The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (18 page)

Two wide steps down from the urinals was a row of generously sized washbasins, set back and mounted on ornate embellishments of curlicued brass fashioned to resemble a confusion of vines interlinked with snakes. They nested beneath individual facing panels split one-half mirror and the other reinforced glass, the glass halves looking through onto an identical set of basins on the other side of the partition, behind which stood the WCs.

It was these wood-panelled floor-to-ceiling enclosed retreats – with their individual light switches, oak toilet seats and covers, matching tissue dispensers, and stained glass backings behind the pipe leading from the overhead cistern – that were, perhaps, the room’s crowning glory. They were even more impressive than the worn leather sofas and wing-backed chairs situated on their own dais at the far end of the toilet, book-ended by towering aspidistras and serviced by standing silver ashtrays and glass-topped tables bearing the latest issues of popular men’s magazines.

But while these extravagant rooms – albeit small rooms, designed for but one purpose – had rightly gained some considerable fame (particularly as the town was not noted for anything even approaching artistic or historical significance) they had also achieved a certain notoriety that was not always welcome.

Such notoriety came not merely from the time, in the late 1940s, when an exceptionally inebriated Jack Walker pitched forward rather unexpectedly – after failing to register the aforementioned double step leading to the urinals – and smashed his head into one of the glass-panelled splashguards. Nor did it come from that legendary night when Pete Dickinson was ceremoniously divested of all of his clothes on his stag night and reduced to escaping the Regal, staggering drunkenly through Luddersedge’s cold spring streets, wearing only one of the toilet’s continuous hand towels (those being the days before automatic hand dryers, of course), a 50-foot ribbon of linen that gave the quickly sobering Dickinson the appearance of a cross between Julius Caesar and Boris Karloff’s mummy.

Rather, the toilet’s somewhat dubious reputation stemmed solely from the fact that, over the years, its lavish cubicles had seen a stream of Luddersedge’s finest and most virile young men venturing into their narrow enclosures with their latest female conquests for a little session of hi-jinks where, their minds (and, all too often, their prowess and sexual longevity) clouded by the effects of ale, a surfeit of testosterone and the threat of being discovered, they would perform loveless couplings to the muted strains of whatever music drifted down from the floor above.

The practice was known, in the less salubrious circles of Calder Valley drinking establishments, as “The Forty Five Steps Club”. The name referred, in a version of the similar “honorary” appellation afforded those who carried out the same act on an in-flight aeroplane (“The Mile High Club”), to the toilet’s distance below ground – three perilously steep banks of fifteen steps leading down from the ballroom’s west entrance.

And so it was that, at precisely 10 o’clock on the fateful night of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, it was to this bastion of opulence and renown that Arthur Clark retired midway through a plate of turkey, new potatoes, broccoli and carrots (having already seen off several pints of John Smith’s, an entire bowl of dry roasted peanuts and the Regal’s obligatory prawn cocktail first course) to evacuate both bladder and bowel. It was a clockwork thing with Arthur and, no matter where he was or whom he was with, he would leave whatever was going on to void himself – on this occasion, all the better to concentrate his full attention and gastric juices on the promised (though some might say “threatened”) Christmas Pudding and rum sauce plus a couple of coffees and a few glasses of Bells whisky. Arthur’s slightly weaving departure from the ballroom, its back end filled with a series of long dining tables leaving the area immediately in front of the stage free for the inevitable dancing that would follow coffee and liqueurs, was to be the last time that his fellow guests saw him alive.

“Edna.
Edna!
” Betty Thorndike was leaning across the table trying to get Edna Clark’s attention, while one of the Merkinson twins – Betty thought it was Hilda but she couldn’t be sure, they both looked so alike – returned to her seat and dropped her handbag onto the floor beside her. Hilda – if it was Hilda – had been to the toilet more than fifteen minutes ago, while everyone else was still eating, her having bolted her food down in record time, and had spent the time since her return talking to Agnes Olroyd, as though she didn’t want to come back and join them: they were a funny pair, the Merkinsons.

When Edna turned around, from listening – disinterestedly – to John and Mary Tullen’s conversation about conservatories with Barbara Ashley and her husband, she was frowning.

“What?”

“He’s been a long time, hasn’t he,” Betty said across the table, nodding to the watch on her wrist. “Your Arthur.”

“He’s had a lot,” Edna said with a shrug. The disc jockey on the stage put on Glen Campbell’s
Wichita Lineman.

“Oh, I love this, me,” Mary Tullen announced to the table, droopy-eyed, and promptly began trying to join in with the words, cigarette smoke drifting out of her partially open mouth.

“You’ve been a long time, Hilda,” said her sister Harriet, pushing her plate forward. Hilda noted that the food had been shuffled around on the plate but not much had been eaten.

“Been talking to Agnes Olroyd.”

“So I saw.”

“She was asking me about the robbery,” Hilda said.

“Robbery? I thought you said nothing had been taken.”

Hilda shrugged. “Robbery, break-in-it’s all the same thing.”

Hilda worked at the animal testing facility out on Aldershot Road where, two days earlier, she had come into work to discover someone had broken in during the night-animal rights protesters, her boss Ian Arbutt had told the police – and trashed the place.

Not wanting to talk about the break-in again – it having been a source of conversation everywhere in the town the past 36 hours, particularly in the Merkinson twins’ small two-up, two-down in Belmont Drive – Hilda’s sister said, “How’s her Eric?”

Hilda made a face. “His prostate’s not so good,” she said.

“Oh.” Harriet’s attention seemed more concentrated on Edna Clark.

As Mary elbowed her husband in the stomach, prising his attention away from a young woman returning to a nearby table with breasts that looked like they had been inflated, Betty Thorn-dike said to Edna, “D’you think he’s all right?”

Edna said, “He’s fine. He always goes at this time. Regular as clockwork. Doesn’t matter where he is.” This last revelation was accompanied by a slight shake of her head that seemed to convey both amazement and despair.

“I know,” Mary Tullen agreed. “It’s common knowledge, your Arthur’s regularity.”

“But he’s been a long time.” Betty nodded to Arthur’s unfinished meal. “And he hasn’t even finished his dinner.”

“He’ll finish it when he gets back,” Edna said with assurance.

Behind her, somebody said, “There’s no bloody paper down there.”

Hilda Merkinson knocked her glass over and a thin veil of lager spilled across the table and onto her sister’s lap. “Hilda! For goodness sake.”

“Damn it,” Hilda said.

Edna threw a spare serviette across the table and turned around. Billy Roberts was sliding into his seat on the next table.

Sitting across from Billy, Jack Hanlon burst into a loud laugh. “You didn’t use your hands again, did you, Billy? You’ll never sell any meat on Monday-smell’ll be there for days.”

Billy smiled broadly and held his hand out beneath his friend’s nose. Jack pulled back so quickly he nearly upturned his chair. He took a drink of Old Peculiar, swallowed and shook a B&H out of a pack lying on the table. “If you must know,” Billy said, lighting the cigarette and blowing a thick cloud up towards the ceiling, “I used my hanky.” He made a play of reaching into his pocket. “But I washed it out, see—” And he pretended to throw something across the table to his friend. This time, gravity took its toll and Jack went over backwards into the aisle.

As Jack got to his feet and righted his chair, Billy said, “I flushed it, didn’t I, daft bugger. But I was worried for a few minutes when I saw there wasn’t any paper – course, by that time, I’d done the deed. They need to check the bloody things more regular.” He blew out more smoke.

“Aren’t you going to tell somebody, Billy?” Helen Simpson asked, her eyes sparkling as they took in Billy Roberts’s quiffed hair.

“Can’t be arsed,” Billy said. “There’s some poor sod down there now – probably still down there: he’ll have something to say about it when he gets out,” he added as he did a quick glance at the entrance to see if he could see anybody returning who looked either a little sheepish or blazing with annoyance.

“That’ll be Arthur.” Edna looked over her shoulder at Betty. “I bet that’s my Arthur,” she said. She tapped Billy on the shoulder. “That’ll be my Arthur,” she said again.

“What’s that, Mrs Clark?” Billy said, turning. “What’s your Arthur gone and done now?”

“He went to the toilet ages ago. Billy says there might not be any paper. There’ll be hell to pay if there isn’t.”

Harriet Merkinson shuffled around in her handbag, produced a thick bundle of Kleenex and she held them out. “Here, why don’t you take him these?”

Edna nodded. “Thanks, er—”

“Harriet,” said Harriet.

“Thanks, Harry-good idea.” She passed the tissues back to Billy and gave a big smile. “Here, be an angel, Billy and go back down and push these under the door for me.”

“You haven’t been down to the gents, have you, Mrs Clark?” There was a snigger at the last part from Jack Hanlon. “You can’t get sod all under them doors.”

“Well, can’t you knock on his door or something?” She nodded to the table behind her. “He hasn’t even finished his meal.”

Hilda looked across at Arthur’s plate and noted that it didn’t look much different to her sister’s – the only difference was that one meal was finished with and the other wasn’t.

When he got back to the toilet, Billy saw one of the young waiters about to go into each cubicle to fasten a new roll of tissue into the dispenser. “Somebody tell you, did they? Was it Arthur Clark?”

The boy shook his head, his cheeks colouring. “It was some bloke, don’t know what he’s called,” the waiter said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Said he’d come down and a lot of the—” The boy paused, searching for the word.

“Traps?” Billy ventured.

The boy smiled. “Said a lot of the traps didn’t have no paper.”

“When was that?” Billy asked.

“Well, when he was down here, I suppose,” he said, frowning and holding up an armful of toilet rolls. “I just said—”

“No, when was it this other bloke mentioned about there been no paper.”

“Oh,” the boy gasped. “I see.” He frowned and chewed his lip. “A while back. I had to get the key to the stock cupboard first and I was still collecting dishes.”

Outside the entrance 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 looked down at the Kleenex in his hand and felt the waiter look down at them at the same time. He jammed them into his jacket pocket, 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? We’ve got toilet paper out here if you’ve run out.”

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.”