JAI MAHMOOD:
Oh man, my mum called saying she’d seen my picture on the news, that the cops wanted to talk to me. I’d never heard her like that, crying so much she couldn’t breathe. She said they thought I was jungled up with this girl who’d gone missing. That was the first time I realized what was going on, man. I was still keeping my head down at Tariq’s, worrying about owing Vlad a grand. I got online and read the official story, which was bad, then I got on Facebook and read the real one, which was worse, all about the sex tape, the fight, the crazy appeal and stuff. That got me out of the house for the first time in days.
It actually scared me into going back to the tower.
So here’s me thinking I’m walking into roadblocks and helicopters, dragnets and manhunts and shit. I’m thinking I’ll be surrounded straightaway, I’ll tell them who I am and we’ll be sorted. But Owens Park was a ghost town, everyone gone for Christmas. I know GMP came out years later, swearing up and down they did their best, but I’m telling you, yeah? Their number one suspect walked right into their crime scene without passing a single high-vis jacket. And I guess it just downgraded it all in my mind. It sounds stupid now that so much of Zoe’s stuff is out in the open, but at the time, when I saw even the police weren’t taking it seriously, I thought it must be innocent. She must be doing what I was.
She was making them all suffer, y’know?
She’d been fucked over by Andrew, just like me, and I thought she was probably planning to reappear once she got bored or thought he’d been punished enough. And in the meantime, I knew stuff about her no one else did, and I thought she probably wouldn’t want her life to blow up while she was away. So I snuck in there and made some problems disappear. I went up to the roof, crouched under the police tape, removed evidence and tampered with the crime scene. And when I got in and out of the tower without anyone seeing me, without anyone saying anything, I just kept on going, man. It clearly wasn’t as big a deal as I thought, and I didn’t know anything special about her going missing, so who was I hurting?
ROBERT NOLAN:
There’s no road map for this stuff, so I was moving heaven and purgatory and hell and earth to try and keep the story alive. Either you hit the ground running, or you splatter on the tarmac. So that meant talking to reporters, calling radio shows, going on TV, the lot. It meant stopping and talking to everyone who recognized me in the street, shaking hands and making time. And I know how that can look, but it was what I had. It was what I could do. Connect with people. Some of the things that have come out since, some of the things I’ve done, okay, I hold my hands up, and I’m not proud of them. But to keep Zoe’s name and face in the news? Yeah, I’d have done anything. Absolutely anything, and I couldn’t give a toss how it might make me look.
SALLY NOLAN:
You just want to close the door, but there are reporters in the house with you and in the car with you and taking pictures, asking stupid questions.
“How does it make you feel?”
Well, God help us. Then you’d read about it the next day, because you had to read everything, because who knows how or where or when you’ll see something important? I learned more about Andrew and Jai from the newspapers than I ever did from the police. I found out more about our Kim, more about Zoe even. But at the same time, things never quite lined up, because I’d read things about myself, things I’d been there for, and think, That’s not how it was. Then I doubted myself and started doubting everyone else too. For me, it started to feel like there was no one real version of the truth.
Rob was the opposite.
He’d read something and it would rub out whatever the reality was, replace it. Newspapers were more real to him than his family, than life.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Feeding stories to the press is dangerous. And especially when you’re someone who loves attention, because where’s the line? How can you say for sure what you’re doing for your daughter and what you’re doing for yourself? I really think Dad got drunk off it. He started taking more care over his appearance, rehearsing sound bites in front of the mirror. There were reporters and photographers coming to town from London just for us, all staying as close as they could, because Dad was trying to turn our family into the story. They were involving themselves in our lives, intruding everywhere they could, and at the end of the day, they’d all go to the same pub where my parents ate dinner every night. They’d offer to pick up the check or buy them a drink, then another, then another. Mum started coming home on her own because she realized that they’d always be buying as long as Dad was talking, and he’d always be talking as long as they were buying. Then we’d find out what he’d told them in the news the next day.
That was how I found out he wanted to launch a charity, the Nolan Foundation. Zoe hadn’t been gone two weeks when he started talking about it. And when stories started coming out about her, about me, personal things you wouldn’t want anyone knowing, things that had nothing to do with my sister going missing, I just started to trust him less and less. I couldn’t talk to him or to my mum, because I knew I’d be reading whatever I’d said the next day in the Daily Mail. I mean, my dad was the only person I ever told about going to see that band, and look what happened there.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I guess I picked up to Andrew on the Wednesday or the Thursday, a few days after Zoe had gone missing anyway. I knew something was up. He was treading too carefully, sounded like he was at gunpoint on the other end of the phone.
SARAH MANNING:
We’d encouraged Andrew to keep trying Jai. He still seemed like our best bet of bringing him in voluntarily. I’d instructed him to make sure Jai was okay, then ask him to report to his nearest police station to give a statement. Of course, this being Andrew Flowers, he went wildly off script.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’ll only shoulder a certain ratio of responsibility for that. I’d been asked to get in touch with Jai, and I did. He sounded worn out and paranoid. I’m sure, to some extent, we both did, but it quickly became clear that this wouldn’t be as simple as having him flag down a police car and say, “Recognize me?”