It was clear by the second day, though, that the conference was happening no matter what we said or did, and by that point, it was probably time. We needed to get Zoe’s face out there.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Initially, I’d tried to defend Jai. We’d parted on bad terms, but I still thought they had him wrong. I was being slowly undone on that front, though. They began reading me these messages that had been going back and forth between them, him and Zoe. I’ve never felt this way before, can’t wait to see you, same time same place, et cetera, et cetera, painting him as some lothario all of a sudden, a dangerous man. I think I said that Jai might have his secrets but that being dangerous wasn’t one of them.
They said, “We hear he’s got a temper, a violent streak.” I was putting them right on that when they interrupted, asked how he’d acquired all those cuts and bruises. I told them about the abuse he’d been receiving, the beating that had followed. I told them that we’d reported it to the police. Surprise, surprise, though. Officer Shitforbrains had never filed a thing. I tried to recover and tell them the fight hadn’t been Jai’s fault, he’d been jumped while taking pictures. They just asked how I could know that for sure. I said, “Why would he lie?” Then they told me that since Zoe’s disappearance, several people had come forward with stories about Jai being a negative presence on campus, being a whip-out man or peeping Tom. I said all that shit was just innuendo, the result of a poison poster campaign that had, in my opinion, originated with the same police officers we’d spoken to following the theft of Zoe’s underwear.
SARAH MANNING:
I heard Andrew repeat this accusation at the time. All I can tell you is that I spoke to the officers involved and can say with some certainty that wasn’t the case. A more disturbing scenario to me is that Zoe’s stalker saw her relationship with Jai and was jealous of it. He took steps to neutralize a threat.
Think about it.
Someone started a campaign to keep Jai off campus. Someone apparently beat him up, apparently broke his camera. If you believe Jai’s version of events, it seems likely he brushed up against the same obsessive mind that Zoe did.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I said I’d never seen or heard anything violent from Jai myself, so I wasn’t going to speculate. They said, “So you weren’t at Fifth Avenue nightclub on such a date?” I shrugged, told them I didn’t keep a diary but might have been. Then they went into the story of him being dragged out of there, wasted. I said, “So what?” You know, in my mind, we’re all lying in the gutter. It’s just that some of us are facedown in our own sick. But no. Jai had been trying to rape some girl on the dance floor in their version of events. I told them that he wasn’t the type. Then they asked if perhaps his substance abuse might play a role? They asked me if I’d ever seen Jai swallowing pills.
HARRY FOWLES:
Look, everyone knew Jai was selling drugs.
SARAH MANNING:
Upon learning that Jai Mahmood was selling drugs on campus, I made my concerns for Alex Wilson very clear. She seemed vulnerable and had been under the influence the first time that we met. It was easy to imagine someone might be preying on her.
HARRY FOWLES:
I’d seen Jai giving cash to this absolute unit of a guy in the Great Central, over the road from Owens Park, which I told the police. Next thing you know, I’m down the station going through mug shots, trying to pick him out.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
You have to remember I haven’t slept in more than twenty-four hours by this point. Now Zoe and Jai are both missing, apparently shagging, and the police think I’m responsible. They left me alone in there a while, an hour or so, then came back and started belting me with pictures of tough guys, running their records down for me. Telling me this one killed a man, this one raped a girl, all of them dealers, motherfuckers, fatherfuckers, babyfuckers even. All possible known associates of Jai’s. They’re telling me that they suspect he’s dealing drugs to vulnerable young women, that he’s taking advantage of them. My head was like a merry-go-round, my face hurt, I felt sick. I didn’t know him very well, but I’d thought he was a decent guy. It upended me. Finally, I said, “Look, unless I’m under arrest, I want to talk to someone. I want to go home.”
They admitted there was no legal case to hold me, so they sort of shrugged and said I was free to go. I didn’t even know where I was, which station, what part of the sodding city I was in. I hadn’t seen natural light in hours. So I went out into the corridor and called my father. It was the first time we’d spoken in six months. Afterward, I kind of walked out into the street, probably crying and pissing my pants, and saw Rob Nolan, Zoe’s dad, heading straight for me.
SALLY NOLAN:
I was never anything to do with Rob’s plan. When he told me what he was up to, I didn’t know where to look. I thought, Who the hell are you? What the hell are you thinking?
ROBERT NOLAN:
The press conference I’d organized was the next day, the first Monday after Zoe went missing. It was planned as an appeal for information, to get her face out there and make it clear that her family meant business. And I wanted the police to get that message too. They’d been shit from the word go. Pure shit. Slow to take us serious or even get that Zoe wasn’t the kind to just wander off without a word. So I was trying to pressure them as much as anything, and it worked because they finally came up with a name for me and a kind of a strategy.
They asked if they could add an appeal for a young lad to come forward, a Jai Mahmood. There was stuff in the press after about racial profiling, but that was something of nothing. I don’t see it. I don’t care if you’re black or white or green. I just said, “Absolutely, fantastic, we’re finally getting somewhere.” So a part of me did want Andrew—apparently Jai’s best mate—to be up there with us. I thought maybe that’d bring this Jai out of the woodwork faster?
But I knew I had to play every side.
When I saw that lad Andrew’s face, my girl’s scratch marks in his skin, nothing could have convinced me he wasn’t involved. Nothing. I thought other people might feel the same way, so I decided to put him onstage, scratch marks and all. I thought, Let’s let the world decide, then we’ll see if he feels like talking.