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 Halifax 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.”
“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.