Review of Lockwood Case Evidence for Mr. Roderick Tanner, KC
Charlotte
So that’s why Nicky-Rose has been so friendly with Issy!
Charlotte
NR is spotted in Mirage with Lucas, who we know has drugs he wants to offload.
Femi
And she’s trying to organize flights at a travel agent in another town—in Sarah-Jane’s name.
Charlotte
Georgia assumes Lucas is having a fling with NR, calls him a lying shit. We know NR is seeing Kevin.
Femi
NR wants to stitch Trina up, but not with the evidence that incriminates her too.
Charlotte
Trina is expecting documents, presumably concealed in a folder or envelope. On April 27 Dustin mentioned LSD infused into blotting paper being sold in Lockwood.
Charlotte
Can we infer these are the same type of drugs Lucas has?
It wouldn’t be relevant if he’s selling ecstasy or ketamine at Lunar, those are pills or powder.
BUT if Nicky-Rose has bought sheets of LSD from Lucas, she can put them in an envelope and have Issy hand that over to Trina in place of the documents.
Setting Trina and Issy up for the police to ambush.
Charlotte
Even if Issy looks inside the envelope before the exchange, the blotters would look like strange sheets of stamps. And if the police are on hand, Trina likely won’t have time to examine the contents of the envelope closely before they arrest her.
Femi
Nicky-Rose plans to pay for her flight with cash from the exchange. That won’t happen if Trina is arrested in Squires with it.
Femi
Dustin says the police don’t have the resources to follow up every lead, so she’s clearly planned for that. On June 2 Nicky-Rose told Trina to make the exchange, let Issy leave, and wait ten minutes before leaving herself.
Charlotte
They may not even show and Trina will find herself with an envelope full of drugs and no documents.
Femi
That’s why NR engages Issy to do the drop—so that when Trina realizes what’s happened, NR is nowhere to be found. But this theory relies on Trina not looking inside the envelope before handing over the money. Surely that’s a risk?
Charlotte
She’s covering all eventualities. Mentions plans A, B, and C to Stuart.
Femi
If the police DO show and Issy’s arrested at 6 p.m., she’ll miss opening night.
Charlotte
And NR won’t get her money.
Femi
Is this about the money at all?
Charlotte
We assume Nicky-Rose cares as much about the play as everyone else, but she seems to have another agenda entirely. Just what is she planning??
Femi
Let’s consider what we learn from this batch of correspondence. Amelia’s leg is healing, but she’s still in pain and struggles onstage.
Charlotte
Fran went through with the flat-swap, because of her guilt about the affair with Josh. She’s making a sacrifice she hopes will atone for her sin.
Femi
Amelia, Lucas, and Georgia make me fume.
Charlotte
I’ve never known you to fume. Ever.
Femi
I’m not a fumer. But the way they casually take advantage of her goodwill is maddening. They expect her to buy their groceries, have their washing machine repaired, and go out of her way to drive them to rehearsals.
Charlotte
Like three lazy children seeing how far they can push a long-suffering parent.
Femi
My blood is boiling.
Charlotte
Georgia is described as six months pregnant, which means she’s due around September. She would have conceived in December?
Femi
On January 3 Amelia says Georgia is “staying with us for a bit.”
Charlotte
Which means she probably didn’t know about the pregnancy at first. It’s not until April 26 that she says her jeans don’t fit and even then, no one has noticed her getting bigger.
Femi
Georgia confides in Lucas first. He knows about the pregnancy back then.
Femi
Amelia says Georgia is trying to pressure the baby’s father into leaving his wife by being pregnant and homeless. It hasn’t worked by June.
Charlotte
Fran wants the same thing from Father Josh, who says his marriage to Elizabeth is over.
Femi
It’s affecting every aspect of Fran’s life. Her performance in the play is suffering. Her work colleagues have noticed a change too.
Femi
She says, “We haven’t been together for a week and it’s killing me.”
Charlotte
There’s no sign of Father Josh leaving Elizabeth. Would Fran get pregnant to force his hand? Is that why she’s below par?
Femi
She’s seen Georgia do that and it didn’t work. Doesn’t seem to be Fran’s style, somehow.
Charlotte
Do you believe in karma?
Femi
No.
Charlotte
Fran won’t tolerate Issy’s obsession. Yet Issy’s behavior and Fran’s “obsession” don’t differ so very much.
Femi
I don’t follow.
Charlotte
Fran’s obsession with Father Josh is comparable to Issy’s obsession with Fran. Karma is therefore teaching Fran to be more sympathetic by making her experience the pain of unrequited/forbidden love.
Femi
Is karma guilty of murder? No. We need to extract a victim and a killer from the evidence, not have an existential debate.
Charlotte
Speaking of which, we should discuss Emma. She tells Sarah-Jane that Kevin is meeting secretly with Fran when he was supposed to be at the cash and carry.
Femi
Emma may be mistaken—she says it’s hard to see exactly who he’s with. Could it be someone else?
Charlotte
Emma uses a picture of Sarah-Jane with her eyes blacked out in the statue she made for the play. She’s gone behind SJ’s back in every case we’ve reviewed. Just when will she realize Emma isn’t her friend?
Femi
Kevin may have been with Fran because she’s a lead actor whose performance has slipped. Perhaps he knows about the affair with Josh?
Charlotte
Would he keep that from Sarah-Jane?
Femi
Yes, knowing she may tell her mother and sister. But Emma, Sarah-Jane, and Carol all jump to the conclusion that their meeting in a park is evidence of an affair.
Charlotte
He HAS been having an affair (with NR), so if any of them had any inkling that something was wrong, him being seen with Fran would appear to be the last piece of the puzzle—albeit wrong.
Charlotte
I’m thinking back to the first batch of correspondence we read. That afternoon tea at Mirage, where Nicky-Rose tells Sarah-Jane something and swears her to secrecy. We discounted it as a pregnancy.
Femi
Not everyone here can be pregnant. It isn’t EastEnders. If Nicky-Rose was, Kevin would have congratulated her in his pre–Big Sunday email as he does Georgia.
Charlotte
Exactly, so, what was the secret? Neither Sarah-Jane nor Nicky-Rose has mentioned it since.
Femi
Tiffany Ramirez? The real reason Nicky-Rose is back in Lockwood?
Charlotte
And according to Isla Coole, the police inspector in charge of the case is coming to London to interview her.
Femi
Isla’s last words have an ominous ring. “What’s right isn’t always what’s fair.”
Charlotte
I think Nicky-Rose has every intention of being on the other side of the world, with or without Trina’s money, when Inspector Lascelles arrives.
Femi
We should look at the whole case from the top, but meeting about to start. Tonight on Zoom? I’ll send a link later.
* * *
Charlotte
Just a thought. Some random discrepancies in how people describe Tiffany.
Charlotte
On June 2 Isla Coole says she bonded with Tiffany because both have lost their parents. Only Tiffany’s parents are alive, they’re quoted in the newspaper article Trina sends Nicky-Rose.
Femi
Adopted parents? Or a lie to bond with her roommate?
Charlotte
Maybe. Then Lily Bielik says Tiffany was shaky and nervous about her first job, just like Lily was. While to Isla she was “confident” and just annoyed it wouldn’t get her Equity membership.
Femi
We’re all different people, depending on who we’re talking to.
Charlotte
Just something I noticed, that’s all.
Lockwood Murder Case WhatsApp group, September 12, 2025:
Charlotte Holroyd
How are you this morning, Mr. Tanner?
Roderick Tanner, KC
Where is Sharon with my papers?
Charlotte Holroyd
Femi and I had a chat last night about the Lockwood case. We’ve got a new report for you, but if you’d rather rest for now, we can send it at a more convenient time.
Roderick Tanner, KC
Send it now.
Sharon Collins
The doctors have told Mr. Tanner to take it easy for the next few months.
Roderick Tanner, KC
Mr. Tanner has told Sharon not to spend her day idly WhatsApping.
Charlotte Holroyd
Shall I send it or not?
Sharon Collins
No!
Roderick Tanner, KC
Yes.
Review of Lockwood Case Evidence for Mr. Roderick Tanner, KC
For this review, we consider correspondence and documents spanning exactly five months between January 2 and June 2, 2025.
Deadly plans
We can identify several people whose plans may turn deadly.
At the moment, Nicky-Rose’s feel the most dangerous.
She’s dealing with criminals and is planning to escape abroad.
Could any of the people she’s involved with see Nicky-Rose’s death as their best way out of the trap she’s setting for them?
Lucas has plans that involve Barry and potentially Mark. They may be shady but are they deadly?
Georgia had a plan to lure her baby’s father away from his wife. Would she escalate that as the birth looms and could that bring trouble to the Stibsons’ door?
Fran is planning for the day Father Josh leaves Elizabeth. Whatever happens, it won’t be a happy ending: at least one woman is left devastated. Could the consequences be deadly?
Who could be a victim in this case?
Whichever way we look at it, Nicky-Rose is top of the list. She is playing with fire and burning her bridges. Her actions will most likely estrange her from her mother and sister, if and when her affair with Kevin is exposed.
The love triangle of Fran, Father Josh, and Elizabeth could end in the murder of any one of them, but as Issy knows about the affair, we wonder if one of the guilty parties, i.e., Father Josh or Fran, may wish to silence her for good.
There are a number of potential victims who seem to be caught up haplessly in other people’s plans, not least Issy, who has been at the center of trouble in Lockwood before.
Barry and Mark are being pulled into Lucas’s toxic orbit and there’s always the danger a completely innocent victim is killed instead of an intended target.
Then there’s Amelia, who might have been killed by the falling light, which Joel and Kevin believe to be the result of sabotage. Was someone targeting her?
Did Nicky-Rose escape death when she left Barbados for Lockwood at the turn of the new year? We’re no nearer discovering the reason for the six-month gap in her whereabouts between June 2024 and January 2025, nor why she arrives without a penny or a suitcase to her name.
Is there a connection between Twin Star and what happened to Tiffany Ramirez? Bridgetown police must consider it serious enough to send Lascelles first to Vancouver to see Isla, then across the world to Lockwood.
We are going to think outside the box and put forward a theory with Nicky-Rose as the victim.
We hypothesize that she spent the last six months in a Barbadian prison, taking the blame for something Trina or Twin Star did.
This would explain her uncompromising position with Trina and the fact she sees it as an unforgivable betrayal.
We believe that whatever Nicky-Rose has planned, her former friend and business partner will stop at nothing to protect herself.
Despite being extremely busy with our own cases, we look forward to receiving the next batch of material, assuming you are ready to send it.
Femi Hassan & Charlotte Holroyd
Lockwood Murder Case WhatsApp group, September 12, 2025:
Roderick Tanner, KC
Thank you. Some interesting points, clearly set out and well supported. However, I have taken this opportunity of enforced rest to read to the end and they are mostly wrong. Sharon!
Roderick Tanner, KC
Sharon! Am I typing into the void?
Sharon Collins
I’m here, Mr. Tanner.
Roderick Tanner, KC
Please send Femi and Charlotte the correspondence up to and including the murder. Thank you.