Gemma Makes Her Mark, page 6
Gemma had finished sorting through the garage and her dad’s study and was leaving the second of two large bags by the outside bin. As Mark and Anne appeared from the back garden, she could see Mark had already taken his new task seriously. He really was pretty adept at manipulating older women; her mum had the self-satisfied demeanour of someone who had been seriously flattered. Gemma almost felt sorry for her.
‘Hi you two, I’ve chucked out all the accounting books and ledgers, they’d be no use to anyone anyway. Why not let Mark try and sell the desk and Davenport, at least? It’ll make a bit of space and you don’t use them anyway.’
Anne seemed happy with that and Gemma suggested Mark take a picture of them to show to his antique contacts as they were too big to fit in the MG for the trip back. It was time for her and Mark to get serious: she needed to see how much prompting he would need. She guessed very little, as long as he assumed he was in control. Today had started things moving but it was probably best not to overdo it too soon.
‘Anyhow, we’d best get going, it’s been nice to help out and I’ll make sure we see more of each other from now on.’
They said their goodbyes and Mark promised to arrange a night out with Anne and also to help her plan and organise an evening do at the house before the end of summer.
***
It was close on five when they left and Gemma suggested she and Mark stop off at a pub on the way back and see if they could get something to eat.
‘We could try the Devil’s Punchbowl in Hindhead, that’s usually pretty good and I’ll pay. And I’ve got to hand it to you, Mark, you really are a smooth operator: from what I could see you were getting on well with my mother and I reckon you’ve got something up your sleeve already.’
Gemma doubted that Mark had any clear strategy as yet but there was no harm in egging him along and keeping him sweet too. She parked on the London Road, finding a spot right outside the front of the Punchbowl and they ordered from the bar meal menu – it was odd how basket meals had become all the rage over the last year or so. The pub had that early evening air of anticipation, as if it was gearing itself up for a busy Saturday evening. They took their drinks to the window seat and waited for the scampi and chips that both of them had gone for. Gemma wanted to see what Mark had been up to.
‘Well look, now you’ve spent some time with her, do you think I’m right to be a little bit concerned about my mother’s intentions, then?’
‘Yes I can see your point, she’s not going to sit around by herself for ever. At the moment I assume you’re in line for it all but you’re probably right, that could certainly change. She mentioned this old guy she’d already had a couple of lunch dates with in Guildford. He didn’t sound like a gold-digger but you can never tell. Rather bizarrely she said he was too old; and if she was planning on snaring someone younger then I could see that could be a different story.’
It was clear to Gemma that she was right about her mother; it was definitely time to get the plan in the open and to make sure Mark was on the same wavelength. She decided to go for it.
‘This might seem callous, and I’ve never told you this really, but the thing is I’ve come to actually hate my mother. It was not so much from when I was young, ’cos she didn’t really get that much involved with me, with all the helpers she had. It was what she did to Dad. Thinking back, I can remember her constantly moaning at him for this or that. I guess I didn’t take much notice of it at the time, but she would go on about him not being rich or successful in his own right, and she’d compare him to her father, of course. It was no wonder he sat and worked or read in his study most evenings. I suppose he had no interest in the type of social networking my mother wanted to get involved with. I remember once when he started playing golf with one of his colleagues who lived out of London like him and she went on and on about him never being around. I think he just gave it up after a few weeks. It came back to me when I saw his clubs and golf buggy lying around in the garage earlier.’
Their food arrived; the claim to be home-cooked might have lacked a little credibility but it looked pretty good all the same, even if the chips would no doubt congeal into the tissues at the bottom of the basket. After they’d decided which of the array of packets of sauces they’d go for, Gemma continued.
‘You know, I don’t think there is anything wrong with two people just growing apart, and if that had been the case I would have accepted things, but it was how she treated him and what she did when he got ill. I’m ashamed I didn’t do anything about it now. I couldn’t stand things but just left them to it. She made him feel a burden, I heard her telling him one afternoon when he was back from the hospital how she had wasted her life on him. I don’t think she actually told him to hurry up and die but she certainly gave him, and me for that matter, that impression. She was busy contacting private nursing homes as soon as he was back home, as if she was doing him a favour; and if he hadn’t gone so quickly she wouldn’t have had him hanging around the house, that’s for sure.’
Gemma found that saying it out loud was, surprisingly, more painful than she had expected, but she could see Mark was taking it in.
‘Look, I won’t go on but she made my dad’s life unhappy and his death even more so. He told me a few days before he went that I was the only good thing that had happened to him. You know, I really hate her for that; and somehow I want to get her back as well. As well as that I don’t really trust her either. I’m not saying she’d leave me with nothing but she’ll always put herself and her enjoyment first.’
They sat back and Gemma ordered another beer for him and a glass of wine for herself. Mark looked a little shell-shocked.
‘Wow, I knew you weren’t close, but I never realised all of that. What a cow; but you mustn’t blame yourself, you were too young to do anything.’
Mark wondered if Gemma had guessed what had already crossed his mind. It was worth a try.
‘This might seem absolutely crazy but I’ve been thinking, I wasted over six years in prison and I’ve not really got anything together since I got out. If you really want to pay her back and get what you deserve too, maybe we could sort something out.’
It was strange but over the years Mark had always referred to murder or death elliptically, he’d never felt able to say it out loud. Come to think of it, ‘sorting out’ was his favourite euphemism.
‘Of course, it is way off the wall and only a thought, and, with my record, hardly feasible.’
Things were working out just as Gemma had planned. That was enough for now. She interrupted him, she needed to reassure him and leave the finer details for the future.
‘Mark, you really would help me, wouldn’t you? That means so much to me; and now we’re together we’d both benefit too. I don’t know, though, let’s not rush into anything. We’ll see how things work out.’
She knew how his mind worked and no doubt he’d have thought things through already, but no harm in spelling it out while they were on the subject.
‘I know you never thought you’d go back there, Mark, but maybe you’re right, and maybe in future we need to make sure we get what we deserve. Let’s face it, if it hadn’t been for you assuming Justine would support you, things would have worked out fine for you. You were bloody clever. I knew that as soon as I met you at Ford Prison. I actually reckon you could do that sort of thing again without anything pointing to you.’
The irony of it was left in the air for now. They were both well aware of it. It had been little over a year since she had been assigned the task of helping to assess Mark’s fitness to be released on licence from a life sentence for the murder of his then in-laws, and after that to help him with his rehabilitation. She pushed on, keeping it at the level of a general idea for the time being.
‘You could take charge, you’ve got the ideas – but you do realise, Mark, if we did do anything I’d support you, I’d be with you absolutely. Anyway, I’m fed up with the probation work, you know that. I want what should be mine anyway; you know my uncle and grandad would have wanted me to have it, they wouldn’t expect me to have to work basically as a glorified dogsbody.’
By the time they’d finished their drinks, they were both well aware they’d made some kind of pact. Gemma felt pretty turned on by how it had all panned out. She’d leave it for the time being though.
‘Come on Mark, let’s get home, I don’t know why but thinking about all this has made me bloody horny.’
It was only about fourteen miles from Hindhead back to Petworth and Gemma put her foot down. She looked over at Mark. He deserves it and so do I. It can be a little bit of advance payment for him, and he’s good at it too. Taking the left fork at Fernland, she pulled hard over into one of the off road tracks heading up toward Castle Copse. She jerked the MG to a halt at the first available gateway.
‘Come on Mark, I can’t wait.’
She almost dragged him round to the back of the car to a patch of grass by the side of a four bar gate enclosing a field heavily populated with a herd of rich, red-brown Sussex cattle. Mark didn’t need much persuading anyway. By the time she’d unbuttoned his jeans and reached into his boxers he was more than hard enough. It was convenient she had chosen a short enough skirt that morning. The grass, weeds and even odd thistle felt good as he pulled her knickers off and rocked in and out of her.
She kissed him.
‘Anyway, those cows don’t look as if they care too much.’
Part Two:
Autumn 1981 – January 1982
Friday 11 September 1981
It wasn’t as straightforward as him ‘reverting to type’, to use that somewhat hackneyed psychological concept. If he wanted to rationalise it, then perhaps just ‘making up for lost time’ was nearer the mark, along with facing up to the frustrations consequent on his having a criminal record and life-sentence for murder. Generally speaking, Mark appreciated structure and clear planning over spontaneity and impulsivity; however, he was well aware that it wasn’t always easy to categorise everything that neatly, and sometimes structures needed circumventing. The circumstances had been different when he had to do everything himself and keep Justine out of it. For one thing, Gemma was more reliable: she wasn’t just a fling or even a paramour, they were a proper couple, they’d been living together for the best part of a year. More to the point, they were doing this together, she was right behind him – almost encouraging him, when he thought about it. In fact, it was unlikely he would be where he was today if Gemma hadn’t sowed the seeds.
Mark was sitting in the oak panelled reading room of Chichester Library. He’d decided to spend the day doing some research and planning. They had driven down from Petworth that morning and he had dropped Gemma off at her office in Littlehampton just under fifteen miles away, arranging to pick her up later. Even though she had been getting increasingly fed up with her job, Gemma had decided to carry on for a few more months at least, to see how things panned out with Mark and her mother before making any final decisions. Mark’s intention was to read up on suspicious deaths and in particular poisonings that had taken place over the years since he’d been given his prison sentence. Even though they hadn’t really thought things through in any great detail, he felt the need to push on with what he now felt of as their plan. Amongst other things he wanted to check out what advances there might have been in forensics and detection. However, for the last hour or so he had been side-tracked by the daily papers.
Ever since he was growing up in Brighton, libraries had held a difficult to explain fascination for Mark, and particularly the reading rooms with the daily national and local papers spread out on massive desks and an array of sensible sounding magazines and journals covering all kinds of interests and hobbies arranged on display stands around the room. He remembered having done a lot of his school work in Brighton Library, walking up from the Seven Dials after school and then meandering down North Road, past the newsagents, second hand shops and record stores that gave that part of Brighton a special feel in the early 1960s. He’d felt comfortable sitting amongst the motley collection of people who had frequented the reading room there. At the time, Mark hadn’t realised that a good few of the regulars who seemed to sit there for most of the day were using it as their second, and sometimes only, home. However, they were only a part of the clientele; there were also what he had liked to think of as intellectuals doing important research and then there were other teenagers, some from his grammar school but also girls from Varndean. One year, it must have been around nineteen sixty-two or three, there’d been a girl called Grace, he’d only found out her name after months of sitting around the same table, usually between half four and half five and before going home for tea. She had long brown hair that reached almost to her waist and somehow managed to make her school uniform look cool. He remembered thinking that her skirt must have been well more than the regulation two inches or so over the knee. And she had smelled nice. They’d smiled at each other most days and often left the library at the same time before going on their different routes home. Perhaps typical of his early forays into the world of male-female relationships, just as he was plucking up the courage to ask if she’d like to go out with him, she stopped coming. He wondered what had become of her. He’d never seen her since her library visits had ended. Probably she had been seen by a more confident, doubtless older, boy and hadn’t realised the potential of the fourteen-year-old budding intellectual she had exchanged all those smiles with. So just one of a series of near-misses and maybes; strange how every decision, or lack of such, shaped one’s future – he remembered having read somewhere that it was called the butterfly effect.
Almost twenty years on, and further along the Sussex coast in Chichester, the library there retained a similar feel and clientele; there were people filling time, or getting essays done, or finding out things as usual. He liked the way that the library staff were always helpful with whatever requests came their way; no doubt the stereotypes must have some basis in reality, but being earnest and interested in books didn’t necessarily mean librarians were naturally boring people. Actually, there hadn’t been a great deal of news to follow on that particular day. The political conference season was in full swing, with the Liberal Party reflecting on the consequences of having voted to form a pact of some kind with the new Social Democratic Party a couple of months previously. Mark doubted this would change the face of life or even politics in Britain too much and realised he didn’t really care either way. He was more interested in reading a review of the cricket season in The Times. It had been an amazing summer of cricket, an Ashes series that England had won three one and it had been dominated by the re-emergence of Ian Botham. When Mark had been at Ford Prison in the mid-1970s, he had followed the rise of Botham – a real ‘boy’s own’, heroic type of figure. Quite early in his career, and with high hopes of leading a new era for English cricket, he’d been given the captaincy of the national team. However things had not worked out and after a pretty disastrous twelve months or so he’d resigned as captain just after the second test of the summer series. Mike Brearley, a more cultured and erudite figure, had replaced him as captain and seemed to be able to bring the best out of Botham himself as well as the whole of the team. For the rest of the summer, Botham had performed miracles. England had been heading for a defeat in the third test at Leeds and with it the prospect of going two down in the series until he’d come in and turned the game around; then in the next Test match he’d bowled half the Australian side out for one run and again snatched a remarkable and improbable victory. Reading through the Times cricket correspondent John Woodcock’s, typically masterful end of season review brought it all back. There really was nothing like test cricket and especially an Ashes series played out over a whole summer.
Meanwhile, he had to get back to the job at hand. As well as poisons, he needed to check out recent developments in criminal detection; no doubt things had moved on and he could do with finding out whether ricin and thallium were becoming any easier to detect. He had a large Chemistry encyclopaedia open in front of him, along with a couple of studies on the medicinal benefits and dangers of natural plants, illustrated with beautifully accurate drawings that betrayed the age of the books. Until recently publishers must have found it cheaper to include intricate, hand-drawn pictures rather than colour photos. The big advantage of public libraries was that you could work in them undisturbed; and if you didn’t take anything out there was not even any record of what you’d been studying. Mark had forgotten the satisfaction, almost thrill, of covering one’s tracks, of avoiding leaving any kind of trail.
He had heard about polonium and its alleged use by the Soviet secret service and had checked that out. Apparently it was a highly radioactive substance that made it an especially toxic poison. Although unlikely to be available through high street chemists, Mark thought it was worth a try at least. The beauty of it was that it didn’t necessarily have to be taken orally: apparently it worked through touch. Botulinum toxin, used to treat spasms and migraines, was another possibility. It seemed likely that both would be rather tricky to get hold of, though, and certainly to do so without arousing suspicion. Better to stick to what he was used to. Mark had visited a good proportion of the chemists in and around Brighton when sorting out his in-laws last time. If he couldn’t find what he needed around this part of Sussex, he reckoned he could always check out a couple of those who hadn’t asked any questions last time and had appeared more than happy to oblige. Hopefully they’d still be trading.
There was something else which might prove useful. He’d picked up a brief comment on a documentary the other night about the discovery and formal recognition in America of a new and increasingly common illness that was killing gay men in different ways. Apparently it attacked the immune system and was pretty much untreatable. From what he had been able to find out, so far it had only been found in gay men, but he needed to get some more detail. It struck him that an incurable disease would be a brilliant change from his previous modus operandi, which could be useful should it come to any investigation in the future. However, and to be realistic, it was hardly likely that he could engineer it for Gemma’s mother to come into contact with an infected gay man, even if he was able to locate such a person in the first place.
