Gemma Makes Her Mark, page 13
Finding an apartment had turned out to have been easier than she thought. Rebecca and Victoria had been a great help and eventually she’d gone for a smart two-bedroom apartment in Holland Park Gardens, just across Holland Park Avenue from their place; and with the owner wanting a quick sale and her being a cash buyer there’d been no problems. In the end Gemma had got it for just over £75,000, a good few thousand less than she was budgeting for; the exchange of contracts was due soon and it seemed she could be in well in time for Christmas. Last weekend had convinced Gemma that she was doing the right thing. She had gone up on the Friday and stayed at Victoria and Rebecca’s. It had been nice that they were so keen on having her around and on the Saturday afternoon Rebecca had helped her pick up some odds and ends for her new place from the more upmarket shops around Ladbroke Grove. After that, they’d taken a cab up to Oxford Street and she’d ordered some new furniture from the House of Fraser store; even though most of the stuff in Petworth was originally hers she didn’t think it a good idea to wind Mark up too much by leaving him with nothing to sit or sleep on. Anyway she fancied a complete change and in the end had chosen a couple of brown leather, Chesterfield-style two-seater sofas and a currently fashionable platform bed which gave her more space in what was quite a small main bedroom.
The weekend hadn’t just been about sorting out the internal décor of her new place. Saturday night had been her first proper date since homing in on Mark shortly after his release from HMP Ford, getting on for two years ago. Simon had picked her up and driven them up to the Hammersmith Odeon; AC/DC had been doing their For Those About to Rock tour for almost a year and this was the last of their four nights there. Gemma was hardly a fan of heavy metal but a free gig and backstage passes sounded good. Last time she’d seen Simon, at Annabel’s, he’d looked the stereotypical young City trader, or yuppie to give them their recently acquired acronym, a slick, narrow-lapelled Armani suit and matching tie. It was strange to see his alter ego, but also oddly comforting. His black T-shirt adorned with some weird kind of mythical creature, tight blue jeans and black baseball boots hardly matched the Porsche Carrera but the incongruity worked for her. The main thing was that she’d had a great night. The band put on an undeniably brilliant show – they might have been Australian and very loud but they were bloody good. After that they’d had a few drinks, either with members of the band or part of the massive road team that accompanied them – Gemma had never been good with faces – and she and Simon had got on brilliantly too.
They’d held on to each other for most of the night and she’d enjoyed kissing him for the first time. Of course, he’d wanted to take her back to his flat in Camden and no doubt try to impress her enough to sleep with him, but she’d decided to leave that till she’d moved up to London herself. It wasn’t that she was prudish, and she knew she’d enjoy it with him, but there was still a kind of loyalty to Mark and she knew it would somehow feel better once they’d actually moved apart. It was also, though, the sense the she was in control that felt good. Anyway, she had made sure Simon knew she fancied him and that he wouldn’t have to wait too long. It was nice that he’d been quite gentlemanly about it all. In the end she’d let him drive her back to the flat in Holland Park; he hadn’t had as much to drink as her and they’d taken enough coke to keep awake so she didn’t feel overly guilty. Rebecca and Victoria were asleep, so she made him a coffee and gave him a ‘next time I promise’ kiss. She liked the fact that he had tried to persuade her to let him stay. To be fair by then she had been pretty tempted herself; in fact she would have been rather pissed off if he hadn’t at least tried, but was pleased she’d stuck to her plan. She had always been good at that. Thinking back, Gemma felt a definite glow of satisfaction. It seemed a future was unfolding itself almost unilaterally; and it felt quite good.
***
Gemma knew that she had to try and keep her excitement at moving away from looking too obvious. She had spent the afternoon in the cottage sorting out what she was going to take to London and what was going to be left there. Mark had gone off on some kind of mission and she’d promised to make them something to eat later. Now that things were falling into place for her Gemma just wanted it to be as painless as possible with Mark.
She’d started frying the onions and mince and decided on spaghetti Bolognese; shepherd’s pie had crossed her mind but the inevitable association with poisoning and murders probably meant they would never be able to face that dish again.
It was a little before six when Mark’s Escort pulled up at the side of the house, accompanied by the usual scrunching of tyres and yanking of the hand brake. She saw him grab some sort of folder from the back seat; he had an oddly determined, slightly manic, look about him. He came in, opened a can of lager from the fridge and called Gemma over in an oddly presumptive manner.
‘Look Gemma, I know you’re going to move out and I know I’ve got to move on; and I do know you’ve been fair enough with the house and things but I don’t want it to just end with you moving out, I’d like us to do something together first. And that’s what I’ve been trying to sort out today.’
Gemma checked the meat, added a sprinkle of mixed herbs, put a pan of water on the hob for the pasta and came over.
‘Well, what do you mean?’
‘I’d like to go away for a few days before you leave, just us two, as a proper goodbye. Anyway, I’ve been into a couple of travel agents, in Farnham actually, and there’s a cruise around the East Mediterranean leaving Southampton next week. It’s only for a week and the late deal is really good. It calls in at Malta or Naples I think and then Dubrovnik in Yugoslavia. What do you reckon?’
It hadn’t been what she expected and Gemma was thrown a little off guard.
‘I don’t know, I’ve got lots to do here and don’t you think it might just make things more difficult between us?’
Apparently not; Mark was clearly full of it.
‘Well, I’ve read up on it and it’ll be great and we can easily afford it. Look, why not at least celebrate what we’ve done before we finally split up? It will be fun, I promise, and I’ve not gone anywhere since I’ve been out of prison.’
Even though Gemma wasn’t convinced that he had really come to terms with things she had to admit it made a change to see him being reasonably positive.
‘It’s a bit of a surprise you know, Mark, but look, give me a little time to have a think.’
She was playing for time really, but then there was also a sort of odd attraction to the idea. Mark and her had got on, they’d done what she wanted, maybe a final goodbye trip wouldn‘t be such a bad idea. It could be a toast to what they’d done; and it might make Mark easier to manage once she’d left. She was well aware that he probably thought it would be a way for him to persuade her to change her mind but she knew that would never happen; even though they’d had some pretty decent times together it had always had the veneer of pragmatism for her. He probably thought a week’s cruise with him would get her to realise, or from his point of view to remind her, how wonderful he was. It was quite comforting to see that he hadn’t lost his almost unshakeable arrogance. She left it for now but had already decided ‘Why not?’
‘Look, let’s have the spaghetti and I’ll think about it. But bloody hell, Mark, if we do this, it’s not about us staying together, it’s a goodbye trip – you’ve got to understand that.’
It seemed that that was enough for Mark, for now at least.
‘Yes absolutely. It’s just I really think we deserve it, after all we’ve done.’
Part Four: Late autumn 1982
Tuesday 2 November 1982
Mark was lying on his bed with his first cup of tea of the day. They had pulled out of Southampton early on Saturday morning, and last night had done the short trip around the shoe of Italy, from the Bay of Naples to Dubrovnik. As they approached the port the Yugoslavian coastline seemed no more than a few yards from their cabin window. The new and half-finished apartments and hotels stretching out beyond and to the south of the old walled city itself evidenced Dubrovnik’s growing reputation as a tourist attraction. Mark felt that at last he had some control again, that he had some sort of plan and that things were going according to it. Gemma had gone up to the sun deck earlier; even though it was late autumn, it was still warm enough to justify that name and the early morning views over the Adriatic looked pretty spectacular even from his cabin window, or porthole to use the appropriate nautical equivalent.
Once Gemma had agreed to come on this farewell trip, and to use some of the money they had got from their legacy for it, Mark had swung into action. Fair enough, it was her family’s money rather than ‘theirs’, but it had certainly helped that they had opened a joint bank account when they had bought the house in Petworth together. At the time, Mark had never seen things coming to this; he really had believed that things would be different with Gemma. However, having the joint account had certainly turned out to be a stroke of luck. As well as paying for the cruise he had managed to withdraw most of the money they’d got from selling the various antiques and paintings that Gemma’s family, really her granddad and dad, had accrued. He had been surprised that there was getting on for £55,000 there; he reckoned Gemma must have put some of the money she’d got after her father had died in that account as well. It was a shame she hadn’t put the money from the sale of the house in Farnham there but there was still plenty. Anyway, apart from the hundred pounds or so he’d left in it to avoid the hassle of actually closing the account, it was now all hidden away in the lining of his suitcase. Fortunately it had been quite a rush to get everything sorted in time for the trip and Gemma had left him to it and he was pretty sure she hadn’t been into town to check how much he’d taken from the account. In fact, she had spent most of the last week or so on the phone to estate agents or solicitors and had been up to London again, apparently to sign some documents to do with the flat she was buying. At least it had kept her busy and left him to get on with his back-up plan. Although a part of him still hoped that things might work out with Gemma, that spending some quality time with him would help her see sense and decide to stay with him, being realistic he had to assume that wouldn’t happen and that he needed to make sure he looked after his own interests.
In any case, it wasn’t as if he was doing anything unfair; the thing was, he deserved it. As well as having to inveigle his way into her mother’s affections and then oversee her premature death, he was the one who had done all the legwork in getting a good price for the bits and pieces left in the Farnham house. As well as that and whatever she might have promised him, legally Gemma would still have the money from their house in Petworth when she sold it, plus her shares and the flat in London she was in the process of buying, presumably with the money from her mother’s house. More to the point, did she really think that he would just accept her handout and leave it at that, take a pay-off as some kind of hired assassin and then walk off into the sunset after all they, but mainly he, had done? At least now he would have enough to start again; and if it did come to it, and that was undoubtedly the most likely scenario, he would have to make some kind of new life for himself. At least he had no real ties back in England either, because going back almost certainly wouldn’t be an option.
Mark had realised, within a couple of days after Gemma had told him that as far as she was concerned they had no future together, that she was serious. Of course, he’d felt angry and let down but that hadn’t got in the way of him starting to make his own plans. Fair enough, if by chance they did end up staying together he could cover his tracks, but if she thought this cruise was just a desperate attempt to persuade her to stay with him and that he would have been too upset to consider any alternatives, she didn’t know him as well as she reckoned. He’d been through absolute chaos and more with Justine, it wasn’t going to happen a second time. He may have been misled before, he certainly had taken his eye off the ball with her but that was then. Musing over things since the early hours and as the SS Uganda rounded the south-eastern tip of Italy he had realised that even though he had been putting his doubts about Gemma to the back of his mind over the last few months, they had clearly been there and were clearly merited as well. Mark was well aware that he had a tendency to put his head in the sand, but over the last few weeks he had been keeping an eye on Gemma and had formed the distinct impression that, in spite of her apparent openness and plausibility, something had been going on. That must have been why he had checked up on her accounts of her trips to London; and even though it went against the grain to spy and was hardly the epitome of the coolness and laid-back approach he liked to accord to himself, he was glad he had. Her excuse for staying an extra night on a couple of occasions had started him off: after all, you could get up to London in an hour from theirs. He had made a point of helping to bring her bags in after her last trip to London and managed to have a quick rummage through when she wasn’t hovering over them. The laced negligee and matching knickers hardly seemed the thing for a night or two staying at her friends’ flat and a somewhat crumpled ticket from an AC/DC gig didn’t strike him as the sort of thing her snobby girlfriends would be likely to be into.
While he had been making arrangements for the cruise, Mark had felt himself getting to the point of not giving a damn about the consequences; and it was something of a consolation that whatever came from it all it couldn’t be any worse than what he’d been through before. It really had got to the stage where he needed to get something akin to revenge, or at the very least a fair deal; and if as it seemed Gemma had abandoned him, that was where he’d get it. The idea of dealing with Gemma in any way other than financially hadn’t crossed his mind when he had initially suggested the cruise. However the frustration and annoyance he’d felt when she had just assumed that that was it between them had been smouldering away and developing into feelings closer to anger and betrayal. In particular, the sense of having been used and having not been aware of it had been building as he had started to make steps to ensure he wasn’t left high and dry. It had given him some focus as well as justification. If she thought that she could play him for a fool then she needed to be taught a lesson. And what was wrong with revenge? Retribution had always seemed to him to be the most sensible justification for any form of punishment. However, the main thing was to get what he deserved and the fifty thousand-plus would fit the bill there.
Of course, he was well aware that should anything happen to Gemma everything would point to him, but no matter what suspicions may and would arise, if it came to it he would leave absolutely no trace this time around. And there’d be no confession either; her mates would be sure to assume it was him but they’d have no evidence. This time there wouldn’t be a need for any convoluted or slow-burning poisoning, apart from anything else Gemma would be on the look-out for that. It would have to be an accident, either in one of the ports they visited or, even if a bit dramatic, over the side at night, maybe a domestic row that got out of hand. He reckoned one of their stop-overs would be the best bet and from the little bit of reading around he’d had time to do, Dubrovnik seemed a possibility.
Mulling it over Mark couldn’t really explain where it had all that come from. He pulled on his shirt and jeans in a state close to semi-shock. Ripping off Gemma or more accurately taking his deserved share was one thing, but he had just let his mind wander way beyond that. Sure, it had been at the back of his mind as a possible last resort, but now, thinking it through, he realised it would be a lot easier without having Gemma to deal with in future; and she was hardly likely to let him just walk off with her money. He could feel a surge of adrenalin: maybe that was the solution and he merely hadn’t liked to accept it before the trip. Feeling that he was in charge of his fate, Mark finished dressing and went up to the deck to find Gemma. For the time being it was probably best to see how the next day or two played out.
The cruise had been a bit of a brainwave; they’d be away from England and depending on how it all panned out he could just leave and go to ground in Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece or wherever felt right. Cruising was beginning to become a popular holiday option and living near to Southampton had helped. Mark had wanted them to be as anonymous as possible and had aimed to get them on as large a ship as he could. Initially he had tried to book with P&O on the SS Canberra. However even though it had been re-fitted since being requisitioned as some sort of troop carrier during the Falklands War earlier that year, and had returned to its civilian role a few weeks back in September, it wasn’t offering any suitable Mediterranean trips that winter. The SS Uganda was a good deal smaller but there were places available and he felt more comfortable with the Med than going any further afield. In fact, it was all beginning to work out better than he had planned or even feared. The trip had cost them – and so, effectively, him, given that he had just about emptied their account – less than he’d expected and it looked as if it had been a stroke of luck that one of the options had ended with the two nights in Dubrovnik. As it was a one-way cruise with passengers flying back to various airports in Britain from the different stop-over points, there’d be no real reason for Gemma or him to be missed should they leave before the end of the itinerary. Presumably it would be assumed they’d missed their flights or just decided to continue their holiday.
