Divine Poison

by AB Morgan

  Vary methods to avoid a pattern being established.

  If in any doubt, abort the plan.

  These were our Ten Commandments and they were developed by Mr M after a series of unfortunate events. Commandment seven was a case in point.

  One dark, winter evening, early on in my apprenticeship, Mr M sat with a warming cup of tea and recounted the wretched tale of the misdirected pie.

  He had decided to deliver a tasty arsenic pie to a man of despicable reputation, who, despite committing several heinous crimes of torture, extortion, and murder for money, had escaped the long arm of the law, leaving broken and devastated lives in his wake. The man was a social pariah and would not be missed. No family were known of and therefore no children or wife would be disadvantaged as a result. He was a man of enormous girth with a voracious appetite to whom the baker would deliver a basket of bread, pies, and buns, direct to his door at the break of dawn every day, collecting the previous day’s empty basket at the same time. This happened six days a week, with double pie and bread being left on a Saturday. With no one else living at the address, Mr M had a straightforward plan to replace one of the baker’s pies with his own; steak, ale, and cyanide.

  There were no difficulties with the delivery of the pie on the Saturday, it was a plain switch, resulting in Mr M having pie for lunch courtesy of the baker. But in a frightening unexpected twist, news broke the very next day via gossip at the local church, which indicated that the intended victim had found his housekeeper dead. The housekeeper was an elderly cleaning lady who was employed out of necessity but whom the man in question only paid to work a few hours on a Saturday morning and he begrudged the money.

  Mr M admitted to the failures that were to lead to the commandments being enshrined in his future practice. He had overlooked the existence of a housekeeper by not being thorough enough in his research and he had chosen a delivery method that was risky, inasmuch as it was not target-specific in nature. We do indeed live and learn.

  Well, what an education I was getting here! The way Grace wrote was so matter-of-fact that it was disarming. Smiling to myself as I read through her memories of her apprenticeship and the factual pros and cons of chosen methods for assassins, I began to wonder if these journals were a device of an elaborate hoax or perhaps a work of fiction. Once I had reached the part about the Ten Commandments, I finally convinced myself that I had probably become completely carried away with the whole idea being based in fact. Ridiculous. I still kept on reading for the enjoyment of the story as it was highly entertaining. So much so that it was tempting to convert Grace’s writing into a publishable work.

  Other people should read this, I concluded, and that night I read aloud to Max excerpts of what Grace had written about poisoning as a weapon of choice for assassins. This resulted in us having a lively debate about what method we would choose were we to have a change of career and become travelling hit men.

  ‘I’d definitely go for a long-distance sniper approach, like Day of the Jackal. Clean, efficient, and I could make a getaway over the rooftops and onto my Triumph, racing through the streets of Rome.’

  ‘Being a sniper in Rome, that’s predictable for you. It wasn’t Rome by the way, it was Paris in Day of the Jackal. I think I could do rifles with silencers, but I couldn’t do knives, too up-close and personal and you’d get covered in blood. The police always catch the knife killers because of the blood. If you think about it, you’d need to be physically strong to use a knife if you had to grapple with the victim, and I don’t fancy a death embrace with someone I don’t know very well. They might have smelly breath,’ I said as Max turned to me with a quizzical expression.

  ‘What are you talking about, you idiot woman? You’re only going to kill people you know?’

  ‘No, I mean knives wouldn’t be my weapon of choice if I were an assassin. I think I would be a sneaky killer. Locking someone in a sauna until they cooked, and making it look like an accident with a faulty door handle mechanism. Tampering with their brakes, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Give over, you wouldn’t have a clue where to start with brake fluid levels.’

  Our conversation was fun and took my mind away from the work I had to catch up on. I had missed several hours of caseload work time by taking on Jan’s memorial medication amnesty, which was to launch in two days’ time, and I was not sleeping well.

  The Jan Collins Memorial Project Team had done a sterling job and had gone down a storm on local radio. To such an extent that the morning DJ, Danny Wakeman, who had the most apt name for a breakfast radio show host, was offering to run reminders each day for a fortnight. A much better outcome than we could have hoped for. Karen, Vanessa, and Pip were bursting with excited chatter when I met with them after the radio interview.

  ‘You sounded so calm and professional. The facts were accurate and I don’t think you could have done a better job. I certainly couldn’t have come across so well. Fantastic effort, guys,’ I said as the three started to relive the whole experience.

  ‘Danny said we were representing the responsible face of the good people of Lensham and Hollberry. Did you hear him describing us? That was funny.’

  ‘Yeah, he really loved my hair,’ Karen said, sparkling with the stimulation of temporary fame. She had taken the lead in the interview and she had exceeded her own expectations, and mine.

  DJ Danny Wakeman ‘time to wake, man’ kept the local population abreast of any exciting developments, and during Karen’s interview, gave credit to Jan’s friends for doing something positive in her memory, as well as trying to address suicide risk. He appeared to revel in the drama of Jan’s suicide and was trying to delve much deeper into her personal life than was necessary. Karen had fended off his personal questions about her friend.

  ‘Jan was a private person, I don’t think she would want me to go into that sort of detail.’

  One unpredicted effect of Danny’s obsession with the dramatic was his plan to dedicate a whole section of one show to a phone-in. We didn’t know that was his intention.

  ‘I know many of you out there will want to share your own stories of how you have lost friends and relatives to suicide. We know, don’t we, that the impact on families can be devastating, but what did you do to cope with the aftermath? Do you think what Jan Collins’s friends are doing is the right thing? Or is it an insult to her memory to focus on the means of her death? Phone in, let’s talk about this.’ I’m sure he thought his efforts to be very laudable, but to me, he sounded insincere and egotistical.

  Inevitably the story of Jan’s mental illness and her disappearing boyfriend came out in the local papers and this spun off into calls to Danny’s show from individuals who had been duped into parting with money by dubious partners.

  ‘Good morning. We have Sylvia on the line. G’morning to you, Sylvia. Now you say you had an affair with a man who you trusted, but how did he repay that trust, Sylvia?’ Sylvia, who sounded like she smoked forty fags a day, growled her way through a sad tale of treachery and betrayal. The older woman, younger man, widow with lots of money, love-rat story. I switched over to BBC Radio Two.

  As well as local radio and newspaper articles written by Pip and Vanessa, posters were placed in inventive venues such as public toilets, nightclub bars, village halls, sports centres, colleges, and the hospital itself. The awareness raising campaign was off to a flying start, in fact there were drop-offs being made at the hospital pharmacy well before the official launch day, which was really encouraging for the willing volunteers to hear.

  The police were delighted with the media efforts highlighting their interest in locating Liam, and DS Adams secured himself a spot on Danny’s ‘time to wake, man’ breakfast show the day after Karen’s appearance. I had to tune in for that one. He appealed to the public for support in ‘seeking this man in connection with an ongoing police enquiry’. His voice lacked any inflection and far from waking the listeners up during their morning commute, DS Adams was sending them to sleep with his d
ull, expressionless appeal.

  ‘God save us. Is it me, or do all Brummies sound depressed? Come on, Eeyore, liven up! You should be reading The Book at Bedtime, even I would fall asleep to that boring voice,’ I shouted at the car radio as I drove to work.

  The media coverage had a snowball effect. At the church hall on the day of the medication amnesty launch, we were inundated with bags of old medication in various forms. In the first wave of enthusiastic depositors was Sean Tierney.

  ‘Well now, Nurse Monica, what a fine idea you’ve had, God bless you. The wife and I have emptied out a whole cupboard.’ He then leant in to whisper to me, ‘We’re glad to be getting shot of this lot. Manuela is scared to death that Benito will one day be so drunk, he’ll accidentally kill himself.’ He shook my hand, pumping my whole arm vigorously as he spoke, and my shoulder was aching by the time he let me go. He had held up the queue behind him.

  Luckily, I had managed to railroad Emma Foster into helping me with the initial influx on day one. I had tempted her with the promise of tea and cake. She was a superstar as usual and immediately organised separation of tablets from liquids. What an oversight on my part, I honestly didn’t think people would deposit their old cough mixtures, and ancient liniments for aching joints, let alone liquids that, quite frankly, could kill a horse.

  Emma updated me with news that Sparkey was settling in well at the farm, being a hit with the children especially. ‘The girls love him. He’s absolutely bonkers.’ I made a mental note to pass this on to Father Raymond. He hadn’t mentioned Sparkey, but if he had been feeding him when Jan was away then he must have wondered what happened to him, surely?

  ‘Mon, do you want cream for haemorrhoids in the liquid, or solid department?’

  ‘Oh God, do we need a bloody creams and lotions section as well?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But we do need a swearing and blaspheming box,’ Emma scolded, suggesting that I was on the verge of full-blown Tourette’s in a place of religion. She rarely swore these days because of having young children in the house but she used to eff and jeff with the best of them.

  ‘Oh shit, sorry.’

  ‘Monica!’

  ‘Sorry …’

  We rapidly filled the clinical waste boxes and by the end of the first day, they were bursting. Anticipating this difficulty, I made arrangements with the hospital to make an exchange of full ones for empties, plus a few extra, well before four o’clock. We could not risk leaving such vast quantities of medicines in a church hall overnight. The bottled items had to stand in cardboard boxes and milk crates that we had purloined from a storeroom at the hall. When I phoned them for advice, I was reminded by one of the pharmacists at the hospital that, ‘You can’t pour any old liquid medication down the sink without a risk to public health.’

  ‘No, indeed, we might create mutant crocodiles in the sewers,’ I added with a laugh. This was not reciprocated. Apparently, pharmacists are serious folk.

  ‘Any Viagra amongst this lot?’ Emma asked with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Why on earth would you ask that question?’ She and Jake were not having bedroom difficulties at their age, were they?

  ‘Apparently it works well for women if they take it …’ Emma hadn’t really changed that much when she became a mum, she still had the naughty imp about her. Thank God.

  The Pathways Project team had turned the medication amnesty launch into an opportunity to advertise their good work. There was tea, cake, and information for all, just about. With the realisation that the turnout was twice the number anticipated, cakes were re-cut to half the original portion sizes, but nobody noticed. Throughout the day there was a gently positive atmosphere in the hall and many willing hands were available to help load up my car before four o’clock. I declined a marvellously kind offer from an ancient lady churchwarden to “ride shotgun” with me. I recognised her face.

  ‘You should be careful, dear, you could be mugged by druggies and other unsavoury types.’ I took her advice, paid careful attention to my rear-view mirror in the event that I was being followed, and headed straight to the pharmacy delivery bay at the back of the hospital.

  Emma had left earlier to pick up her children and I was relying on a couple of other helpers to wait for me to return with the empty clinical waste bins before locking up. The door to the hall was to be closed at four o’clock sharp as advertised. When I returned, there was a box of medicines dumped outside the church hall entrance, and no one was there to let me back in with the replacement clinical containers. Typical. I put the box of dumped medicines in my car rather than leave it outside.

  This was another issue I had failed to anticipate. What if others were tempted to do the same? I rustled up a handwritten sign for the door, which requested that medication was not to be left outside and reminding people that it may fall into the wrong hands or be eaten by animals.

  There was only one other car in the car park, a silver saloon beneath the trees. I could see someone sitting in the driver’s seat but couldn’t make out his or her features. Convinced that it was Frank Hughes, I kept the car in my sight. I had been expecting him to confront me by turning up at the office, but now I was wondering whether he had something else in mind. I added to the handwritten sign ‘No drugs are left on the premises overnight’.

  I made it home in one piece. No druggies and no psychopathic Frank Hughes put in an appearance.

  12

  The next amnesty day was almost as manic as the first, and whilst doing my rounds of the drop-off points to ensure that the systems were working as planned, I finally caught up with Father Raymond. Popping into St David’s Church Hall first thing with the replacement clinical containers I was handed a welcome cup of tea by Vanessa, who winked at me.

  The police hadn’t spoken to her or Karen and Pip about Liam Brookes yet, although Jan had died four weeks ago. ‘They’re probably dealing with the information coming in from the public as a result of DS Adams’ appeal on the radio,’ Pip suggested. ‘I’m a bit cross about how they made it sound like he was a villain, but at least someone is looking for him. We can’t get hold of him and we don’t know where to try next.’ Pip saying he was ‘a bit cross’ made me smile to myself. He didn’t possess the ability to be furious or angry. Mildly irritated was the worst I’d ever seen from Pip.

  ‘I liked Liam,’ Vanessa said wistfully, as she offered me a biscuit. We were about to have a conversation regarding the mysterious disappearing Liam, when Father Raymond appeared with an elderly and doddery Father Joseph, who he was showing around the medication amnesty set up. I apologised to Vanessa for cutting her short, and took my opportunity to update Father Raymond on Sparkey’s welfare.

  ‘Father, you’re a modest man. Lily tells me that you looked after Sparkey for Jan when she was in hospital, and when she was in France of course.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But I think he ran away. I went back several times after I heard about Jan’s death but the neighbours said they hadn’t seen him. God bless the little thing.’

  ‘Oh no, he’s fine,’ I reassured the doleful priest.

  There had clearly been an oversight on my part. I should have at least let the neighbours know where we had moved the cat to. Mind you, as I had no idea that Father Raymond existed in Jan’s life until after her death, I couldn’t have known to inform him until now. All I had done was to put a short note through to Jan’s next-door neighbours to assure them that I was taking responsibility for rehoming Sparkey. They would usually have been the ones to feed him whenever Jan was away, and sometimes when she wasn’t.

  Father Raymond seemed genuinely relieved to hear how well Sparkey had settled with his new family.

  ‘Looking after cats. All part of the work of a street priest, Miss Monica,’ interjected Father Joseph.

  This was when the difference between the two priests became clearer, thanks to a succinct explanation from Father Joseph who, because of deafness, shouted at me, ‘I minister in the local Catholic Church to a congregation and Father
Raymond here works with community projects. He’s often moved after a few months to set up projects elsewhere. The resident parish priest always hosts him, you see, wherever he lands.’ Father Joseph then turned to talk to Vanessa with the ultimate goal of helping himself to more biscuits. ‘How long have you been the priest at St Francis’?’ I heard Vanessa ask.

  ‘I’ve been twice in total, young lady. I was here about twenty years ago, and then I was asked to return four years ago this November. It’s lovely to be back.’

  ‘Another biscuit, Father?’ Father Joseph happily chatted to Vanessa for as long as the supply of biscuits lasted.

  ‘I like the nomadic life, really.’ Father Raymond nodded sagely.

  ‘It sounds as if you rarely have chance to put down any roots,’ I said, quickly adding, ‘On a slightly different note, and with your street priest shoes on; have you heard anything to help the police find Liam Brookes? You must have known him fairly well?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Father Raymond, with a direct and steady gaze. ‘He seemed, on the surface, a decent enough chap, but it is a sad fact that the vulnerable can be so easily hoodwinked by those with less than honourable intentions.’ Father Raymond shuffled his feet and stepped towards Father Joseph, putting his hand into the small of the elderly priest’s back as if to guide him further away. I was under the distinct impression that Liam Brookes was a subject that Father Raymond did not wish to discuss with me. Undeterred, I prodded a little further.

  ‘Did you know that Liam Brookes paid for Jan’s holiday to France and went to see her in hospital when she was there?’

  Father Raymond fidgeted more noticeably and suggested that, ‘We should arrange to meet and talk these important matters through in private, in case discussing such unpleasantries should upset Jan’s close friends.’

  ‘Of course, I wasn’t thinking. Good idea. I’ll give you my number at work.’