The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 43

  Outside the door to the toilet there was a sudden burst of high-pitched giggling. “There’s a bloody waiter in there!” a girl’s voice said. Billy chuckled. Presumably only the waiter’s presence was preventing the girl from coming into the gents with her partner and not the fact that the toilet area was filled with men, young and old, either standing at the urinals or washing at the basins. Alcohol was a wonderful thing and no denying.

  The chuckling continued and was complemented by the sound of feet hurriedly ascending the 45 steps back to the ballroom. A man Billy didn’t know wafted through the doors unzipping his flies and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  Billy exchanged nods with the man and turned his attention back to the waiter. He was still smiling – until he saw that the door to the cubicle which had been occupied while he was down here was still firmly closed.

  “Has somebody just gone in there? I mean, while you’ve been down here.”

  The boy glanced at the closed door and shook his head. “Not while I’ve been down here.”

  Billy walked across and tapped gently on the door. “Hello?”

  There was no response.

  “He’ll be sleeping it off, lad, whoever he is,” a stocky bald man confided to Billy as he held his hands under the automatic drier. “You’ll need to knock louder than that.”

  Billy nodded slowly. He rapped the door three times and said, “Mister Clark – are you in there? I’ve got some tissues for you.”

  No answer.

  The bald man finished his hands off on the back of his trousers and moved across so that he was standing alongside Billy. Although he was short, a good six inches shorter than Billy and three or four beneath the lofty height of the young waiter, the bald man had a commanding air about him. The waiter shuffled to one side to give the man more room.

  The bald man hit the door several times with a closed fist and shouted, “Come on, mate, time to get up. You’ll be needing a hammer and chisel if you stay in there much longer, never mind bloody toilet paper.”

  Still no answer.

  “He must be a bloody heavy sleeper,” Billy said. “Either that or he’s pissed as a newt.”

  The bald man turned to the waiter. “Is there any way into these things? I mean, some way of getting in when they’re locked.”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said.

  “Well, can you find somebody who does know? And can you do it bloody sharpish?”

  The boy turned around and ran to the door and disappeared, his clumping feet echoing up the steps to the ballroom.

  The man lifted his hands and felt around the door. “Do you know this bloke, whoever he is?”

  Billy shook his head and jammed the toilet tissue into his jacket pocket. “No. Well, I do . . . I know his name and that but I don’t really know him. His wife asked me to come down.”

  The man nodded. “Why was that, then?” he said, turning around.

  “Well, there was no paper in any of the toilets.”

  “How did his wife know that?”

  “She heard me telling them on my table. I’d just got back from . . . you know –”

  “Having a crap. I know – get on with it, lad.”

  Billy straightened his shoulders. He would usually square up to anyone who spoke to him like that – after all, he wasn’t a lad: he was almost 25 – but there was something about the bald man that made him shrink back from confrontation. “That trap was closed when I came down here and it was still closed when I went back up.”

  The bald man reached into his inside pocket and removed a packet of Marlboro. As he pulled a cigarette out, he said to Billy, “Do you smoke?”

  Billy nodded. “Yeah,” he said, lifting his hand towards the man’s cigarettes. The man closed the pack and returned it to his pocket. “Well, give it up,” he said as he flicked a lighter under the cigarette and drew in smoke. “It’ll stunt your growth. Did you hear anything while you were down here?”

  Billy shrugged. “Like what?”

  The man blew smoke out. “Groans, plops, farts, throwing up . . . the usual.”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  The man nodded. He hammered on the door again, louder this time. “What did you say his name was?”

  “Arthur Clark.”

  “Not the bloke who wrote 2001, I suppose? I loved that picture.”

  “I don’t think so,” Billy said with a chuckle.

  “No, me neither.” He hammered again. “Mister Clark . . . if you can hear me, open the door. It’s the police.”

  Billy was watching the door but when he heard that he turned to the man. “Are you really the police? I mean, are you a . . . a copper?”

  Before the man could answer, the waiter came back into the toilet. He was trailing behind a tall man with bushy eyebrows that met over his nose. His face, which was scowling, was a mask of excess, folds of skin lined with broken blood vessels. He said, “What’s going on?”

  “Who are you?” the bald man asked.

  “Sidney Poke. I’m the manager of the Regal.”

  The bald man nodded. “Any way into these things when they’re locked on the inside?”

  Sidney Poke said, “Who are you?”

  The bald man jammed his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, pulled a credit card holder from his inside pocket and shuffled through the little plastic flaps. He found what he was looking for and held it out for inspection. “Detective Inspector Malcolm Broadhurst, Leeds CID,” he said.

  “What’s the problem, Inspector?” Sidney Poke said, his manner suddenly less aggressive.

  “Somebody’s in here and we can’t get them to open the door. Been here a while, this lad says,” Malcolm Broadhurst said, nodding at Billy Roberts.

  “Who is it? Who’s in there?” Sidney Poke asked Billy.

  “Never mind who he is,” the policeman said. “How do we bloody well get in to him?”

  Sidney Poke shrugged. “I suppose we have to knock the door down.”

  Malcolm Broadhurst nodded. “Why did I know you were going to say that? Right—” He threw his cigarette on the floor and ground it with his foot. “One of you go upstairs and call for an ambulance – just to be on the safe side.”

  A blond-haired man said, “I’ll do it,” and disappeared at a run out of the toilet.

  The policeman took hold of Billy’s left arm and squeezed the biceps. “What do you do for a living, lad?”

  “I’m a butcher.”

  “Just the job,” he said, and he stepped back out of the way. “Right, break that bloody door down – and, daft as it sounds, try not to go mad: he could be on the floor at the other side.”

  As he squared up to the door, Billy said, “How the hell do I do that? Knock the door down but go steady, I mean.”

  “Just do your best. Now, you others stand back and give him room.”

  The door jamb splintered on the sixth try. It came away on the eighth, still fastened but only loosely.

  “Brilliant job, lad,” Broadhurst said taking Billy’s arm. He pulled him back and stepped close to the door, squinting through the small gap that had appeared. “It’s still fastened, but only just.”

  He stepped back and frowned. “No time to bugger about looking for something to prise it open. If the fella couldn’t hear all that din then he’s in a bad way.” He stepped back and nodded to Billy. “Break it down, lad.”

  Billy pulled himself back onto his left foot and hit the door with all his strength. The lock snapped and they heard something – a screw, maybe, or part of the actual lock – clatter inside the cubicle. The door stopped against something on the floor.

  Malcolm Broadhurst pushed Billy out of the way and, holding the door, squeezed his way into the cubicle. When he was inside, the policeman closed the door again.

  They heard shuffling.

  “Is he all right?” Sidney Poke asked. Billy thought it was a pretty stupid question.

  For a few seconds there was no answer and then the policeman said, “He’s
dead.” Then, after a few seconds more of shuffling sounds and sounds of exertion, he said, “Bloody hell fire.”

  Billy said, “What is it?”

  When the door opened again the policeman was rubbing his face, looking down at the floor.

  Billy and Sidney Poke and the young waiter – whose name was Chris and for whom this was his first night working at the Regal – followed Malcolm Broadhurst’s stare.

  Arthur Clark was now sitting up against the side wall of the cubicle, the toilet paper dispenser – containing almost a full roll of paper – just above and to the side of his left ear. He was fully clothed but his shirt had been ripped apart at the stomach. Worse than that, the man’s flesh looked to have been flayed . . . with thick red welts and deep gashes covering the skin, and the top of his light grey trousers seemed to have been dyed black around the waistband: but they knew the original colour had been a deep red.

  Chris the waiter gagged and turned away, his hand clamped over his mouth as he made for the washbasins. He made it just in time. When he was through, he leaned his head on his hand to one side of the basin and, in a surprised voice, said, “Hey, that’s where they were.”

  The boy crouched down and reached his hands to the deep metal basket on the floor between his basin and the one next to it. When he stood up he was holding an armful of toilet rolls, some full and still thick and some partly used.

  “Bloody idiots,” said Sidney Poke. “Do anything for a laugh but they wouldn’t think it was so damned fun—”

  “Get everyone out, Mister Poke,” the policeman said. His voice sounded tired. “Get everyone back upstairs. But not you, butcher boy,” he said, turning to Billy. “You can give me a hand getting him out of here.”

  The toilet was completely empty when they finally struggled out with Arthur Clark and laid him on the floor beside the washbasins.

  “He looks like he’s been got at by a wild animal,” Billy said. “And scared to death, by the look on his face.”

  The policeman shook two Marlboros from his pack and handed one to Billy. “Give it up tomorrow,” he said as he held his lighter under Billy’s cigarette.

  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.

  “Shit,” 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 God. To the policeman from Leeds CID the trio was doing more harm than good and he sent them packing. “Like the bloody witches from ‘Hamlet’,” he said to Billy Roberts over at the bar, ordering a couple of stiff Jamesons from Sidney Poke, who had assumed 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.”

  “Was it Bill or was it Ben?” Broadhurst mumbled.

  “Huh?”

  The policeman shook his head. “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 50–51. 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 glass 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 crap 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 glass.

  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 shells equally spaced 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 phrrrp! 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 space 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 reassured 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 by those colleagues in Halifax CID who could remember the TV show. It’s an open and shit case, seems to me, it added with what might have been a wry chuckle.