I got the money together and I also took some ketamine with me, as I had often done, to the Heath. I want to be clear: my only intention was to give him what he wanted and to start anew. I felt Taylor was a good person, and that what we’d engaged in had affection in it. I know that sounds naive, given that he was blackmailing me, but I felt he would take this money and that would be an end to it.
He was so manic – so bright-eyed, so excited. This was going to change everything for him, he said, this sum of money. He had a younger brother, as I said, and he told me this was going to make his life different. It began to feel as if Taylor was glorying over me, and that he was happy our relationship was at an end.
I told him I had the ￡10,000 he wanted in the boot of my car and a little something else he might enjoy. I was parked behind Jack Straw’s Castle. He came with me to the car, I handed him the bag of money and he took, by way of celebration, quite a powerful shot of ketamine from me. Then he told me that what we had been doing repulsed him – that he was glad it was over. ‘Don’t have to do that disgusting shit no more,’ he said. He looked at me with revulsion and I saw it was all about the money for him.
[Suspect breaks down again. Interview halted for several minutes.]
I saw myself, tiny and humiliated. He never loved me; he never even liked me. I revolted him, and all the things we’d done. Something came over me, some powerlessness which transmitted itself into pure rage. I’ve never felt so white hot with anger before. I pushed him into the open boot of the car and slammed its door down on him. I got in the car and started to drive, no idea where, just anywhere. I found myself travelling the route to Deeping, which is like second nature to me. It was as if the car was driving itself. You know what it’s like when a route is embedded in your brain – you can find yourself following it while your mind is entirely elsewhere. Before I knew it, I was on the M11. On that journey I thought: I can drive him out of London and leave him stranded, without the money. Ketamine is a potent analgesic – it causes sedation and amnesia while maintaining cardiovascular stability. He would be lost. And he would forget.
When I got to Deeping, I opened the boot and he was unconscious but alive, I checked. Ketamine, as I said, is an anaesthetic: it leaves you dissociated, feeling as if you have no control over your legs or any movement at all. I went into the house and put the bag of money into an upstairs bedroom; I don’t know why, to put it somewhere safe, out of his reach, I suppose. I thought I would return to get it later.
After putting the bag in the bottom of the wardrobe, I returned to the boot. I felt in his pockets to retrieve his mobile phone. I knew the phone could incriminate me, in terms of contact between myself and the boy – nothing else, you understand, just contact – and I was also taking away his means of getting help. I wanted him to take a long time getting home.
I got back in the car and drove along a dirt track – it was incredibly muddy – which runs across our land and over into the neighbouring farm. I stopped in a wood beside a river and hauled him out of the boot and left him there, semi-conscious, on the ground, about ten feet from the water’s edge. I did not put him in a river or drown him or cause his death. He must have come round, groggy, stumbled about and fallen into the river later.
A week after that awful night, we were informed of Edith’s disappearance. I was horrified; I still am horrified. I love my family. I would never do anything to hurt them. I know nothing of what’s happened to my daughter and I am desperate to get her back.
In my haste to get back to Miriam that night – the night with Taylor Dent – I left the money in the bedroom at Deeping. When officers went to search the house, after Edith disappeared, I was sure they’d find it and ask what I was doing with ￡10,000 stashed in a plastic bag in the bottom of a wardrobe. I had a plan to tell them (and Miriam) that I was paying cash for some building work to Deeping and that’s why the money was there. I waited and waited but no mention of the money ever came. Of course, I couldn’t bring it up, or ask what had been found at Deeping; it would have raised too much suspicion.
Thursday
Miriam