JAI MAHMOOD:
So while Flowers, this walking definition of white privilege, is proving how funny he can be, I’m winding my neck all the way in. I can tell these guys don’t like the look of me. And I can hear my mum in my head, saying I’m the first in the family to reach higher education, how she’s killed herself to get me here, so I just go quiet, which is the worst thing you can do. Andrew’s dickheadedness makes him look innocent. Cops understand hostility and being called pigs, but they don’t understand fear, so I just look like I’m hiding something. I just look guilty as sin.
And at the same time, I’m racking my brains trying to work out what we’ve done. Y’know, is this because we were in the tower? Is this because I was on the roof? Is this because that girl thinks I’m a fucking barrister? But it’s clearly something more serious than all that, and then they tell us that “personal items” have been removed from a property we’d visited the night before. That we were trespassing in the tower block and the best thing we can do now is own up to it. I’m sitting there shitting it, staring at the floor memorizing my fucking Converse, when they say, “Look, we know you’ve got priors for theft.” And that’s confusing, man, because no, I haven’t. Course, I look up and realize they’re talking to Flowers.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
A complicated story, a boring one. Not funny and not interesting. I just grew up estranged from the rest of my family. There was a nanny around in Surrey when I was a boy, Mrs. Withers, then when I was of age, I got packed off to boarding school. And you know who my father is? Right, correct, one of those men who owns things. Not just hedge funds and lobbies but whatever he happens to be handling in any given moment, whatever falls within his sightline. People and places and you name it. So it wasn’t theft, whatever the police might like to call it. He took something that belonged to me, so I took something that belonged to him. That’s quid pro fucking quo as far as I’m concerned.
Case No: VT 08/03/11/3462
Reporting Officer: Constable Alice Hardy
Date of Report: March 8, 2011
At 1755 hrs on March 8, 2011, I met with Mr. Richard Flowers at Ashwan House on Christchurch Rd. regarding a vehicle theft. Mr. Flowers said his son, Mr. Andrew Flowers, had stolen one of his cars, a vintage Jaguar, after an emotional argument in the family home at approx. 1600 hrs. Mr. Flowers was concerned his son may have been under the influence of drink and/or drugs when he took the vehicle.
Mr. Flowers described his car as a burgundy colored, 1952, C-Type Jaguar, registered in the UK. The car registration is FLW3RS. He estimated the value of the car at in excess of ￡450,000, adding that it is a “one of a kind” collector’s item and due to be sold at Sotheby’s Auction House in early April. He described no distinguishing marks or items.
Mr. Flowers stressed that he had not given his son permission to take the car and that he was concerned his son would intentionally damage the vehicle as a result of their disagreement. He stated further that his son was given to dishonesty in discussing his father’s business dealings, relationships, morality, and sex-life.2
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, the short version is that my maternal grandfather, Charles Barclay, owned a merchant shipping venture which went under, I think literally, and he basically sold off his daughter—my mother—to be married. She’d been around the world, but as with everything else in my grandfather’s possession at the time, she was basically damaged goods. One bad marriage behind her, one burgeoning speed addiction in front. I was always embarrassed by her. Eyeliner that looked like it had been scrawled on with a Sharpie, smile painted a few millimeters away from where her mouth actually was. Always walking out of shops without paying, always crashing cars, always crying in the shower. Mainly I was away at school anyway, and when I went home, I spent most of my time with the daughter from next door, a seventeen-year-old half-Parisian princess called élodie.
Anyway, I got a worrying phone call from Mother one day in term time, which was rare, and then I couldn’t get hold of my dad, which was the norm. I travelled home to find he’d had her hauled off to the nuthouse a fortnight before and not told anyone. And look, it’s not like she shouldn’t have been there—she was mad as a box of ballbags—but the fucker hadn’t even been to see her. In fact, I found him busy making house with my girlfriend, élodie, the half-Parisian princess from next door—forty-three fucking years his junior. So I don’t know. I suppose some days passed, Mum cut her wrists and killed herself, Dad and élodie eloped, yada yada yada, I rolled his vintage half-a-million-pound ponce racer. I didn’t mean to damage the car. I think I just wanted to stop. Stop everything. The fucker pressed charges too.
FROM THE OFFICE OF RICHARD FLOWERS (CBE), DATED 2019-09-08:
Mr. Flowers does not wish to make any comment on his relationship with his estranged son Andrew at this time. Furthermore, Mr. Flowers has no information on the disappearance of Zoe Nolan and no interest in the case beyond that of a citizen wishing to see justice done. He will make no further statements on this topic, nor on the subjects of his deceased wife, his current wife, or his three other children. He would urge readers to address their attention to Andrew’s criminal record and to disregard unverifiable and emotionally presented “facts.” Finally, Mr. Flowers requests that the press respect his privacy and that of his young family.3
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Clearly, with hindsight, I shouldn’t have been at university a few months after all that, and I certainly shouldn’t have been dating any young women, least of all ones as troubled as Zoe. I shouldn’t have been allowed within fifty feet of anyone at all. It’s funny to think that in all my protestations that Zoe and I had nothing in common, I was overlooking our two recent suicide attempts. Well, not funny ha-ha.
JAI MAHMOOD: