They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

76 Autumn 2011

Half an hour later, on the second floor of the Munich Police HQ, I was in a function room that felt like a laboratory. With its pale blue walls and ancient office furniture, on which perched a battery of modern high-tech equipment and a plump, smiling man with a crew cut and a badly fitting uniform.

I volunteered to provide my fingerprints and photograph as I didn’t want to appear obstructive. The plump man indicated a chair that immediately brought to mind images I had once seen of Old Sparky, America’s most infamous electric chair.

This was a contraption consisting of a wooden chair on a swivel, at the end of what I can best describe as a wooden plank, facing, by contrast, a modern camera.

‘Frau Jones, please, a seat!’ He positively beamed encouragement at me, as if to sit in this chair was the greatest privilege he could bestow on any human being in his charge.

So I dutifully sat in it. It was hard. He partially disappeared behind the camera and called out, ‘At me, please, look here, ja!’

There was a brief flash.

Then he pulled a lever beside him that I hadn’t noticed, and my chair swivelled 90 degrees to the left. There was another flash. He pulled the lever again and I swivelled 180 degrees.

Flash!

‘All done!’ he announced.

Then Kriminalkommissar Steinmetz, who was waiting in an adjoining room, escorted me, along with a female officer, to a side office. The officer offered me coffee, which I accepted, and asked if I needed anything to eat. But I wasn’t hungry. It was 11 a.m. Steinmetz informed me that the two detectives from Jersey would be here in one hour.

Then the door slammed shut. And I realized for the first, and I hoped only time in my life, what a truly horrible sound that was. It shook every fibre in my body, and the sound echoed in my ears like the peal of a bell.

It was a tiny, windowless room, with the only place to sit an indented ledge at the far end.

The Jersey police couldn’t seriously think I had murdered Nicos, could they?

But they had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to find me.

What had happened since I’d left in the fishing boat that night? Had they found something they hadn’t told the press yet?

Nicos? His body?

Shit, was this going to backfire horribly on me? Oh God, I couldn’t bear it. I could feel my anxiety rising.

Just over an hour later I was in another room with the officers from Jersey. They introduced themselves. ‘Detective Constable Rosie Barclay and Detective Sergeant Jason Cowleard.’ She was pleasant, in her mid-thirties, I guessed. Wavy brown hair and conservatively dressed. The female soft-man to her hard-man colleague.

Cowleard was tall, bald and looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here, in a Munich Police Headquarters interview room, right now. And I couldn’t blame him.

It was small and horrible. Slime-green walls, a metal table, metal chairs, the sour, ingrained reek of a million cigarettes that had been smoked in here. Somewhere beyond these walls a glorious autumn day was happening — without us.

I had to hand it to these two, they had sure done their homework, in rapid time.

They knew the gym I had joined in Jersey, the Carrefour, and they’d already spoken to one of my buddies there, Beth Pettit, who had told them she had recently seen the bruises below my neck and had quizzed me on them. They’d spoken to our cleaning lady, Vesma Jermaka, who had told them how one morning a month ago she had arrived to find me crying, with a cut lip. DC Barclay said that Vesma had also told them that Nicos terrorized Bruno and had come close to striking him on several occasions. She had told them it was only a matter of time before he did hit Bruno, in her opinion.

I’d told Vesma just how vile and abusive Nicos had been to me, but that I’d been more worried about how he treated Bruno, and that I was really scared he would hurt him one day. I’d also said I was seriously thinking of leaving Nicos and that I was beginning to plan how.

When I asked them if they had any news of Nicos they exchanged a strange glance and replied, a little too bluntly, that they hadn’t.

‘Ms Jones,’ Jason Cowleard said. ‘At 9 p.m. on the night of September the twenty-sixth, a taxi driver, Toby McMichael, dropped you and your son outside a small apartment block just above Bouley Bay. None of the occupants know you there. So what was your actual destination on that night?’

I looked at them both. And I could see in their eyes that they knew.

‘Saint-Malo.’

‘Where you had a hire car booked with Sixt, which you were due to pick up in the morning,’ Cowleard said.

I looked at him, wondering how on earth he knew that.

‘Your cleaning lady, Ms Jermaka, gave us your phone number. We obtained the records from that and the numbers you had called in the days immediately prior to September the twenty-sixth.’

‘How did you get to Saint-Malo?’ DC Barclay asked.

‘On a boat,’ I replied.

‘So you were on a boat,’ DS Cowleard said, ‘heading out of Bouley Bay, shortly after the last time anyone saw Mr Christoforou?’

‘I think you are putting two and two together and making five,’ I said testily.

‘Is that what you really think?’ he asked, staring at me even more intently.

‘It is, yes.’

‘Ms Jones,’ Detective Barclay asked. ‘How much do you know about your partner — apologies — ex-partner’s business activities?’

I should have anticipated the question, but I stupidly hadn’t, thanks to my discombobulated brain, and it hit me like a cold slap. I suddenly felt very queasy, on the verge of throwing up. I took several deep breaths to calm myself before answering. They were both looking at me intently, scrutinizing my face as if it was an object of wonder in a museum display case.

My reply, popping out of nowhere, was little short of inspirational, I thought. ‘Nicos regarded all women as just her indoors. Someone who should be at home, the little housewife, there for cooking, cleaning, laundry and sex — he never shared—’

Cowleard instantly interrupted. ‘You said regarded, Ms Jones — why did you say Nicos regarded? Why did you use the past tense?’

That flummoxed me. I blushed — it was more of a hot flush. ‘A slip of the tongue,’ I mumbled. ‘Once I’d left him, he became a was to me. Nothing makes any sense.’

They were still staring at me intently. ‘You lived with him for more than three years?’ Detective Barclay asked.

‘About that, yes.’

‘During this time were you aware of him being involved in any criminal activity?’ She seemed to be turning increasingly cold and hard.

‘Criminal activity?’ I feigned astonishment. ‘What do you mean, what kind?’

‘Are you a drug user?’ Detective Cowleard asked.

‘Me?’

They looked at me in silence. I kept wondering, what do you know that you are not telling me?

‘An empty prescription package, labelled methadone, with your name on it, was found in the apartment you shared with Mr Christoforou,’ Detective Barclay continued.

I’d thrown that in the bin before leaving, just the outer envelope. They’d been going through the rubbish? Clearly, they’d been going through absolutely everything.

Shit.

‘I believe methadone is prescribed for opiate addiction. That it is particularly effective for someone trying to get off a heroin dependency. Is that the case with you?’ Barclay asked.

Something in the way she said it and the way she was looking at me told me she knew, she absolutely knew.

I didn’t need to answer. The two detectives could see my red face.

‘Ms Jones, were you addicted to heroin before you met Mr Christoforou, or after?’ Detective Cowleard asked.

I was wary of saying anything that might incriminate me. I felt I should maybe have a lawyer present. ‘I’m not prepared to answer that,’ I said, more confidently than I felt.

‘You should know that a substantial quantity of drugs has been found in the apartment. A commercial volume of heroin, cocaine and other substances. Are these yours?’ he asked.

I felt the floor was sinking beneath me, as if I was in an elevator. ‘A commercial volume? You’re — you’re joking. No, no, they are not mine and I had no knowledge of them.’

‘Are you aware,’ Barclay asked, ‘that Nicos Christoforou spent five years of a twenty-five-year sentence in prison in Zanzibar on drug smuggling charges? That he would still be there today if he hadn’t escaped, and there is an international warrant out for his arrest?’

I looked at her, dumbfounded. ‘No — I... he never told me.’

Then, totally unexpected and out of the blue, Detective Sergeant Cowleard asked, ‘Ms Jones, did you kill Nicos Christoforou?’

I was so stunned by the direct accusation it took me a moment to think clearly. ‘Do you seriously think that?’

For the second time, I wondered if I should get a lawyer. But then I thought, why the hell should I? I’d done nothing apart from fleeing from an abusive monster.

Well, perhaps not nothing.

‘You say you went on a boat to Saint-Malo on the night of September the twenty-sixth. What time was that?’ DC Barclay asked.

‘It was soon after the taxi dropped myself and my son in Bouley Bay.’

She glanced at her notebook. ‘According to the driver, Mr Toby McMichael, he dropped you and your son at Bouley Bay at approximately 11.10 p.m. That is three hours after the last time your former partner was seen. Can you tell us what you were doing in that time?’

From three years of regularly going out with Nicos on his boat, I had learned something of the local winds and tides. ‘What I was doing in that time was feeding my son and myself, packing and organizing the taxi pick-up. But as you clearly think I murdered Nicos during that window, let me explain some nautical facts to you. On the night of Monday, September the twenty-sixth, there was a south-westerly wind of 12 knots, gusting sixteen. The south-westerly is the prevailing wind of the Channel Islands, as I’m sure you know?’

The two detectives looked at me, frowning.

‘The missing boat was, as has been reported on and detailed in the Jersey Evening Post extensively, clocked by the Corbière coastguard radar station heading on a north-westerly course at 8.30 p.m. that night. Some while later, the boat was found abandoned, drifting ten nautical miles off Guernsey, according to what I’ve read.’ I looked at them for acknowledgement.

Cowleard nodded. ‘Yes. Your point being?’

‘Hear me out.’ I suddenly felt my confidence surging. ‘Someone was steering the boat, so, unless it was stolen, it was Nicos — he’s never let me steer the Bolt-Hole. He was heading against the prevailing wind and tides. Many hours later, the boat was found drifting somewhere off Guernsey, which means that before it was abandoned it must have been several miles west of Guernsey for it to have drifted that way. Are you seriously suggesting that between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Monday, September the twenty-sixth, I was on board the boat, murdered Nicos, and then miraculously got back? Because I sure as hell didn’t swim thirty miles back to shore with a young boy strapped to my back in that time.’

Cowleard, unsmiling, asked, ‘Could the skipper of the boat that took you to Saint-Malo vouch for you — as an alibi?’

I hesitated, thinking hard again. I didn’t want to dump Adam le Seelleur in it, but then he hadn’t actually done anything wrong, had he? He’d simply ferried me to France, a country I could legally enter as a European citizen. All the same, I felt a loyalty to him. ‘I’m sure he could,’ I replied.

‘Can you give us his name?’ he asked.

I looked at him levelly. ‘Are you arresting me for anything?’

Cowleard and Barclay shot a glance at each other. ‘No, Ms Jones, we are not arresting you — this is not our jurisdiction. All we are concerned with at this stage is establishing what has happened to Nicos Christoforou.’

‘In which case, have a nice day in Munich, and enjoy your trip home to beautiful Jersey.’