JAI MAHMOOD:
I don’t know if it means anything, man, but I can say one thing about that. Andrew never told me anything about a tape or him and Kim having sex, but after Zoe went missing, when it was just me and him in that flat over Christmas, he asked if I remembered that night at Fifth when he took me home. Obviously I didn’t, but that was when he told me about her being taken. The van, the men, the tattoo, all that.
LIU WAI:
It’s very touching that Andrew managed to bone the PTSD out of Kim, but it’s my opinion that everything should be reexamined in the light of what we now know. Clearly, they were having an affair. Obviously, Zoe was a problem that got in their way, and clearly, they solved that problem somehow.
Andrew always looked bad because he had no alibi for the night Zoe went missing, and neither did Kim. Now we know that they actually did have alibis. They were hand in hand, out at this abandoned building site a mile up the road. They never told anyone that because they knew the only thing worse than them being alone was them being together. You do the math.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Liu Wai knew all this at the time. I told her in the lobby of the tower the day I got arrested. She wasn’t pissed off about it then, and not in all the years since, so why now?
LIU WAI:
Oh, Jai was out of his head that day. That’s why he got arrested.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Liu was waiting for Fintan and started asking me if Andrew had said anything about where he was when Zoe went missing. I was pissed with him in that moment, so I told her what Andrew had told me. He’d gone out to this building site looking for Zoe, with Kim. Liu asked why they’d think Zoe was at a building site, and I told her. I shouldn’t of, but I did.
LIU WAI:
We’ll have to let your readers decide who seems more trustworthy.
JAI MAHMOOD:
Fuck that. When you interviewed us about the night Kim got grabbed outside Fifth, Liu was the one who told you Kim saw something inside the van, the tattoo on someone’s hand, yeah? Kim didn’t volunteer it. It wasn’t in her interview with the Mail. So how else would Liu know? Kim told Andrew, Andrew told me, and I told Liu. The only reason she’s pissed at them now’s because they had sex, and she thinks they should have cleared her name on the laptop thing.
LIU WAI:
Well, so maybe Jai did tell me? My point still stands. On the night Zoe went missing, Kim and Andrew—who were having an affair behind her back—spent an unknown amount of time at an abandoned building site. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what they were doing.
The building site at Canal Street was searched extensively by authorities after Kimberly’s arrest on the night of Zoe’s disappearance. Nothing suspicious was found at the time, nor during a subsequent three-year construction. After Kim’s story about her ordeal appeared in the press, the Mail funded a private ground-penetrating radar scan of the premises that was finally erected on the site in 2014. No disturbances or irregularities were discovered in the foundations.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-03-20 02:35
To: you
on Mon, Mar 18, 2019, Joseph Knox [email protected] wrote:
Evelyn—How are you? I’m sure you’re looking after yourself but don’t forget to check in. I’ve been thinking about Rob Nolan. There HAS to be something that links him to that crawl space in the tower. In one of the early chapters somewhere in part one he said something about calling the university himself, asking for Kim and Zoe to be placed together…
Let’s say that somehow he knew about the crawl space in 15C before they arrived in Manchester. Could he have requested they get placed in that EXACT apartment so he could monitor them?? It must be worth asking if there’s any record of his conversation with the housing department?
And I hate to hear about you feeling sick. Have you managed to see a doctor? As you say, you’ve been going flat out and might just be run down. They might just be able to put your mind to rest?
Jx
# # #
Hey J
Re: Rob’s tower request, I’ve spoken to student accommodation and it doesn’t sound promising, especially if Rob just got on the phone and asked someone MAN TO MAN. We’re talking about an informal call from seven years ago :/
I am gonna take another run at Fairfield Property Management, though. Someone found out about that crawl space somehow, and I think I agree with Sarah. It only makes sense for it to have been someone who was OUTSIDE of Zoe’s life. Her friends could go and see her any time they liked.
That plus the harassment I’ve had makes me think that someone I’VE interviewed must be on edge about all this. And who have I interviewed who was obsessed with Zoe AND shut out from her life? Rob Nolan.
I hear you on the doctor, I do. It’s just that I know what happens next if it’s bad news. Cancer could stop everything for me. Again. You’ve never had to go through that, you don’t know what you’re asking. I can’t explain it but I KNOW I’m close to something here. I just need a few more days before I can risk hearing the worst. It won’t be longer than that because, honestly, I’m sick all the time atm. Anyway. Thanks Joe.
Ex
26.
“Canal Street”
JAI MAHMOOD:
Oh man, you wouldn’t believe how many times I woke up with no memory of the night before and a guy in scrubs standing over me saying, “Son, you’re lucky to be alive.” I thought, Fuck me. If this is what luck feels like, curse me any time. By then, so many people I knew had died. Mickey Mouth, Bi George, Typhoid Mary. Some of them I called ambulances for, some of them just stopped coming around. They weren’t like Zoe. There was never any mystery when one of them went missing. In a horrible way, you knew all about what happened.
I only made it to one funeral in that whole time, and that was my mum’s. Wasn’t even invited, and I was so broke I had to steal the suit I went in. After that, it was bad. I called Fintan, crying, asking for help, but as soon as he said the word “rehab,” I hung up. I was doing the limbo, man. As long as I could still dance under that pole, I didn’t care how low down I got. Like, I was at that stage where you’re down to one of everything. One pair of underpants, one pair of socks, one pair of trousers. One pound in my pocket, one friend in the world, one-track mind. But because I was an addict, to me, that was all I needed. I thought, How can I stop now when I’ve still got so much left to lose? I was the real thing, a living, breathing Oxy-moron. What I’m saying is I wasn’t sitting around thinking, like, Where are they now?