Meanwhile, hehad to get back to the job at hand. As well as poisons, he neededto check out recent developments in criminal detection; no doubtthings had moved on and he could do with finding out whether ricinand thallium were becoming any easier to detect. He had a largeChemistry encyclopaedia open in front of him, along with a coupleof studies on the medicinal benefits and dangers of natural plants,illustrated with beautifully accurate drawings that betrayed theage of the books. Until recently publishers must have found itcheaper to include intricate, hand-drawn pictures rather thancolour photos. The big advantage of public libraries was that youcould work in them undisturbed; and if you didn’t take anything outthere was not even any record of what you’d been studying. Mark hadforgotten the satisfaction, almost thrill, of covering one’stracks, of avoiding leaving any kind of trail.
He had heardabout polonium and its alleged use by the Soviet secret service andhad checked that out. Apparently it was a highly radioactivesubstance that made it an especially toxic poison. Althoughunlikely to be available through high street chemists, Mark thoughtit was worth a try at least. The beauty of it was that it didn’tnecessarily have to be taken orally: apparently it worked throughtouch. Botulinum toxin, used to treat spasms and migraines, wasanother possibility. It seemed likely that both would be rathertricky to get hold of, though, and certainly to do so withoutarousing suspicion. Better to stick to what he was used to. Markhad visited a good proportion of the chemists in and aroundBrighton when sorting out his in-laws last time. If he couldn’tfind what he needed around this part of Sussex, he reckoned hecould always check out a couple of those who hadn’t asked anyquestions last time and had appeared more than happy to oblige.Hopefully they’d still be trading.
Therewas something else which might prove useful. He’d picked up a briefcomment on a documentary the other night about the discovery andformal recognition in America of a new and increasingly commonillness that was killing gay men in different ways. Apparently itattacked the immune system and was pretty much untreatable. Fromwhat he had been able to find out, so far it had only been found ingay men, but he needed to get some more detail. It struck him thatan incurable disease would be a brilliant change from hisprevious modusoperandi, which could be useful should itcome to any investigation in the future. However, and to berealistic, it was hardly likely that he could engineer it forGemma’s mother to come into contact with an infected gay man, evenif he was able to locate such a person in the firstplace.
It was almostfour-thirty, and just as he’d done at their age, a couple ofblazered school boys plonked their bags on a nearby table andpulled out their exercise books. Their arrival took Mark bysurprise; the day had flown by and it was time for him to leave.He’d agreed to drive along to Littlehampton to meet Gemma afterwork at five. Before driving back to Petworth, they’d planned tohave a drink and meal in a pub they knew near to her old apartmenton the sea front.
Although hehad made a few notes on this and that, it seemed that really notthat much had changed in relation to poisons or forensics over thelast few years. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised – it hadonly been just over half a decade, not long in terms of the historyof crime and justice. He hurried along to his car: it would take agood half hour to get to Littlehampton at this time of day and,even though she was generally easy-going, one thing that Gemmahated was waiting around.
***
Gemma hadwalked down from her office in the town centre to Pier Road and theharbour. With the sun out, it was a pretty sight, in the slightlydown-at-heel sort of way that perhaps best typified Littlehampton.There were a couple of fish and chip shops gearing up for the teatime trade, a Mr Whippy ice-cream van hoping to
