True Crime Story(21)

Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet.

JAI MAHMOOD:

Well, when the alarm went off again, so the seventh or eighth time that day, I knew it had dick all to do with fire. We were still in the tower, so I walked into the stairwell with everyone else, but I went the other way—up—to the next floor. I had my camera, and I had the idea to go around shooting empty rooms while the alarm was going off. There was something extra about it, man, Chernobyl vibes. But when I got to the top, there was a door open, leading onto the roof. I didn’t even know you could get out there, then all of a sudden, I found myself walking through into this amazing electric-blue, half-night sky.

I had my camera up taking a shot before I noticed there was someone else out there, this heart-stopping girl standing right on the edge of the building. I didn’t dare move or say anything in case I made her jump. She was lifting one foot off the ground and hanging it over thin air like she might step off into nothing. She always brought it in again, but I was holding my breath until she backed off from the edge. And when she did, I saw she was smiling, she was happy. I kind of leaned into one of the air con units up there, and she walked back inside and down the stairs. So I don’t think she saw me, but that was the first time I saw Zoe. It’s how I still see her now, one foot on the floor and the other one raised up, like, hanging out over the abyss.

LIU WAI:

We got back inside twenty minutes later and that was the last alarm of the night. I was quite glad it seemed to have gotten rid of all the lads who’d been milling around. It seemed like quite a big coincidence to me afterward, though. We’d had all these quite unsavory characters in our place for the first time, and the next morning, Zoe was in my room telling me that her knickers, like every single pair of knickers she’d brought with her, had been stolen. At the time, I thought that was the darkest thing I could possibly imagine.

These days, I have something like seven people working under me, so rest assured, my imagination’s much richer. At the time, like I said, I was still a bit na?ve.



From: [email protected]

Sent: 2019-01-19 18:27

To: you

Hey

Don’t know if you’re there yet—but a quick note about the tower block. Construction work started in 1964, the same year that the last ever execution was carried out in England(!)* and was fully complete by 1966. There were originally only fifteen floors, so Zoe and Kim’s flat would have been right at the top. Four further floors were ADDED in 1974–75 to increase housing capacity. This might help explain certain irregularities later on…

I’m charging ahead, still interviewing, transcribing and assembling part two. Getting seriously dark. I think I might have come into this as na?ve as Liu Wai was. Not anymore.

PS—XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXX

Ex

* By chance, that execution took place a twenty-minute drive down the road from the tower, at Strangeways Prison. The hanged man was a pathological liar named Gwynne Evans, who was seemingly incapable of telling the truth. He’d killed someone he was maybe having an affair with, and he told mainly what they call “prestige” lies, things to improve his standing in the eyes of others, all easily caught out and disproved. These days he could have pled diminished responsibility and gotten a reduced sentence because he literally couldn’t help himself. Something about that really unsettles me though.

I sit with Kim, Liu, Andrew, Jai, Fintan, Robert, Sally, etc., sometimes for hours at a time, recording everything they say, transcribing it later, then printing it up, trying to get it published. What if one day it hits the shelves and I find out one of them was like Gwynne Evans?

Like, what if there was someone like him in Zoe’s life? Someone who just couldn’t help himself? That would mean he’s in my life now too…

Anyway, I digress. Read the rest of my email.





4.


“Dark Room”

The investigation into Zoe’s missing underwear pulls certain people closer together and pushes others further apart.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

I was awake early, watering Chihiro, my bonsai, my pride and joy. She was three years old, and I’d grown her from this softwood cutting, so from literally two leaves into something resembling a tree. I got her when I was fifteen, when Dad told me I was no longer required in his vocal classes, when he basically decided I was no longer required at all. I didn’t have many friends outside Zoe, so I was lonely, and I liked the idea of these living things that only revealed themselves over years. They were all about patience, and I guess that’s how I thought of myself, a late bloomer. Or maybe just high maintenance. And I learned as I went that it wasn’t really about patience anyway. It was more about contemplation, effort, ingenuity. I’d named her after the brave little girl in my favorite film, so she felt like my spirit guide or something. I’d usually find myself thinking about life while I worked on her, and that morning, I felt good. I’d taken a chance the night before—I’d tried and I’d made, if not friends, then people who might become friends.

My room was right next to Lois’s, and I could hear she was up early too, murmuring something through the wall.

LIU WAI:

I think I felt violated on Zoe’s behalf? If you see theft as a form of envy, then the theft of someone’s most intimate personal possessions seems like a declaration to the world about what you’d really like to be stealing from them. I just thought it was psychotic behavior, not cool, not a joke. Zoe seemed fine at the time, a little shaken maybe. I said something like, “It’s probably a stupid question, but you don’t share clothes with Kim, do you?” She shook her head. She was distracted by something, and I could tell she hadn’t spoken to Kim about it. I remember thinking it was strange that she was confiding this in me rather than her twin sister. But then of course it occurred to me that Kim had let all those people into our flat the night before…