Faith - Lesley Pearse [91]
Meggie still thought it was purely the speed, but didn’t like to admit that was what Laura had taken for fear of getting her into serious trouble. She volunteered to take care of Barney as Greg was away on business.
Laura was allowed out of hospital two days later as the cramps had gone, but although she’d had various tests, the doctors hadn’t been able to find a definite cause for them.
Meggie made her sister a light meal and waited until she had eaten it, but just as she was about to leave she saw Laura go to a drawer in the kitchen and take out a tiny pill bottle.
‘Don’t even think of taking any more of those!’ Meggie shouted, rushing forward to grab them.
‘I wasn’t going to, I just wanted to check them,’ Laura said. ‘You see, I had two of these on the morning of the day I came over to your house, and I was fine then. I took another two after I got home because I was going to go out again later. It must have been them, the pains began a couple of hours afterwards and I didn’t get the buzz I usually get with speed. I thought maybe some of these are something else.’
She tipped the remains of the bottle on to the work surface and together they looked at the small black capsules. But they were all the same, absolutely identical to the black bombers both of them had seen countless times.
‘You’ve just poisoned yourself by taking too many.’ Meggie felt irritated that Laura was trying to find another reason for her pain. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Laura promised me she wasn’t going to take them ever again,’ Meggie told Stuart. ‘And I think she did stick to it for a while. But then about a month later, it happened again, and that time she was dangerously ill. I didn’t know about it for some time as Greg was home – he got her to hospital and took care of Barney. Laura only phoned me as she began to recover. She said she had been close to death, and the doctor had told her she had all the symptoms of strychnine poisoning. He apparently asked Greg if she’d had any contact with rat poison.’
‘Surely he wasn’t lacing her with that?’ Stuart didn’t feel he could believe that of anyone.
‘I’m a hundred per cent certain that’s exactly what he did,’ Meggie insisted. ‘I think he opened up some of the black bombers and replaced the speed with rat poison. I doubt he did them all, I think he probably did about half in the bottle, so it was a bit like playing Russian roulette. She might get three tampered ones at once, or none, but whatever happened to her he would be in the clear as he’d just say he had always disapproved of her taking speed and she was at the mercy of her supplier. You know how straight people were about drug-taking back then – who would have had any sympathy?’ Meggie paused for a moment to drink some wine.
‘Laura didn’t even dare admit her fears to the doctor at the hospital,’ she went on. ‘Greg had thrown out the bottle by the time she got home, and when she confronted him he blew his top and said she was going mad. I just wished I’d taken some of them away the first time, that way we could have had proof.’
‘Even then it would be impossible to prove he was responsible,’ Stuart said. ‘It could have been the dealer, or anyone along the chain from the manufacturer. Anyway, Laura shouldn’t have been taking drugs with Barney around. And what right-minded person would carry on taking them after a scare like that? I don’t believe it was Greg!’
‘You would if you’d seen what came after that,’ Meggie said darkly. ‘He was vile to her. He stopped hiding his mistress, he stayed out at nights, refused to allow Laura any money, told lies about her all round Chelsea. He hit her lots of times too. In the end she had no choice but to leave. All she took was her car and her clothes, and she flogged the odd bits of jewellery Greg had given her and ran off with Barney. She couldn’t get a place of her own without a job, and she couldn’t work unless she got Barney into a nursery. So in the end she went to Scotland, which is where you came in.’
‘So why didn