Hide & Seek

‘No, no, nothing.’

Hutton went to one camera and bent down to squint through the viewfinder, aiming in Arnold’s general direction. Not at head height.

‘The male nude can be quite exquisite,’ Hutton was saying. ‘Nothing photographs quite as well as the human body.’ He clicked the shutter, ran the film on, clicked again, then looked up at Holmes, smiling at the policeman’s discomfort.

‘What will you do with the . . .’ Holmes searched for some decorous word. ‘I mean, what are they for?’

‘My portfolio, I told you. To show to possible future clients.’

‘Right.’ Holmes nodded, to show he understood.

‘I am an artist, you see, as well as a portrait snapper.’

‘Right,’ Holmes said, nodding again.

‘Not against the law, is it?’

‘I don’t think so.’ He went to the heavily draped window and peeked out through a slight opening. ‘Not unless it disturbs the neighbours.’

Hutton laughed. Even the sober face of the model opened in a momentary grin.

‘They queue up,’ said Hutton, coming to the window and peering out. ‘That’s why I had to put up the curtains. Dirty buggers that they were. Women and men, crammed into the width of a window.’ He pointed to a top-storey window in the tenement across the way. ‘There. I caught them one day, took a couple of quick shots of them with the motor-drive. They didn’t like that.’ He turned away from the window. Holmes was browsing along the walls, picking out this and that photograph and nodding praise towards Hutton, who lapped it up and began to walk with him, pointing out this or that angle or trick.

‘That’s good,’ said Holmes, gesturing towards one shot of Edinburgh Castle bathed in mist. It was almost identical to the one he had seen in the newspaper, which made it a very near relative to the one in Ronnie’s bedroom. Hutton shrugged.

‘That’s nothing,’ he said, resting a hand on Holmes’s shoulder. ‘Here, have a look at some of my nude work.’

There was a cluster of a dozen black and white ten-by-eights, pinned to the wall in one corner of the room. Men and women, not all of them young or pretty. But well enough taken, artistic even, Holmes supposed. ‘These are just the best,’ said Hutton. ‘The best, or the most tasteful?’ Holmes tried not to make the remark sound judgmental, but even so Hutton’s

good humour vanished. He went to a large chest of drawers and pulled open the bottom one, scooping up an armful of photographs which he threw to the floor.

‘Have a look,’ he said. ‘There’s no porn. Nothing sleazy or disgusting or obscene. They’re just bodies. Posed bodies.’

Holmes stood over the photographs, not seeming to pay them any attention.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘if I seemed -’

‘Forget it.’ Hutton turned away, so that his face was towards the male model. He rubbed at his eyes, shoulders slumped. ‘I’m just tired. I didn’t mean to snap like that. Just tired.’

Holmes stared at Arnold over Hutton’s shoulder, then, because there was no way it could be done stealthily, bent down, picked out a photograph from the selection on the floor, and, coming upright again, stuffed the photo into his jacket. Arnold saw, of course, and Holmes just had time to wink at him conspiratorially before Hutton turned back towards him.

‘People imagine it’s easy, just taking photos all day,’ Hutton said. Holmes risked a look over the man’s shoulder and saw Arnold wag an admonitory finger. But he was smiling archly. He wasn’t about to tell. ‘You’re thinking all the time,’ Hutton went on. ‘Every waking minute of every day, every time you look at something, every time you use your eyes. Everything’s material, you see.’

Holmes was at the door now, not about to linger.

‘Yes, well, I’d better let you get on,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Hutton, as though coming out of a dream. ‘Right.’

‘Thanks for all your help.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Bye, Arnold,’ Holmes called, then pulled the door shut behind him and was gone.

‘Back to work,’ said Hutton. He stared at the photographs on the floor. ‘Give me a hand with these, Arnold.’

‘You’re the boss.’

As they began to scoop the photos back into the drawer, Hutton commented, ‘Nice enough bloke for a copper.’

‘Yes,’ said Arnold, standing naked with his hands full of paper. ‘He didn’t look like one of the dirty raincoat brigade, did he?’

And though Hutton asked him what he meant, Arnold just shrugged. It wasn’t his business after all. It was a shame though, the policeman being interested in women. A waste of a good-looking man.

Holmes stood outside for a minute. For some reason, he was trembling, as though a small motor had stuck somewhere inside him. He touched a hand to his chest. Slight heart murmur, nothing more. Everybody got them, didn’t they? He felt as though he had just committed some petty crime, which he supposed, really, he had. He had taken someone’s property away without their knowledge or consent. Wasn’t that theft? As a child, he had stolen from shops, always throwing away whatever he stole. Ach, all kids did it, didn’t they? . . . Didn’t they?