The Psychopath: A True Story(39)

‘So for her that was a big deal, that was a really big deal. Um, and her mum was lovely, I liked her parents, but I loved her mum – I wished she was mine – she was an amazing, amazing woman. She was very much that kind of dour . . . you know that something just has to be done, this is the way it is . . . She was just this really good host.

‘Mary was a nonconformist; her first move was to go rush out and drop out of school. Hooked up with this guy who played guitar; he sang in a bitsy band and had a kid within five seconds of whoever he happened to be with. She was a groupie. Had a little kid by him. And she lived in a little flat. But she was on, I think, her 3rd mortgage. [laughs]

‘She had a relationship with her parents, her cousins, her child . . . [several hand motions] and she worked for Midlothian Council, so she was probably on about 20 or 30 grand a year – which for Edinburgh is not that much.

‘She was very quick: she could put A, plus B, plus C, plus D, “that means if I do this, this and this”, then she can apply logic to it.

‘So after we first got together . . . at first I thought I wouldn’t tell her anything, but she could see where things were going.

‘I mean I was happy; I was genuinely happy. That was the greatest loss of that whole era [circular hands] for me, because she was an amazing person.

‘She reasoned, if you are happy to play along, then I am happy with this. You don’t have to live here; you don’t have to do what you are doing. If you want to start up a business – because she had always wanted to start up her own business. You have got your reasons – do it!

‘I get in this car that doesn’t start every couple of days. She said, “All right, let’s get you a car, let’s build a life here! You’re going to have to pay X amount of money into this bank account.” And she walked the walk. Again, as long as it was not something that was in her face. It wouldn’t be up there, that was the whole point. We would never criss-cross each other. Before we got happy, it’s just – I call it God’s will of the mongrels that we came here, because OK, enough is enough . . . um, but that was fine – that went on for years – we were together for five years, I think.’

Mischele: ‘Five or six years, I think she said.’

Will: ‘And that, you know, quite honestly, that would have gone on forever. It wouldn’t have changed.’

Mischele: ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to leave [your wife] and then you could’ve just lived happily ever after with Mary?’

Will: ‘And that was kind of where things were getting to . . . We had a separate company up there. Money was being funnelled into things . . . It was being funnelled into the house in her name. I trusted her. It’s not like I had an “us” thing. I trusted her. OK, fine, the house needs to be in her name, the bank account needs to be in her name – so on and so forth. So that these things won’t cause an issue all of a sudden, “Well, I want [hand chop motion] to get everything”. . . Keep in mind . . . All I was interested in was making sure that, OK, you guys can still carry on living – and I wanna do the same. I didn’t go through all this and work this hard to wind up trying to find change for a coffee. Yeah, I was manipulating and manoeuvring things so that I could break and move somewhere else.’

He then went on to say that I was complicit in his plan. That what hurt him the most about my book was that I had denied I’d been involved in his plan all along. But then he also said that he got it. He understood that I had to ‘wave a flag’ to ensure people didn’t think I was involved in his deceptions and had in fact been left lots of money, ‘multiples of seven figures’ as he said before. (I do remember getting phone calls from the other wife asking if I had got money from him, I assume now because he was telling her the same thing. At the time I was distracted by having found out my mother was terminally ill.)

Will: ‘And yeah, [my wife] is nothing if not efficient. She’s like a dog with a bone when she starts something [makes scratching hand action on the table with his fingers]. Start thinking, “OK, you have a job. Where is all the money? [drumming fingers on table] . . . Where’s the rest of the money?” But – she’s waving that flag, and all that just gets swept under the carpet. And I felt, truthfully, I felt outfoxed. I couldn’t see that coming. Couldn’t see that coming. Because there was nothing I had stuffed under a mattress, for me personally. I hadn’t done that. Because it had never crossed my mind. What was under the mattress for me was in that scenario. I had never thought about that – so I thought kinda like, “OK. Learnt your lesson.”

‘And . . . you know – that’s the mess of this – really – underneath all that. It’s always expensive . . .

‘And . . . both of them, despite anything I might say about them, have been the best they can in their own way, given their situation. The money left them, I am assuming it has gone on all the things that it should have gone on. Certainly from [my wife]’s perspective, if nothing, she has always taken excellent care of the children, that is a big thing for her.’

Mischele: ‘She says she is on government assistance now.’

Will: ‘It’s not the same as it is here . . . She is not on welfare. Over there, as a mother with children, you get a certain amount of assistance no matter what. And it doesn’t go to the men, it goes directly to the children. Because they had so much trouble with the men drinking and all that. So it is literally for the children. So let’s just say that she is a master of not, not getting what she should get. How she fares specifically, who knows, how much she makes, whether she is with somebody else [shrugs], I don’t know.’