Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

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 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 lady’s 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; 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 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 what you’d 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, Mai.”

Broadhurst waited. “And?”

“And then he died. 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 grâce.

“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. A 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.”