I Know You Know Page 12

  “Stuart Legrand. What can I do for you, detectives?”

  “We’re interested in some visitors to the casino on Sunday night, specifically a woman called Jessica Paige. Apparently she goes by Jessy.”

  “Don’t know her.” It’s a quick response.

  “Twenty-six years old, brunette, brown eyes, about five-four.”

  Legrand shakes his head. “Do you know what time she was here?”

  “Any time up until approximately eleven P.M.” This is Fletcher’s best guess. It fits with her arrival time back at the estate and takes into account the fact that she may have gone somewhere else between the casino and home.

  “Do you know what she played?”

  “I’m hoping you can tell me that,” Fletcher says. “It’s likely she was drinking here.”

  “We’ll start with the bar cameras. I hope you’ve got some time.”

  Legrand takes them back out into the corridor and through a chipped unmarked door into another room, where there’s an impressive bank of CCTV monitors. A skinny guy has his feet up on the desk. He’s eating crisps from a packet. An open newspaper is balanced on his thighs. He makes no move to adjust his position.

  Legrand sets up the detectives in front of a different screen that’s hooked up to a VCR. He inserts a tape of the bar footage from Sunday night for them to review. Danny offers to stay and look through it all and Fletcher agrees so he can get back to the office, but he hasn’t even stepped out of the room when Danny says, “That’s her!”

  The quality of the footage is good. Jessica Paige is clearly visible sitting on a barstool. Or rather she’s half sitting and half standing, perched on the edge of the stool with her legs stretched out in front of her as if to keep herself from falling. She’s disheveled and looks drunk. Her dress is scanty and rucked up too high on her thighs; her hair is flopping over her face. Danny and Fletcher watch as a man approaches her. His face is partially obscured by a hat, but Fletcher feels an immediate tug of recognition. Jessy pulls her head up with some effort in response to something the man says and they exchange words. Her face falls as she listens to him and she lifts her glass in a mock toast when he walks away from her. He’s carrying himself as if he’s angry.

  “Look at the state of her,” Danny says.

  Legrand is defensive. “She’s an adult. We don’t babysit our clients.”

  “Do you recognize the man?”

  Fletcher licks his lips, which suddenly feel papery and tacky. He recognizes the man, but he remains mute as Legrand shakes his head with a tight, controlled movement. It strikes Fletcher as forced. Maybe he’s not the only one in the room who knows it might be more than his life is worth to name this man in this context.

  “You sure?” Danny asks.

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  They watch more of the tape. Jessy gets up from the stool, staggers, steadies herself, and totters out of view as if she was being pulled by a string. Fletcher notes the time stamp: 22:13. This must be the start of her journey home, though according to witness statements she didn’t arrive at the estate—which is approximately a fifteen-minute drive away—until 23:25. Unless she walked. “Have you got cameras in the car park?” he asks.

  There’s hesitation. Fletcher doesn’t have time for it. The feeling of having the dying boy in his arms returns, hot and alive. The sounds of the autopsy follow. Added to those is the weight of recognizing the man who is with Jessy Paige on the tape. “We’re investigating a murder, Mr. Legrand. Will you be helping us with our inquiries, or will I be making a call to our organized crime unit to let them know I suspect there’s something to investigate in the way this casino is run?”

  Legrand doesn’t take his eyes off Fletcher’s, but he says, “Get the car park tapes, Ray,” and the skinny man jumps to it.

  The quality of the car park tapes isn’t as clear as the footage from inside—no need for it, Fletcher supposes—but they see well enough that a man exits the casino at 22:13 and Jessy Paige follows him thirty seconds later. It’s the same man she was talking to in the bar. Once again, his face is partially obscured. Fletcher holds himself very still as he watches. On the tape the man strides to a car and gets into it. Jessy follows drunkenly, weaving her way between the few other parked cars as laboriously as if she was in a complicated maze. The car headlights switch on when she’s at least thirty yards away. As she totters along, the driver aggressively backs out of the parking spot and accelerates toward her.

  Jessy stops, blinded by the headlights, and puts her hand up to cover her eyes. She’s standing a few feet in front of the car and looks as functional as a rag doll. Her hair is stringy, and in the shadow of her arm her eyes are dark bruises. The car lurches forward again, another few feet toward her. And then another. Jessy stands her ground lopsidedly. When the car has remained stationary for a few seconds, she walks toward it and slams her hands on the bonnet. Fletcher is certain the engine is gunning, but there is no sound on the tape, so he can’t be sure. Jessy Paige stares through the windscreen at the driver. Fletcher has never seen anybody look so broken and so defiant all at once. He feels a small spark of admiration, but it’s tempered by fear, because it’s crystal clear that Jessy Paige was playing with fire the night her son went missing.

  “Jesus,” Danny says, “she’s going to go with him, isn’t she?”

  They watch as she walks around the car, opens the passenger door, and gets in. The driver reaches a hand toward her and grabs her by the back of the neck. She tenses and stays very still, eyes shut. Her face is obscured when he leans in and kisses her. The kiss doesn’t last long. It is not loving, more a gesture of violent possession. The driver straightens up and accelerates away. As the car pulls out of the parking area the tape allows a quick final glimpse of Jessica’s face, pale as a moon, turned toward the camera as she looks out of the window. Fletcher would give good money to know what she’s thinking.

  “Fit bird,” Danny says. “She’s got some bollocks, too.”

  Fletcher bites his tongue. “Are you sure you don’t recognize this man?” Danny asks again. It’s a negative from both Legrand and his employee.

  “We’ll run the number plate,” Fletcher says to divert Danny’s attention, and because that’s what Danny will be expecting them to do. “We’ll take the tapes with us.” Fletcher eyeballs Legrand with his best cop stare. “You can hand them over now or I’ll be back in half an hour with a warrant and a few uniformed officers who might want a chat with your punters.”

  The detectives leave the casino five minutes later. Fletcher holds a rattling box of videocassettes in his arms.

  It’s Time to Tell

  Episode 5—The Prime Suspect

  “‘Wednesday, 21 August, time: 09:45.

  “‘Priority to speak to the man known as Sid the Village. We believe his full name to be Sidney Noyce. Twenty-four years old. Lives with his parents in Nightingale Tower on Glenfrome Estate. Three reasons:

  Cody Swift reports that he, Scott, and Charlie spent time with Sidney Noyce at the dog track kennels on the morning before Scott and Charlie disappeared.

  An estate resident reports seeing Sidney Noyce walking down Primrose Lane in the path of Scott and Charlie at approximately 20:15 on the night the boys disappeared.

  Estate residents report that Sidney Noyce and the boys were often spotted together around the estate during the summer.’”

  My name is Cody Swift. I’m a filmmaker and your host of It’s Time to Tell, a Dishlicker Podcast Production. What you just heard is ex–Detective Superintendent Howard Smail reading from the photocopied pages of his policy book. That’s the book he made notes in during his 1996 investigation into the murders of my best friends, Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby. Smail and I discussed what he recorded in the book and the clip that follows is our conversation. You’ll hear Smail’s voice first.

  “That’s the first time Noyce’s name appears in the book.”

  “Can you tell us about Noyce?”

  “He quickly
became a person of interest in the investigation, but it was complicated. We were not initially aware of how acute his impairment was, but it turned out it was very severe. Nowadays we would describe Sidney Noyce as having special educational needs. He was a twenty-four-year-old man with the mental age of a ten-year-old boy.”

  “A boy in a man’s body.”

  “Yes. Exactly that. Noyce didn’t have a criminal record. Estate residents we talked to who knew him said he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, and certainly when we began our inquiries—before anybody had had ideas put into their heads—nobody seemed to think him capable of harm. He helped out on and off at the dog track, and he got the occasional shift collecting trolleys at Tesco.”

  “Can you tell us a bit about the sighting of Sidney Noyce on the night of the murders?”

  “The last sighting of Charlie and Scott was when they walked down a lane called Primrose Lane that divided one of the high-rise blocks from the semidetached housing on the estate. It went from east to west and led from a play area at the center of the estate toward the dog track and the new Tesco supermarket. Officers interviewed a resident of Meadowsweet Tower, which overlooked the lane, and she stated that she saw Charlie and Scott walking along Primrose Lane in the direction of the dog track at approximately 20:15 on the night of Sunday, 18 August. She was sitting out on her balcony, smoking a cigarette. She saw Sidney Noyce following in the path of the boys. He walked east up Primrose Lane a few minutes after them.”

  “Was the identification of Noyce secure?”

  “The witness was credible. She’d come across Noyce before, so she could identify him. Additionally, Sidney Noyce’s mother stated that her son went out to buy some ketchup at some point that evening, though she couldn’t pinpoint the precise time because she went out for the evening, so nobody could tell us exactly what time he returned home either and what kind of state he was in when he did. Based on that information, I made Sidney Noyce one of our priorities for further investigation.”

  Maya and I have been working hard to try to find a variety of people to interview about Noyce in order to give you a balanced picture of him, but frustratingly, we haven’t had much success. People were either unwilling to talk or impossible to find.

  One success we have had is in locating Sidney Noyce’s mother, Valerie. Noyce’s father died a few months before Sidney took his own life. We’ll play you my interview with Valerie shortly, but before we do, there is one other person who can tell you a little about Sidney Noyce.

  That’s me. I knew Sidney Noyce.

  The reports in Smail’s policy book of Noyce’s hanging around with Charlie, Scott, and me in the summer of 1996 are true. But before I add my voice to the picture of Noyce that we’ve been building up, I need to be honest with you, because here’s where things get awkward for me. In the interests of being completely transparent, I’m going to let Howard Smail explain why. This clip of Smail speaking is from my interview with him at his home in Norway:

  “You and Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby took advantage of Sidney Noyce, didn’t you? You wound him up. We heard that from more than one person on the estate.”

  What Howard Smail said is true. The way Charlie, Scott, and I treated Sidney Noyce that summer is something I feel guilty about to this day. It is also why I felt particularly nervous about approaching Valerie Noyce, Sidney’s mother, to ask if she’d be willing to be interviewed. She knew how Charlie, Scott, and I treated her son because it formed part of the prosecution’s case against him and she attended every day of her son’s trial. The prosecution vigorously asserted that it was our poor treatment of Noyce that goaded him into retaliating with the act of violence that ended Scott’s and Charlie’s lives.

  We found Valerie Noyce easily. She still lives in the same flat in the Glenfrome Estate. It is to her credit that she agreed not only to see me but also to let me record an interview. At her request, I went to meet her in a park in Redland. That sounds more cloak-and-dagger than it was. Valerie has a cleaning job in a chapel beside the park, and it was convenient for her to meet me there.

  I find the chapel quite easily. It is a little gem hidden in a corner of the city I’m not familiar with. It is a small Georgian building built from Bath stone and surrounded by a graveyard in which every headstone seems to be tilting. I turn the heavy handle of the main door and ease it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Come on in out of the wind, my love.”

  Valerie Noyce is holding a feather duster in one hand, and she shakes my hand with the other. We are the only people in the chapel. It has impressive stained-glass windows and a large painting of Christ on the cross above the altar, framed by ornate wooden carvings. Valerie sees me looking at it. Her breath mists in front of her as she speaks.

  “They’re a devil to dust. Are you cold?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s always chilly in here, but I don’t feel it when I’m cleaning. I’d offer you a tea, but the kettle’s on the blink. Come on, let’s sit down.”

  There are only a few rows of pews and we sit in one toward the back of the chapel. I ask Valerie if she would be willing to describe Sidney and talk about the relationship he had with Charlie and Scott and me. I ask her not to hold back. To hear her side of the story feels like a sort of penance for the way I treated Sidney. Valerie looks at me with dark, restless eyes as she speaks. In the following clip you’ll hear one of the most challenging conversations I have ever had.

  “Sidney grew bigger than his dad before he was seventeen, but he never developed in his head. The doctors and the social workers told us he would only ever have the sense of a ten-year-old, and they were right. They call it mental impairment these days. Back then they said Sid was a retard. It’s not a nice word, is it? You taunted Sid something rotten, you boys did. Tormented him. Do you remember, you told him you would meet him at certain times and places? Then you wouldn’t turn up. You encouraged him to steal for you. Milk bottles from the van or from people’s steps, bits from the shop. You got him to buy you cans of Black Label because he was old enough—on paper, anyway. Did you know because of the stealing, Sid got banned from the corner shop on the estate, so he had to go all the way to Tesco if I sent him out to get something for me? They sound like little things, but they never stopped. It really affected him. I told him until I was blue in the face to keep away from you three, but he couldn’t see the harm in you because the problem was, no matter how bad you treated him, he wanted to play. He was lonely. To him, it felt like you little daredevils should be his friends because you were into all the things he wanted to be into. He thought you were fun, and in his head he was just like you.”

  “I understand that now that I’m an adult and I’m not making excuses—because I’m very, very ashamed of what we did and extremely sorry for how we treated Sid back then—but I don’t think any of us understood him or his condition.”

  “’Course you didn’t. Sidney seemed disgusting to you because he was as big as a man, but he didn’t act like one. That’s not natural. You weren’t the only ones who thought that, but you were the ones who truly made his life a misery. Do you remember one day you had him carrying an armchair somebody left in the foyer while they moved in, and putting it in the middle of the green by the estate? You sat on it like little princes, that Charlie smoking a cigarette bold as brass, and you told him to, you know, eff off, and threw stuff at him. Stones! They left bruises on Sid. I witnessed that with my own eyes. You wouldn’t treat an animal like that. You boys hurt his feelings all the time, but he couldn’t keep away from you. He didn’t have enough sense in him.”

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. We were stupid and thoughtless and, well, I’m incredibly sorry.”

  “You were kids. Have I upset you? Did I say too much? You said I should be honest, love.”

  “I meant it. The listeners need to hear what Sidney went through.”

  “Ask me something else. Change the subject.”

&nbs
p; “Can you tell me about Sid’s work at the dog track?”

  “Sid loved them dogs, and he couldn’t keep away from them either. Harry Jacks, one of the kennel stewards, was a friend of Sid’s dad. He took Sid down there whenever he could. Sid was ever so good with them dogs. He knew how to take care of them before they raced and after. He tidied up and cleaned the kennels, he did the water bowls after the race. Me and his dad hoped he could get a permanent position there, a few hours a week maybe, but one of the trainers took against him.”

  “Why?”

  “He said Sid couldn’t be trusted. There’s money riding on them dogs, of course that’s why they’re there, so the people who handle them have to be tight-lipped about what goes on in the kennels, and Sid wasn’t. He didn’t know how to be.”

  “Are you saying Sid might have known about some bad practice that was taking place? Illegal practice?”

  “I’m saying that if you work close with the dogs you know their form better than anyone else and you know what goes on. I’m not accusing nobody of nothing illegal. Sid loved it when you boys came down the kennels. Not you and Scott Ashby, though, was it? It was Charlie Paige, mostly. Sid said Charlie loved the dogs as much as he did.”

  “Do you know where Sid was going when he was spotted walking down Primrose Lane on the evening the boys disappeared?”

  “He was going to Tesco. To get some tomato ketchup. Like I told the police.”

  “Why didn’t he go to the corner shop?”

  “Because he got banned, like I said. They twisted that in court, of course, that sighting of him. Sid said he went to Tesco, but it was shut because of flooding, so he came back home and watched television, but the barrister made it sound like he was circling the block, looking for Scott and Charlie, wanting to hurt them. Like some kind of predator. Sid would never have done that. He was gentle as a lamb.”