SARAH MANNING:
One thing we were certain of was that the tin, the surrounding area, the banister on the staircase and the door leading up onto the roof had all been spot-cleaned. Every surface wiped down with alcohol. Now, whether you believe that could have been a drug-addled Jai or not, it’s certainly disturbing.
SALLY NOLAN:
They called ahead, said they had something to show us. This is Christmas Day. Course, every thought goes through your mind at once. She’s dead and she’s alive and she’s on the other side of the world. She’s being held hostage, or she doesn’t want to come back, everything. The detective, James, came in with Sarah and showed us a picture of a man, the one that had been found in Zoe’s things. We passed it around: me, Rob, Fintan and Kim. Liu Wai had gone home for Christmas by then. Rob thought he knew him but couldn’t say from where. Kim looked at the picture for the longest time. We all held our breath.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I thought I recognized him somehow, but Sarah stressed we shouldn’t put all our faith in this one picture. It had been found in Zoe’s things but was cut out from a magazine, so it might have been anything. I might know him from a film or an advert. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, though. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same shadow man I’d seen standing outside our building the night before Halloween. I wondered if we’d met.
ROBERT NOLAN:
There was something about the face. I just couldn’t place it. So to my way of thinking, the next step was to get the picture on the news. Let’s get him out there, a wanted, dangerous man. Let’s warn people. But the way Manning and James looked at each other told me I’d have to fight for it.
SARAH MANNING:
You have to remember that all we had was a picture that looked like it had been cut out of a magazine. The chain of evidence didn’t even lead conclusively back to Zoe.
FINTAN MURPHY:
We were all sitting in silence in one of those wretched tower communal spaces when I got a brain wave. Having spent more time online than was probably healthy, I asked if they knew of Google’s reverse image search and was surprised when they said that they didn’t. Essentially, you upload a picture that you can’t trace the provenance of, and it finds identical ones online, usually taking you to the original source. We were in the tower, so we went downstairs there and then to the computer lab, unfortunately to no avail. We uploaded the picture, but it didn’t match any others online. To me, that seemed to suggest that it wasn’t an advert. This wasn’t an actor or a singer or something.
LIU WAI:
I was contacted by Essex Police on Boxing Day? They came out to my mum’s place with a copy of the picture so I could look at it. In spite of the circumstances, it was kind of thrilling, and I was desperate to help. I’d felt guilty about leaving, but I didn’t want to have Mum on her own for Christmas. So I stared at it for a long time, like, smoke coming out of my eyes and ears, brain on endless scroll, but I didn’t know him. I have a pretty good memory and felt safe in saying I’d never met him before.
I suppose if one thing stood out to me, it was that he looked a little bit like Andrew Flowers? Kind of arrogant and rich and snobbish but handsome in a way. I wondered if this was the other man she’d hinted she might be seeing when we were in the cab a few weeks before? Y’know, like, maybe Zoe had a type…
SALLY NOLAN:
That was that. They left and we went back to waiting, all except for Rob. Rob said he needed some fresh air, but I knew what he’d really be doing. Heading straight down to the Great Central to see if any of his press friends were still around, anyone he could drown his sorrows with. Some Christmas.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Afterward, we were told to keep it between ourselves. Sarah really stressed that leaked information might harm or prejudice a case, but the lead was still right there in the newspapers the next day. The next day…
We weren’t allowed to keep copies of the picture, which is probably the only reason it wasn’t in there alongside the story.
SARAH MANNING:
The money in Zoe’s bank account seemed like a more promising lead to me. The first aspect of discovery on that was to speak to the people in her life. We knew she’d been spending beyond her means, but the one person around her who would have immediately questioned that, Kim, had been shut out from her sister’s life. To the rest of her friends, I suppose Zoe affected the air of someone who could walk out one day and come back with a new iPhone like it was no big deal.
LIU WAI:
When I’d asked Zoe, like, “How can you afford all this?” she told me it was through her singing work. She’d saved the money she was making over the years, and she still did private shows and things. I didn’t know anything about the economics of live performance, so I just assumed that was true?
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I’m sure Liu Wai can make herself believe in anything that benefits her. Look, to some extent, I was the same, but at least I can come out and say it. I didn’t have so many questions about money back in those days because it was a fact of my life. I wish like fuck it still was. At the time, I’d always had it, and so had everyone around me. I never thought to ask.
FINTAN MURPHY:
As I’ve said before, I’m not certain my friendship with Zoe was necessarily representative of the friendships she shared with others. When we were together, we walked, perhaps we got a coffee when we felt extravagant. I didn’t have two cents to rub together, so I’m sure Zoe would have felt it incongruous to flash the cash in front of me.
SARAH MANNING:
We knew the date that the money started to arrive in Zoe’s bank. The first payment was a small amount, a couple of hundred pounds, likely a test, before the second payment of ￡15,000 reached her account on October 1, so just a couple of weeks after she moved to Manchester. Certainly not singing money saved from down through the years.
ROBERT NOLAN:
Zoe had been picking up paid singing work since she was sixteen years old. We’re talking cash in hand, though, fifty here, a hundred there. The biggest shows she did were with choirs and orchestras, concerts where she’d travel with a group of other musicians, usually by bus, but it was rare she stayed away—and that was really just for the experience more than the money. It wasn’t about that for her.