KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I spent the weekend with Mum and got to my meeting with the police at Owens Park early. I didn’t have much else to do that day. It was the seventeenth, the seventh anniversary of Zoe’s disappearance, so I suppose I thought I should take a moment and pay my respects. I could see the tower from the street, but I knew it was empty. I’d heard it was scheduled to be demolished, which felt like the end of something. And I was nervous about talking to the police.
No one had ever asked me outright if it was Zoe in that video, but I knew I’d lied by omission, and I assumed that was illegal. The detective, James, hadn’t sounded happy on the phone. What worried me most was Owens Park, the main entrance, right on a busy road. I’d already had some odd looks, or at least I thought I had. My picture had been in a paper or two in the last few days, and of course the video was out there, so I didn’t like the idea of being out in public. But I knew they had to have found something to arrange our meeting there.
JAI MAHMOOD:
When Andrew came back from the bar, I wasn’t sure how long he’d stay upright, so I got right down to it, the reason I was there. I said, “That watch you had when we were living together, man, the Rolex…”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I said, “Yeah, what about it?”
JAI MAHMOOD:
“Did you ever find out what happened with that? Where it went? Who had it and why?”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I probably looked at him a little more closely, a little more darkly, then answered carefully. “No, and I assume it’s gone for good.”
JAI MAHMOOD:
I said, “What if I told you I knew where it was?” Andrew picked up his next pint and put a serious dent in it. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “It’s probably best left in the past.”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Look, if he’d taken the damn thing, I was trying hard to let him off the hook.
JAI MAHMOOD:
This thing that had been like life or fucking death for him seven years ago suddenly wasn’t worth the time of day. He didn’t have any curiosity about it. I said, “Andrew, mate, I can get your granddad’s watch back. How can you not care?”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
To which I said something like, “Look, let’s put our friendship above all that stuff. I don’t want to know how you got it. My heart can’t take it right now, okay? I don’t want to think of you like that.” Then he started to get angry, asking if I was accusing him of stealing the watch, the very argument I was trying to avoid. He pushed his chair back and bared his gums, said he was clean, he was working for the Nolan Foundation, and anyway, he didn’t have it, he just knew how I could get it. I said, “Oh, let me guess. For a price?”
JAI MAHMOOD:
And, well, yeah. Look, man, I don’t like the idea of someone paying to get their shit back, but I guess I’d gone there thinking, somehow, he still had money, he still cared. But neither of those things was true. Vlad had come straight out and said it, he’d stolen the watch, but not from Owens Park, and not from back then.
He said he’d give it up for a grand, way less than what it was worth, whatever state it was in. I tried to tell this to Andrew, but he wouldn’t listen, and he started to leave. I was like, “So let me get this straight. You don’t want your watch back?”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I said, “No, you can keep it. And I need to be somewhere, so I’ll see you in another seven years.”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I’d been waiting there for the best part of an hour by this point. I was just about to call the police and make sure I had the right time when I heard someone behind me say, “Kim?”
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Detective James had called me the night before for a light bollocking about the video. He said I needed to meet him at Owens Park to discuss the potential fallout of my not mentioning when questioned, yada yada yada. What with work and Jai and one thing and another, I was late. When I got there, I couldn’t see the police, just a woman with a duffel coat drawn up so high about her head I could hardly make out her face. I’d know that scowl anywhere, though.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I said, “Andrew?” We laughed. I mean, just awkwardly, but still. And we hugged. I think we said hello in there somewhere, asked each other what we were doing. Andrew said he was meeting the police, but he was so late, he thought they’d probably left. I told him I’d been there for an hour and they’d never shown. I just remember the smile fading off his face when he said, “Why would they ask us both here?” Then my smile faded too.
I tried the number James had called from, but it just went to voicemail. Then we both tried the police, we got passed around a bit, and finally Andrew got put through.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Except DI James sounded distinctly different from the man I’d spoken to the previous evening. What’s more, he had no memory of asking either one of us to meet him anywhere. He wasn’t even assigned to Zoe’s case anymore. I got off the phone and Kim said, “But why would someone set us up to be here?” when I spotted a man over the road taking pictures. A man who’d clearly been standing there the entire time. I walked straight through the traffic, threw his fucking camera into a tree and grabbed him by his fat throat.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Andrew was lifting him off the ground by his neck, demanding to know how he knew we’d both be there. The guy said his newspaper got an anonymous tip. They’d sent him out to take pictures, then he looked at me like I’d cool things down. I told Andrew to squeeze harder. The guy was shouting at us that it was assault, which was true, but I got in his face and explained to him that we were in a unique situation.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I was too furious to see straight, much less speak, my piss was at boiling point. Kim said what I couldn’t. Neither one of us wanted to be pictured outside Owens Park on the seventh anniversary of Zoe’s disappearance, and especially not smiling, especially not three days after that ridiculous video leaked.
But what incensed us was the suggestion of an anonymous tip. We’d both fallen foul of that game over the years, and I think after this last run-in especially, we were both coming to the conclusion that someone was behind it. These weren’t isolated incidents. Each represented one part in a sustained campaign of hate. Kim explained all this to the newspaper man, but when Clark Kunt still couldn’t grasp things, she put them more bluntly.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I said I thought the video of me and Andrew had been leaked by the person responsible for taking my sister. I said we’d both been lured there by someone impersonating a police officer and that his newspaper had been notified of our meeting before we’d even known about it. I was stressing that whoever set this photo shoot up could well be Zoe’s stalker or kidnapper, her killer even.