It’s the the perfect poison, known only by a four-letter acronym, its symptoms indistinguishable from a natural disease. It took him two years to figure out how to synthesise it, but once he succeeded, there was no stopping him.
In this week’s story our protagonist preys on elderly ladies, parting them from their money and their lives. Can anyone stop him? And can they stop him quickly enough to prevent him claiming another victim?
Julian gazed at the crowd of mourners thoughtfully. She was here somewhere; he knew it.
“How did you know Brigitte?” said a voice.
He jumped, and turned to see an elderly woman with a sharp, inquisitive face, grey hair swept back into a ponytail.
“Oh, I was her lodger,” he replied, wiping away a tear.
“You’re Julian,” said the woman. “She often spoke of you. She loved you dearly, you know.”
“I loved her too,” said Julian. “She taught me so much. She was so good to me. After my parents died I was completely at sea. If I hadn’t met Brigitte, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“You poor thing,” said the woman, understandingly.
She seemed to hesitate, searching his face.
“I’m Sarah,” she said, suddenly, extending her hand. “A friend of Brigitte’s.”
“Lovely to meet you,” said Julian, taking her hand. “I think perhaps we’ve met before? Didn’t I see you at the house a few months ago?”
“You have an excellent memory, young man,” said Sarah.
“I could never forget such a beautiful face.”
Inwardly he winced, wondering if he’d laid the flattery on too thick, but he took care to utter the words with a warm smile infused with a touch of humour.
She seemed to take it in the manner for which he’d hoped.
“Bless you,” she said. “I was beautiful once, but the years have taken their toll.”
“Age has its own kind of beauty,” said Julian earnestly.
“And what will you do now, Julian?” Sarah asked.
“I-I don’t know,” he said. “I shall have to stay in a hostel for a bit.”
“You’re a writer, I understand?”
“That’s right. Well, sort of.”
He laughed, self-deprecatingly.
“Nothing actually published yet, but my publisher’s given me an advance for my first novel. Not enough to live the high life quite just yet.”
He laughed again, taking care to inject his laughter with a suitable degree of sadness. This, he had practised carefully and extensively in front of a mirror.
“You know, Julian,” said Sarah, her speech slow and thoughtful as though broaching a sensitive topic, “since my husband died I’m rattling around in a big old house all by myself. You’d be most welcome to stay with me for a while if you’d like. At least until your book’s published.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.” said Julian. “It’s incredibly good of you to offer. Brigitte always had excellent taste in friends. But no, I’ll be happy enough in a hostel for a while.”
“What nonsense.” said Sarah pleasantly. “Brigitte wouldn’t have wanted you staying in a hostel. At least come and have a tea with me at my house. I’d love to hear your memories of Brigitte. Don’t make any firm decisions just yet.”
“I’d love to come for a tea,” said Julian. “Thank you.”
“The pleasure would be all mine. Sometimes I feel so terribly alone since Raymond died.”
A dark wave passed over her face. Julian could sense her pain. Searching for pain was a skill he’d developed assiduously.
“It must be very difficult,” said Julian, his face grave and knowing.
“I mustn’t complain,” said Sarah. “We had a good run together. How about next Tuesday around three in the afternoon?”
“That would be lovely.”
There was a faint drizzle in the air as the mourners made their way back to their cars from the graveside.
He wouldn’t decide just yet, he thought. She seemed an excellent prospect, but he had pretty well got her in the bag, and seeing him charming a few other old people at the wake would only make her all the more keen.
Really it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
At the wake he exchanged only a few further words with her, on neutral topics, but carefully demonstrating his education and compassion. When he drove home in his car—an ageing Polo, quite inferior to the Porsche Cayman he kept in a garage in London—he was sure she was the one. Everything about her suggested significant wealth, perhaps not on the scale he’d ideally like but certainly enough to enable him to take the next step up the ladder. With another half a million behind him he could make a good attempt at the rich old ladies of Kensington or even Mayfair.
Yes, Julian Enfield was moving up in the world; there could be no doubt about that. He might even treat himself to a Carrera if all went well.
He wondered vaguely why she had said next Tuesday, and not tomorrow or Saturday? That might suggest an active social life, which was potentially a double-edged sword. On the one hand, friends might form suspicions. On the other hand, they might provide him with a new tasty mark.
Most likely she had simply not wanted to appear too eager, he thought.
On Friday he went to stay at his tiny flat in London. He took the Porsche out for a drive in the Chilterns, accelerating far past the speed limit. In the evening he hung about in the bars of Soho for a while, picking up a small gaggle of new acquaintances, then he took three of them to his favourite club. In the club he picked up a young woman and he spent the night at her apartment. Then in the morning he told her he had to go to work, and he walked an hour to the garage, enjoying the bright sunshine and the morning breeze, all the while thinking about Sarah.
He drove the Porsche to his makeshift lab, where he looked both ways up and down the street, and slipped inside.
Julian flicked on the lights one by one, wiping the dust from the switches off his fingertips with a handkerchief.
There it was: his beautiful apparatus.
He walked around inspecting it. Everything was in place.
His greatest fear was a police raid. To a casual observer, the place looked like a drugs lab. A police raid might set him back even months. Very unlikely the police would find anything, of course. Even if they did, technically he was doing nothing wrong. Not as far as the chemicals in the lab went. No, at worst he had violated some minor zoning or health and safety regulations.
He checked the respirator and decided to fit fresh filters to the mask. Then he donned the hazmat suit and set to work.
A fresh batch would be needed, but he was completely out of phenylmagnesium bromide. He began to synthesise a new batch, grinding up magnesium flakes in a coffee grinder. The suit was probably unnecessary at that stage.
“Your health is precious, old boy,” he said to himself. “Best not take any chances.”
He didn’t trust the bromylbenzene, nor the ether, and he had only an ineffective improvised fume cupboard to work with. The worst thing, aside from any risk to his health, would be an ether fire. The stuff could pool invisibly on the floor, where the slightest spark would set it off. But Julian had faith in his abilities.
After three hours of work, he disrobed from the hazmat suit, got back into his Porsche, and drove half an hour to see his dealer, Spiv. Spiv, in spite of his nickname and his many tattoos, was surprisingly middle-class and lived in a fairly nice apartment.
“What do you want?” Spiv asked, once Julian was inside Spiv’s flat.
“Pills,” said Julian. “Same ones you sold me last time. Let’s say, twenty of them.”
“Twenty?” said Spiv, surprised.
“I’ve got a lot of friends,” said Julian, with a smile.
While Spiv busied himself looking through carefully-organised drawers, he said, “You should stick around for a bit. We can smoke some weed.”
“No can do,” said Julian. “I’ve business to conduct.”
Spiv located a bag of small blue pills and handed them to Julian.
“I won’t ask what business that might be,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “That’ll be two hundred.”
Julian handed over the money.
“Be back next week, probably,” he said, as he was leaving.
“Counting on it.”
The following week, Julian went to Sarah’s house. She beamed at him when she opened the door.
“Julian!” she said. “How lovely to see you again. Do come in.”
The house was exactly as Julian had hoped for: large, well-kept, expensive-looking.
Inside she offered him a tea, which he accepted, and they sat drinking it and chatting.
“Didn’t you and Ray have children?” Julian asked, forming his face into an expression of mild sympathy.
“No, Ray wasn’t able to, and we didn’t want to adopt.” said Sarah. “I don’t regret it, really.”
Julian nodded in satisfaction. No children or grandchildren to steal his house.
“Having children is overrated,” he said.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Sarah. “Ray and I led very busy lives, in any case. Hard to imagine how we would even have found the time for children. Some days we would barely see each other. But you know, every day, no matter how busy we were, we always sat and had a hot chocolate together at some point: in the afternoon if Ray was home, otherwise in the evening. It’s so rare to find a man who really appreciates chocolate. Now I drink my cup of chocolate alone.”
Her eyes became misty and unfocused, and she stared into the distance, through the watercolours on the wall above the fireplace.
“I love a good hot chocolate,” said Julian, seizing his chance.
“Do you really?” said Sarah.
“Yes, I’ve never much liked chocolate in solid form, but I’ve always loved a nice mug of hot chocolate.”
“But how marvellous!” said Sarah.
She gazed at him fondly for some moments, then said, in a tone of voice that suggested she hardly dared raise the topic, “You wouldn’t like to have a mug of chocolate with me now, would you? It would mean so much to me. It would be the first time since Ray’s passing that I’ve had someone to drink with.” She winked. “They do say you should never drink alone.”
“I’d like that very much,” said Julian. “It would be an honour.”
Sarah laughed, and Julian laughed too.
“It’s settled!” she said, and she went to the kitchen.
Julian followed her. The kitchen was huge, with an island in the middle for preparing food or eating. Copper pans hung from a series of hooks, and immaculate machines for making pasta and slicing meat stood around the sides.
Julian half-thought he might hang on to the house for a bit after he’d persuaded her to leave it to him in her will, just so he could enjoy the kitchen. Then, course, he’d sell it, because he didn’t want to live in someone’s old house. No, he would spend the money upgrading his apartment and purchasing a Carrera. The life he could live, with all this extra money!
“Here we go,” said Sarah, handing him a mug of chocolate. “I’ve added a little almond essence into it. I always like to add something a little extra, to make it a bit special. You do like almonds, don’t you?”
“Oh, I love almonds.” said Julian.
They sat in the living room drinking the chocolate. Julian asked about the watercolours hanging on the walls, and Sarah explained that she used to paint, and had even held exhibitions.
Julian pretended to be impressed.
The following day, Julian went back to the makeshift lab and completed the next stage of the synthesis. He also went to his usual chocolate shop, and bought a hand-picked selection of chocolates in a fancy box. These, he stashed in the fridge, checking the humidity and refreshing the little tray of calcium chloride for absorbing water.
A week later he moved into Sarah’s house.
“I’m so happy to have some company again,” she told him.
She insisted on cooking for him, and even on washing his clothes.
Two weeks went by before he was ready to begin dosing her. By that time they had established a regular routine, drinking hot chocolate together in the evening whenever Julian was at home in the evening, and in the afternoon or even the morning, when he wasn’t.
She told him all about her life; her struggles in the art world, her marriage to Ray—sometimes while holding his photograph with tears glistening in her eyes—and her failed attempts to become an actress. Ray, she said, had died only three years ago, and she clearly missed him greatly.
He decided to tell Spiv about her. Spiv was the only person he knew who would really understand.
“I’m already like that with her,” he said, the next time he was at Spiv’s apartment. He held up an intertwined middle- and index-finger. “She trusts me completely.”
“You’ve going to start giving her the stuff this week?” Spiv asked.
“Yep,” said Julian. “It’s almost ready.”
“How long will it take?”
“Maybe six months.”
Spiv whistled, and dragged on his joint.
“You really play the long game, man,” he said.
“Six months is nothing,” said Julian. “The first one I did, it took me a year and a half.”
“Shouldn’t you convince her to add you to her will before you start poisoning her?”
Julian smiled, a self-consciously wicked smile.
“No need,” he said. “Two months tops and she’ll be begging me to let her put me in her will. I’m going to tell her I dream of setting up a donkey sanctuary. She loves donkeys. Anyway, some of them don’t even start thinking properly about their wills till they’re actually dying. A bit of poisoning will help her develop the right ideas.”
“Brilliant,” said Spiv, shaking his head in amazement at Julian’s genius. “I’d never be able to manage the whole thing.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Julian agreed. “It takes charm, intelligence and sophistication.”
Spiv swore at him good-humouredly.
After visiting Spiv and buying more pills for the following weekend, he went back to the lab and finished cleaning the MPTP, which he then dissolved in warm glycerol. Then he took the chocolates and carefully injected a couple of millilitres into each chocolate, leaving out only the coffee-creams.
Then, still wearing the hazmat suit, he took a spatula he’d warmed up in a beaker of hot water and meticulously smoothed over the injection hole.
He began feeding her the chocolates the very next day.
“These are lovely,” she said. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” he said. “A friend of mine owns a very exclusive chocolate shop in London. I picked these out by hand.”
“Let’s have a hot chocolate and we’ll start on them now,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “Oh, but you don’t like chocolate. Have I remembered right?”
“I might be persuaded, just this once,” said Julian.
“No, I won’t force you,” said Sarah. “I shall put them next to my bed and I’ll eat a few before sleeping, while I read for a bit. I’ll look forward to it tremendously.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” said Julian.
He was privately relieved that he wouldn’t have to eat the coffee creams. There was always a faint chance of picking the wrong chocolate by mistake. He was, after all, human.
In the following weeks, Julian observed Sarah carefully for signs of deterioration.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“I’m so stiff recently,” she shouted one morning, as she descended the stairs.
“Maybe it’s arthritis?” Julian shouted in reply. “You should see a doctor, Sarah.”
“You know what I think about doctors.”
“All the same. I’m worried about you. You don’t seem quite yourself recently.”
“It’ll pass.” she said. “All things pass.”
But it didn’t pass. Over the following months, Sarah’s condition worsened. She began to stoop and her fingers trembled when she rested them in her lap or on the arm of her chair. Her movements became slow and cramped, and her voice low and monotonous.
“Julian, I need to talk to you about something,” she said, one day, after Julian had been explaining his donkey sanctuary plans again.
“Yes?” said Julian.
“As you know, Ray and I didn’t have children, so I’ve no-one to leave my things to after I die.”
“Sarah!” said Julian, as if outraged. “You’re not going to die for a long time yet.”
“I don’t know, Julian.” she said. “The past months I haven’t felt so good. I feel as though I’m not long for this world.”
Her hands trembled as she spoke, the trembling extending all the way up her arm. Her head was nodding over, rather reminding him of Spiv in the middle of a weed session. She seemed to have aged fifteen years in the past few months.
“Sarah, you need to see a doctor.”
“If I agree to see a doctor, will you allow me to put you in my will?”
“I’m touched, Sarah, but it’s really not necessary. Why don’t you leave your things to a good cause? Or perhaps a cousin?”
“I don’t have any cousins,” said Sarah, as Julian well knew. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
“If that’s what it takes for you to see a doctor, then yes.”
She smiled.
“Good boy.” she said.
“You’ll see a doctor this week?”
“I’ll make the appointment now.”
In fact, she saw a doctor the following week, which was the earliest appointment available. The doctor informed Sarah that she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and prescribed medication.
“I might live another twenty years, or I might die next year,” Sarah told Julian. “The doctor’s worried that it seems to have come on rather quickly. That’s a bad sign, apparently.”
“I’ve heard of it.” said Julian. “It’s not usually fatal. You’ll be fine, Sarah, don’t worry.”
“What’s wrong?” said Sarah, alarmed by the sudden change in Julian’s facial expression.
“Oh, I’m just worried about you,” said Julian, recovering quickly.
“Try not to worry,” she said. “Let’s have a hot chocolate and a good natter, shall we?”
“That would be great.” said Julian.
As soon as her back was turned he stared at his hand. When resting by his side on the sofa, it trembled uncontrollably.
He must have exposed himself somehow, he thought. A common fate among all those who dealt with MPTP. He cursed out loud, forgetting himself.
“What’s that?” said Sarah.
“Nothing!” said Julian. “I just hit my elbow.”
He went straight to the laboratory as soon as he could reasonably get away. He swabbed the dust on every surface and sent the swabs to a lab.
The results came back three days later. The lab had detected no MPTP in any of the swabs, nor anything chemically similar to it.
For several weeks he half-convinced himself that the trembling was psychosomatic. Perhaps he was imagining it. It did seem to come and go. Then, one morning, he noticed a definite stiffness in his muscles.
He decided to send one of the pills he’d got from Spiv for analysis. That also came back negative, but it was impossible to be certain that some chemical in the pills hadn’t turned into MPTP during metabolism.
When he saw Spiv again, he tackled him about it.
“Listen Spiv, I’ve got tremors. Those pills you sold me are messing me up.”
“No way, man,” said Spiv. “Thousands of people have taken those pills.”
“You’re telling me none of them have got ill?”
“A couple of them died but they overdosed. Probably took a lot of other stuff too. No-one’s got tremors, dude.”
Spiv’s face was slightly pale and Julian thought he could perhaps detect a trace of guilt, but Julian suspected that Spiv was simply scared of him, and after all, there was no question that the pills were potentially lethal if misused, and sometimes even when used correctly. Not even Spiv would try to deny that.
“If the pills didn’t cause my tremors, what did?”
“Might be a natural thing,” Spiv suggested. “Might be your lab.”
“I swabbed the lab and the swabs came back clean.”
“It’s probably in the air. You told me some dudes in America were looking for some chemist that made MPTP once, and when they found him he was all, like, shuffling about and stooped over, poisoned by his own medicine. If a professional chemist can’t avoid poisoning himself with that stuff, what chance have you got? No offence, my man.”
Julian had a quiet, grave think, on his feet.
“It’s possible,” he said.
“It’s totally possible,” said Spiv.
“I wear a hazmat suit with industrial-grade filters.”
“Means nothing,” said Spiv, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “Micrograms, that’s all it takes. You said so yourself. You telling me micrograms can’t get through those filters?”
Over the following months, Julian’s condition worsened. He synthesised one last enormous batch of MPTP and made ten boxes of chocolates. That ought to be enough to finish the old bag off, he thought.
He stopped taking the pills, sticking to alcohol at the weekends.
One morning he woke up with incredible stiffness in his limbs and found it difficult to even jolt himself into activity. The cover of his duvet seemed to draw him in, as though pulling him into a timeless realm where only the duvet existed.
That same day he made an appointment to see a Harley Street doctor.
The doctor scheduled him for an MRI scan.
A week later, sitting in the MRI machine as it banged and clanked, he wondered feverishly where he had gone wrong.
He knew what the doctor was going to say. He had Parkinons’s disease. Somehow, from somewhere, MPTP had got into his system; almost certainly. It was destroying the substantia nigra in his midbrain. His brain was becoming unable to communicate with his body.
Sure enough, a week later, the doctor gave him the news he was expecting.
“You have Parkinson’s disease,” the doctor told him. “I’m going to prescribe levodopa. It should provide immediate relief from some of your symptoms, but it may cause movements that you find difficult to control. I’m also prescribing an MAO-B inhibitor. That will help the levodopa to work.”
“What’s the prognosis, doctor?” Julian asked nervously.
“Very hard to say,” said the doctor. “I’ll be honest, Julian. It’s a bad sign that it’s develop this rapidly, and in someone so young. We’ll have to take it week by week.”
Julian picked up the prescription at a chemist and, sitting in his Porsche, washed it down with mineral water from a plastic bottle.
Then he drove to see Spiv again.
He had to bang repeatedly at Spiv’s door and shout Spiv’s name before he answered, wearing a dressing gown and clearly drugged up to the gills with something.
“What’s the problem, man?” said Spiv. “You’re not normally here on … whatever day it is today.”
“I want you to be honest with me. Has anyone else developed tremors from your pills?”
Julian shut the door behind himself.
“No, no way, man,” said Spiv.
But Spiv’s face had a distinctly guilty look to it.
Julian grabbed him by the collar.
His hand felt weak. Spiv could easily have pushed him off if he’d chosen to, and if he hadn’t been half out of his head.
“Tell me the truth!”
“OK, one person got, like, all shaky and stopped taking them. It’s not even the same thing you’ve got. They got better. You’ve got some progressive thing.”
Julian let Spiv go, since in any case, his hand was tired from grasping Spiv’s collar. He could feel himself stooping but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. He repeatedly pulled himself out of the stoop only to find himself doing it again a minute later.
“Fine.” he said.
“We OK?” said Spiv.
Julian smiled as best he could, although his face felt stiff.
“Of course we are. Sorry, I’m just stressed. I really need to find a way to relax for a bit. Dealing with that old cow drives me nuts, and now I’ve got the shakes as well. Tell you what, a friend gave me something last week. A free gift for services rendered. I think it’s MDA. Would you try it with me?”
“Sure,” said Spiv, relieved. “Let’s do it.”
They sat down and Julian took two pills from his pocket. He handed one to Spiv.
“How long does it last?” Spiv asked.
“Not long,” said Julian. “Short-acting. Comes on pretty fast. Down the hatch!”
Julian threw the pill down his throat and swallowed it. Spiv did the same.
They chatted about random topics for half an hour before Spiv began to feel distinctly ill. Soon he was doubled over in pain.
“Call an ambulance!” he said to Julian.
“It’ll pass. Relax. You’re just having a bad reaction.”
For another fifteen minutes he strung Spiv along, persuading him that the pain would soon go. Then Spiv fell onto the floor while trying to get to his phone, and he stayed there, saliva pouring from his mouth, his legs twitching.
He tried to say something.
“What?” said Julian. “What’s that, Spiv?”
“You’ve poisoned me,” gasped Spiv.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Julian. “Teach you a lesson, old boy. No hard feelings.”
He stood over Spiv for another ten minutes, until Spiv lapsed into unconsciousness. Then he poured himself a shot of vodka and sat on Spiv’s sofa. Another ten minutes passed and he checked Spiv’s wrist. No pulse.
Julian found the walk back to his car onerous. His legs just wouldn’t cooperate. He kept almost falling face forwards onto the pavement. He found himself taking rapid, short steps, just to avoid overbalancing. Everything was stiff.
When he finally sat in the driver’s seat of the Porsche, he wondered whether he’d be able to drive back to Sarah’s house. In the end he managed it, swapping the Porsche for the Polo along the way, but only by stopping frequently and taking an extra L-dopa.
In the weeks after that he assiduously fed Sarah the doped chocolates. She shuffled around painfully, her voice almost a whisper.
“What a pair we are!” she said to him.
“Yeah,” said Julian miserably.
“Let’s have a cup of chocolate,” she said.
He threw himself onto the sofa. His hands were trembling and one arm kept moving about uncontrollably, as if trying to dust an invisible spider’s web from his face.
“OK.” he mumbled.
The following day, Julian woke up paralysed. Everything was stiff and weak. For two hours he tried to cry out. Time seemed to pass in disconnected jerks.
He wasn’t sure what the time was when Sarah shuffled in.
“Oh no,” she mumbled, her head weaving about uncontrollably due to the L-dopa, her posture horribly stooped. “Poor Julian. Don’t worry, I’ll call a doctor.”
He gazed at her with wide, terrified eyes.
“In an hour or two,” she added.
Then, suddenly, she stood up perfectly straight, her head stopped bobbing about, the tension seemed to completely leave her body, and she said, in a calm, clear voice, “Do you know, I feel much better all of a sudden.”
She flexed her fingers, holding her hand out.
“It’s a miracle! I’m cured!”
He tried to say something, but he could hardly get the words out.
“What’s that Julian?” she said.
“You did this to me!” he gurgled.
“I only fed you your own chocolates, Julian,” she said. “Every cup of your hot chocolate was made with nothing but your own produce, and a little flavouring. Did I mention I took acting classes when I was young? I always knew they’d come in handy. Ray was a doctor, you know. He died twenty years ago, but I thought I’d bring his death forward a bit to make it all the more convincing. After all, vulnerability was what you were looking for, wasn’t it, Julian?”
She leaned over and put her face close to his.
“You can use undetectable poisons, Julian, but you can’t hide the corpses. I know exactly what you’ve been up to. I suspected even before Brigitte died. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough to save her. Oh, don’t worry, Julian, I shan’t go to the police. Spending the rest of your life as a living corpse will be more than punishment enough, I think.”
