The real Murrell mystery? Why didn’t he just pay his own way? - Susan Morrison
When I got married, my mum told me that she never told my dad what she was spending his money on, because it only worried him. I have always regarded that as excellent advice.
I only tell my grumpy Yorkshire husband how much something costs if I think he’s going to break it. I didn’t even tell him I’d put the bid in for our house until the deal went through. Well, I didn’t want to get his hopes up.
I mention this because it is entirely possible that I could buy a motorhome and just not mention it until it appeared. Actually, my husband would quite like that. He’s had a hankering for a life on the open road ever since we drove around Southern California in an RV.
He spends hours looking at second hand ones and has voiced concerns that Police Scotland may not be taking sufficient care of the most famous motorhome in Scottish history.
On the other hand, if he were to turn up in a brand new Jaguar iPace, I’d probably blink and ask a few questions. If seriously expensive coffee mugs appeared on the breakfast table, I’d be asking a lot.
We don’t even like Le Creuset stuff. It weighs a ton. We’d need to get the table re-inforced. And who needs an arm workout just to get at your morning caffeine?
Peter Murrell certainly seemed to have liked them. He shelled out more than £400 on bicep-busting mugs. You can’t help but wonder what happened to them. Given the heft of those things, they could have been melted down and turned into Dreadnoughts.
So, it is possible that Ms Sturgeon just failed to clock that her then husband had a bit of a thing for flashy pens, designer salt ‘n’ pepper sets and something referred to as a ‘hand chased wine coaster from Hamilton and Inches’.
Obviously, I have not a Scoobie what that is, but then, I don’t pick up my wine coasters from Hamilton and Inches. I’m not actually sure they'd even let me in. Whatever it is, it cost £3500, and ironically, it’s made from Britannia silver.
Perhaps, and I am guessing here, she thought it was all legit. After all, they could probably afford it all without using party funds as a piggy bank. They were making good money.
And this is the real mystery to me, ‘not what did his wife know and when did she know it’.
If Peter Murrell really wanted a £124,550 motorhome, I have no doubt that a man on his salary and with his credit rating could have shelled out for it himself.
He and Nicola could have enjoyed the occasional trip around the NC 500. Perhaps he could have looked forward to parking it up at the occasional book festival where his missus was speaking, once they had both retired.
His pension years don’t look quite so jolly now. Was it worth it for two Fortnum and Mason Feasting Advent Calendars?
But no, he deliberately plundered money entrusted to his care by people who believed they had a common cause. That’s criminally callous.
At the very least, those folks whose money was misused should get a free hurl in the motorhome and first dibs on a fancy coffee machine.