Simon and I discussed the worst-case scenario, that Jessica Paige had some sort of involvement in the murders of Charlie and Scott. I asked him a difficult question:
“If the fastest route from the Paradise Casino to the Glenfrome Estate took nine minutes, do you think Jessy Paige would have had time to get there, witness or be involved in the death of the boys, and then leave, change clothing or whatever she had to do, and arrive back later in a taxi?”
“It would be tight, though that depends on where she got into the taxi, but it would be possible.”
Maya and I are incredibly grateful to this team of brilliant students for their research. We followed the lead they had given us and found that, unfortunately, neither the Blue Door pub nor the taxi firm exist there any longer. In the past twenty years a large part of Blackhorse Lane has been cleared to make way for a new housing development. This is an exciting lead, though, and we will continue to investigate and bring you what we find.
You might be wondering why we did not do this research ourselves and why this episode might not feel as put together as our previous ones. The reason is that at approximately 20:45 on Wednesday evening, Maya was assaulted on the street where we live.
About seventy-five yards from our front door, a man dressed in dark clothing and a beanie dragged her from the pavement and down an unlit alleyway leading to some garages behind the properties opposite ours. He threatened to sexually assault her and told her she had been, and I quote, “poking your nose where you shouldn’t.” He pushed her up against a wall and covered her mouth with a gloved hand. He held a knife to the side of her neck. Before anything worse could happen, he was disturbed by a car turning into the alleyway. He tried to drag Maya farther out of sight, but she managed to shake free of him and ran home. He didn’t follow her. She sustained a cut to the side of her neck. Maya got the wound checked out at A&E and we reported the assault to the police.
I am racked with guilt. This happened because I involved Maya in the podcast. We went to bed that night very shaken. I could not sleep. I sat up and watched her resting. The inky light in our bedroom seemed to shroud her. I climbed in beside her and found she was shivering. I held her until she slept, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I thought about how I had risked my future to seek answers in my past. I couldn’t help listening out for every bump and thump in the night. I feared somebody would try to break into our property and hurt us in our beds.
My state of mind was so sickly that something unexpected happened. I remembered something. A memory that I once buried very deep fought its way back to me. I tried to make it disappear. I opened my eyes and fixed them on the spidery cracks in the ceiling plaster and the once opulent but now peeling ceiling rose from which our junk-shop chandelier hangs. I imagined the chandelier’s pale pink icicle drops tinkling in a breeze. I imagined each bulb being replaced by a flaming candle. I imagined that the cracks in the ceiling were the cracks in my mind. I ran out of things to imagine, which was when the memory I had been trying to push to the back of my mind began to play like an old-fashioned cine reel. I watched a scene that I hadn’t seen for twenty years:
It is the afternoon of Sunday, 18 August 1996. I am wearing my Atlanta Olympics T-shirt and it is not ripped yet. Me, Charlie, and Scott are hanging round behind one of the towers on the estate in a dark alley around the back of the social club. Black refuse bags are heaped in a pile. Dirty nappies spill from one of them, and when we kick one of the others, we hear the sharp chink of empties. Charlie takes a look in the bag. There’s a bottle of Napoleon brandy. He swigs the dregs and smashes the bottle. We have a pissing contest up the wall of the social club and Scott wins easily. I notice the bag moving first and point it out to the others. Charlie jumps a mile. “Fuck!” he says. “What is it?”
We approach cautiously. As we get closer, a corner of the bag bulges, as if something inside is squirming. We scream and run out of the alley.
Sidney Noyce is there. “Hello, Scott,” he says. He liked Scott the most out of the three of us, probably because Scott was the nicest.
“Hey, Sid,” Scott says. “Do you want to do something?”
We know he’ll say yes. He always does. Charlie points down the alleyway. “Go and see what’s in that bag.” Sid nods. He’s too stupid to be afraid. We watch from the end of the alley. Sid pokes the bag first, and we all recoil when it moves again. He’s not bothered, though. He kneels down and makes a rip in the plastic and we can’t see exactly what he’s doing but he says, “Hello!” and when he turns around, he’s holding a little creature in his arms and smiling even more widely than before. The creature whimpers.
“What is it?” I say.
“Puppy,” Sid says.
The little dog is brown with a white flash on its tummy. It has a pink nose and floppy ears. Its eyes are open and so is its mouth. It is panting with shallow, noisy breaths.
“Are there any more?” Charlie asks.
“Just this one,” Sid says.
Charlie puts his arms out to take the dog. When Sid hands it over, the dog cries again and we see that there’s something wrong. Two of its legs are hanging down unnaturally.
“His legs are broken,” Charlie says. “Some bugger left him here to die.” He’s upset. Charlie loves dogs.
“What shall we do with him?”
“He’s buggered,” Charlie says. He spends enough time at the kennels that he thinks he knows this.
“No!” Sid says. He tries to snatch the puppy back and the creature squeals.
“Sid!” Charlie says. “We have to kill it.”
“We should take him down the vet,” I say. I have only a scant idea of how to take care of animals, but I’m pretty sure about this.
“With what money?” Charlie asks. “Vet costs an arm and a leg.” He kneels down and strokes the puppy, fondling its ears gently. “Who’s going to pay for that?” He sounds angry and he’s right. None of our parents have money for a vet. “He’s too far gone anyway,” Charlie says.
We go to the club to fetch water for the dog, but we can’t persuade it to drink. Charlie gets upset when it begins to whimper.
“Sid,” Charlie says, “you have to kill it. It’s not kind for it to be alive.”
Sid shakes his head.
“You have to. You’re stronger than me. You can do it quick.”
“I don’t want to.” Sid steps back.
“Come on! Do you want this dog to suffer because of you?”
“I don’t know how to kill it.”
“I’ll hold him. You squeeze his neck. Squeeze tight and don’t let go.”
“Go on, Sid.” Scott pokes him in the back and I do, too.
Charlie cradles the puppy and Sid places a large hand on its neck. He begins to squeeze. Charlie screams and Scott and I jump as the puppy reacts reflexively. It wriggles vigorously for just a second and its head whips round, small teeth marking the inside of Charlie’s arm. He bleeds. Droplets fall onto the hem of one of Sid’s trouser legs as he kneels beside Charlie with his hand clamped on the puppy’s neck until long after it stops moving.
“Let go now,” Charlie says. “Let go now! That’s enough, Sid. Stop!”
Sid steps away. “Sorry, Charlie,” he says.
Charlie is crying. His tears fall onto the puppy’s fur. He strokes it for a few moments and we are all quiet, watching him, but he can’t get over it. He is so upset he turns on Sid. “Fuck off!” he says. “Dog killer!” He reaches for a crumpled aluminum can that has spilled from the bag and throws it at Sid. “Fuck off!”
Sid looks at me and at Scott, but we never break ranks. “Fuck off, Sid,” I say. “You’ve upset him now. Can’t you do anything right?” Sid looks horrified. He reaches down to try to console Charlie, or maybe it’s to give the puppy one last stroke. “Don’t touch me!” Charlie shouts. “Never touch me or my friends! You’re dirty! You enjoyed that! You’re a dirty dog murderer.” He’s crying loudly now, and Scott and I go to him. Scott hugs him. “What bugge
r would hurt a dog like that?” Charlie says over and over again. When we look up again, Sid has gone, and later, before we go to the playground and sit in the concrete tubes, we try to bury the puppy in a patch of land near the estate, but the ground is too hard to dig, so we tear up big chunks of long grass and lay them on top of the puppy instead.
The memory of this scene plays again and again in my mind as I lie in the dark beside Maya. I realize that for the past twenty years I have been the only person who knows the true reason why the police discovered Charlie’s blood on Sidney Noyce’s trousers. Perhaps this is why I have felt so certain Owen Weston might be right about Sid’s innocence. Perhaps it is why I am prepared to dig into alternative scenarios for what might have happened that night in spite of the intimidation.
I apologize for this podcast being a sort of extended monologue and reflection. Things have felt very personal this week, and very strange.
Maya has recovered physically from the assault and we are beginning to rebuild emotionally. We are not sure how this act of violence will affect the podcast going forward long-term, but we can assure you that we will be back next week with a new episode and another important development. We will not be cowed, because if there is one thing this attack tells us, it’s that somebody has something to hide, and our next episode will look into that more closely than ever. Here’s a taster from ex–Detective Superintendent Howard Smail:
“What I do know is that we were never able to ascertain who Jessica Paige’s boyfriend was. We were obviously very keen to trace him, but he was an absolute mystery man so far as we could tell.”
Chapter 19
On the night Jessica arrives in Morocco, there’s a dinner for the cast and crew at the hotel. At Nick’s request, she is hastily added to the seating plan. She wishes she’d known it was happening because she would have delayed her arrival to avoid the social overexposure. Nowadays she avoids big gatherings.
Jess looks down the long, narrow table where the movie’s cast and crew are seated. Swags of fairy lights hang overhead, and glazed tagine dishes have been set at regular intervals down the length of the table. As each dish is ceremoniously uncovered by the waiting staff, a cone of steaming couscous appears, topped with tender meat, fresh herbs, and gleaming crimson pomegranate seeds scattered as liberally as birdseed.
The woman sitting beside Jess is a young actress. As Jess offers her bread, the actress covers her plate with her hand and stares morosely toward the far end of the table, where the big-name cast members are sitting with the director and producers. Bursts of laughter issue from them and billow down the table’s length. Their crystal and cutlery seem to glint more magically than anybody else’s, steam seems to rise more dramatically from the dishes they have in front of them, and waiters cluster behind them as if drawn in by their power. It’s an intoxicating sight for the young and hungry, Jess understands that, even though she’s become immune to this brand of envy. She reaches for the bottle of wine and tops up her own glass and the actress’s. “Have a drink, love,” she says. “It’ll do you good. Why don’t you tell me everything about yourself? I want to know it all.”
The tactic works like a charm on this vapid girl, who is not the beauty she supposes herself to be. Her features flirt with loveliness, Jess thinks, but shy away from it at the last moment. The actress takes the conversational bait and Jess is able to sit back and appear to listen to the energetic monologue. It includes a catalogue of insecurities about her agent, her prospect of auditions after this shoot is over, and her current role, then segues into a tiresome description of the drama teacher who saw her potential. Jess nods and mutters “uh-huh” and “amazing” between mouthfuls of the lamb, which is delicious, and little more is needed in the way of interaction.
Jess thinks of her own career break, which she owes to Nick. It was a year after Charlie died, six months after Nick had taken her under his wing. Jess had spiraled blackly out of control by then. Charlie, resented by her and badly cared for by her at times, had nevertheless been an anchor in her life when he was alive. After his murder, she floated—rudderless and defenseless—further into the worlds of others than she had ever gone before, and was used by them as if she were a rag doll.
The actress leans across Jess to top up her wineglass. Fairy lights dance in her eyes. She’s enjoying her audience, Jess thinks, and makes an effort to concentrate better. Listening to the woman talk, Jess feels nothing but relief that she’s out of the business. She’ll never regret doing Dart Street, though. In her time on the soap she discovered she was a good actress and threw herself into the punishing shooting schedule to obliterate the rag doll. Rebuilding herself was a shaky business, but it brought her a measure of self-respect, the first she had ever experienced. The job and Nick and their life together haven’t been able to stop her looking back over her shoulder and feeling the drag of shame and guilt, but they have taught her to look forward, too, and imagine a different, better life.
Jess glances down the table to where Nick is sitting. He catches her gaze and winks. She smiles. Nobody else notices. Jess sips her wine. Without Nick, she would be nothing, nobody. She would not be a good person. That he will stop loving her is a daily fear. It comes on strong even as she sits at the garlanded table; she feels as if bitter juice has seeped into the joints of her jaw. She’s grateful to be interrupted by the actress standing abruptly and raising her voice at a photographer who is working her way down the table.
“Please don’t take pictures of me without warning me first,” the actress snaps. “Is that going on social media?” Careful, Jess thinks, or they’ll cast you as a harpy.
“Excuse me,” Jess murmurs to nobody in particular. “I’m going to find the little girls’ room.” She follows signs for the restrooms and finds herself in a corridor where the floor is tiled in black and white and a swing door flaps back and forth, giving glimpses of a busy kitchen where sweaty men work fast and noisily.
Jess moves on a few paces and leans against the wall. The plaster feels cool against her backless dress. She eases her feet out of her punishingly high-heeled sandals and lets her toes spread on the cool tiles, enjoying the feeling of relief. She fishes her phone out of her bag and checks it. Nothing from Erica. She feels a twinge of concern. She tries to call Erica, but there’s no answer and she leaves a short, upbeat voice mail to disguise her anxiety: “Call me, please, darling, when you get this. Love you!!”
She wonders if she should call Olly’s mother and ask if Erica is okay. It’s pretty much a taboo thing to do now that the kids are teenaged, but Jess doesn’t care. She calls, but it goes to voice mail. Jess leaves a message saying she’d appreciate a quick text or phone call to confirm all is well back home. It’ll infuriate Erica if she finds out, but Jess doesn’t care. She has learnt in the bitterest way that if you don’t look after your own, chances are that nobody else will.
When she returns to the terrace, the evening has progressed. A band has set up in a corner and they’re tuning up. People are leaving the table and mingling. She feels a hand on her elbow and turns to see Nick.
“Thank god you’re here,” he whispers into her neck. “I’m so sick of this lot already, and it’s only been a week.”
Their faces are as close as they could be without touching. She can tell he’s pretty drunk already, but she doesn’t mind. She moves her cheek alongside his. She doesn’t mention that she’s worried about Erica. He’s had a tough week. He deserves to let his hair down. The band starts to play. The lead singer is a pale-skinned woman with a burst of curly hair and lips that look bitten pink. She has a very decent voice. She starts with Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love,” and the smile Nick gives Jess melts her heart a little for the second time that evening. “Dance?” he asks.
Nick holds her close. After the first number the next tune is livelier, and his eyes light up in invitation. His tipsy enthusiasm infects Jess. She nods and he whirls her around the dance floor like a pro. Her sandals get kicked off once again. By the time
they step off the floor later in the evening they’re both flushed, riding high on the music and the rare treat of a grown-up night out. They grip each other’s hands and walk shoulder-to-shoulder on the way back to their room.
When Jess gets her phone out in the elevator it’s in the absolute expectation that she’ll have heard from both Erica and Olly’s mum. She’s right on one count. There is nothing from Erica, but she has four missed calls from Olly’s mum and a text that reads:
Tried to call you. I thought Olly and Erica at your house tonight and you off to Morocco tomorrow?
“No!” Jess says. “Oh, crap!” In the mirrored walls of the elevator an infinite number of versions of her say the same thing, all with the same smear of mascara under one eye. Jess tries to phone Olly’s mum immediately, but the signal is too patchy to connect.
I Know You Know Page 22