The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (56 page)

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.

“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.
Bloody 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 butties, 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. She turned the sausages over in the frying pan and shuffled the ones that looked sufficiently cooked across to the side with the bacon 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 bloody 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 a 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.

Jeff Wilkinson was busy dismantling one of the trestle tables over near the stage. Several of the tables had already been folded up and were standing propped against the ornate pillar beside the
steps leading up to the stage, and chairs were stacked in towering piles against the side wall.

In the centre of the floor, Mervyn Frith was adding to a huge mound of tablecloths lay jumbled up – the cloths were waiting for somebody to fold them, an unpleasant job given their size
and the amount of spilled food that still clung to them.

Elsewhere, various young men and women were loading glasses 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 embarrassment.

It was a ladies’ handbag.

Malcolm Broadhurst sat smoking a cigarette. He had been up since before dawn, having snatched a couple of hours’ fitful nap lying fully clothed on the eiderdown.

He had watched the sun pull itself languidly over the rooftops of Luddersedge and had then spent the next 40, 45 minutes trying to get something resembling decent reception from his TV. In the
end, faced with either the Tellytubbies or an Open University programme on quantum physics, he gave it up and sat waiting for the day outside to catch up with him. That and thinking about 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 . . . for which Yvonne sends her thanks, by the way – was the
list of symptoms, all classical.”

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.”

“Suggesting what?”

“The contusions?” Garnett smacked his lips. “Dizziness, auditory and visual disturbances, blurred vision . . . that kind of thing – and not the kind of thing you want to
experience when you’re stuck in a WC. It’s my bet he shambled about in there like a ping pong ball, bouncing off every wall. And, of course, the pain would have been nothing to what he
was having from his stomach – that’s why he’d clawed at himself so much. By then, he’d be having seizures – hence the tongue – and he’d be
faint.”

“Why didn’t he just come out, shout for help?”

“Disorientation would be my guess. And panic. He’d be in a terrible state at this point, Mal.”

Broadhurst waited. “And?”

“And then he’d die. I’ve seen cases before – cardiac arrests – with two or three of the same symptoms, but never so many together . . . and never so intense. This
chap suffered hell in his final minutes.”

Garnett sighed before continuing. “So, we checked him out for all the usual bacteria – saliva, urine, stool samples . . . and there were plenty of those, right down to his ankles
– and—”

“So he hadn’t even been to the toilet?”

“No, he
had
been. His large bowel was empty. This stuff came as the result of a sudden stimulation to the gut and that would release contents further up the bowel passage. Anyway,
like I said, we checked everything but it was no go. Then I checked the meal – bland but harmless – and the beer . . . nothing there either.”

Garnett moved away from the phone to cough. “God, and now I think I’m coming down with a cold.”

“Take the rest of the day off.”

“Thanks!” He cleared his throat and went on. “So, in absolute desperation, we started checking him for needle marks . . . thought he might be using something and that was why
he always went to the toilet so regularly. But there was nothing, skin completely unbroken. And then . . .”

“Ah, is this the good bit?”

“Yes, indeedy – and this is the good bit.”

Broadhurst could sense the doctor leaning further into the phone, preparing to deliver the
coup de grace.

“Then we turned him over and we found the rash.”

“The
rash?
All that and a rash too?”

“On his backside, across his cheeks and up into the anus . . . nasty little bastard, blotches turning to pustules even five hours after he died. At first I thought maybe it was thrush but
it was too extreme for that. So we took a swab and tested it.”

The pause was theatrical in its duration. “
And
. . . go on, Jim, for God’s sake,” Broadhurst snapped around a cloud of smoke.

“Nicotine poisoning.”

The policeman’s heart sank. For this he had allowed himself to get excited? “
Nicotine
poisoning?” he said in exasperation.

“Nicotine as in
cigarettes
?” He glanced down at the chaos of crumpled brown stubs in the ashtray next to him on the bed.

Garnett grunted proudly. “Nicotine as in around eight million cigarettes smoked in the space of one drag.”

“What?”

“That was what killed him – not the heart attack, though that delivered the final blow – nicotine . . . one of the most lethal poisons known to man.”

“And how did he get it . . . if it wasn’t in the drink or in the meal, and it wasn’t injected? And assuming he didn’t smoke eight million cigarettes while he was sitting
contemplating.”