The woman who had a long-standing affair with a murdered Fife businessman has described the brother who ordered his death as a ”coward”.
Speaking publicly for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Courier, Carol Davies said she had been left ”heartbroken” by the murder of Toby Siddique and could never forgive those involved in the killing.
She also wanted to ”put to rest the rumours”, which she said had been the talk of Kirkcaldy for years, about her and Toby, who was 38 and a married father-of-three.
Carol (30) decided to speak out more than a month after Toby’s killers were jailed for a total of 72 years. The victim’s brother, Mohammed Azam Siddique (known as Mo), was found guilty of hiring the gunman.
Carol said: ”The manner in which Toby was taken so cruelly and by someone who was supposed to protect him his big brother that’s what I can’t get my head round. Mo is a coward. He paid a foreigner £1,000 to shoot him. I would have thought more of him if he did it himself.”
Mo (42) was jailed for life on March 28 for the execution and told he would serve at least 25 years. Bulgarian hitman Tencho Andonov (28) and fixer Deyan Nikolov (27) were also given life and were ordered to serve at least 29 and 18 years respectively.
The trio were found guilty of murder at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Carol admits her 10-year relationship with married father-of-three Toby was far from conventional and, in her own words, was ”Kirkcaldy’s worst kept secret”.
However, her blind, if not misguided, devotion to the property tycoon manifested itself in various ways. Not only does she have 111 tattoos of Toby’s name on her body, she also took the blame and was sentenced to three years in jail for a £290,000 benefit scam masterminded by the convicted fraudster.
Carol does not regret their illicit relationship and said it would have been their 11th ‘anniversary’ last Friday.
They met when she was a teenager and Toby and Mo co-ran Uncle’s Bar now defunct in Lauder Road, Kirkcaldy.
She said she does, however, regret her time in Cornton Vale as she could not be with Toby in his final months.
”It was called Uncle’s Bar because their dad was known as Uncle and when he passed away Toby and Mo put their money together to buy the pub,” said Carol, a former pupil at Pathhead Primary and Kirkcaldy High. ”It was the local for my family. I used to go there with my mum and my gran. It’s so hard to believe that all those years ago the brothers were so close, and now it’s come to this.”’Open secret’Carol, who left school at 16 to start work as an apprentice hairdresser, said that 18 months after the brothers sold the pub she met already-married Toby on Kirkcaldy High Street by chance. They chatted and she said their 10-year relationship developed from there.
Carol said it was an ”open secret” and they did not have to ”sneak about”. They worked together, met regularly and went on holiday.
”Toby was a property tycoon,” Carol said. ”He had shops and flats in Aberdeen, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes, all over… He was not an angel. But if he was the brains of the operation, then Mo was the brawn, and he wasn’t scared to get his hands dirty. Toby always had us on the lookout for estate agents advertising cheap properties so he could do them up. He had an eye for that sort of thing.”
Toby was sentenced to nine months for fraud in 2003 and it was while in Perth Prison that his face was slashed.
The later £290,000 benefit fraud involving Carol went on for several years before they were caught.
She said. ”He was the ring leader but, of the seven arrested, two of us took the rap for Toby.”
Carol, who converted to Islam a number of years ago, served nine months of her three-year sentence and was due to be released on a five-month tagging order in October 2010. Her release date from Cornton Vale turned out to be the day Toby was murdered.
”I was being kept in for a few extra days for misbehaving,” she said. ”I was doing my usual prison work as a cleaner and tried to phone Toby’s mobile at lunchtime but it just kept ringing out.”
Continued…
”An officer shouted that I needed to phone my sister Michelle. I phoned her and I could tell she’d been crying. She said: ‘It’s Toby. He’s dead. He’s been shot’.”
When Carol was released from prison soon after Mo had not yet been arrested. She said she ”knew straight away” he was responsible because, she claimed, Toby was going to ‘buy out’ Mo from Moncrieffe Properties on the day of the shooting.
Carol added: ”According to Muslim tradition, the dead must be buried within 24 hours. However, due to the ongoing police forensics operation at the murder scene in Glenrothes, this had not been possible.
”I was really upset by this at the time, but what upsets me more is that Mo had the audacity to ‘clean’ Toby before his funeral, which is what the male family members do according to Muslim tradition.
”How he could do that with Toby lying there with bullet holes in his face when he knew he was responsible?”
When the guilty trio were jailed for a total of 72 years she had ”mixed emotions.”
”I was happy because we’d come to the end of it, but 25 years for a life?”
After Toby’s death Carol feels in ”limbo land” and has been finding it difficult to cope. She has been sent cruel Facebook messages and some people have shouted at her in the street.
She has ”no regrets”, though, and said telling her story is a way of moving forward.
She said: ”I know he’s not here but he was the only person I ever knew. He was my life. I have 111 tattoos with his name on every single one. I could be married in 20 years’ time and I’ll still be covered in Toby tattoos. I did love him and I know he loved me. He was a giant teddy bear with a heart of gold.
”But it’s not just about me. He was taken from his wife and kids and their families. He was no angel, but he didn’t deserve to die so cruelly at the hands of someone he trusted.”The trialThe trial heard how Mo and Toby were partners in a company which let out hundreds of slum properties in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy.
But there had been feuding between the pair for years about who should control the firm and the bitter power struggle came to a head in October 2010.
Toby was lured to a Glenrothes flat thinking he was going to buy contraband cigarettes. Instead, Andonov emerged from the bathroom, pressed a pistol against Toby’s nose and fired. As Toby slumped to the floor, he shot him again in the back of the head.
Former security man David Dalgleish (44), who lived in the flat, was shot in the head but survived.
Andonov was also convicted of his attempted murder.
The sentences marked the end of a £1.5 million investigation by Fife Police which involved up to 80 officers and support staff.
Toby’s widow Saimah Siddique has already said she cannot forgive jailed brother-in-law Mo and is seeking £1.75m damages from him.
Mrs Siddique (33) has raised a personal injuries action against the convicted killer seeking £1 million damages for herself and £250,000 for each of her three children.
She is also seeking £10,000 in her capacity as her late husband’s executor for his pain and suffering as a result of the shooting.
Mrs Siddique could not be contacted at her home in Kirkcaldy, but she recently said of Mo Siddique: ”My husband trusted him. He trusted him more than he trusted me.
”He loved him and for him to do such an attack on his own brother, yes, I feel sorry for him. I don’t have words for what I feel towards him but I don’t forgive him.”
”An officer shouted that I needed to phone my sister Michelle. I phoned her and I could tell she’d been crying. She said: ‘It’s Toby. He’s dead. He’s been shot’.”
When Carol was released from prison soon after Mo had not yet been arrested. She said she ”knew straight away” he was responsible because, she claimed, Toby was going to ‘buy out’ Mo from Moncrieffe Properties on the day of the shooting.
Carol added: ”According to Muslim tradition, the dead must be buried within 24 hours. However, due to the ongoing police forensics operation at the murder scene in Glenrothes, this had not been possible.
”I was really upset by this at the time, but what upsets me more is that Mo had the audacity to ‘clean’ Toby before his funeral, which is what the male family members do according to Muslim tradition.
”How he could do that with Toby lying there with bullet holes in his face when he knew he was responsible?”
When the guilty trio were jailed for a total of 72 years she had ”mixed emotions.”
”I was happy because we’d come to the end of it, but 25 years for a life?”
After Toby’s death Carol feels in ”limbo land” and has been finding it difficult to cope. She has been sent cruel Facebook messages and some people have shouted at her in the street.
She has ”no regrets”, though, and said telling her story is a way of moving forward.
She said: ”I know he’s not here but he was the only person I ever knew. He was my life. I have 111 tattoos with his name on every single one. I could be married in 20 years’ time and I’ll still be covered in Toby tattoos. I did love him and I know he loved me. He was a giant teddy bear with a heart of gold.
”But it’s not just about me. He was taken from his wife and kids and their families. He was no angel, but he didn’t deserve to die so cruelly at the hands of someone he trusted.”The trialThe trial heard how Mo and Toby were partners in a company which let out hundreds of slum properties in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy.
But there had been feuding between the pair for years about who should control the firm and the bitter power struggle came to a head in October 2010.
Toby was lured to a Glenrothes flat thinking he was going to buy contraband cigarettes. Instead, Andonov emerged from the bathroom, pressed a pistol against Toby’s nose and fired. As Toby slumped to the floor, he shot him again in the back of the head.
Former security man David Dalgleish (44), who lived in the flat, was shot in the head but survived.
Andonov was also convicted of his attempted murder.
The sentences marked the end of a £1.5 million investigation by Fife Police which involved up to 80 officers and support staff.
Toby’s widow Saimah Siddique has already said she cannot forgive jailed brother-in-law Mo and is seeking £1.75m damages from him.
Mrs Siddique (33) has raised a personal injuries action against the convicted killer seeking £1 million damages for herself and £250,000 for each of her three children.
She is also seeking £10,000 in her capacity as her late husband’s executor for his pain and suffering as a result of the shooting.
Mrs Siddique could not be contacted at her home in Kirkcaldy, but she recently said of Mo Siddique: ”My husband trusted him. He trusted him more than he trusted me.
”He loved him and for him to do such an attack on his own brother, yes, I feel sorry for him. I don’t have words for what I feel towards him but I don’t forgive him.”