A Good Girl's Guide to Murder(5)

I think chronologically is the best way to consider the events of that day and those that followed, even though we, as a town, learned the details out of order and jumbled.

Mid-morning: Naomi Ward, Max Hastings, Jake Lawrence and Millie Simpson contacted the police from school and confessed to providing false information. They said that Sal had asked them to lie and that he actually left Max’s house at around 10:30 p.m. on the night Andie disappeared.

I don’t know for sure what the correct police procedure would have been but I’m guessing that at that point, Sal became the number-one suspect.

But they couldn’t find him: Sal wasn’t at school and he wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his phone.

It later transpired, however, that Sal had sent a text to his father that morning, though he was ignoring all other calls. The press would refer to this as a ‘confession text’. 10

That Tuesday evening, one of the police teams searching for Andie found a body in the woods.

It was Sal.

He had killed himself.

The press never reported the method by which Sal committed suicide but by the power of high school rumour, I know (as did every other student at Kilton at the time).

Sal walked into the woods near his home, took a load of sleeping pills and placed a plastic bag over his head, secured by an elastic band around his neck. He suffocated while unconscious.

At the police press conference later that night no mention of Sal was made. The police only revealed that bit of information about CCTV imaging placing Andie as driving away from her home at 10:40 p.m. 11

On the Wednesday, Andie’s car was found parked on a small residential road (Romer Close).

It wasn’t until the following Monday that a police spokeswoman revealed the following: ‘I have an update on the Andie Bell investigation. As a result of recent intelligence and forensic information, we have strong reason to suspect that a young man named Salil Singh, aged 18, was involved in Andie’s abduction and murder. The evidence would have been sufficient to arrest and charge the suspect had he not died before proceedings could be initiated. Police are not looking for anyone else in relation to Andie’s disappearance at this time but our search for Andie will continue unabated. Our thoughts go out to the Bell family and our deepest sympathies for the devastation this update has caused them.’

Their sufficient evidence was as follows: They found Andie’s mobile phone on Sal’s body.

Forensic tests found traces of Andie’s blood under the fingernails of his right middle and index fingers.

Andie’s blood was also discovered in the boot of her abandoned car. Sal’s fingerprints were found around the dashboard and steering wheel alongside prints from Andie and the rest of the Bell family. 12

The evidence, they said, would have been enough to charge Sal and – police would have hoped – to secure a conviction in court. But Sal was dead, so there was no trial and no guilty conviction. No defence either.

In the following weeks, there were more searches of the woodland areas in and around Little Kilton. Searches using cadaver dogs. Police divers in the River Kilbourne. But Andie’s body was never found.

The Andie Bell missing persons case was administratively closed in the middle of June 2012. 13 A case may be ‘administratively closed’ only if the ‘supporting documentation contains sufficient evidence to charge had the offender not died before the investigation could be completed’. The case ‘may be reopened whenever new evidence or leads develop’. 14

Off to the cinema in 15 minutes: another superhero film that Josh has emotionally blackmailed us to see. But there’s just one final part to the background of the Andie Bell/Sal Singh case and I’m on a roll.

Eighteen months after Andie Bell’s case was administratively closed, the police filed a report to the local coroner. In cases like this, it is up to the coroner to decide whether further investigation into the death is required, based on their belief that the person is likely to be dead and that sufficient time has elapsed.

The coroner will then apply to the Secretary of State for Justice, under the Coroners Act 1988 Section 15, for an inquest with no body. Where there is no body, an inquest will rely mostly on evidence provided by the police, and whether the senior officers of the investigation believe the missing person is dead.

An inquest is a legal enquiry into the medical cause and circumstances of death. It cannot ‘blame individuals for the death or establish criminal liability on the part of any named individual.’ 15

At the end of the inquest, January 2014, the coroner returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ and Andie Bell’s death certificate was issued. 16 An unlawful killing verdict literally means ‘the person was killed by an “unlawful act” by someone’ or, more specifically, death by ‘murder, manslaughter, infanticide or death by dangerous driving.’ 17

This is where everything ends.

Andie Bell has been legally declared dead, despite her body never having been found. Given the circumstances, we can presume that the ‘unlawful killing’ verdict refers to murder. After Andie’s inquest, a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘The case against Salil Singh would have been based on circumstantial and forensic evidence. It is not for the CPS to state whether Salil Singh killed Andie Bell or not, that would have been a jury’s job to decide.’ 18

So even though there has never been a trial, even though no head juror has ever stood up, sweaty palmed and adrenaline-pumped, and declared: ‘We the jury find the defendant guilty,’ even though Sal never had the chance to defend himself, he is guilty. Not in the legal sense, but in all the other ways that truly matter.