“Ah, here it is,” Poke grunted. “Must have pushed it further back than I thought.” His back to Hilda, Poke pulled out a small bundle and closed the drawer.
The footsteps were getting closer. Hilda tried to ignore the yawning staircase on her right, the fabled 45 steps that led down to the Gentlemen’s toilets. Deep in her mind, the footsteps belonged to Arthur Clark as he descended less than 12 hours earlier to empty his bowel and meet his end . . . except they seemed to be coming towards her rather than away from her. She shook her head and turned back to see the Hotel manager holding a toilet roll enclosed in a polythene bag.
“Right then,” Poke was saying, though his words sounded like rushing water in Hilda’s ears. Rushing water and footsteps, now getting very close . . . echoing . . . as though there were more than just Arthur coming back.
Poke moved the bag from one hand to the other as he returned the keys to his pocket.
Hilda frowned at the bag, looked at Poke, smiled awkwardly, and turned around to face the toilet steps, half expecting to see Arthur climbing up to see her . . . to ask her why she had done what she had done, and bringing other people with him, friends of his . . . friends who
wanted toilet paper.
wanted to talk to her and smooth her troubled brow with grave-cold hands. She turned sharply, took a couple of steps in the direction of the reception area and then stopped. There were figures approaching, figures making footstep-sounds. Her initial relief at discovering that the footsteps didn’t belong to her sister’s fancy man quickly evaporated when Malcolm Broad-hurst called out to her.
“Ah, one of the Misses Merkinson.” Broadhurst’s tone was cheery. There were two policemen with him. “Now, which one are you?”
Hilda started to speak and then, clutching her bag tightly, she spun around. Behind her, Sidney Poke was still standing by the doors leading into the ballroom, the toilet roll in his hand.
“Miss Merkinson?”
Hilda looked all around, clutching the bag even tighter, willing it to disappear . . . willing it to be a week earlier . . . willing there to have been no rain so that Jack Wilson’s General Store had not been flooded and Harriet had not had to stay and so Hilda had not gone for the fish and chips and so met Arthur who believed that she was her own sister . . . willing herself, back seven years ago, not to take the job at the animal testing centre . . . so many things. So many opportunities for her to have avoided this single instant.
But it was too late.
The footsteps were growing louder and slightly faster, moving towards her along the polished floor.
“Miss Merkinson?”
Then it all became clear.
She could escape through the toilets somehow. Escape and find Harriet and they could run off together, start a new routine . . . just the two of them.
She turned and almost leapt forward.
The piece of slanted ceiling that descended with the steps stayed straight for a second or two and then tilted.
Just as she was wondering why that was, Hilda hit her head on the side railing. She felt something warm on her cheek, spun around, and smashed her shin on one of the steps. For a second, amidst the confusion and the pain, she thought she could see a figure standing at the foot of the 45 steps, a figure patiently waiting for her to come down. She heard a crack.
Hilda slipped backwards and to the side somehow, hitting the back of her head on another step before turning over fully and ramming her face into one of the rail supports. More warmth . . .
And then blackness.
Another step broke her nose and her pelvis, another her third and fourth ribs – sending a splinter of bone into her left lung and scraping a sliver of tissue away from the second and third ventricles of her heart.
Two more steps fractured her skull, broke her left collarbone and smashed the base of her spine. The final step on the first flight sent another piece of rib through her heart.
She rolled onto the first landing and then proceeded down the second flight. And then onto the third.
It was Betty Thorndike who found Harriet.
She had called around on her way back from Edna Clark’s house, just to see if Harriet was all right. Of course, she wasn’t.
By Monday afternoon, it was all over bar the shouting. And as far as Malcolm Broadhurst was concerned, there would be little of that.
He had been to see Edna Clark on the Sunday afternoon, with both of the Merkinson sisters lying on metal trays in the cold and strangely smelling basement of Halifax General.
In the silent loneliness of Edna’s kitchen, the widow had told him everything that Harriet had told her. Broadhurst put the rest of it together himself.
He had spoken with his boss at Halifax CID and they had agreed between the two of them that there was little to be achieved by releasing all of the gory details. They decided that Hilda had been a keen promoter of animal rights, using her position at the centre to obtain vital information of the testing Ian Arbutt was carrying out – hence the break-in.
Harriet, meanwhile, had been unable to come to terms with her sister’s death and had hanged herself. Only a slight discrepancy in timing suggested that such might not be the case and nobody would hear about that discrepancy. Now the two of them were united again . . . in whatever routine they could arrange.
Edna Clark cried when the policeman explained what he had organised. It meant that her life had been partially restored. To all intents and purposes, she was still the grieving widow of a fine and upstanding member of the Luddersedge community. Betty Thorndike, who had not said anything to anyone about Harriet Merkinson’s revelations – and had had no intention of doing so – consoled Edna and assured her that everything was all right.
“He was a good man,” Edna whispered into her friend’s shoulder. “Deep down,” she added.
“I know he was, love,” Betty agreed. “They all are . . . deep down.”
Driving back to Halifax late afternoon on Monday, there was just one thing that niggled Malcolm Broadhurst. He could not understand why Ian Arbutt had seemed somehow relieved – albeit momentarily – when he was told of Hilda’s unfortunate accident.
But the policeman did not believe Arbutt was in any way involved in either the break-in or Arthur Clark’s murder. There was another story there, somewhere . . . as, of course, there always is.
STEPPING UP
Mark Billingham
I was never cut out to be the centre of attention. I never asked for it. I never enjoyed it.
Some people love all that though, don’t they? They need to be the ones having their heads swelled and their arses licked; pawed at and fawned over. Some people are idiots, to be fair, and don’t know what to do with themselves if they aren’t smack in the middle of the fucking action.
Of course, there were times when I did get the attention, whether I wanted it or not. When things were going well and I won a title or two. I got it from men and women then, and you won’t hear me say there was anything wrong with that. Blokes wanting to shake your hand and tarts queuing up to shake your other bits and pieces, well nobody’s complaining about that kind of carry on, are they?
But this, though . . .?
The doctor had been banging on about exercise, especially as I was having such a hard time giving up the fags. It would help to get the old ticker pumping a bit, he said. Get your cholesterol down and shift some of that weight which isn’t exactly helping matters, let’s face it. You used to box a bit, didn’t you, he said, so you shouldn’t find it too difficult to get back in the swing of it. To shape up a little.
Piece of piss, I told him, then corrected myself when he smiled and straightened his tie.
“Cake, I meant. Sorry, Doc. Piece of cake.”
I don’t know which one of us I was kidding more.
I got Maggie’s husband, Phil, to give me a hand and fetch some of my old gear out of the loft. We scraped the muck off the skipping rope and hung the heavy bag up in the garage. I thought I would be able to eas
e myself back into it, you know? Stop when it hurt and build things up slowly. Trouble was it hurt all the time, and the more I tried, the more angry I got that I’d let myself go to shit so badly; that I’d smoked so many fags and eaten so much crap and put so much booze away down the years.
“It was mum’s fault for spoiling you,” Maggie said. “If she hadn’t laid on meat and two veg for you every day of her life, you might have learned to do a bit more than boil a bleeding egg. You wouldn’t have had to eat so many take-aways after she’d gone. . .”
Once my eldest gets a bee in her bonnet, that’s it for everyone. It was her that had nagged me into going to the doctor’s in the first place, getting some exercise or what have you. So, even though the boxing training hadn’t worked out, the silly mare had no intention of letting the subject drop.
One day, in the pub with Phil, I found out that I wasn’t the only one getting it in the neck.
“Help me out, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “She won’t shut up about it, how she thinks you’re going to drop dead any bloody second. Just do something.”
“Snooker?”
“Funny.”
“Fucked if I know, Phil. There’s nothing I fancy.”
I’d told Mags I wouldn’t go jogging and that was all there was to it. I’ve been there, so I know how that game works; shift a few pounds and fuck up your knee joints at the same time. Tennis wasn’t for the likes of me and the same went double for golf, even though a couple of blokes in the pub had the odd game now and again. The truth is, I know you have to stick at these kind of things, and that’s never been my strong suit. I had a talent in the ring, so I didn’t mind putting the hours in, and besides, I had more . . . drive back then, you know? Day after day on a golf course or a sodding tennis court, just so I wouldn’t look like a twat every time I turned out, didn’t sound much fun.
Plus, there weren’t that many people I could think of to play with, tell you the truth . . .
“There’s a class,” Phil said. “Down our local leisure centre. One night a week, that’s all.”
“Class?”
“Just general fitness, you know. Look it’s only an hour and there’s a bit of a drink afterwards. You’ll be doing me a favour.”
“Hmmm.” I swallowed what was left of a pint and rolled my eyes, and that was it. That’s how easily a misunderstanding happens and you get yourself shafted.
I should have twigged a couple of weeks later when Maggie came by to pick me up. On the way there I asked her where Phil was, was he coming along later and all that, and she looked at me like I’d lost the plot. See, I thought it was his class, didn’t I? A few lads jumping about, maybe a quick game of five-a-side and then a couple of beers afterwards. When I walked out of that changing room in my baggy shorts and an old West Ham shirt, I felt like I’d been majorly stitched up. There was Maggie, beaming at me, and a dozen or so other women, and all of them limbering up in front of these little plastic steps.
A fucking step class. Jesus H . . .
And not just women, either, which didn’t help a great deal. There were a couple of men there to witness the humiliation, which always makes it worse, right? You know what I’m talking about. There were three other fellas standing about, looking like each of them had gone through what I was going through right then. An old boy, a few years on me, who looked like he’d have trouble carrying his step. A skinny young bloke in a tight top, who I figured was queer straight away, and a fit-looking sort who I guessed was there to pull something a bit older and desperate.
Looking around, trying my hardest to manage a smile, I could see that most of the women were definitely in that category. Buses, back-ends, you see what I’m getting at? I swear to God, you wouldn’t have looked twice at any of them.
Except for Zoe.
I met her forty-odd years back, when I was twenty-something and I’d won a few fights; one night when I was introduced to some people at a nightclub in Tottenham. Frank Sparks was doing pretty well himself at that time, and there were all sorts of faces hanging about. I wasn’t stupid. I knew full well what was paying for Frank’s Savile Row suit and what have you, and to tell you the truth, it never bothered me.
There weren’t many saints knocking around anywhere back then.
Frank was friendly enough, and for the five or ten minutes I sat at his table, it was like we were best friends. He was one of those blokes with a knack for that, you know? Told me he was following my career, how he’d won a few quid betting on me, that kind of thing. He said there were always jobs going with him. All sorts of bits and pieces, you know, if things didn’t work out or I jacked the fight game in or whatever.
I can still remember how shiny his hair was that night. And his teeth, and the stink of Aramis on him.
She was the sister of this bloke I used to spar with, and I’d seen her waiting for him at the back of the gym a few times, but it wasn’t until that night in Tottenham that I started to pay attention. She was all dressed up, with different hair, and I thought she was an actress or a stripper. Then we got talking by the bar and she laughed and told me she was just Billy’s sister. I said she was better looking than any of the actresses or strippers that were there guzzling Frank’s champagne, and she went redder than the frock she was wearing, but I knew she liked it.
I saw her quite a bit after that in various places. She started going out with one of Frank Sparks’ boys and wearing a lot of fancy dresses. I remember once, I’d just knocked this black lad over in the fourth round at Harringay. I glanced down, sweating like a pig, and she was sitting a few rows back smiling up at me, and the referee’s count seemed to take forever.
You just get on the thing, then off again; up and down, up and down, one foot or both of them, in time to the fucking music. Simple as that. You can get back down the same way you went up, or sometimes you turn and come down on the other side, and now and again there’s a bit of dancing around the thing, but basically . . . you climb on and off a plastic step.
I swear to God, that’s it.
Maybe, that first time, I should have just turned and gone straight back in that changing room. Caught a bus home. Maggie had that look on her face though, and I thought walking out would be even more embarrassing than staying.
So, I decided to do it just the once, for Mags, and actually, it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I expected. It was a laugh as it goes, and at least I could do it without feeling like it was going to kill me. It was a damn sight harder than it looked, mind you, make no fucking mistake about that. I was knackered after ten minutes, but what with there being so many women in the class, I didn’t feel like I had to compete with anyone, you know what I mean?
Ruth, the woman in charge, seemed genuinely pleased to see me when I showed up again the second week and the week after that. She teased me a bit, and I took the piss because she had one of those microphone things on her ear like that singer with the pointy tits. They were all quite nice, to be honest. A pretty decent bunch. I’d pretend to flirt a bit with one or two of the women, and I’d have a laugh with Anthony, who didn’t bang on about being gay like a lot of them do, you know?
Even Craig seemed all right, to begin with.
The pair of us ended up next to each other more often than not, on the end of the line behind Zoe. Him barely out of breath after half an hour; me, puffing and blowing like I was about to keel over. The pair of us looking one way and one way only, while she moved, easy and sweet, in front of us.
One time, he took his eyes off her arse and glanced across at me. I did likewise, and while Ruth was shouting encouragement to one of the older ladies, the cheeky fucker winked, and I felt the blood rising to my neck.
I remember an evening in the pub with Maggie and Phil, a few weeks in, and me telling Maggie not to be late picking me up for the class. To take the traffic into account. She plastered on a smart-arse smile, like she thought she’d cottoned on to something, but just said she was pleased I was enjoying myself.
It only too
k one lucky punch from a jammy Spaniard for everything to go tits up as far as the fighting was concerned. I had a few more bouts, but once the jaw’s been broken, you’re never quite as fearless. Never quite as stupid as you need to be.
Stupid as I had been, spending every penny I’d ever made, quick as I’d earned it.
With the place I was renting in Archway, the payments on a brand new Cortina, and sweet FA put by, it wasn’t like I had a lot of choice when it came to doing door work for Frank Sparks. Besides, it was easy money, as it went. A damn sight less stressful than the ring anyway, and I certainly didn’t miss the training. Your average Friday-night drunk goes down a lot easier than a journeyman light-heavyweight, but the fact is, I couldn’t have thrown more than half a dozen punches in nearly a year of it. I was there to look as if I was useful, see, and that was fine. Like I said before, I was happier in the background and I think Frank was pretty pleased with the way I was handling things, because he asked me if I fancied doing a spot of driving.
And that’s when I started seeing a lot more of her.
She wasn’t married yet, but I’d heard it was on the cards. Her boyfriend had moved up through the ranks smartish, and was in charge of a lot of Frank’s gambling clubs. Classy places in Knights-bridge and Victoria with cigarette girls and what have you. She used to go along and just sit in the corner drinking and looking tasty, but some of these sessions went on all night, and she’d always leave before her old man did.
So, I started to drive her.
I started to ask to drive her; volunteering quietly, you know? There were a couple of motors on call and we took it in turns at first. Then, after a few weeks, she asked for me, and it sort of became an arrangement.
In the image I still have of her, she’s standing on a pavement, putting on a scarf as I indicate and drift across towards the curb. She’s clutching a handbag. She waves as I pull up, then all but falls into the back of the Jag; tired, but happy as Larry to be on the way home.
In reality of course she was thinner, and drunker. Her eyes got flatter and the bleach made her hair brittle, and she was always popping some pill or other. That crocodile handbag rattled with them. The smile was still there though; lighting up what was left of her. The same as it was when I looked down through the ropes that time and saw her clapping.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 46