I Know You Know

by Gilly MacMillan

“Half past.”

  Fletcher looks at his watch. Only five minutes to wait, which would be the sensible thing to do if it avoids agitating Noyce junior. On the other hand, a bit of agitation can be helpful in an interview. You don’t always want your interviewee to feel in control. Fletcher fancies getting a look at Sid Noyce’s bedroom, too. “Do you mind if I go and say hello?” he asks in his best I’m-no-threat voice.

  “It’s your funeral,” Phil Noyce says. “Second on the left.”

  Fletcher follows the direction indicated and takes a few steps down a short corridor. He knocks gently on a door where SIDNEY is spelled out in childish wooden letters stuck on at chest height. He can hear the television, but no answer. He knocks again and this time opens the door a crack.

  Sidney Noyce is sitting on a single bed in a corner of the room. He’s easily as big as his father and is surrounded by the accoutrements of childhood. Fletcher has a tenuous grasp on popular culture, but he recognizes the design on Noyce’s duvet cover as the Ninja Turtles. Noyce glances at Fletcher and treats him to a glower that would have got Fletcher a sharp clip around the ear when he was a kid. Noyce’s eyes return to the television screen.

  Fletcher glances back down the corridor into the sitting room. Danny is standing beside Phil Noyce. Both have their arms folded. Noyce is nodding as Danny talks. Fletcher eases the door of the bedroom open a little more. He sees a couple of comic books on the bedside table and a well-loved copy of the Guinness Book of Records. Noyce is sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed, a couple of feet from a television that’s on a white chest of drawers.

  “What are you watching?” Fletcher asks.

  “Supermarket Sweep with Dale Winton,” Noyce replies readily. “They run and get things in the trolley. They can have anything they want.” He glances quickly at Fletcher with eyes wide as saucers at the wonder of it.

  “I like that one,” Fletcher says, though he’s never watched it. He eases himself into the room slowly and takes a seat on the side of the bed, keeping a good distance between himself and Noyce. Valerie appears in the doorway holding a mug of tea. She doesn’t enter but holds up the mug, offering it to Fletcher.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “Don’t come in!” Sidney says, though his eyes remain fixed on the TV set.

  “He doesn’t like me to come in his room,” Valerie explains. Her toes are inches from the door’s threshold. Fletcher stands up, takes the tea from her, and sits back down. The mattress springs creak. The bedding smells fruity.

  “Did your mum and dad tell you who I am and why I’m here?” Fletcher asks. Noyce shakes his head. His bottom lip protrudes farther than the top one. It’s moist with saliva. His back is large and powerful. “I’m a police detective and I’m here to have a chat with you about two boys who I think you know,” he says.

  This captures Noyce’s attention. “A detective like Sherlock Holmes?”

  Fletcher nods.

  “Do you solve mysteries?”

  “I do. And sometimes people help me.” Fletcher can’t see Valerie Noyce any longer but a shadow on the hall carpet tells him that she’s standing just out of sight. “People like you help me,” Fletcher adds as the credits roll on Supermarket Sweep. A voice-over announces the upcoming entertainment.

  “The next program is boring,” Noyce says. He presses a button on the TV, extinguishing the picture, and shifts round to face Fletcher. “Hi, mister detective.”

  “Hi. Now, tell me, do you think you can help me find out what happened to Charlie and Scott? Because they got hurt.”

  “They’re not dead,” Noyce says matter-of-factly, as if he’s informed, and Fletcher catches his breath.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because they was breathing when I put the carpet on them.”

  From the landing outside, there’s the sound of fabric scraping against a solid surface, as if Valerie Noyce is sinking to her knees, her back against the wall. Rainwater washes down the window behind Noyce, liquefying the view of the sky, the city, and the green hills beyond. The sudden pounding of Fletcher’s heart tells him that he—John Fletcher—is holding all the cards in his hand, right here, right now. Tread carefully, he thinks. Fuck Howard Smail, he thinks, and anybody else who thinks they own me. I have this. This could be mine.

  He stretches his fingers out and relaxes them. He allows himself no other movement. He is walking on eggshells, but his concentration is perfectly sharp. “Where were Charlie and Scott when you put the carpet on them?” he asks.

  “Behind the track.”

  “Were they hurt?”

  Noyce pauses before answering, apparently considering this. “I didn’t know if they were pretending or if it was real.”

  “What did you see? Can you tell me how they looked when you saw them?”

  “Scotty had blood on his hair,” he says. “They looked cold, so I pulled the carpet on them.” Jesus, Fletcher thinks. He draws in a deep breath to keep control. Noyce tears viciously at a fingernail with his teeth and looks out of the window. “It’s raining,” he says. He flattens the pad of his index finger on the glass, leaving a greasy smudge.

  “What else did you see?” Fletcher keeps his voice even and calm and drops it almost to a whisper. Trust is everything. This moment must not be broken.

  “I didn’t touch them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m not allowed to talk to them or touch them or follow them.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Scotty and Charlie and Cody.”

  “Do you know why they said it?”

  “Because I want to play with them, but they don’t want me to.”

  “How does that make you feel?” Fletcher asks. “When they tell you they don’t want to play with you?”

  Noyce shakes his head and turns away from Fletcher. The set of his jaw is truculent. The fingernail he bit is torn and bleeding. Noyce sucks it.

  “Do you feel angry when that happens?” Fletcher asks.

  “Sometimes.”

  “What do you do when you feel angry?”

  “I hit and I hit, but I’m not allowed to hit.”

  From the corridor comes the sound of a suppressed sob. Fletcher feels his heart rate quicken.

  “Did you hit Charlie and Scott?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure? It’s important to tell the truth.”

  “I only found them. I didn’t know if they was pretending, but I checked them and they was still breathing.”

  Fletcher wants to ask more, he’s desperate to, he’d love to squeeze a confession out of Noyce here and now, but they’ve got to do this properly or anything this man-child says won’t be admissible in court.

  “Sid,” he says, “have you ever had a ride in a police car?”

  “With lights on?”

  “With a radio. A real police radio. Would you like to? You could come and see the police station where the detectives work and we could carry on talking there.”

  Sid jumps to his feet. “Let’s go!”

  Fletcher avoids Valerie Noyce’s gaze as he walks out of the room with his hand on Sid’s shoulder. He remains focused, turning possibilities over in his mind one after the other. If he’s right in thinking he may have just been dealt a winning hand—and he’s feeling increasingly certain that he has—then he needs to use it as wisely as he can.

  “Sid’s going to come down the station and have a chat with us,” he tells Danny, who nods as if that was nothing special. Fletcher turns to Phil Noyce. “We would prefer it if one of you could come with him, if that’s possible? If not, we’ll make sure he has an appropriate adult with him at all times.”

  “We’ll come,” Valerie Noyce answers from behind Fletcher. She’s as pale as a ghost.

  “There won’t be room for you both in our car, I’m afraid,” Fletcher says. He feels as if a band is tightening around his chest as he says it, because it’s not true and he hasn’t got a Plan B if they call him
out on this. “Do you have your own transport?”

  Danny doesn’t move a muscle as Fletcher lies. Phil Noyce nods in acceptance, and Fletcher scribbles down the address of the Southmead Station in a businesslike way even while his adrenaline surges in anticipation of what he wants to do next.

  Downstairs in the parking area, they jog through the rain, Sid Noyce acting like it’s a game. Fletcher gets into the back of the car with Noyce, and Danny takes the wheel. Noyce’s parents climb into a beaten-up Ford Fiesta and Fletcher sees the taillights come on and off as they try to get it started.

  “Where’s the radio?” Noyce asks as Danny starts the ignition and the wipers slice across the windscreen.

  “It’s in the front. Built into the dashboard. Look.” Danny turns on the radio and it obliges by crackling with speech. “Not many people get to see that,” Fletcher says. Noyce leans forward to inspect the radio more closely. He reaches out to touch the handset that’s clipped to the side. “Don’t touch!” Fletcher says. Noyce snatches his hand back and looks upset.

  “Sorry,” Fletcher says. He mustn’t lose Noyce. “We can’t touch it now, we’re just listening in case there are any burglars we need to chase. You’re part of the team now.”

  “Which station?” Danny asks. They are closest to Trinity Road, but Fletcher needs as much time as possible in the car with Noyce. They could go the “pretty way” to Trinity—they’ve done that before plenty of times—but he thinks it’s safer to head back to base.

  “Southmead,” he says. “I think Sidney would like to see the detective headquarters, wouldn’t you, Sid?”

  Danny’s and Fletcher’s eyes meet in the rearview mirror, and Danny nods.

  It’s Time to Tell

  Episode 6—The Case Against Sidney Noyce and the Silencing of Owen Weston

  “The jury had to decide: was Sidney Noyce a gentle giant or an avenging monster? He presented as the former in court, but the evidence against him piled up. Throw into the pot an inept defense and an aggressive and skillful prosecution, and what hope did he have?”

  My name is Cody Swift. I’m a filmmaker and your host of It’s Time to Tell, a Dishlicker Podcast Production. That’s the voice of Owen Weston, the crime reporter who has mounted a long crusade to convince others that Sidney Noyce was innocent of murdering my best friends, Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby, in 1996. Owen is asking one of many questions about this case that have haunted him for twenty years.

  Maya and I tried to secure an interview with the barrister, Robert Clay, who defended Sidney Noyce. He wasn’t easy to find because he no longer works in the law. The most recent professional trace of him we discovered was a ten-year-old ruling by the Bar Standards Board, who fined and suspended him because he had, and I quote, “behaved in a way likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public placed in him and his profession.”

  With a bit more persistent research we found a phone number for a Robert Clay who we thought might be the same man. He appeared to have settled on the south coast, where he works at a boatyard. I gave him a call:

  “Hello. Is this Robert Clay?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Hi, Mr. Clay, my name is Cody Swift. I’m working on a true crime podcast concerning the murders of my best friends, Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby, back in 1996. I believe you defended Sidney Noyce, the man accused of murdering them. I would love to ask you a few questions about Sidney Noyce’s trial, if you’re willing to talk to me.”

  “No. Not willing.”

  “But that’s you? You were the barrister defending Noyce?”

  “I was.”

  “Mr. Clay, it was alleged by a reporter at the time that your defense of Sidney Noyce was not as robust as it might have been. Do you have anything to say to that?”

  “Absolutely no comment. Please leave me alone.”

  “Do you believe Sidney Noyce was innocent, Mr. Clay? Do you think you let him down?”

  What you just heard is Robert Clay hanging up. I called back on more than one occasion, but it went to voice mail. I left messages, but he didn’t return them.

  We tried to track down the prosecution barrister to see what she had to say, but learned that she had passed away. She was close to retirement at the time of the trial, so it wasn’t surprising news.

  In the absence of interviews with the main players for the prosecution and defense, my primary resource for learning about the day-to-day machinations at the trial has been the reporting done by Owen Weston for the Bristol Echo. I’m a fan of his work. He maintains a steady, reasonable tone, he avoids sensationalism, and like a man after my own heart, he has clearly done his research. I also discovered that he won a prize for his coverage of the Noyce trial.

  Owen Weston invited me to come and interview him at his home.

  The drive to see Weston takes me north of Bristol beyond the suburbs and into the fringes of the countryside. His house is one of a row of bungalows built on a ridge overlooking the Severn Valley. He welcomes me warmly and shows me through the house into a conservatory, which has spectacular views across the broad valley toward Wales. The river glints below, a silver band edged by the green silhouettes of trees. Pockets of fog hover in dips and ditches, and skinny layers of clouds crowd the horizon. The scene is a held breath, a moment of stillness.

  Weston is tall and slim with curly and abundant gray hair. I figure he is just on the far side of seventy years old. His shoulders stoop, but only a little. In the main, he seems physically fit, and a Times newspaper with completed crossword and sudoku puzzles tells me he is mentally fit, too. He has kind eyes and a gentle manner that put me at ease immediately. As we chat, I begin to understand that his nonthreatening demeanor is very likely one of the reasons Weston has persuaded so many people to talk to him over the years.

  I jump right in with the question that haunts me most.

  “Do you think Sidney Noyce killed Charlie and Scott?”

  “I don’t know if he did or not—he could have—but what I do believe is that the police did not treat him fairly and he did not get a fair trial as a result. You read my recent article, so you will know that I’m not the only one to have my doubts about Noyce’s treatment. His solicitor expressed reservations, too.”

  “Can you talk about what she said?”

  “Her name is Julie McDowell. She was the duty solicitor on the day Sidney Noyce was brought in, questioned, and subsequently arrested at Southmead Station by Detective Inspector John Fletcher. Full disclosure: Julie is a friend of mine. I got to know her well, as we had met each other at court on numerous occasions when I was covering stories. I had—still have—a lot of respect for her. She was present at the first interview with Noyce after they arrested him and she wasn’t comfortable with what she observed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Frustratingly, she wasn’t able to put her finger on what exactly made her feel that something about the situation was off, but she described how she had the feeling that there was something going on behind the scenes.”

  “Such as?”

  “Possibly something that had gone on between Noyce and CID, prior to her involvement. It’s not unusual for detectives to withhold information from solicitors and muck about with disclosure and that kind of thing—everybody is trying to work the system to their advantage—but in this case she said John Fletcher seemed too eager to disclose, if that makes sense. He was trying incredibly hard to demonstrate that he was doing everything by the book, ostentatiously so.”

  “Could that be because of the nature of this case?”

  “It could be, but Julie had worked on some big cases and she had never experienced anything quite like it before. That eagerness on the part of the police to demonstrate overtly that they are doing everything by the book, it’s not unheard of, but it was unusual and it certainly wasn’t associated with DI Fletcher. He had a mild reputation for being a bit of a maverick. He was certainly smart enough to work the system to get the results he wanted.”

 
; “The lady doth protest too much?”

  “That’s one way to describe it, yes, though I’m not sure how John Fletcher would feel about being described as a lady. It boiled down to the fact that Fletcher was working so hard to demonstrate that everything was tickety-boo, it made an experienced solicitor like Julie smell a rat.”

  “Did she have any evidence of wrongdoing?”

  “If she had, she would have used it, but never underestimate a gut feeling when it’s underpinned by years of experience and observation. Instinct can be very accurate.”

  “Did you find any evidence yourself?”

  “I hate to say it, but where this case is concerned, I had to admit defeat for personal reasons, but I still believe there is more out there to be discovered and this might be the time to find it.”

  I’ll come back to the reasons why Weston gave up investigating, because they are important, but I want to spend a few more moments considering Julie McDowell. Maya and I felt it was important to contact Julie herself. She has moved on from Bristol and now lives and works in Norfolk. Julie didn’t want to record an interview, but she sent us this statement by email. This is Maya reading it out:

  “I have an excellent track record as a solicitor. I represent many of my clients in court. There are very few cases that gnaw at me for years after they’re over, but Sidney Noyce’s case is one of those. Something felt wrong at the time, and still feels wrong. I was devastated to hear that he took his own life. It brought a lot of the frustration I felt at the time flooding back. Sidney Noyce was not a perfect man, but I was, and remain, convinced he was not a murderer. A certain police officer twisted Noyce around his little finger. I raised my suspicions, and had anybody pursued them seriously, I believe they could have been enough for the case to be dismissed, but unfortunately the officer concerned was too clever for that. In that situation, there is nothing you can do, but to this day I continue to live with the sense that I, and the justice system, failed Sidney Noyce.”

  Interesting, don’t you think? To get a better idea of what Noyce was up against at trial, I asked Owen Weston to summarize the key evidence against him.