Lord Lucan is On The Run

I’d just left Susan Maxwell-Scott’s house in Uckfield, Sussex. She’d given me a drink, we’d talked things through, and although she’d offered me a bed for the night, I had left before my resolve weakened. I’d fobbed her off by telling her that I had to get back 'to clear things up'.

But I tell you now, I never had the slightest intention of going back. At the time, anything at all seemed preferable to limply turning myself into a pawn and handing myself into police. That would have been craven - throwing in the hand just because I didn’t like the look of my cards. At least, for a little while yet, I was still master of my own destiny. And what a destiny it would turn out to be. 

Outside it was dark as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. I’d been driving for about 30 minutes in that beaten-up Ford Corsair that Michael Stoop had lent me a couple of weeks earlier. The same Corsair in which I’d planned to transport Veronica’s dead body to Newhaven dock before dumping her in the Channel. It sounds brutally blunt when I write it like that. But there’s never a pretty way to write about murder.

I remember how every instinct in my body was yammering at me to flee - jump into my powerboat, Charybdis, and head for the Continent.

What I’d do once I’d reached France or Holland, I had no idea. I had no money, no passport, no change of clothes, not a razor, nor even a toothbrush. I had nothing but the clothes I stood up in - some grey slacks, still wet from the blood that I’d had to sponge off, a shirt and jumper.

I didn’t have a hope. Most likely they’d have caught me on the channel, and if not there I’d have been caught thumbing a lift by the side of the road, or sleeping rough in the woods. Without help, I didn’t stand a dog’s chance.

For some minutes I’d been driving aimlessly, heading I suppose in a sort of southerly direction for Newhaven where I’d left the boat. But in a sudden moment of clarity, I realised it was pointless: If I were going to try and escape by boat, I might as well give myself  up then and there. At least I’d avoid the indignity of being caught on the run after a month living like a vagrant.

It was misty as hell. Even though I was only dawdling, I remember the shock as I nearly ran over a badger by the side of the road. I jinked the wheel as the card slewed to the side, before pulling over at the next layby. I didn’t have a clue where I was, somewhere in the wilds of Sussex. What was the point in driving any more when I didn’t know where I was heading?

I took four valium tablets to try and calm down and for a while I dozed. It was the first of the nightmares. Real, genuine, scream-out-loud nightmares. They have dogged me now for 20 years. Even in my sleep I’ve been unable to escape the demons that torment me.

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