True Crime Story(40)

LIU WAI:

I probably wasn’t the best person for them to talk to at eleven o’clock in the morning, but it felt like everyone had just gone. Like, Andrew, Kim and Jai all just disappeared around the same time as Zoe. I couldn’t get Kim on the phone and I didn’t have Andrew’s number. I was panicking, talking to Mr. and Mrs. Nolan too fast, just overflowing with caffeine and fear. I’d hardly slept. I could hear myself going a million miles a second, but I couldn’t slow down. They kept asking me where their daughters were, and I had to keep telling them I didn’t know.

FINTAN MURPHY:

This was the first time I’d met Zoe’s parents, and I suppose I was in a slightly better state of mind than poor Liu. She’d known about Zoe’s disappearance since almost the moment it happened. She’d been due to meet her on the roof of course, and I don’t think she’d slept much in the interim. I’d gone home after Andrew and Jai’s fight and not heard about Zoe until the next morning.

My flatmate, Connor, had lent out some speakers for the party in the tower, and I’d gone with him to Owens Park to help load them up. In the event, once I heard what was going on there, I left him to it and reported to the police so I could join the first search party. I tried to be strong and direct for Robert and Sally, but it seemed as though the news was all bad. Zoe hadn’t been seen for something like eleven hours by this point, and her last known location was the high rooftop of a burning building while intoxicated.

To make matters worse, Kimberly had wandered off soon after giving a statement to the police. No one knew where she was, and no one could get hold of her, not for the rest of that night or the following morning. We were worried sick. Even more so when we heard Kimberly was on her way back to Owens Park with the police, that she’d been arrested for something.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

I thought Zoe had gone over the ledge of the building, that she’d fallen or jumped. Everything was so dark up there that when I got to the edge myself, I nearly stepped off it by accident. I could see cars and buses going up and down Oxford Road, lit windows all around me for miles, but not Zoe, not anywhere. I shouted her name, got down on my knees and leaned out over the side of the building, as far as I could go. On the ground, at the foot of the tower, I could see this mass of people, just shapes moving under the lights. I thought she must be down there, I thought she must be dead, and this voice in my head told me to follow her, to lean out a little farther and let go.

For a second, I think I did.

Then it all came crashing back and everything hit me at once. The smoke pouring out of the building, the smell of it, then the sound of the fire alarm and how high up I was. I edged back in until I was safe, then pulled off my boots and went back inside, down the stairs as fast as I’d gone up them. It was unreal. Eighteen floors and not a single other person.

When I got to the bottom, I was looking through the glass doors, expecting people to be screaming or gathered around, upset, in shock, but they were all just normal. They were all just like I’d left them. Still drinking, laughing, smoking, being kids, not taking anything seriously. I walked out wondering if I’d gotten it wrong, like when you wake up out of a dream where someone you love died.

LIU WAI:

While Kim was checking the roof, I was going through the crowd, looking for Zoe, asking if anyone had seen her. Alex stayed by the door in case she came out, but of course she never did. The tower was still smoldering, so by the time the fire brigade arrived, we were all just kind of powerless to do anything else. Speechless, arm in arm, staring at it. I think the natural assumption was that Zoe being missing was somehow something to do with the fire? That she must be trapped inside or hurt or something.

JOHN MARBER, Watch manager, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service:

Two crews were dispatched from Manchester Central in the early hours of December 17 in response to an automatic alarm from the Owens Park campus. On inspection, the fire was fairly serious, even if the damage was minimal. A lit cigarette sent up a communal sofa on the seventh floor, then that had spread to the entire kitchen, then the entire flat. No one was hurt, though, and we’d arrived in time to contain it. We were satisfied there was no structural damage preventing most of these kids from spending their last night in there before the Christmas break.

Once the space in question had been made safe, we were made aware of a resident from the fifteenth floor who was unaccounted for. We agreed to look for her while we conducted our own safety search of the premises. Six firefighters and, I think, four welfare officers from the university swept that tower from the ground up. Searches like those are fairly standard procedure for us before letting people back inside a reported structure. We didn’t see anyone, and nothing stood out as unusual. In the end, I think we concluded that if Zoe was missed during our sweep, then the students would have to see her when they went back in an hour later. All I can tell you’s what I wrote in the callout log. There was no one in any of the rooms and there was no one on the roof.5

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

When Zoe didn’t turn up in the search, and when I told the people from housing that she’d last been seen heading for the roof, they called the police. I had to repeat everything to them and things started to ramp up. At the same time, all I could think about was the building site near Canal Street where I’d been dumped after those guys grabbed me from outside Fifth Avenue. I got this idea that Zoe must have been the one they’d wanted. I mean, I’d been wearing her jacket when they took me. I got this idea that they must have come back for her. People were already searching Owens Park, Liu Wai was going on and on, and at a certain point, I just stepped back, out of the light. I heard someone shout after me, but it was so dark, I could be invisible. Then I just gravitated toward town, not even thinking. I was on the 142 up Oxford Road, then standing outside the building site. I don’t know what time it was by this point. If Zoe went missing around half midnight, then I’d guess it was three in the morning, maybe later.