True Crime Story(45)

HARRY FOWLES:

When the police were doing their door-to-door stuff the morning she went missing, we all said how Andrew talked about Zoe. Basically, he didn’t like her very much. He’d say stuff like, “Has anyone seen my earplugs? I’m going over to the tower.” One of us asked once why he was with her, since he seemed to have such a problem. He said, and I promise this is true, he said, “I won’t be with her for much longer. Count on it.”

ANDREW FLOWERS:

That’s right. Harry, my housemate, told them I disliked Zoe. That I wanted to split up with her a month before but didn’t have the balls to go through with it. They started to suggest that my life might be a lot easier if she just went out one day and never came back. I thought, Right, that makes sense, doesn’t it? I perceived some social awkwardness in splitting up with a girl who was being stalked, so obviously the simplest solution was to stove her head in and incinerate the body. I said something like, “Let’s hope I don’t get bored by these questions, or I might have to murder my way out of the station, since that’s apparently how I solve all my fucking problems.”

SARAH MANNING:

Andrew definitely didn’t endear himself to the investigating officers.

LIU WAI:

Of course I’d mentioned that the police had been called out in September when items of Zoe’s underwear were stolen. And that they’d then been found in Jai’s pockets all this time later at the party. So they started asking me if Zoe’s text could have been meant for Jai? Maybe because of the thong thing, maybe because Zoe thought he’d leaked the tape.

ANDREW FLOWERS:

When they moved on to Jai, I was relieved. “What about your other flatmate, the one who kept stealing her underpants? Could she have been texting him?”

LIU WAI:

Jai? I thought it wasn’t the craziest idea in the world. He seemed to have some kind of one-sided obsession with her, and I thought maybe he could have even gotten the video from Andrew somehow? Like, he obviously enjoyed stealing from Zoe.

ANDREW FLOWERS:

I thought about it, then sort of explained that Jai and Zoe didn’t really know each other.

LIU WAI:

I said, no, actually, hang on. Zoe and Jai weren’t really that close. How could you do this to me? That’s something you’d say to a person who’s in your life, I think.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

I said, no, Jai was more like a friend of a friend to Zoe. I wasn’t sure they’d ever even spoken.

LIU WAI:

I said how we’d only ever had one night out with Jai, and he’d been so wasted he got kicked out of the club. They were interested in that, like, “Why did he get kicked out?” So I said, “Oh, you know—he got into a fight.” And I saw that they were super interested in that, so I said, “You know, he didn’t start the fight.” “Oh, who did?” And I said, “Well, Jai was flirting with some guy’s girlfriend on the dance floor.” “And the guy got annoyed?” Well, I told them Jai actually blew smoke into the guy’s face. Their eyes were getting wider and wider, and I kind of wanted to back up. I kind of reiterated that Jai and Zoe didn’t really know each other. As far as I knew, they’d never properly spoken.

At which point they said, “So is there any reason why she might have his number saved in her phone?”

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

“Is there any reason why Zoe called him three times last night?”

ANDREW FLOWERS:

“So how come your girlfriend’s been meeting with this guy in secret once or twice a week?” There were texts and calls between them backing it all up. It was one of those rare moments when I was rendered speechless.



From: [email protected]

Sent: 2019-02-05 17:18

To: you

on Sat, Feb 04, 2019, Joseph Knox [email protected] wrote:

Well, that was a lot of fun. Great, great, great to see you. We must do it more often. XXXXX XXXXX XXXX XXXXX Thanks again for sending through P2. Don’t have heaps of reading time right now, but rest assured it’s safe.

I did just finish chapter 11.

Have you noticed Liu Wai says Andrew used to pick Zoe up on her English? If memory serves that was the theme of whoever messed with Zoe’s essay too. It also feels weird to me that Rob Nolan had hair missing on the morning he arrived at Owens Park…

It would be really helpful to have a cheat sheet of who was where on the night Zoe went missing, if you have such a thing?

Stay well.

Jx

# # #

Hey, hey—XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX XXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXX XXX XXXX XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX

Interesting catch re: Andrew correcting Zoe’s English. The essay said: “Too many pronouns”…

Alibi cheat sheet below:

Andrew Flowers: No alibi (says he was walking round the xmas lights).

Fintan Murphy: Left tower with Jai (Jai too wasted to remember). He stayed in with his flatmate Connor Sullivan that night then back to Owens Park on the morning of the 17th to retrieve speakers from the party (Connor confirmed Fintan’s alibi at the time but would be good to speak to him.)

Jai Mahmood: No alibi (says he stayed at absent friend Tariq’s place).

Kimberly Nolan: No alibi (says she left party after Andrew and Jai’s fight. Then was in tower, apparently alone, looking for Zoe, then some missing hours before her arrest at the building site.)