On Tuesday 24 July Nicholson did not work a full day, instead calling in sick at lunchtime. He told the office that he had sickness and diarrhoea. As he would have known, it was company policy for carers to remain off for 48 hours after the last symptoms had passed, to minimise the risk of infecting frail or elderly clients. Nicholson was not sick: that afternoon he cycled up to the flat of an elderly man whom he knew in Curzon Court, right beside the Sports Centre. The flat was dirty and cluttered with old clothes, papers and magazines. Nicholson was there for some 3 hours;I have no doubt he spent the time planning how to go about removing Lucy from his life.She had ceased by then to be of interest to him as a compliant object for his easy sexual gratification and had instead become a serious obstacle to his continuing comfortable life at the family home, where he had a base for his tattooing and a place for his collection of dangerous reptiles. There was also the real risk of Lucy making good her threat to reveal his abuse of her to her mother and Richard, “outing”him as a paedophile. So far as Nicholson was concerned, Lucy had to go.
Whilst at Curzon Court that Tuesday afternoon, Nicholson ordered a pair of new trainers for delivery first thing the next morning.He probably also dug out of the piles of old clothes a disposable outfit in which to murder Lucy the next day.
Only Nicholson knows exactly what was said in communications between him and Lucy on the evening of Tuesday 24 July and first thing on Wednesday morning 25 July over Facebook Messenger. He deleted the written messages soon after reading them;the last was a conversation. At 8.15am on Wednesday Nicholson cycled from his mother’s home to the flat at Curzon Court arriving at around 8.30. At around 9am he took care to make a trip to the nearby Tesco Express, to be captured on the store CCTV wearing clothes other than those in which he was to murder Lucy shortly afterwards.
Just before 9, very soon after she had spoken with Nicholson over Facebook Messenger, CCTV captured Lucy leaving her home and starting out on the half hour walk up to the Sports Centre. She made the journey on her own.She had no phone. She can be seen walking purposefully, looking at her watch, taking off her jacket, carrying a bottle of energy drink. It was a hot day. Those CCTV clips are terribly moving to watch now, knowing that she was walking to her death. The last piece of any known footage of Lucy is at 9.30 when she was captured walking past the same Tesco Express that Nicholson had visited half an hour before. A woman walking her dog in the Sports Centre around 10am saw a girl matching Lucy striding past her, in a straight line, going up to the top cricket pitch.It was the last time Lucy was seen alive by anyone other than her murderer.
Clearly she was going to meet Nicholson, pursuant to an arrangement made the previous evening or early that morning. Perhaps she thought that he was going to resume their relationship, to show kindness, or even affection.Nicholson took her into the woods to the side of the top cricket pitch and there, deep into the foliage off one of the paths, he stabbed her to death. The pathologist noted that Lucy had some stab wounds on her arms and wrists which could have been defensive ones, as if she had tried to protect herself. There was one anomalous incised wound right across her wrist, as if the murderer had tried to make it look like Lucy cut herself. There were some 27 cuts and stabs in all, most to Lucy’s face and neck. Those that killed her were a collection of 4 or 5 repeated stab wounds, all in one place to the right side of her neck. These cut her carotid artery leading to sudden high-pressure blood loss, unconsciousness and, very soon after that, her death.
After he had killed her, Nicholson returned to the flat at Curzon Court before cycling home. He detoured from his usual route to dump the outfit in which he murdered Lucy, stained with her blood,deep in bushes beside the stream in Tanners Brook.
Later that day he pretended to commiserate with Stacey over her worry about her missing daughter; on Thursday he appeared horrified and concerned for her and Richard when the body was found. But in the mean time he burnt his old trainers, disposed of his phone and changed his Facebook password. He was arrested on the Friday evening,but the Motorola handset taken from him then had only been in use for 24 hours. Nicholson told the police in interview that on the day of Lucy’s death he had cycled to and from the flat in Curzon Court by the straight route on the main Coxford Road. He said nothing to the police then or later about any detour to Tanner’s Brook.
