My comment about coming on board with the writing was just a thought, but there are things you can’t just power through.
I love the way you’re handling it, but I guess it’s still a story without an ending. A more experienced hand might be able to help you shape some kind of conclusion from all this material.
My worry is that unless you can say what happened to Zoe, you might not be able to find an ending or a publisher. I’m not saying my name opens doors exactly, but it might lean on them a bit…
XXXXXX XXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
Jx
# # #
Hey—Some of these questions are answered in the next couple of chapters so I’ll leave you hanging until you get to them, some we might need to come back to. I can confirm that Anderson has never studied or worked at Manchester Uni, though.
In terms of the Facebook discovery that Zoe and Anderson might have met in 2009, Sarah said it didn’t make much of an impression on the case (which I found shocking). The team didn’t buy that Zoe posting the Mogwai song was some secret message to Anderson, so as far as they were concerned the photograph existed in a vacuum. It was just circumstantial evidence that said nothing for sure. Definitely makes my stomach turn, though.
I’ve finally got hold of the maintenance firm who go in and rebuild Owens Park/the tower every year after another few thousand students have been through and wrecked it. Fairfield Property Management. They confirmed from memory (and some photographs) that Rob Nolan has never done any work for them in any capacity, so you swung and missed there, champ. The owner, sadly, doesn’t have a full list of everyone who worked maintenance at Owens Park in the 2011 summer before the Nolans arrived. I’ve asked if there’s any way he can get one.
Unbelievably, he says Greater Manchester Police NEVER spoke to him at the time.
Also, he told me that he personally remembers passing through that crawl space in the summer before the girls arrived. According to him, it was spotless. ALSO ALSO, after some uming and ahing he managed to produce an alibi for the night Zoe went missing. It turned out his firm had their Christmas party on the 17th, so almost all of them were with each other, out of town in Stretford. I’ve called around and that checks out.
Argh, but Zoe’s stalker HAD to have found out about the hatch somehow. In my mind, we’re either talking about a student, someone who worked for the university or some third party who visited, like a maintenance man. I don’t see who else it could be?
And as to ending MY book, there’s no need for you to be such a fucking Anderson about it, is there? Why don’t you leave that problem to me?
E
20.
“Playing Zoe”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
After Jai was arrested and they removed part of the wall in our flat, I got moved down the hall, to an empty room with another group of girls. I spent that night on my own. And it didn’t escape me, it never did, that this was what I’d been asking for all those years, to be rid of Zoe. I think I found myself wondering if I’d wanted it so much I might have made all this happen, like, if I’d forced it into existence somehow? I don’t believe in that stuff, cosmic ordering or whatever, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try doing the opposite.
To really want her back and do anything it took…
So I thought about playing Zoe, in my life as much as the reconstruction, and I decided I’d do it. If the only way out of all this was to give myself away, then I’d do it. I thought about the night she went missing, when I went up onto the roof of the tower and leaned out over the edge looking for her. I’d backed off from it then, I’d pulled myself in and carried on, but I decided that next time something called out to me, something that felt like a sacrifice, I’d just give in to it and let go.
CARYS PARRY:
Kim called me quite late one night, not long after our scene at the café. Her voice was thick, and I thought she’d either been crying or drinking, possibly both. She said she wanted to be a part of the reconstruction after all. She wanted to play Zoe. Honestly? I tried to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. I could hardly tell her she was wrong, even if I thought she was. We were due to film the following week, but I’d already begun preproduction on an alternative story.
Bluntly, I didn’t think it would happen.
I knew she was trying to do a brave thing, but, well. I’d seen enough of Mr. Nolan by then, I knew he exerted his will through shame, guilt, persistent pressure. He wasn’t above using the police, the press, even me, to make his family do just what he wanted them to. It had been a recurring theme across the interviews we’d conducted with Zoe’s loved ones, his domineering brand of grief.
So I suggested Kim have an understudy. We’d had exploratory conversations with an actor who resembled Zoe closely enough. I said if Kim really wanted to do it, then of course she could, but my one condition would be that Chloe was on-site ready to step in and replace her if it was all too much.
SARAH MANNING:
Jai Mahmood was held for a couple of days before we had to release him. He freely admitted to taking the pictures of Zoe we’d found inside the crawl space but claimed that his room had been burgled, that those pictures had, conveniently, been stolen from him. He couldn’t prove that of course. He hadn’t reported it to campus security or to the police, and he said he hadn’t even told anyone about the theft. It was made clear to him, you know, “You took these pictures and self-developed them, Jai. You’re telling us now that they were stolen, but with no one to back that up, we have to assume that you were the one behind that wall.”
The circumstantial evidence against him was ridiculous. The pictures, the rooftop liaisons, the stolen underwear. His unwillingness to allow a police search of his own room, when even Andrew Flowers had consented to one. That’s before we even talk about the drugs. No one felt comfortable about letting him go.
JAI MAHMOOD:
And all this is being listed off at me like my fucking obituary. I’m sitting in the hot seat here because I tried to help. Then my pictures, my own photography, starts getting thrown in my face. They said pictures of mine had been found inside this crawl space behind Zoe’s room. I was like, “Bro, I don’t even know what a fucking crawl space is.” They showed me the snap and it was just one picture reprinted dozens of times. Then I remembered that one of the constables who came to mine and Andrew’s had grabbed a photo out of my hand when he left. I knew Andrew had seen it happen.
ANDREW FLOWERS