CHAPTER 4

Dead Lucky

Inside, the changing room was much like any other. There was a slatted wooden bench running along one wall with clothes hooks mounted above it, a large sink with a mirror over it, a row of ceramic urinals and two toilet cubicles. But there was one unusual detail: in the gap beneath the closed door of the left-hand cubicle, the soles of a pair of shoes were just visible.

‘It’s a bloke,’ said Rory in a half whisper. ‘You can tell from his footwear.’

‘Genius, Sherlock!’ Amy said. ‘Although, the fact that he’s in the gents is a bit of a clue too, don’t you think?’

The Doctor immediately strode to the closed cubicle and knocked on its door. ‘Hello! Can you hear me? This is the Doctor!’

There was no answer.

‘I already tried that,’ Rory said. ‘I even reached under and waggled one of his feet a bit. Nothing.’

‘Do you think he’s dead?’ asked Amy.

‘Hard to say without a closer look,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Could just be deeply unconscious. We need to get this door open.’

Amy expected him to produce his sonic screwdriver, but the Doctor just stared at the cubicle door.

‘A bog-door lock shouldn’t give your sonic much trouble, should it?’ suggested Amy after a few moments.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘The lock isn’t the problem, Pond. The door opens inwards. Whoever’s in there is squashed up against the other side. If they are alive, they won’t thank us for squeezing them half to death trying to get the door open.’

‘So we need to force it outwards somehow?’ said Rory.

‘Exactly. Which means using something as a lever … A-ha!’ The Doctor pulled his rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket. With his other hand, he took out his sonic screwdriver, and, after a little twiddling of the controls, he touched its glowing tip to the end of the newspaper.

‘If I can realign the carbon molecules into a lattice,’ he muttered, ‘it should increase the rigidity to a high enough degree.’ He deactivated the sonic screwdriver and, without warning, gave the toilet door a firm whack with one end of the rolled-up newspaper. It made a loud metallic clang.

‘Excellent! Total petrification. Good as an iron bar,’ said the Doctor. He quickly set to work on the cubicle door, using the now-rigid newspaper like a crowbar. It didn’t take him long to prise the door off its hinges. He and Rory lifted it clear.

The man inside the cubicle was lying on his left side with his head against the toilet pedestal. He was curled up, his knees drawn into his chest and his face covered by his raised forearms. He was dressed like many of the male supporters they had seen so far – in a smart suit, with a white shirt and tie.

Amy helped the Doctor to carefully drag the stranger out on to the changing-room floor, where there was room to examine him. As Rory checked for signs of breathing or a pulse, the Doctor scanned his sonic across the man’s body. His expression remained grave.

‘He is dead, right?’ said Amy.

Rory nodded grimly. ‘’Fraid so.’

‘Has been for about an hour,’ confirmed the Doctor.

‘He’s not very old, is he?’ said Amy sadly. The man looked to be in his mid-twenties. ‘What happened, do you think?’

The Doctor was now carrying out a more thorough scan of the man’s chest. ‘Sudden death in humans is quite often due to a myocardial infarction –’

Amy frowned. ‘My-old-cardy’ll what?’

‘A heart attack,’ clarified Rory.

‘Oooh! Get you,’ cooed Amy, impressed.

‘What?’ said Rory. ‘I am a nurse, Amy!’

‘But there’s no indication of heart failure in this chap’s case,’ continued the Doctor. ‘In fact, he’s a picture of health, inside and out. Other than being dead.’

‘You think he died from something other than natural causes?’ said Amy.

‘Possibly. But there’s no evidence of violence,’ replied the Doctor. ‘No swelling from a blow or bleeding from a wound. No trace of toxins, either.’

‘Perhaps he had some sort of medical condition,’ suggested Rory. He pulled back the man’s right jacket sleeve to look at his wrist. ‘Did they have medic-alert bracelets in the sixties?’

‘Dunno,’ said Amy. ‘You could check his pockets.’

Rory quickly frisked the dead man. He slipped a wallet from an inside jacket pocket and tossed it to Amy. ‘See what you can find out from that.’

Amy began eagerly rifling through the wallet’s contents. There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘This is just like one of those American cop dramas on TV, isn’t it?’ she said, with a clear note of excitement. ‘An unknown corpse. You two, the guys who do all that forensic-y pathology stuff. Me, the glamorous, super-brainy detective trying to piece together the victim’s identity.’ Her face lit up. ‘I’m in CSI! CSI Wembley!’

Both Rory and the Doctor glanced up from examining the body. Their disapproving looks wiped the smile off Amy’s face. She adopted an expression of exaggerated seriousness. ‘Sorry. Obviously I’m not enjoying this. Not when someone has died. That would be wrong. Clearly.’

‘Found anything yet to suggest which “someone”, Detective Inspector Pond?’ the Doctor asked.

Amy turned her attention back to the wallet’s contents. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘There’s not much here. Nothing with an ID, anyway. No credit cards. But I guess people didn’t carry plastic back in 1966, did they? There’s just a couple of big old one-pound notes. Cute.’

She tried another compartment in the back of the wallet. ‘Hang on. There’s this, too.’ She pulled out a small slip of paper, and took a closer look at it. ‘It’s some sort of receipt, I think. Dated yesterday. From William Hill. That’s one of those betting shops, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Rory. Amy passed him the slip of paper.

‘Yeah, it’s a betting chit,’ said Rory. ‘He must have put some money on a horse. Someone’s written on the back of it. “Hot to Trot. Two hundred to one. Ten pounds to win.”’

Amy frowned. ‘Hot to Trot?’ she repeated. ‘I’ve heard that somewhere before. I’m sure I have …’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Got it! It was when we stopped at that newspaper stand on the way here. There was a sports bulletin playing on that guy’s radio. The lead story was about this no-hoper horse that had won a big race. Hot to Trot – that was definitely what it was called.’

Rory passed the betting chit back to her. ‘Well, if you’re right, this chap just won a small fortune. At those odds, he’d have picked up two grand in winnings. And, round about now, two thousand pounds is a lot of money. We’re talking enough to buy a house.’

Amy looked at the dead man pityingly. ‘What a rubbish time to snuff it. Like winning the lottery, then keeling over before you can spend it.’

‘Do you think maybe he works here?’ asked Rory.

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Amy.

‘Well, how come he’s allowed in here? “Officials only” it said on the door.’

Rory pulled something from the man’s trouser pocket. It was a piece of printed card, about ten centimetres square, in a leather sleeve. Rory looked it over.

‘I think I just found my answer. Listen to this.’ He read out the text from the card. ‘“VIP World Cup Final Stadium Pass. Issued to the winner of the Daily Express World Cup Spot-the-Ball Challenge.”’

‘Blimey,’ said Amy. ‘So this guy had just won a fortune on the horses and a nationwide newspaper competition. He was having a seriously lucky day, wasn’t he?’

‘Up until the moment of his sudden, lonely death, you mean?’ said Rory.

‘Point taken.’

The Doctor finished examining the body. He stood up, frowning. ‘I can’t find any obvious cause of death. Maybe there’s a clue in where we found him …’ He moved into the now-doorless cubicle, and began looking around inside. ‘Why would he have locked himself in here, do you think?’

Rory gave the Doctor an amused look. ‘Er, you mean apart from the obvious reason?’

‘Yes, Rory, I do.’ The Doctor lifted one side of the toilet cistern’s cover. He buzzed his sonic over the water inside for a second or two. He replaced the cover, then lifted the lid of the toilet itself and peered into the bowl. ‘There’s no evidence of him having used the loo.’

Amy smirked at Rory. ‘Not like when you’ve been, then.’

Rory ignored her. ‘How can you tell?’ he asked the Doctor. ‘He’d have flushed it, wouldn’t he?’

‘The water in the cistern is at room temperature,’ explained the Doctor. ‘Which means it’s been in there long enough to equalise with its surroundings. This toilet hasn’t been flushed for several hours.’

‘I’m losing that cool cop-show vibe now,’ muttered Amy. ‘They tend not to major in loo flushing …’

‘Maybe he was just about to go,’ said Rory.

Amy looked despairing. ‘Enough already with the detailed toilet analysis! Can’t we dust for DNA or something?’

‘Or maybe,’ the Doctor pressed on, ignoring her, ‘he wasn’t in there to use the toilet at all. Look at how he’s lying. Back curved, knees up, hands covering his face. The foetal position. The posture of an unborn child. Humans instinctively revert to it when they feel defenceless. And look at his eyes. They’re screwed tight shut.’

Amy looked at the Doctor. ‘You’re saying he came here, locked himself in and curled up in a ball because he was frightened?’

‘Exactly, Pond.’

‘Frightened of what?’ said Rory.

‘No idea,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I intend to find out.’ He knelt beside the man’s body again. ‘I must have missed something … I’ll take another set of bio-readings. You two check if he has anything else on him.’

Rory obediently began a repeat search of the man’s trouser pockets. Amy rooted around in his jacket to see if Rory had overlooked anything there.

After a few seconds of silence, the Doctor let out a triumphant cry. ‘Ah-hah! Now that makes things a lot more interesting!’ He was running the tip of his sonic slowly across the man’s forehead.

‘What is it, Doctor?’ asked Amy.

‘I can’t find any evidence of endorphins anywhere in his system. Not even the faintest of traces. There shou–’

But, before the Doctor could explain further, something happened that brought their investigation to an abrupt halt: the changing-room door swung open and a tall middle-aged man strode through. He was smartly dressed and carrying a large green kitbag. He had silver hair, very dark, thick eyebrows and an impressive, almost black moustache.

The man stopped dead in his tracks, his shock obvious in his face. Amy, Rory and the Doctor could hardly have looked more suspicious. A group of strangers, in a restricted area, going through the pockets of a corpse.

The man’s wide-eyed gaze flitted to the forced cubicle door propped against the wall behind them, then back to the trio.

Amy smiled sweetly. This was going to take a lot of explaining.