Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [136]
An outrageous claim!
‘No I didn’t! I never had a problem with depression. Nor did Peter, if you ask me. I don’t know why he was always on so much medication.’
‘No one’s accusing you of having depression,’ the officer said. But Amitriptyline, he explained, is a powerful sedative.
‘Were there any times when you woke up and couldn’t remember falling asleep? Or were awake but not completely in control of your senses?’
I thought about it. All those nights when I’d curled up next to Daniel, just praying for Peter not to make an advance had usually ended up with me sound asleep. Was it possible he’d drugged me? Is that why I’d slept through so deeply until morning in that really cramped, tiny bed?
The police were convinced. Peter, apparently, was renowned in Brighton and then Bathgate for his drug-dealing. I tried to say that wasn’t true, but they batted me away.
‘We believe it’s correct. There are too many people saying it.’
Who were these people? I was his wife and I hadn’t noticed anything.
But then, I realized with a chill, I hadn’t noticed anything with my mother either. Had those early days conditioned me never to notice drugs or their effects again?
As for why they thought I was drugged regularly, they knew for a fact that several times a week Peter was out of the house at night, frequenting casinos and tormenting prostitutes. He’d built up a reputation as a trouble-maker in both areas. In fact, it was a few of the prostitutes who’d initially told the police I’d been drugged. They’d been to my house. They’d seen Peter do it or heard him talk about it.
I admit, my instinct was to dismiss it as just another preposterous claim. What sort of wife – or mother – wouldn’t notice if their husband was out so often at night? But I did remember women like Lisa coming to the house. And I did remember sometimes being very, very groggy when I watched them with Peter. All those times my head felt cloudy – was that the effect of Amitriptyline or Rohypnol or a similar narcotic kicking in?
Yes, I had to conclude. There was no other explanation. I didn’t know when he was slipping me the pills or in what sort of quantities or how often. But staring across the interrogation table at Cosham police station, I was forced to admit, ‘He drugged me. That must have been what happened.’
I couldn’t believe it. Yet another parallel to life with my mother . . .
When the police in Margate had originally dug up Peter’s sandpit, it wasn’t actually Vicky Hamilton they’d been expecting to find. By trawling through the missing persons lists and re-examining evidence in dozens of old cases, they’d concluded that the man who had picked up a young hitchhiker, Dinah McNicol, on the A3 out of Hampshire in August 1991 had to have been Peter. It was her body they were expecting when they discovered Vicky.
A week later, however, the dismembered remains of Dinah were dug up as well.
The way the police had narrowed in on Peter as the likely suspect took a convoluted path. Initially they thought he’d been living in Bathgate when the girl disappeared on Monday 5 August, so they’d dismissed him. Then they learned he’d actually moved to Margate by then, but even so, the A3 wasn’t exactly local to his new home. And then they discovered he used to spend weekends with us in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and the pieces fell into place.
After two excellent days attending the Torpedo Tour music festival in Liphook, Hampshire, Dinah and her new friend David had decided to hitch home. They didn’t have to wait long at the service station on the A3 before a green car pulled over.
‘Where are you going?’ the driver asked in a thick Scottish accent.
David lived in Redhill, Surrey, so not far around the M25. Dinah, on the other hand, faced a long journey to Tillingham in Essex.
‘You’re in luck,’ the man said. ‘I can drop you both off.’
Like all hitchhikers, David and Dinah would never have got into the car if they’d been at all suspicious. But the child’s booster seat in the back of the car pushed any fears out of their minds.
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