Revenge – Ken Cooper

Jean was watching the former matrimonial home from inside her car – the second-hand car she’d been forced to buy when she left Derek. Five minutes earlier she’d seen him leave in his BMW for work. It would take him fifteen minutes to get to Yeovil hospital. That’s where he worked. It’s where they both worked. It’s where they had met - what was it, twenty two years ago, now? He was one of those reviled NHS administrators; Jean was ‘front-line’.

She was now living with her friend Carol. “Stay as long as you need,” Carol had said.

“When Dad’s probate has been sorted out I’ll be able to get my own place; somewhere just for me. And for Jenny to come back to during the college vacations and after she’s graduated.”

The garden of 37 Dene Road was surrounded on three sides by leylandii. Jean had always hated them. “Gives us some privacy,” Derek said. Ironically, privacy was what Jean needed now - for what she was about to do. She needed no witnesses.

She started the Vauxhall Astra and in one sweeping manoeuvre taking no more than three seconds, slotted it into the drive, cutting the engine as she applied the footbrake. She searched in her pocket for the house key. It needed to be handy if she was to gain entry with the speed and grace of a commando.  She had fleetingly wondered whether he would have changed the locks, but knowing Derek as she did, she concluded the possibility was impossibly tiny.

She strode up to the door, slid the key in and turned it through twenty degrees. She was inside. The door clicked gently behind her – as sweet as a nut. Nothing had changed since she had walked out two weeks ago. She wondered when Tracy The Marriage-Wrecker would be moving in, but after some more thought imagined that this woman would have her own affairs – no pun intended, she thought – to sort out. She crept upstairs, and although her business was with the bathroom, she couldn’t help but take a look in the bedroom. What did she expect to find? Some incontrovertible evidence of his unfaithfulness? A black bra or panties? There on her chair was a pile of his jeans, tee-shirts and socks, waiting for space to be made in the laundry basket. They would wait in vain. The basket was so full the lid would not close. Was he really incapable of using a washing machine? For a second she thought she might set a load going – God! Even after all this, her wifely instincts played on her conscience!

She needed to focus now; needed to do what she had come to do and get out. She moved to the bathroom. Nothing had changed here either she thought. Then she noticed the bottle of aftershave on top of the cabinet. That was new. Paco Rabanne. It looked expensive. She resisted the temptation to sample its scent, fragrance, essence – whatever the current vogue word was. There must be no trace of her presence today. No evidence.

In the rehearsal, performed in her mind at 3 a.m. that morning, she would unscrew the top from the toothpaste. Silly girl! Didn’t she always complain that he never replaced the top on the tube? And he always squeezed it from the middle. One of her roles in life had been to rectify both misdemeanours, every single day of their twenty-year marriage.

From her left coat pocket she carefully retrieved the freezer bag. It held the strange bottle taken from her father’s shed. Her father had died two months previously and Jean had been undertaking a brief, informal inventory of the contents of his house. She thought she had better take a look in the shed, but soon wished she hadn’t. It was full - full of tools, and jars. Coffee jars, jam jars, sweet jars. Jars of nails, screws, nuts, bolts, and washers. Scores, maybe hundreds, of different types of fixings and fittings. And cans – cans of paint, varnish, lacquer, fillers for metal, fillers for wood. Some of the cans had price labels – silly prices, a tenth of what you’d pay today. Some even had prices in shillings and pence and quaint illustrations of bespectacled grey-haired craftsmen in brown aprons.

High on one dark shelf Jean noticed the bottle. It was covered in cobwebs and dust. It was because it looked so different that she reached up and freed it from the clinging grime. She gave it a quick wipe with a nearby discarded rag and found that it was of brown glass with vertical ribbing. It looked Victorian, or Edwardian. The word POISON was actually embossed on the glass. There was a faded label on which was depicted a skull with DANGER printed emphatically underneath. There were a few centimetres of liquid remaining inside the bottle. So, what could it be? Rat killer? Strychnine? Arsenic? Cyanide even? Most probably the bottle had remained there because her father, her grandfather maybe, had not known how to get rid of it safely. It was like a curse. If it was cyanide, then pouring it down the drain, or tossing it in the river could have devastating consequences. Fortunately Jean was in a position to throw off the curse. Hospitals had facilities for the disposal of hazardous things – drugs, syringes, soiled materials, body parts. On the next visit to her father’s old house she would remember to collect the bottle and take it to work with her.

As it turned out Jean had made a special trip to collect the bottle. She would take it to work with her, but only after she had made use of those few centimetres of liquid left inside.

Four days earlier she had found Derek’s mobile. He’d been looking everywhere for it, growing ever more desperate. “It’ll turn up,” she’d said, “Try calling it from mine.”

“That’s no good,” he had snapped, “It’s on silent. Shit! Shit! Shit!” Reluctantly he left the house under a black cloud. From the window Jean saw him rummaging through the car for a third time. He made as to come back into the house, but then stopped, got into the driver’s seat and drove off. Half an hour later she found the thing, down behind the loo. She opened it up and all the evidence a divorce lawyer needed unfolded before her. Text messages in the In and Sent boxes; some with pictures. A call log the FBI would be proud of. A photo gallery featuring that girl in Management Information – Derek called them The Number Crunchers. Seems Tracy and Derek and been crunching a few numbers of their own. Jean used his mobile to call him at the office. “I’ve found your phone, Derek. I won’t be here when you get home.” That’s all she said. He knew the game was up.

Gingerly she picked the bottle from the freezer bag and set it at the side of the basin. She tore several pieces of toilet tissue from the roll and laid them in a single pile next to the bottle. From her other pocket she took some latex gloves, a face mask, and a disposable hypodermic syringe. She pulled the gloves onto her shaking hands, fixed the mask over her nose and mouth and assembled the syringe. She squeezed the toothpaste in the tube to ensure its bulk was now correctly collected at the top. Stepping back, she broke some black waxy substance that sometime had been used to seal the bottle. The glass stopper had to be twisted back and forth several times before it came loose. Holding her breath, she laid the stopper on the paper. Taking the syringe she drew up what must be about 5 ml of the liquid, and transferred it to the toothpaste tube, sinking the needle below the surface just visible inside the tube. She gently withdrew the needle and checked to see that its entry and exit would be undetectable. Replacing the stopper into the bottle she could breathe again, but she took the shallowest of breaths. She carefully packed everything - bottle, syringe, mask, paper, gloves – into the freezer bag and slipped it into her pocket. Once downstairs she stole a look through the front windows. She knew she wouldn’t be able to see much – now those damned trees were a hindrance - but it would not be good to encounter someone like the postman whilst making her getaway. All clear as far as she could tell. She let herself out and slid quickly into the Astra. As efficient as an executioner! She saw no-one as she reversed out of the drive and went to work to start her late morning shift.

As soon as there was an opportunity Jean disposed of the evidence in one of the yellow bags marked “CLINICAL WASTE – FOR INCINERATION ONLY”. All day she went over everything, time and again. Had she forgotten anything? Had she left any clues? She tried to behave as normally as possible, but inside Jean was a nervous wreck.

At seven she left the building and walked to the staff car park. She was aware of a group of lads looking under the bonnet of an old car. One of them slid into the driver’s seat whilst another called “Try it now.” Suddenly she felt a powerful push in her back, sending her forward to the ground. Someone was pulling her bag. She felt a pain in both her knees and her left arm as she hit the unforgiving paving slabs. Forgetting all the advice handed out on “Self Defence for Women” courses she’d attended, she gathered the bag into her body and shouted “No!”

“Give it to me, you bitch!” her assailant growled as he landed a blow on her cheek.

“No, no, no!” she shrieked, as she tried to roll into a ball with her bag at its centre. Both his hands were now on the bag and he was tugging at it furiously. She heard the car revving up. This two-person bundle – her and him - was directly behind it, she could smell the oily exhaust fumes. Suddenly the car reversed into both of them. She got the worst of it. A wheel ran over her leg. The boy called out “You stupid sod!”, and he got to his feet and scrambled through the car’s open rear door. The driver now found first gear and the car shot forward making a second pass over the limb. Jean cried out in pain as she saw the car turn the corner by B wing. Then she lost consciousness.

When she woke up she was in A&E, a place very familiar to her, though she had never witnessed its workings as a patient. Through the grog she saw Derek approaching her bed. What was he doing here? Ah, yes. The news of their split was not public knowledge yet. Clearly he was trying to behave just like any other husband whose wife had been mugged and had her leg run over twice.

“How are you, Jean?”

“A lot you care! Why don’t you sod off to your new companion?”

“OK. If that’s the way you want to be. You know where I am if you need anything. The police will want to interview you as soon as possible.”

“What’s that sticking out of your top pocket?”

“Toothbrush. Just bought it at the hospital shop. It’s for Jenny. She’s on her way down from London - came directly from college as soon as she heard. Asked me to buy it – she’ll be staying with me tonight.”

…ooOoo…

 image: antiquebottletrader.com