The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries Part 12

Billy drew in the smoke and watched the bald man crouch down by the body. He turned over Arthur Clark's hands one by one and said, "He was the wild animal. He did it to himself. See-" He held one of the hands up for Billy to see. The nails were caked with blood and skin they looked like the hands of a butcher.

"Why? What did he think he was doing, do you think?"

"Looks to me like he was trying to get into his own stomach."

"Arthur?" a woman's voice shouted from outside the toilet door.

Then a man's voice said, "You can't go in there, madam."

"Arthur!" the woman's voice screamed.

There was a crash outside the door that sounded unquestionably like someone falling over.

"s.h.i.t," said Detective Inspector Malcolm Broadhurst.

The ambulance arrived with siren wailing but it left silently.

Malcolm Broadhurst sat with Edna Clark for a long time, initially with Betty Thorndike, Joan Cardew and Miriam Barrett by her side, offering consolation in the undoubtedly heartfelt but seemingly sycophantic way that people have when they feel there but for the grace of G.o.d. To the policeman from Halifax CID, the trio was doing more harm than good and he sent them packing. "Like the b.l.o.o.d.y witches from Hamlet," he said to Billy Roberts over at the bar, ordering a couple of stiff Jamesons from Sidney Poke, who had a.s.sumed bar duties for the duration.

The rest of the guests and all the staff had given their names to a couple of uniformed officers from Halifax and had gone home.

"Macbeth," Sidney Poke said quietly.

Billy looked up from his Irish frowning. He would have been happier with a pint but the policeman had ordered. "What?"

"The three witches. It was Macbeth, not Hamlet."

"Oh."

"And what about Bill and Ben? That was a turn-up for the books."

"Who's Bill and Ben?"

"Oh, the Merkinsons. The two old women."

"Oh, the one who collapsed."

Billy nodded. "And her sister."

"Which one of them was it who collapsed?"

Billy shrugged. "You can never tell. They both always look the same dress the same, talk the same; it's really weird."

The two "old" women, as Billy Roberts had called them, were 53 years old. Malcolm Broadhurst wouldn't have been far out with his own estimate of 5051. The same age, give or take a year he always forgot his own age but he knew he'd had his fiftieth because of the stripper they'd bought for him down at the station and he didn't consider himself as old. But then again, maybe he was. "Twins, are they?" he said.

Billy nodded.

Broadhurst had noticed them, standing by while he was talking to Edna Clark, because they were identically dressed, right down to the two-string necklace of fake pearls hanging over the first half-inch of their maroon dresses. One of them was looking after the other, the one who had collapsed, feeding her sips of brandy brought over by Sidney Poke.

"Like a couple of weirdos," Billy Roberts said, remembering the scene in vivid detail. "Funny though, her keeling over like that."

Now it was the policeman's turn to nod. "She the Hilda Merkinson who works at the animal rights centre? The one that was done in this week?"

Billy frowned. "Don't know. But she's the only Hilda Merkinson in Luddersedge."

"Cheers!" said Malcolm Broadhurst. He lifted his gla.s.s and drained it, then set it back on the bar top. "How much do I owe you?" he said to the Regal's manager.

Poke shook his head. "On the house. Think I'll have one myself."

It was one o'clock.

"What was it, d'you think?" Billy asked. He lit a B&H from the packet he'd retrieved from the table and offered it to the other two. Poke waved a hand and the policeman simply produced his Marlboros and took one out.

"We'll know when the autopsy boys know," Broadhurst said around a cloud of smoke. "His missus says he didn't have a bad heart or anything, but it's either that or something he ate."

"I thought that," Billy offered, and then wished he hadn't when he caught the glare from the Regal's manager.

"Or drunk," Broadhurst said. "I've had his meal wrapped up for tests, along with the pint he was working his way through."

"Fancy," Billy said, more to himself than to the others, "getting up for a c.r.a.p halfway through your meal."

"His missus says he does it regular as clockwork," Broadhurst said.

"That's right," Billy said. "Doesn't matter where he is or who he's with. Come ten o'clock he has to disappear to do the deed. It's legendary around town everybody knows."

"Another?" Poke said, holding the bottle of Jamesons over the policeman's gla.s.s.

Broadhurst frowned over the answer to that and other questions that were already forming in his mind.

It was almost two o'clock when Broadhurst made his way from the ballroom and along the corridor towards reception. At the steps leading down to the Gentlemen's toilet he paused. The steps were well lit but only in stages, the main house lights of the hotel having been dimmed an hour earlier. Now only single bulbs, secured behind half sh.e.l.ls equally s.p.a.ced down the flights, lit the steps leaving a well of darkness at the bottom.

The darkness seemed inviting and off-putting, both at the same time.

The policeman shook a cigarette from his packet, lit it and breathed smoke around him. It felt good . . . felt normal somehow. For there was a lot about what had happened that was not normal.

Before he even realized he was moving, Broadhurst had reached the landing at the foot of the first flight, his hand on the rail and his eyes squinting into the gloom. He took the next two flights two steps at a time but when he reached the bottom, with the ornate doors leading into the toilet right in front of him, he stopped and listened.

What was he listening for, he wondered. Was he listening for the sounds of Arthur Clark, screaming in agony? For didn't some folks say that no sound ever died but only grew faint, waiting to be heard once more by those with the most finely tuned sense of hearing? No, it was something more than that; something more than the late-night campfire thoughts of ghoulies and ghosties and things that went phrrp! in the night.

He threw his cigarette stub to the floor and stepped on it hard, pushing open the doors and stepping inside.

The toilet was silent. There was no sound save for the distant chuckle of water moving through ancient pipes, turning over in radiators and cisterns, and dlup dlupping down drain holes.

He looked around.

Someone else had been in here, someone who knew more about Arthur's tragic death than he did. A lot more. Broadhurst felt it felt it in his water, he thought, cringing at the unintentional pun. The death was neither natural nor unintentional. But he couldn't understand how it could be anything else.

He walked along the row of cubicles, their doors either fully open or ajar, and felt a sense of threat, as though someone was going to step out of them, perhaps someone recently dead come to exact his revenge, or someone who knew more about the death, come to prevent being caught. Broadhurst stepped away from the line of cubicles and stopped, staring at the open doors.

What was he thinking of? How could the death be anything other than natural? The cubicle walls went from floor to ceiling, the door the same . . . save for barely an inch of s.p.a.ce top and bottom-certainly far less than would be required to get into the cubicle if the door were locked from the inside. And, of course, the same went for getting out again when the deed was done.

"What deed?" Broadhurst said softly. There was no answer, just a giggle of water over by the sofa at the far end of the room.

He leaned on one of the basins and continued to look around. He moved from the basin, reluctantly turning his back on the cubicles until he was rea.s.sured by their reflection in the mirror over the basin in front of him, and looked some more. What are you looking for, Kojak? a small voice whispered in the back of his head, using the name granted to him long ago by his colleagues in Halifax CID. It's an open and s.h.i.t case, seems to me, it added with what might have been a wry chuckle.

"Funny!" Broadhurst snapped, and he looked along the basin-tops, down to the floor and then along beneath them. There was a basket beside each one.

Hey, that's where they were.

The young waiter's voice sounded clear as a bell in his head. Broadhurst could half see him, stooping down to lift an armful of toilet rolls.

Then Sidney Poke's voice chimed in. b.l.o.o.d.y idiots . . . Do anything for a laugh.

Broadhurst frowned.

The ghost of Billy's voice said, That's right, doesn't matter where he is or who he's with. Come ten o'clock he has to disappear to do the deed. It's legendary around town everybody knows.

Broadhurst turned around to face the cubicles- everybody knows and walked slowly towards them, his back straightening as they came nearer. He started at one end and walked slowly, pushing open each door and staring at the empty tissue holder- Hey, that's where they were attached to the wall of each cubicle, right next to where an arm would be resting on a straining knee, where so many arms had rested on so many straining knees- It's legendary around town until he reached- everybody knows a cubicle with toilet paper. The cubicle.

He stared down at the now empty floor and closed his eyes. He saw Arthur Clark writhing in agony, crying out for help; so much pain that he could not simply unlock the cubicle door and crawl for help.

Broadhurst removed his handkerchief from his pocket and, stepping into the cubicle, wrapped it around the toilet roll.

Seconds later he was going up the steps away from the Regal's Gentlemen's toilet, two steps at a time; and wishing he could move faster.

Sundays in Luddersedge are traditionally quiet affairs but the events of the previous evening at the Conservative Club's Christmas Party had permeated the town the same way smoke from an overcooked meal fills a kitchen.

In the tiny houses that lined the old cobbled streets of the town, over cereals and toast and bacon b.u.t.ties, and around tables festooned with open newspapers-primarily copies of the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Sport-voices were discussing Arthur Clark's unexpected demise in hushed almost reverent tones.

Conversations such as this one: "I'll bet it was his heart," Miriam Barrett said from her position at the gas stove in the small kitchen in 14 Montgomery Street.

Her husband, Leonard grunted over the Mirror's sports pages. "Edna said not," he mumbled. "Said he hadn't had no heart problems."

Miriam was unconvinced as she fried her bacon and sausages, and a few pieces of tomato that looked like sizzling blood-clots. "All that business with his-toilet," she said, imbuing the word with a strange Calder Valley mysticism that might be more at home whispered in the gris gris atmosphere of a New Orleans speakeasy. "Can't have been right."

Leonard said, "He was just regular, that's all."

"Yes, well, there's regular and there's regular," Miriam pointed out sagely. "But having to go in the middle of your meal like that, just 'cos it's ten o'clock, well, that's not regular."

Leonard frowned. He wondered just what it was if it wasn't regular, but decided against pursuing the point.

But not everyone in Luddersedge was talking.

In his bedroom over his father's butcher's shop at the corner of Lemon Road and Coronation Drive, Billy Roberts opened his eyes and stared at the watery sun glowing behind his closed curtains. His mouth was a mixture of kettle fur and sandpaper and using it to speak was the very last thing on his mind. It was all he could do to groan, and even then the sound of it sounded strange to him, like it wasn't coming from him at all but maybe drifting from beneath the bed where something crouched, something big and unpleasant, waiting to see his foot appear in front of it.

Billy turned to his side and breathed deeply into his cupped hand. Then he stuck his nose into the opening in his hand and sniffed. The smell was sour and vaguely alcoholic, almost perfumed. He slumped back onto the pillows. It was those b.l.o.o.d.y whiskies that did it. He should have stuck to the beer, the way he usually did. It didn't do to go mixing drinks.

Billy had had a bad night, even after all the booze. He supposed there was nothing like messing around with a dead body particularly one that had smelt the way Arthur Clark's had done, Arthur having so recently dumped into his trousers to sober a person up. It had taken Billy more than an hour to drop off after getting in-despite the fact that it was three in the morning and even then his dreams had been peppered with Arthur's face . . . and the man's ravaged stomach.

Work had been underway in the ballroom of the less than palatial Regal Hotel for several hours when Billy Roberts was beginning to contemplate getting out of bed.

The wreckage was far worse than usual somehow, even though the festivities had been cut short by the tragic events in the gentlemen's toilet. But at least most of the explosive streamers were still intact and there were fewer stains than usual on the cloths and the chairs. The most surprising thing was the number of personal possessions that had been left in the cloakroom, particularly considering the very careful population of the town. But then the unceremonious way the guests had been dispatched for home after been questioned made a lot of things understandable.

Chris Hackett had arrived after the clear-up had begun, clocking into the ancient machine mounted on the green tiled wall leading to the Regal's back door at 7.13. He didn't think anyone would object to the fact that he was almost quarter of an hour late, not after last night. He set to straight away, throwing his yellow and blue bubble jacket onto one of the chest freezers in the kitchen and emerging through the swing doors into the ballroom. It was a hive of activity.

Elsewhere, various men and women were dismantling trestle tables, creating a mound of jumbled tablecloths, loading gla.s.ses and bottles and plates and cutlery onto rickety wooden trolleys, the sound of their labours dwarfed by the sound of similar items being loaded into the huge dishwashers in the kitchens.

Wondering where he should start, Chris Hackett saw a table that had been untouched, over by the far wall. He went across to it, moving around to the wall side to begin stacking the plates. Halfway along the wall he caught his foot on something and went sprawling onto the floor, knocking over two chairs on the way.

Somebody laughed and their was a faint burst of applause as Chris got to his feet and looked around for the culprit of his embarra.s.sment.

It was a lady's handbag.

Malcolm Broadhurst sat smoking a cigarette. He had been up since before dawn, having s.n.a.t.c.hed a couple of hours' fitful nap lying fully clothed on the eiderdown; unable to settle to anything, his mind full of the previous evening.

The call came through at a little after ten o'clock.

A man's voice said, "You up?"

"Yeah."

"Been to bed?"

Broadhurst grunted. "Didn't sleep though."

"Well, you were right not to," the voice said. "We've been on this all night-well, all morning would be more accurate."

"And?"

"We've not finished yet but we've got a pretty good idea."

The voice with the "pretty good idea" belonged to Jim Garnett, the doctor in charge of forensic science at Halifax Infirmary and who doubled as the medical guru for Halifax CID. He chuckled. "It's a goodie. You were right to be suspicious."

The policeman shook another cigarette from his packet and settled himself against the bed headboard. "Go on."

"Okay. Two hours ago, I'd've been calling you to tell you he'd had a heart attack."

"And he didn't."

"Well, that's not exactly true: he did have a cardiac arrest, but it wasn't brought on by natural causes." Garnett paused and Broadhurst could hear the doctor shifting papers around. "What made me a little more cautious than usual-apart from your telephone call last night was the list of symptoms, all cla.s.sical."

Broadhurst didn't speak but it was as though the doctor had read the question in his mind.

"There were too many. Profuse salivation-"

"Profuse is that like, there was a lot of it?"

"You could say that," came the reply. "The poor chap's shirt was soaked and he'd bitten through the back left side of his tongue; he'd vomited, messed his pants-diarrhoea: most unpleasant and there were numerous contusions to the head, arms and legs."