Before We Met(63)

‘Nick used to jump over his back fence,’ one recalled. ‘It scared the living daylights out of Jim, turning the light on to find Nick standing on his back patio staring in through the kitchen window. Jim had an old shed at the end of the garden, near where Nick used to come in, and several times he said he found drug paraphernalia on the bench inside. When he complained to Gordon and Elizabeth, they were very apologetic, they always were, but nothing seemed to change. Lizzie always excused his behaviour as teenage hi-jinks but it was clearly more than that.’

What passed between Nick and Jim Thomas is still the subject of local speculation but six weeks after Thomas’s complaint to the Reillys, the shed on his allotment was found ablaze. Three weeks after that, Thomas’s dog, a Red Setter named Molly, was found drowned on the bank of a stream that runs close to the houses. Nick had played truant from school that afternoon and had earlier been seen on the street wearing jeans soaked to the thigh. Neighbours recall a tearful Thomas banging on the Reillys’ front door but though the police were called, for reasons that remain unclear no charges were pressed. Reilly’s immunity held firm.

Classmates at his senior school describe Nick Reilly as charismatic and entertaining, though they struggle to remember who his particular friends were among the other boys. Clearly, however, by the later years of school he was a major success with his female contemporaries, a fact perhaps unsurprising given his looks, reported charm, and the second-hand orange Triumph Spitfire that arrived outside the bungalow on his 17th birthday, courtesy of his mother.

If he had no particular friends among the boys, it seems also that he had no particular favourite among the girls, instead spreading his favours equally between the best-looking and most popular members of his own year and the one above. Reilly had been sexually active since the age of 13, but relationships were short-lived and casual, at least on his side. Though there is no suggestion of a causal connection, he is believed to have had a brief relationship with Emma Simpson, a lovely but emotionally fragile girl who committed suicide not long after they parted company.

Despite his poor school attendance record, Nick’s natural academic ability was enough to secure him the grades for a place at university in Leeds, where he studied economics, ‘at least nominally’, says Rachel Jenkins, a fellow student on the course. He soon became a fixture on the city’s vibrant party scene, where his use of alcohol and drugs – constants in his life for several years by that point – really took off. He graduated with a third-class degree, which many considered him lucky to get at all. Reilly was reportedly angered by the result, however, and demanded his papers be remarked. His grade remained the same.

As soon as exams were finished, he vacated his student digs in Headingley and moved south again to London. Most of his university contemporaries reduced the high costs of London living by renting houses together but Nick took a one-bedroomed flat in Borough where he lived for the next three years.

How he paid for the flat is not clear. He is known to have received financial support from his mother but not enough, it would seem, to cover life in central London. His employment record during these years was patchy at very best and included brief stints as an assistant in a high-profile PR firm, an estate agency and a record company.

He had no difficulty getting jobs – his charm made him a natural at interviews – but keeping them was another matter. The issue was his work ethic. A fellow employee at the estate agency recalled: ‘He was late every day, took long lunches and called in sick three times in his first fortnight. He just didn’t seem to care.’

Then, at the age of 26, Reilly started working with his brother, Mark, and seemed at last to have found something that held his interest for more than a couple of weeks.

In marked contrast to Nick, Mark Reilly had, by the age of 27, achieved tremendous success. After taking a first-class engineering degree at Cambridge, he had come to London and begun raising the capital that allowed him to start DataPro, a company that designs custom-made software for banks and brokerage firms in the City and, these days, around the world. Within three years, the company was generating an annual turnover close to £5 million.

Nick Reilly was employed as a project manager at DataPro and his job was to win new business for the firm and ensure good working relationships with clients. He seemed initially successful in the role.

He received a handsome six-figure salary, which funded the lifestyle that has already been widely reported in the press: the flat just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, a new Porsche, frequent visits to top London restaurants and nightclubs, and skiing in Val d’Isère where parties at his rented chalet, fuelled by cocaine and unending streams of vodka and champagne, often lasted until noon the following day. Women – party girls, a model, two junior employees from the same fashion magazine – came and went, none of them lasting long enough to make an impression.