Well, so maybe Jai did tell me? My point still stands. On the night Zoe went missing, Kim and Andrew—who were having an affair behind her back—spent an unknown amount of time at an abandoned building site. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what they were doing.
The building site at Canal Street was searched extensively by authorities after Kimberly’s arrest on the night of Zoe’s disappearance. Nothing suspicious was found at the time, nor during a subsequent three-year construction. After Kim’s story about her ordeal appeared in the press, the Mail funded a private ground-penetrating radar scan of the premises that was finally erected on the site in 2014. No disturbances or irregularities were discovered in the foundations.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 2019-03-20 02:35
To: you
on Mon, Mar 18, 2019, Joseph Knox [email protected] wrote:
Evelyn—How are you? I’m sure you’re looking after yourself but don’t forget to check in. I’ve been thinking about Rob Nolan. There HAS to be something that links him to that crawl space in the tower. In one of the early chapters somewhere in part one he said something about calling the university himself, asking for Kim and Zoe to be placed together…
Let’s say that somehow he knew about the crawl space in 15C before they arrived in Manchester. Could he have requested they get placed in that EXACT apartment so he could monitor them?? It must be worth asking if there’s any record of his conversation with the housing department?
And I hate to hear about you feeling sick. Have you managed to see a doctor? As you say, you’ve been going flat out and might just be run down. They might just be able to put your mind to rest?
Jx
# # #
Hey J
Re: Rob’s tower request, I’ve spoken to student accommodation and it doesn’t sound promising, especially if Rob just got on the phone and asked someone MAN TO MAN. We’re talking about an informal call from seven years ago :/
I am gonna take another run at Fairfield Property Management, though. Someone found out about that crawl space somehow, and I think I agree with Sarah. It only makes sense for it to have been someone who was OUTSIDE of Zoe’s life. Her friends could go and see her any time they liked.
That plus the harassment I’ve had makes me think that someone I’VE interviewed must be on edge about all this. And who have I interviewed who was obsessed with Zoe AND shut out from her life? Rob Nolan.
I hear you on the doctor, I do. It’s just that I know what happens next if it’s bad news. Cancer could stop everything for me. Again. You’ve never had to go through that, you don’t know what you’re asking. I can’t explain it but I KNOW I’m close to something here. I just need a few more days before I can risk hearing the worst. It won’t be longer than that because, honestly, I’m sick all the time atm. Anyway. Thanks Joe.
Ex
26.
“Canal Street”
JAI MAHMOOD:
Oh man, you wouldn’t believe how many times I woke up with no memory of the night before and a guy in scrubs standing over me saying, “Son, you’re lucky to be alive.” I thought, Fuck me. If this is what luck feels like, curse me any time. By then, so many people I knew had died. Mickey Mouth, Bi George, Typhoid Mary. Some of them I called ambulances for, some of them just stopped coming around. They weren’t like Zoe. There was never any mystery when one of them went missing. In a horrible way, you knew all about what happened.
I only made it to one funeral in that whole time, and that was my mum’s. Wasn’t even invited, and I was so broke I had to steal the suit I went in. After that, it was bad. I called Fintan, crying, asking for help, but as soon as he said the word “rehab,” I hung up. I was doing the limbo, man. As long as I could still dance under that pole, I didn’t care how low down I got. Like, I was at that stage where you’re down to one of everything. One pair of underpants, one pair of socks, one pair of trousers. One pound in my pocket, one friend in the world, one-track mind. But because I was an addict, to me, that was all I needed. I thought, How can I stop now when I’ve still got so much left to lose? I was the real thing, a living, breathing Oxy-moron. What I’m saying is I wasn’t sitting around thinking, like, Where are they now?
FINTAN MURPHY:
I’d hear from Jai every so often, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes with a call from someone he owed money to. More often than not from the police or the Royal Infirmary. I always tried to reach out, but he didn’t make it easy. Maybe that’s why I started steering the work of the Nolan Foundation more and more toward the problems of substance abuse. It was something Robert always resisted—I think he thought it unseemly—but it was the great problem of our time and place and something it seemed likely Zoe had struggled with too. Our work drifted naturally in that direction as Robert’s attention drifted elsewhere. The foundation merged with a homeless shelter I’d worked at in Ancoats and then began expanding their program. When four out of five people are walking through the door with addictions, it doesn’t seem good enough to just give them a warm meal and send them on their way.
JAI MAHMOOD:
It was another year after the funeral before I ran out of things. Underpants, socks, excuses. I got right down to my very last possession, right down to my soul, and I’d started to feel like even that had one foot in the grave. The limbo pole was set too low, man. I couldn’t get under it anymore. When I finally asked Fintan for help, he never called me out on my shit. He never said, “How many times am I gonna have to bail you out?” He stumped up and put me in rehab, probably saved my life.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Once the sex-tape story broke, I got packed off home from work. My phone started ringing with strange offers and requests, and I got the whole sodding weekend to myself so I could really stew in it. Technology’s come on leaps and bounds since the last time I waded through this sort of shit, and it was great to get a demonstration in how connected we are now, all the ways you can get called a liar, a cheater and a cunt without leaving the comfort of your own home. If you haven’t received a death threat via LinkedIn, if there isn’t a Twitter parody account with your picture attached—mine’s called Andrew De-Flowers—then have you even really lived? One company called TripleXDirectory offered me money to produce an actual porn film, as long as I could get Kim involved. They sounded sincere, but I was probably live on Australian radio or something, probably speaking to a shock jock or their prime minister, however it works over there. I told them the truth anyway, that it sounded a fuck sight better than another Christmas in retail, but alas, I hadn’t spoken to Kim in the worst part of a decade.