SAM LIMMOND:
I know your book’s about Zoe, but for me, the defining tragedy of that time was what happened to Alex. I still don’t understand it. It was only as the days, weeks and months went on that I really started to think about that guy, that fucking user. With everything that happened, with all the years that have passed since, you can’t help but wonder, can you? Who was he? Where did he go? And what the fuck was his problem?
Publisher’s Note
The following Facebook update was posted by Jai Mahmood after the original publication of True Crime Story. The information it contains was not made known to Evelyn Mitchell during the writing of the book nor to Sourcebooks during the editorial process. We are pleased to include it for clarity in this second edition.
Editor’s Note:
I am, in fact, very pleased for this opportunity to clarify my role in the events of True Crime Story. As I stated in my introduction, in 2011, I was twenty-five years old and living in Manchester myself. In a city with a population approaching three million, I thought the chances that I had interacted with the participants in this book were vanishingly small. As a result, I failed to fully interrogate my own personal life, and I failed to fully guarantee my own objectivity. However, my failure to mention a relationship with Alex Wilson was never an attempt to deceive Evelyn or her readers, nor is it suggestive of any deeper involvement in the case on my part or any manipulation of the facts.
It was simply a failure.
As I read Evelyn’s chapters, I did not recognize myself as the man described by Mr. Limmond and Mr. Mahmood as a “user,” although I do not dispute all elements of their recollection. I did not recognize Alex Wilson as the young woman—Lexy—who I saw a handful of times across late 2011 and early 2012. And I did not recognize the description of events that took place at the Great Central pub in Fallowfield, where, to the best of my recollection, I was punched rather than headbutted.
Neither Alex nor myself ever thought of our relationship in terms of boyfriend or girlfriend, and to my mind, we only ever met on four or five occasions—usually when one or both of us had been drinking. I don’t recall being introduced to any of her friends or flatmates, and I only visited her in the tower at Owens Park once. Perhaps most indicative of how casual our acquaintance was, she never spoke to me about Zoe Nolan or the events surrounding her disappearance.
After being assaulted and told in no uncertain terms to stay away from the girl I’d been seeing, I did just that. I never heard from or interacted with her again, and I only discovered that she had taken her own life when Mr. Mahmood’s Facebook post was brought to my attention some eight years after the fact. Although the inquest into Alex’s death ruled it a suicide, and although I dispute the assertions from Liu, Jai and Sam that I supplied drugs to Alex, it’s impossible for me not to feel at least partly responsible. I could have been better, and I should have been better.
As to Mr. Mahmood’s wider accusation that I in some way “stole” Evelyn’s work, this could not be further from the truth. Although it had previously been a private arrangement, all advances and royalty payments for True Crime Story have been split equally between myself and the Mitchell family. Further, following a period of reflection, I have decided to donate my share of all future earnings to the Nolan Foundation.
Although I know this episode will taint my involvement in the project for some and that many readers may even be tempted to read the rest of the book differently as a result of this intervention, I would urge them not to do so. This statement describes my full involvement in the case. A brief affair with a troubled young woman, a much-deserved broken nose, and a failure of memory that has been deeply painful for both me and my family.
I was a friend of Alex Wilson’s, I was a supporter of Evelyn Mitchell’s, and I urge readers not to minimize the stories of two young women by searching for my shadow at the margins of this book. I can assure you that it is simply not there.
18.
“Scream Mask”
Following Alex’s funeral, interviews and preproduction for the reconstruction of Zoe’s disappearance resume, taking place across mid-to late January 2012. A sudden break in the case arrives from an unexpected source.
DOT SHELDON, Cleaner:
Well, I’d read about this missing girl, and I knew her face and everything, but aside from thinking, How awful, I hadn’t given it much thought. I usually cleaned at the College of Music, the Royal Northern on Oxford Road, for a firm called Rise N Shine. Only, two of the girls had gone down with stomach bugs and they needed a volunteer for some nights at the new police station, out at Central Park. This is three or four weeks after Christmas and I needed the hours, so I took them. On my second or third night there, I was going around a wreck of a room—if you think students are bad, you should see coppers—trying not to touch anything important, just sweeping, brushing, wiping, emptying bins. There’s two blokes staring at a picture they’ve got pinned up, clearly wondering who it is. So I stop, dustbin in one hand, cloth in the other. One of them says, “Can we help you, Mrs. Mop?” [Laughs] I went, “I don’t know about that, but I think I can help you, PC Plod.”
SARAH MANNING:
Mrs. Sheldon immediately identified the man in the picture. Professor Michael Anderson, a senior lecturer from the Royal Northern College of Music. She saw him almost every day while she was cleaning there.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Everything moved so fast. One minute, Dad was telling me about this idea of a reconstruction, the next, me, him and Sarah were sitting in a café with a woman from the BBC. The first few weeks of that year were like watching someone else’s life on fast-forward. I don’t even remember Alex’s funeral. I just know Mum put me in a car, drove me there, stood next to me, then drove us back. It was insane, it was too much, and all the time, Dad’s in my ear, saying, “I need you to be Zoe.”
On this day, the producer was taking us through the results of their interviews. We were on to Fintan, which was uncomfortable for me, because he’d really zoned in on my drinking from the night of the party. He knew I’d have the transcript read back to me, that my parents would, and he did it anyway.
FINTAN MURPHY:
Ah, shite. So someone from that stupid party had said in their statement that they thought Kim was so wasted she must be doing drugs, just like Alex, Jai and Zoe were. I’d been with Sally when she saw that story in the press about Kim and Jai paying for drugs on Oxford Road. She fell down, collapsed. I thought it almost killed her, so in my statement, I just went to great pains to say Kim was drinking and that’s all. I don’t think it occurred to me how it might come across to her in isolation. It sincerely was not said to hurt her.