clothes off and . . . sort of play around for a bit. And I didn’t like it, but I thought it was worth the money. But when I’d taken my clothes off, I went over to the bed, and we fooled around for a bit, and then suddenly . . . ”

  She broke off.

  “That’s all right,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t need to hear about that. Of course you were very upset after it happened?”

  “Yes. I felt horrible. Ill, and . . . disgusting. And in the end I had to tell my mother.”

  “That was the Wednesday after, wasn’t it? A week later?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s the day your father takes off from the restaurant, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. He takes the evening off. He goes jogging in Green Park, and then he goes to a Greek club in Camden Town.”

  “Did he come in from the jogging while you and your mother were talking?”

  “Yes. Just after I’d started telling her.”

  “And Nikos—when did he come in?”

  “He didn’t. He never did.”

  “Why did your father say he did, then?”

  “I don’t know, but he was . . . mistaken.”

  “When did Nikos hear about . . . all this?”

  “One day . . . later . . . when they all came round. Nikos’s family all come round to us once a fortnight, and we go there in the other week. I told him on the day they came round.”

  “I see. Getting back to your father. What exactly did he hear?”

  “Everything. I told them both about Vince, and how he filmed there on Monday and Wednesday nights, and how he sometimes used the kids who hadn’t got homes, who I’d met in the café. And I told them about the offer they made to me, and how I wanted that dress, and how he ’d offered me sixty pounds. And I told them about Denny, and about how nice he’d been the first time, and all he’d told me . . . And then I told them about the filming . . . and what Denny did to me . . . ”

  “And your father went wild?”

  She pondered how to reply.

  “He was very angry.”

  “He went and got his gun, I suppose?”

  “No. No, he didn’t. He never went out at all. He and Mother put me to bed, and then they sat talking for a long time. I heard them.”

  The little, appealing, childish face had resumed that obstinate expression. I felt sure that she was lying. And yet the whole case didn’t quite, somehow, make sense. Not psychological sense, as far as I understood the people involved. Leonides’s story had certainly been a good one, a consistent one. I could see an adolescent boy, overhearing that story from his girlfriend, from the person who he’d come to think of as his future wife, going over the edge, going out, getting a weapon, and gunning down all and sundry in the Bodies studio. He wouldn’t ask himself if they were all involved, or if he did he’d have said they were all in the same dirty game.

  I couldn’t quite see Leonides having the same rush of blood to the head, the same overmastering burst of unreason. Leonides—the impeccable restaurateur? The genial mine host of the Knossos? He might wait, stalk Vince Haggarty home, kill him—that I could imagine. But not to wait, just to rush out and kill all four? . . . And yet I must have misjudged him, because surely that’s what must have happened . . . Unless there was something else, something more that drove him that one step further into blind passion.

  In the back of my mind something clicked, a connection was made. Was it possible?

  “You told your parents all Denny had told you about himself and his background, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you tell them his name?”

  She wriggled uncomfortably in her chair, not looking at me.

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because I’d liked him . . . liked him at first . . . And then I didn’t really blame him . . . He was more sort of . . . pathetic.”

  “But you did tell them?” She nodded. “Was that because your father demanded to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Demanded over and over again?”

  “Yes . . . He shook me . . . In the end I had to tell him.”

  “And when you told him—Denzil Crabtree—what did he say?”

  Tears were trickling down her cheeks, but she still prevaricated.

  “I don’t know. He talked Greek to my mother. I didn’t understand. I don’t know that much Greek.”

  I saw that I had to put it to her, and to have the courage of my hunch.

  “I think you did understand, Maria. Because it wasn’t anything very difficult, was it? Wasn’t it something like: I killed his father, and now I’m going to kill him?’ ”

  She broke down into sobs.

  “Yes. That’s what he shouted before he ran out. That’s what he thought he was doing.”

  Chapter 19

  I DIDN’T REALLY get to discuss the Bodies case in depth until about a week after I arrested Leonides. One bleak evening in early December Charlie arrived at the flat on a visit, sat in an armchair drinking cans of cold Australian beer, and demanded to be told all the details.

  “I thought at first it was going to be difficult to get the ne
cessary evidence,” I told him. “I thought the Leonideses would be one of those families that close ranks impenetrably when they’re threatened from outside. In fact, without ratting on her husband in any way, Elena has been surprisingly cooperative. When we took him old Leonides wrung his hands and lamented the fate of his family, his restaurant, and so on. I think the idea of his indispensability was very important to him. In fact Elena has engaged a capable young chap to supervise the front of house, she remains in charge of the kitchen, and everything goes on swimmingly.”

  “And business is good, I suppose,” said Charlie cynically.

  “Business, disgustingly enough, is very brisk, and will remain so until after the trial, at the earliest.”

  “Elena was the cause of all the trouble with Denny’s father, was she?”

  “Oh yes. Back in Cyprus in 1965. It was only at the last minute that I remembered that Leonides was not in fact Greek, but Cypriot, and then I made the connection. How far the trouble went I haven’t liked to inquire. After all, that’s not a murder he’s ever likely to be charged with. And with someone so likely to fly off the handle, the actual provocation could have been pretty small. It may be, though, that Elena has had something of a grudge against her husband ever since, and that’s something that is helping us.”

  “Christ,” mused Charlie, “to look at her now you wouldn’t think she’d ever been something to kill over.”

  “She was probably one of those typical Mediterranean women who go from being a real prick-tickler to being a frump in no time at all.”

  “Like Sophia Loren, for example?” put in Jan sweetly.

  “If there was any closing of the ranks,” I went on, “it was between Leonides and his pal Stavros, Nikos’s father. There was plenty there of the old male solidarity Jan goes on so boringly about. Did I tell you about the jogging shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it was the first thing we looked for, of course, but not surprisingly it was no go. Not a pair in the house. We thought we’d have to satisfy ourselves with that as evidence: the fact that a regular jogger apparently owned not a single pair of jogging shoes. But do you know what he’d done with them?”

  Charlie thought.

  “Given them to his pal Stavros to put among Nikos’s things?”

  “Right! Isn’t it incredible? That Stavros should do it? He swore blind they were his son’s, and has never gone back on that. Of course Forensic reduced that little claim to mincemeat, and that will be an important part of the evidence against him. You can’t get away with clever-cleverness like that these days. But it’s very interesting on the human level, isn’t it?”

  “What other evidence have you?” asked Charlie, getting up to get himself his third can of beer, which, to be fair, he had brought along himself, ready chilled.

  “No gun, of course. Got rid of immediately. My bet is that it was put in one of those garbage bins in Soho. Easiest way. But the best evidence against him will come from Haggarty and Spivey, because they actually saw him.”

  “Saw him. How?”

  “Because, as I half suspected, if Bob Cordle’s session went on too long because of Wayne Flushing’s incompetence as a model, then the unlovely Vince and Mick would be around in the area waiting for the lights to go off, and for Bob and his models to come out of the building and go home. Then they’d hop straight in and set the cameras rolling. They didn’t let the grass grow under their feet, those two, as the catalogue of films proved. They’d botched together a fantastic number of films, leaving questions of quality aside. And of course, where would they be waiting but in the café opposite? From there, instead of seeing Cordle and Co. come out, they saw Leonides run in, disappear up the stairs, and run out again after six shots had been fired.”

  “Did they connect the two things?”

  “Not at first. They thought it was the Strip à la Wild West, naturally. But then nobody came out of Bodies, and they waited and waited, and still nobody came out, and finally Vince went in, heard nothing, went upstairs, saw the bodies, and then ran for his life.”

  “Did he realize who it was who’d done it?”

  “Yes. He knew Leonides. Vince is an old Soho hand.”

  “Did he realize he was one of the intended victims?”

  “He didn’t know—he could never be sure. But he had a bloody good idea. He didn’t come within a mile of Windlesham Street from then on. They had to keep quiet about it, of course, because if they let on to us they’d spoil their own game. And apart from that they were dead scared. Someone who’d just wiped out four people wasn’t going to balk at a fifth and a sixth. For a time they were very frightened people.”

  “Will they make good witnesses, though?” asked Jan.

  “No. We’re a little bit worried about that. We’ll use Haggarty rather than Spivey, but even so he’s not a type my jury is going to love and trust. Still, he’s the best we’ve got, and in fact everything he says will be gospel truth. I don’t think there’s any doubt we’ll get a conviction.”

  “I’m sorry for the little girl,” said Jan. “First that awful experience, then the boyfriend killing himself, then Father taken from her as well.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Under all that, she’s bearing up remarkably well. It’s good that we probably won’t need to use her in the trial. I think in fact the losing of Father may prove a blessing in disguise: Leonides was a patriarch without the real patriarchal equipment—more bluster than authority. I think the process of growing up may be easier without him. I’m afraid poor Nikos would never have come to much. By all accounts he was a neurotic boy, smothered by his father who was still fighting the Greek Civil War, and full of mad macho notions the boy could never have lived up to. Maybe that’s why he took the news the way he did. I’m as sorry for that boy as for anyone. Poor Maria, poor Nikos—poor Denny, even. It was a sad, sorry case, but I think Maria and her mother are going to come out of it all right.”

  “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” said Charlie, draining his can.

  “I know.”

  “You can’t. It’s something different. I’ve never mentioned it.”

  “You want to talk about joining the police force.”

  “Damn it, how did you—?”

  “Oh, come on, Charlie. You’ve been smart-arsing it throughout this case. Give me credit for some native powers of observation just this once. It’s been obvious to me for weeks.”

  “Well,” said Charlie, rather miffed, “tell me what, you think.”

  I had anticipated it, and had thought about it.

  “We’ll skip the bit where I tell you that policing isn’t all fun and raids and arrests, and dressing up and pretending, like it’s been for you these last few weeks—right?”

  “Right. Mostly undressing and pretending, actually.”

  “We can’t skip the bit where I tell you it’s nearly all slog, ninety percent of it, sheer bloody tedium. And when it isn’t, it’s less likely to be exciting than just plain nasty. Stomach-turning, very often. And don’t tell me you’ve got a strong stomach, because you just can’t know. You’ve only seen one stiff in your life, and that was a nice clean one.”

  “Point taken. But I think I could cope.”

  “Have you thought about all the racist talk you’ll have to put up with?”

  “So—where’s the difference from now?”

  “Not just from the public—from colleagues: the chap with you on the beat, the blokes you drink with in the canteen.”

  “Where’s the difference?”

  “People expect the police to be different.”

  “I don’t. You’re not bleeding clergymen. It’s just a job. It’s pretty much the same inside the Force as outside, I reckon.”

  “That’s a point of view,” I admitted. “We don’t get the police we deserve, we get the police we are. Have you got the necessary educational qualifications?”

  Charlie shot me the sort of look that reminded me that he’d struck me as
a distinctly formidable character when I’d seen him first.

  “Do you mind? I thought everyone had the educational qualifications you demand for the police,” he said nastily.

  “Well—if it were up to me, I’d say Welcome to the Police,” I said.

  “Oh—I haven’t made up my mind,” said Charlie, going all hard-to-get. “There’s other possibilities. I may have got the bug for the posing game. Who knows what offers I may get when the next issue of Fly comes out?”

  “That magazine will be a grave embarrassment to you, once you’re in the Force,” I said, ignoring his coyness.

  “Crap. I won’t be the first policeman to have done embarrassing things in the line of duty. At least I didn’t have to go into drag.”

  “Tell me,” said Jan. “When you were involved in the case, who did you guess had done it? Obviously you wouldn’t guess Mr. Leonides, because there was nothing to connect him with it till right at the end. Who did you guess?”

  “Policemen don’t guess like that,” I said. “Except in their sleepless-night reveries.”

  “Bullshit,” said Jan. “Anyway, who did you pick on in your reveries?”

  “Todd Masterman,” I said. “Though it did occur to me once that Denny Crabtree’s mum had the guts to do it. And was just slightly bonkers on one subject, but perfectly compos otherwise.”

  “Who did you guess?” Jan asked Charlie.

  “Mick Spivey. But that was pure emotion, pure distaste for the guy. I knew he hadn’t got the guts to do anything like that. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have plumped for Masterman as well.”

  “Funny—I’d have plumped for Phil Fennilow,” said Jan. “He sounded so yucky-looking, and then he obviously fitted well into his grubby occupation—and it is grubby, whatever you may say. He was at the very centre of the business, yet you never seem to have considered him, Perry.”

  “I suppose—as with Leonides—it was because I’d known him before. It’s funny—silly—but if you’ve known them in some other connection, you never think they’re going to pop up as murderers.”

  “Oh, of course, you met him when you were on that Vice Squad job, didn’t you? Actually talked to him.”