True Crime Story(26)
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1 This interview was conducted by Joseph Knox and added to Evelyn’s text in 2019.
2 This police report was added to Evelyn’s text by Joseph Knox in 2019.
3 This statement was added to Evelyn’s text by Joseph Knox in 2019.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-01-22 23:33
To: you
Are you still reading the chapters, JK? Feel a bit like I’m talking into the void.
After Sirens came out, did you feel more confident as a writer? I don’t know how I can feel MORE frustrated and confused but I really do. A second book should be like the 13th floor of a hotel. You just skip the fucker entirely.
Did I ever tell you that Curtis Brown tried to get me to write a cancer book? Mum died of breast cancer, so they thought it might be “fun” to chart my progress against hers, like that’s how either one of us would want to be remembered. It was before I’d even finished chemo, when it could still have gone either way. I replied suggesting some titles: Almost Gone Girl, Infinite Tests, Remission Impossible. They never got back to me.
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Anyway, the reason I’m writing is that someone called my landline the other morning, at THREE in the morning. I didn’t even know my landline still worked. There was no heavy breathing sadly, so I couldn’t get myself off, just silence then the dial tone.
Too much to hope that it was you tryna remember my number after a few stiff ones, eh?
Thought so.
Ex
5.
“Evil Eyes”
Zoe and Andrew meet each other on a night out, while a sinister presence begins to make itself known in Zoe’s life, social circle, and bedroom.
LIU WAI:
Personally, I never felt safe from that moment on. Once I knew someone had been in and stolen Zoe’s stuff, I felt like we were under some kind of surveillance. Someone actually set up a Facebook page posing as an appeal for information on the location of her underwear, invited half the student population to join, like, hundreds of people. At the time, it seemed juvenile. Now, like everything else, it just looks sinister. We never found out who it was, but let’s just say I was looking a little bit more closely at the people surrounding me at the time.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I’d guess that Zoe and I had only met two or three more times by this stage. There’d been a couple of choir practices at St. Chrysostom’s Church, and we’d taken a long stroll, walking and talking, after each one. I’m afraid she didn’t tell me about the theft, no. My relationship with her was quite humorously chaste, almost old-fashioned. No off-color jokes, both kind of focusing on music, positivity.
I suppose we both must have needed it.
I’d grown up in the old country, in an old family, and I think I was quite old-fashioned myself in some senses. I did unfortunately find out about it all without Zoe’s consent. I was invited to join a Facebook group called “Knickers with Attitude,” which had been established to resemble an appeal for information on Zoe’s missing underwear. I declined the request and blocked the page. To me, it felt intensely childish. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for her.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
People nudged each other, they looked her way. Word definitely got around. It could have been really distressing, but I think she sort of enjoyed it. She was recognizable for a few days—who wouldn’t want to be the center of attention at eighteen? It’s what Dad had been priming her for her whole life. Suddenly, she was getting smiles in the lobby, boys were buying her drinks…
That’s actually how we found out Jai was the main suspect.
Two boys bought us a bottle of wine at the Friendship Inn, and one of them said he’d heard that “raghead” took Zoe’s underwear from her room. I didn’t know Jai outside the night I’d seen him in our flat, and as far as I knew, Zoe hadn’t met him at all, but I guessed he was the person they were talking about. We left without finishing our drinks.
LIU WAI:
So, whoever set up the page had taken pictures from Zoe’s real Facebook. Like, personal information and stuff from her wall. We realized it must have been someone who was actually friends with her on there or someone who had access to her account, which I think made it even more disturbing? Zoe loved Facebook. She was always talking to ten people at once, putting up pictures, making comments, so to suddenly realize someone was monitoring her was dark.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I think what disturbed me more than the page itself—which was just stupid—was that none of us were talking about the theft outside our group. Me, Zoe, Liu, Alex and Lois all knew about the robbery. Well, I didn’t tell anyone. Zoe said she didn’t either. I think Fintan backs that up because she never said anything to him. Then you’ve got Liu Wai, who was scarily loyal, Alex, who was busy with her own life, and Lois, who left immediately afterward. I just couldn’t see it coming from anyone in that group. So to me, the most likely person to have started that page was whoever had actually stolen her underwear or maybe whoever the police had spoken to about it. No one else should have even known.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I personally never saw the Facebook page, but you could tell something was in the air. Who knows if one thing was connected to the other, but what I remember were posters appearing around Owens Park, warning of a predatory photographer. As I recall, they specifically urged girls to “Beware.” I mean, it could only have been directed at Jai, which was ridiculous, but he started getting shit for it pretty much immediately.