She was making them all suffer, y’know?
She’d been fucked over by Andrew, just like me, and I thought she was probably planning to reappear once she got bored or thought he’d been punished enough. And in the meantime, I knew stuff about her no one else did, and I thought she probably wouldn’t want her life to blow up while she was away. So I snuck in there and made some problems disappear. I went up to the roof, crouched under the police tape, removed evidence and tampered with the crime scene. And when I got in and out of the tower without anyone seeing me, without anyone saying anything, I just kept on going, man. It clearly wasn’t as big a deal as I thought, and I didn’t know anything special about her going missing, so who was I hurting?
ROBERT NOLAN:
There’s no road map for this stuff, so I was moving heaven and purgatory and hell and earth to try and keep the story alive. Either you hit the ground running, or you splatter on the tarmac. So that meant talking to reporters, calling radio shows, going on TV, the lot. It meant stopping and talking to everyone who recognized me in the street, shaking hands and making time. And I know how that can look, but it was what I had. It was what I could do. Connect with people. Some of the things that have come out since, some of the things I’ve done, okay, I hold my hands up, and I’m not proud of them. But to keep Zoe’s name and face in the news? Yeah, I’d have done anything. Absolutely anything, and I couldn’t give a toss how it might make me look.
SALLY NOLAN:
You just want to close the door, but there are reporters in the house with you and in the car with you and taking pictures, asking stupid questions.
“How does it make you feel?”
Well, God help us. Then you’d read about it the next day, because you had to read everything, because who knows how or where or when you’ll see something important? I learned more about Andrew and Jai from the newspapers than I ever did from the police. I found out more about our Kim, more about Zoe even. But at the same time, things never quite lined up, because I’d read things about myself, things I’d been there for, and think, That’s not how it was. Then I doubted myself and started doubting everyone else too. For me, it started to feel like there was no one real version of the truth.
Rob was the opposite.
He’d read something and it would rub out whatever the reality was, replace it. Newspapers were more real to him than his family, than life.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Feeding stories to the press is dangerous. And especially when you’re someone who loves attention, because where’s the line? How can you say for sure what you’re doing for your daughter and what you’re doing for yourself? I really think Dad got drunk off it. He started taking more care over his appearance, rehearsing sound bites in front of the mirror. There were reporters and photographers coming to town from London just for us, all staying as close as they could, because Dad was trying to turn our family into the story. They were involving themselves in our lives, intruding everywhere they could, and at the end of the day, they’d all go to the same pub where my parents ate dinner every night. They’d offer to pick up the check or buy them a drink, then another, then another. Mum started coming home on her own because she realized that they’d always be buying as long as Dad was talking, and he’d always be talking as long as they were buying. Then we’d find out what he’d told them in the news the next day.
That was how I found out he wanted to launch a charity, the Nolan Foundation. Zoe hadn’t been gone two weeks when he started talking about it. And when stories started coming out about her, about me, personal things you wouldn’t want anyone knowing, things that had nothing to do with my sister going missing, I just started to trust him less and less. I couldn’t talk to him or to my mum, because I knew I’d be reading whatever I’d said the next day in the Daily Mail. I mean, my dad was the only person I ever told about going to see that band, and look what happened there.
JAI MAHMOOD:
I guess I picked up to Andrew on the Wednesday or the Thursday, a few days after Zoe had gone missing anyway. I knew something was up. He was treading too carefully, sounded like he was at gunpoint on the other end of the phone.
SARAH MANNING:
We’d encouraged Andrew to keep trying Jai. He still seemed like our best bet of bringing him in voluntarily. I’d instructed him to make sure Jai was okay, then ask him to report to his nearest police station to give a statement. Of course, this being Andrew Flowers, he went wildly off script.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’ll only shoulder a certain ratio of responsibility for that. I’d been asked to get in touch with Jai, and I did. He sounded worn out and paranoid. I’m sure, to some extent, we both did, but it quickly became clear that this wouldn’t be as simple as having him flag down a police car and say, “Recognize me?”
He didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
Not only was Zoe missing, but we were all on the spot for it. We’d all been unaccounted for at the crucial time. His speech was slurred—it sounded like he’d taken something—and I had what the police had said to me blasting through both ears. Namely that Jai’s a junkie and he can’t be trusted. I delicately broached the subject with him and he admitted he might need a day or so for stuff to pass through his system. I said that was fine and I could meet him the next day. I felt like a pretty solid friend until he said he’d rather not meet me alone, he wanted someone else to be there. Oh, and that he needed a fucking grand first.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
When I saw Andrew was calling me, I nearly didn’t pick up. I probably shouldn’t have. He asked how I’d been, but I could tell there was something else and at some point, he blurted out that he knew where Jai was, he just needed my help in making him come forward. This was it, my one attempt to try and play the game. It was after the story had come out about me “partying” in the wake of Zoe’s disappearance. I let Andrew convince me that we could clean up our images and come out looking like the good guys, which, obviously, we didn’t.
We went into town and met Jai in the Temple, this tiny underground toilet of a pub on Great Bridgewater Street. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures, but he looked awful, like he really was guilty of something. Like I say, I tried not to, but I’d read every headline, every story, every radioactive comment section. I was at the point where I believed the bad things they said about me, so of course I could believe the worst of him as well. There were too many coincidences for them not to show in my face. The theft stuff, this suggestion that he and Zoe had been seeing each other on the sly, the fact that he’d been unaccounted for when she went missing and had turned up afterward wanting money.