Gemma Makes Her Mark, page 7
It was almost four-thirty, and just as he’d done at their age, a couple of blazered school boys plonked their bags on a nearby table and pulled out their exercise books. Their arrival took Mark by surprise; the day had flown by and it was time for him to leave. He’d agreed to drive along to Littlehampton to meet Gemma after work at five. Before driving back to Petworth, they’d planned to have a drink and meal in a pub they knew near to her old apartment on the sea front.
Although he had made a few notes on this and that, it seemed that really not that much had changed in relation to poisons or forensics over the last few years. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised – it had only been just over half a decade, not long in terms of the history of crime and justice. He hurried along to his car: it would take a good half hour to get to Littlehampton at this time of day and, even though she was generally easy-going, one thing that Gemma hated was waiting around.
***
Gemma had walked down from her office in the town centre to Pier Road and the harbour. With the sun out, it was a pretty sight, in the slightly down-at-heel sort of way that perhaps best typified Littlehampton. There were a couple of fish and chip shops gearing up for the tea time trade, a Mr Whippy ice-cream van hoping to boost its takings for the day from the workers and schoolchildren straggling home to start their weekends, and a little late afternoon activity from the small group of fishing vessels – not enough to call a fleet, she reckoned. The mixture of noises and smells reminded her of family days out, mainly with her dad, come to think of it – the frying of chips, the generator from the ice cream van and the sound of the fishermen cleaning their equipment or hauling their catches up the harbour wall ladders and on to the walkway. The fishermen seemed to have had a decent day: there were plenty of flat fish, mullets and bass but also baskets of eels. Her probation colleague Mathew, the one who had taken over the supervision of Mark, was also a keen fisher and had explained at length to her that the River Arun was renowned as a habitat for those fish and had been so since Roman times. It hadn’t worked as a seduction strategy but she had listened dutifully and learned, apparently by osmosis, a little about the different fish that lived in the area.
As was common practice on Fridays, Gemma had left work early and so was in good time. She sat on a bench across from the Arun View Inn and closed her eyes to the late afternoon sun, waiting for Mark to turn up as arranged. It was hotter than Gemma had thought and even merited some suntan lotion, on her face at least. As she rummaged through her bag for the familiar plastic blue bottle she noticed two seagulls fighting over the remains of an ice cream cornet, and being watched by a lone sparrow, on the off chance they’d leave something behind. Gemma had enjoyed her time in Littlehampton before the move to Petworth. There was no way she was going to live with her mother after her father died and the probation job that came along just as she completed her degree had had its moments, although she had never intended it to be long-term. She wondered if her dad had realised just how badly he’d been treated; but even if he had not, it was up to her to make amends. Gemma was sure he would have understood and supported her. She had to take it slowly, of course, but she was going to sort things, to get what she deserved and what she was sure her dad would be happy with, if there really was any chance he could ever actually know for himself. Even though it seemed to her highly improbable and to fly in the face of any logic, Gemma had never been able to quite dismiss the idea that there really might be life after death and she reckoned he would have been devastated if his daughter’s inheritance was ever hijacked by some future step-father.
So far things had gone well enough. She was almost twenty-five, and could set a year or two as a rough target and the time to have it all worked out and through. The move to Petworth had paved the way for bringing Mark and her mother into contact; and she quite liked living with Mark anyway, he was pretty good company and not bad on the eye too; and so what if he wasn’t long-term? She let the sun play on her eyelids. She wasn’t a bad person, but her mother had been. It might seem like she was using Mark but she would make sure he got what he deserved too. Gemma knew she was never going to ride off into the sunset with Mark but she prided herself on being a fair person; if he helped her she’d be as generous as she could and she’d do her best to let him down gently when it came to it.
Recently she had become somewhat concerned that Mark hadn’t settled into much since his release; and perhaps not surprisingly he appeared to be getting increasingly down about things and even a little insecure about their relationship. It wasn’t an overly obvious or desperate neediness but his desire to please her was beginning to verge on the oppressive; she was thankful that at least he hadn’t mentioned marriage. Anyway, she wasn’t about to take responsibility for his emotional state. From her point of view they were partners in more ways than one and things were going along fine; after all, he was a grown up and knew there were no guarantees.
She heard a car pull in to the pub car park across from the harbour and hoped it was Mark. It had been good of him to drive her to work and a meal out was always nice. Although they hadn’t got round to making any detailed plans, there was a sort of implicit agreement that Anne, her mother, had to be separated from her wealth one way or another and certainly before she had ensnared a second husband. Mark was pretty hopeless at keeping anything to himself and had let it slip that he was going to check out recent crime stories at the library. Mind you, she was surprised he was bothered about keeping anything to himself – surely he’d realised they were both thinking along the same lines. Perhaps being too obvious and brazen about things didn’t seem right, or perhaps he just liked a little subterfuge for the sake of it – after all there was a kind of seductiveness to secrecy. Maybe tonight’s meal would be the time to develop a proper plan of some type, to bring into the open what they had basically already agreed on.
***
Sure enough, it was Mark. She watched him lock the car and cross over to her bench.
‘I haven’t kept you waiting too long have I? The traffic out of Chichester was mad as usual.’
‘No, that’s fine, it’s a lovely afternoon and I like it down here by the harbour. You know, I did actually quite enjoy living in Littlehampton; and we had some good times here, didn’t we?’
They’d been regular visitors to the Arun View when they’d lived in Littlehampton and even though the menu was pretty limited and typical, the fish and chips was usually a safe bet and tasty enough, and Gemma went for that. They were on nodding terms with the landlord and Mark followed his advice and ordered the lamb cutlets, peas and chips followed by Black Forest gateau. There was no shortage of tables and they took their drinks over to one overlooking the harbour. Gemma got straight down to it.
‘Well, did you find anything useful out?’
She needed to convince herself that Mark was on the same wavelength. He had spent the best part of six years locked up and, irrespective of whether or not it was possible to measure rehabilitation, that might have been enough to put anyone off risking going back again. Any such concern was soon allayed: if anything, he appeared to have assumed they had already started. He had clearly got over any compulsion he might have felt for avoiding spelling things out explicitly.
‘Oh you guessed, did you? Yes, it was interesting I suppose, but really there’s been little change since I sorted out Gordon and Jean. I did pick up a couple of ideas but not sure they’d be any better than the old castor beans made into ricin, along with a bit of thallium. Funny thing was, the only poisoning case I could find much of a report on was mine; it’s strange, but I never really read the newspaper reports on it after I’d got sentenced. Actually I felt a bit of a celebrity and a bit weird too, reading about me without the people sitting around me knowing it was me, if you know what I mean.’
So there was no need to worry, he was big-headed enough to believe he could do it all again. Maybe that was a little unkind; she was glad he had enough self-confidence left. Even at this stage Gemma realised that while she would have to help Mark with some of the planning it would be better to keep as much distance as possible from any physical involvement, just in case things went wrong. She would have to make sure there was no hard evidence tying her in – no receipts, no finger prints – and she’d need that to make sure Mark had nothing he could hold over her if it ever came to it. At most she would have to ensure that any evidence was hearsay; and that it would just be Mark’s word against hers. That was only if things went badly wrong of course, but there was no harm in imagining worst-case scenarios.
‘Yes it must be strange, but you know, Mark, you’re the expert, you can do this and you know I’ll help as much as I can. We’re in this together, remember that. So what do you reckon is the best approach, what worked best last time, and would it work again?’
This was more like it. Mark warmed to the task.
‘Well, it’s a matter of gradually wearing someone down, then upping the amounts when they’re weakening. And it’s important to get her doctor, or any doctor really, on side; get them to see that there is a gradual deterioration. What’s on the death certificate is the key, really: that can avoid any detailed post-mortem or autopsy.’
She wasn’t sure what it was, but it made her really quite aroused listening to him talk about her mother as some kind of subject. Mark was keen to explain his strategy.
‘The first thing is to spend more time with her, to take her out and get her to drink more, to have meals with her when I can mix in this and that; to win her confidence, too.’
They’d finished eating and Gemma wanted to get him home while she felt in the mood. It made her feel better if she was treating him and letting him do what he looked as if he wanted to more than anything else. It offered a sort of equilibrium too, to balance her feeling that she was just using him.
‘Okay, we’ll invite her over to ours more often, and as you suggested you can take her up to London sometime and also help arrange a drinks evening or something at hers. You’ve got to charm her too; and another thing is to get that bloody Terry from the golf club out of her mind. He’s been coaching her apparently and she sounded like she was enjoying it. I only picked up on it when I spoke to her the other day and she went on and on about him and her golf. I did ask her about that other chap, the one you said she’d met up with in Guildford, the one with the car, but like you said I think she’s so full of herself that she’s after someone younger. That should make things easier for you, I guess.’
She brought a bottle of red wine from the Arun View’s fairly limited stock and suggested they get back home as quickly as they could. It was never too difficult to get the message across to Mark. It might seem a little calculating, mercenary even, but in her defence she had no intention of going with anyone else while they were working together, whatever might happen in the future. Anyway, she always enjoyed sex with him too.
As they reached home, their row of cottages looked as inviting as ever, nestled on the outskirts of Petworth and with a lovely view of farmland and the gently undulating Downs beyond. As Mark parked in the makeshift driveway at the side of their house, Gemma felt a wave of affection; he may not be her long-term plan, but why not enjoy things for the moment? It wasn’t just about keeping him on track, it was about having a good time at the same time.
‘Why don’t you roll a joint while I get the glasses out?’
Mark didn’t smoke much nowadays but he kept a little stash of Moroccan in case. Gemma had never been much into dope herself, but they liked an occasional joint and now seemed like a good time for one.
Mark didn’t need much encouragement. They sat outside the back door. Old Mrs Mortimer in the middle terrace next door had no idea about pot and the Brays at the end were generally away at the weekends anyway, so there was no need to worry about the smell wafting across the back gardens.
Gemma poured them both second glasses and led Mark upstairs.
‘Come on, we’ve got the rest of the weekend ahead of us and I think we should get down to some serious planning, this week has just about done it for me with probation. It really is becoming a shambles at the moment. Like I said, I’ll keep it going for a few months but that’s it. Let’s arrange a do at my mother’s for the end of the month while it’s still fairly light in the evenings. Meanwhile, I’ve got my needs, you know.’
She let him undress her and sort her out, before doing the same for him and letting him finish off inside her.
Friday 25 September 1981
Over the last couple of weeks Mark had experienced increasingly regular feelings of déjà vu; perhaps surprisingly, they hadn’t been particularly unpleasant and it was almost as if the last few years had been a mere distraction. They had decided on Saturday the 26th for the planned social evening at Gemma’s family house in Farnham, and it had come around quickly. While Gemma had helped her mother with invites for some of the neighbours and a couple of recently acquired golfing friends and persuaded her to ask Ruth down for the night, Mark had been busy renewing his acquaintance with the world of plants and poisons.
Rather than visit the various and quite numerous chemists and supposed health shops he had previously used in the Brighton area, Mark had toured those in Chichester and then Portsmouth. Somehow it seemed more anonymous in larger towns and the further from Brighton the less chance he felt there’d be of him possibly being remembered. It was still easy enough to get castor beans which could form the staple and initial part of the plan; and producing powdered ricin from them was straightforward enough as well. Even though one of Agatha Christie’s thrillers, The Pale Horse, had encouraged a wider awareness of the dangers of thallium, there were still heavy concentrations of it in the cockroach and rat poisons that chemists as well as hardware stores had plentiful stocks of. Mark had found it particularly useful in the past and although it was not completely untraceable, apart from a danger of hair loss it wasn’t easily recognised, and after all the link with an early 1960s book by Agatha Christie wasn’t an obvious connection to make. Come to think of it, a bit of appropriately targeted depilatory might not be such a bad thing in women of a certain age, he mused; and being realistic, it would take a fair while before any significant loss of hair would become apparent.
It had only taken Mark a bit of driving around to get more than enough of everything he supposed that he might need. The problem was that those shop-bought powders were more difficult to disguise than home-made ricin and would have to be used only as a last resort or a final push if needed. To begin with, apple pips and peach stones crushed up with ricin would be easy enough to slip into anything with a reasonably strong flavour of its own. Then he would need to make sure the right person, in other words Anne, was the only one whose food and drinks had the specially prepared extras included. Mind you, if there were the occasional slip up, one or two other guests suffering stomach cramps wouldn’t be the end of the world; and there’d be no follow-up administering of regular doses with them, so any collateral damage would be limited. It would just be seen as a one-off complaint.
Although to a certain extent he was acting on autopilot Mark had realised that he was actually quite enjoying having something to work on, and some sort of direction and purpose at last. He had plenty of time on his hands and Gemma had encouraged him to drop in on her mother by himself sometimes as a way of getting things moving. In fact, he had called in for lunch last week with a ready prepared shepherd’s pie as a first step and ostensibly to discuss the upcoming party. Gemma had helped by phoning her mum and telling her to give Elaine that day off; and Mark had prepared two separate versions of what had been his signature dish last time around and with his previous in-laws. The lunch trip had worked out well. Mark had persuaded Anne to open a bottle of wine and after a glass of that, along with her usual two or three cigarettes, any slightly odd flavouring was easy enough to put down to the special spices Mark hinted that he used with his cooking. He had decided not to hold back too much this time and even though he saw this as just an initial foray he had put a pretty hefty amount of ricin along with a dash of thallium into Anne’s individual dish; he reckoned her taste buds would be pretty shot through anyway, given her less than healthy lifestyle. The military analogy seemed appropriate: he liked the way it smacked of a planned strategy.
They had sat out on the patio after eating and Mark had suggested he organise a trip up to London for a night out once they’d had the party. One of his old favourite bands, the Pretty Things, had a mid-week residency at the Marquee Club and he considered that a heavy night or two might help things along in due course. Mark would enjoying seeing the band again too, he had always liked their hard rock style and he promised Anne he would bring up his favourite album of theirs, ‘SF Sorrow’, next time he came.
Although he had managed well enough in terms of the conventional poisons Mark had made little headway in trying to get hold of any other drugs. He no longer had ready access to students and the student lifestyle. Since his conviction, he had lost contact with virtually all of his previous colleagues and on the one occasion he had visited the university campus where he had worked it was apparent he was not seen as a prodigal son, let alone a welcome guest. However, he knew one of his previous students-cum-suppliers, Greg, had gone on to take a PhD and might still be around the Brighton area. In the past Greg had always been able to get anything Mark had wanted; the problem was renewing contact. Strangely the only member of the Sociology Department who had shown any sympathy for Mark had been Craig, a new appointment who had only been there for a few weeks before his arrest. He reckoned it might be an idea to contact Craig and see if he knew anything about Greg and where he might be.
