The Pornographer Diaries

16. Caught by the fuzz

Things went downhill from there. When the girls went to put their dresses on, we found that we only had one of them. I must’ve dropped the other one during the chase and suddenly Tanya was naked for keeps.

‘I don’t think I can walk down the High Street like this,’ Tanya said, holding her hands over her breasts.

‘What are we going to do?’ Cindy ask, pulling her dress over her head.

‘You’ll have to leave me,’ Tanya said. ‘Go and get some clothes and bring them back for me. I’ll stay here.’

Endorphins were swimming through my mind so I was pretty sanguine about just about everything. The Old Bill could peer over the fence and lock us all up as far as I was concerned, nothing was going to wipe the stupid smile off my face. I think it was this attitude that helped me deal with the situation calmly and collectively. What was it that Kipling said? ‘If you can keep your head while all about you others are losing theirs, blahdy blahdy blah... etc’. I’ll put money on it he’d just been gobbled off by a couple of right sorts just before he wrote that because suddenly I felt like a man... my son.

‘No one’s leaving anyone anywhere. Here, take my t-shirt and put my boxers on,’ I said, slipping out of my clothes and handing them to Tanya. ‘I can go bare-chested, it won’t matter too much. We might look odd but at least we’re not breaking the law any more,’ I told them as I pulled my jeans back on.

‘Thank you Godfrey, you’re a star,’ Tanya said, covering herself up at last.

I peered over the gate, up and down the alleyway, but there was no sign of the police.

‘We ready? Okay, let’s go.’

We clambered back over the fence and dropped down into the alleyway. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get in the pub now, not without a shirt, so we would have to walk back to mine. It was about a mile and a half but luckily I knew the back streets pretty well and already had a route in my head.

We quick-stepped it along the alleyway, then through a gap in the fence, along some waste ground and then through another alleyway.

People stared at us as we went by. Well wouldn’t you? One bloke stripped to the waist, one girl in a skimpy junior tennis dress and one girl wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt with Ron Jeremy doing it on the front. We were just walking along a side street towards the Broadway when all of a sudden a police car crossed the road up ahead. The cop car didn’t even pause for consideration when he saw us, he just stuck on his lights and started towards us.

‘This way,’ I yelled and turned and started running in the opposite direction as fast as we could. If we could just get back to the gap in the fence and the alleyway and everything else I thought… but it was hopeless, the Old Bill were nearly upon us. And to make matters worse, Cindy stumbled on a loose paving slab and scuffed her knee up pretty badly. Blood started pouring down her leg and at that moment I saw that the game was up.

I had one last moment of clarity and handed Tanya a fiver and told her to make a break for it.

‘Go on, go. The Tube Station’s that way. Run. I’ll take care of Cindy.’

Tanya was stuck in indecision so I shouted at her again and finally she sprinted off. Well, there was no point in all of us getting nicked, was there?

I bent down and put my arm around Cindy as the police car roared to a halt in front of us.

‘Thank you Godfrey,’ Cindy said, her eyes full of gratitude. She leant towards me and tried to give me a kiss, but I pulled away at the last moment and kissed her on the forehead instead.

‘Let’s save it for another time, hey, shall we?’ I said sounding all heroic, although what I meant was, another time when you haven’t just had my gunk in your gob.

*

‘So, why don’t you talk us through it again? What were you doing on Tooting Common this morning?’ PC Butler asked me across the interview table. He and WPC Kensington remained completely expressionless, giving me a chronic case of the grins.

Talk your way out of this one genius, someone was laughing way off in my brain.

Me and my Ron Jeremy t-shirt had been reunited, as unfortunately had Tanya and Cindy. All three of us knew not to implicate Bling or the company so it was agreed beforehand if it came to it that we’d have to take it on the chin (a bit like Cindy had earlier).

‘Well, you’re not going to believe this,’ I started and PC Butler agreed, he wasn’t. ‘Tanya and Cindy are friends of mine. They’re models. Anyway, we decided to meet up and have a game of tennis and we all just got a bit carried away. We were having a game of dare-double-dare and, well as you can see, there’s just no calling their bluff.’

The two uniforms stared at me across the table wearing uniform expressions.

‘Who’s idea was it for the girls to take their clothes off?’ WPC Kensington asked.

‘Er, I’m not sure. I think it was a joint decision all around, they suggested it and I said I thought it was a good idea, or I suggested and... er, vice versa,’ I explained, tailing off at the end beneath their judgmental gazes.

‘Why don’t you tell us what you were really doing this morning?’ PC Butler suggested.

‘I have.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What happens now?’

‘Now you tell us the truth.’

‘But I have,’ I insisted.

‘No you haven’t, and you’re just making things worse for yourself by lying to us,’ PC Butler said.

‘I can’t help that,’ I told them. ‘I’m sorry that I’m making things worse for myself but this is the truth and I don’t know what else you want me to say. Do you want me to make something up and tell you that? Wouldn’t that get me into even more trouble?’

‘You’re in a whole lot of trouble already, you really don’t want to get in any more,’ WPC Kensington informed me.

‘I know,’ I replied.

‘Okay then, now how about the truth? What were you doing on those tennis courts this morning?’

‘Well, we were having a game of dare-double-dare right, and I said...’

‘Okay, let’s stop right there shall we?’

‘What?’

‘Mr Bishop, tell me something; what do you do for a living?’

‘Er... oh... I’m a... I’m a journalist.’

‘A journalist. And what newspaper do you work for?’

‘Well, it’s not really a newspaper, it’s more of a magazine.’

‘And what’s the name of this magazine?’

‘Um... Bling.’

‘I see, and how would you describe the contents of Bling, the magazine that you work for?’

‘Well, er, in a word – colourful.’

‘Colourful? Can you be more specific?’

‘Erm, not really, it’s kind of a complicated question. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. I don’t really do a lot on the design side.’

‘Okay, let me put it like this, would it be fair to say that Bling, the magazine you work for, was full of pictures of women in the nude?’

‘Hmm...’ I mused, buying for time. ‘It would be difficult to argue with that one,’ I told him.

‘Yes or no?’ he insisted.

‘Er... yes.’

‘Let me ask you another question. I understand that the magazine you work for usually works two to three months ahead of publication. The edition that you’re working on at the moment, when does it appear in the shops?’

‘Ooh, well, now you’ve got me. I’m not really up with schedules.’

‘June time?’

‘Er... it could be, I don’t really know.’

‘What major sporting event takes place in June?’

‘The Olympics?’

‘Try Wimbledon.’

‘Does it really? “Come on Tim”,’ I said raising a fist.

‘So, you were shooting your Wimbledon edition of Bling on the tennis courts of Tooting Common, weren’t you?’

‘What? Absolutely not,’ I gasped, outraged at the very suggestion.

‘Look, the sooner you admit it the sooner you can go home, so come on, tell us what you were really doing.’

‘I already have.’

‘Why was there a guy taking pictures then and why did he run off as soon as we turned up?’

‘I didn’t see any guy. He was probably just some old pervert with one of those long range lenses.’

PC Butler leaned back and snorted with frustration. I guess he thought they had me banged to rights and I’d cough just as soon as I was pinched. But what would be the point? I was caught, I knew that, and nobody could help me. Boo-hoo, where was the gain in grassing Stuart and Howard up? Okay, you could argue that I might get myself off the hook by claiming that I was just the monkey and that Stuart was the organ grinder, but if in order to unhook myself I had to stoop to the level of a snitch, well, let’s just say I had a bit more self-respect than that. I mean, come on, I was a man, I knew what I was doing. I was a bit too old to go bawling my eyes out in front of the headmaster that it was actually a load of big boys who’d forced me to hold some first year’s head down the bog and flush the chain as I heard the cane swishing behind me. And it didn’t matter that Stuart and Howard had left us behind to get pinched because that was their level. This was mine.

‘You know, they’re really going to throw the book at you. You realise that, don’t you?’ PC Butler gloated. ‘We have witnesses who claim that the girls were not only naked, but that you were instructing them to perform sex acts on each other in front of two fourteen year old boys. That will not be looked upon kindly by the magistrate. I’d be surprised if you weren’t looking at prison time for that sort of thing and five years on the sex offenders’ register. How would you like to have to disclose that every time you went for a new job or moved house?’ he asked.

I merely stared at him, my cockiness suddenly evaporated.

‘Is there anything you’d like to tell us now?’ WPC Kensington asked, when I failed to say anything.

I stayed silent for a moment longer and thought about my options. That couldn’t be true, could it? That I would be classed as a sex offender? Surely this was a bluff. But if it was, it was a very good bluff.

No, I couldn’t believe that. People streaked at cricket matches all the time and only ever got a slap on the wrist. Mind you, streaking was one thing, banging yourself off when you got to the stumps, that was another.

No, I couldn’t believe it, it had to be a bluff.

Finally I answered.

‘Only what I said before. It was a game of dare-double-dare that got out of hand.’

This time though, I didn’t smile when I said it.

*

WPC Kensington took my back to my cell and told me I’d have to stay in custody while they talked to the girls and decided what the charges would be.

She was just about to close the door when she looked up and down the corridor and spoke to me softly.

‘Look, we all know what you were doing, between you and me, why don’t you say something?’

‘I can’t and I won’t. I’m sorry, but I’m just not a blabbermouth and I never have been.’

‘Well, you’re a fool to yourself,’ she said.

‘I know, but in my job you end up having to keep a lot of things to yourself. Bit like your job I would imagine.’

WPC Kensington laughed at that.

‘Getting your kit off in public. That’s hardly keeping things to yourself.’

‘Well yeah, fair point.’

‘Do you know how we know what you were doing on the Common this morning?’ she asked, but I stayed silent, ‘because another porno mag was arrested up in Walthamstow three days ago doing exactly the same thing. Every copper in the Met must’ve heard about it. We did. These things get around, you know. So, when we got a call to say there was someone on our patch swinging racquets about in the buff, we couldn’t believe it. There must’ve been about six patrol cars all after you at one point this morning. Feel flattered?’

‘Oh yeah, cushty.’

WPC Kensington smiled triumphantly.

‘Let me ask you something, where do you find the girls to do that sort of thing? I mean I wouldn’t have the nerve. How do you find people to strip for you?’

I sensed she was trying to entrap me but I couldn’t quite see how. I answered her question very carefully, watching every word so as not to incriminated myself.

‘Well, the girls volunteer for it. They read the magazine, send in pictures of themselves and, if we like the look of them, we might invite them in to meet us.’

‘And then you take pictures of them?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, unsure of where this was going. I didn’t want to mention any photographers because I figured she was trying to drag Howard into it again so I told her that I took the shots. I also figured this might persuade her that this morning wasn’t a photoshoot because no camera was found.

‘And have you photographed many girls?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes hundreds,’ I told her. ‘But I can’t really go into it because, like I say, a lot of the girls don’t want anyone knowing so I have to respect that,’ I said, hoping that would throw her off the scent.

‘Okay. Well, I’ve got to shut the door now but, look, don’t mention this to anyone, and I mean anyone, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that sex register stuff. I think that’s very unlikely. Not for this. But, like I say, don’t you tell a soul I told you. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ I agreed and breathed a huge sigh of relief as she shut the door.

But then, why had she told me that? What was her game? God, women were such conniving bastards, weren’t they? I decided I had to be even more on my toes around WPC Kensington than her mate PC Butler.

He might’ve been a twat, but at least he didn’t have one to bedazzle me with.