Finally I managed to read through the Stephen book in a library, thank you to the person who suggested trying libraries.
I am going to share some notes below as there is a lot in the book that is helpful, and which does call into question some of the threads that DV raised. In particular, this book was written very close to events, and had access it seems to material from the investigation.
So here are some notes and thoughts:
-- AS is pretty adamant that SJL took not only the keys to Shorrolds road with her but also the house particulars. I assume that this comes from material from the investigation rather than him chatting to people from Sturgis? He says that people in her office recall her going behind a colleague's desk to grab the keys from the board and also go into a drawer to get house particulars.
It would seem odd to me that, if this were mistaken, the police just somehow did not notice or covered it up, it seems like they were investigating from the start the possibility that SJL might have made up Mr Kipper to get out of the office, so her not taking the keys would lend credence to that theory.
DV deduced that SJL did not take the keys because when police searched the house a day or so later, the door seemed open without being forced. I think on reflection we can find other explanations for this, e.g. the door gave way easily to being forced so no visible damage in a photo, a locksmith just opened it for them. If there was another key, the police would have noted this. It was a part of the timeline they came up with that SJL took the keys and given the level of detail they do seem to have gone into, I don't think this key piece of the timeline (pun intended) was overlooked in such an unprofessional way,
-- The sighting of a male and a female near/outside 37 Shorrolds by the neighbour: in fact, the neighbour, HR, initially told SJL's colleagues, MG and SF, that he had seen a male and a female leaving the house and looking up appraisingly at it. This was when MG and SF went to the address to look for SJL BEFORE they called the police. So this means that the man and woman HR claims he saw WAS NOT MG / SF. HR gave a detailed description of the young male but was far less certain about the female.
However, the issue with this is that HR does seem like a rather unreliable witness. When he was later (that same day I believe) spoken to by police he embellished his story to say that the male and female had been arguing and that the female had been bundled into a car, claims that initially led police to think SJL might have been abducted at the address but which HR later backtracked on.
Also, we don't know what MG and SF initially asked HR. If they turned up and asked him if he saw a woman meet a male at the address at lunchtime then they led him as a witness. All HR then had to do was say yes he saw what he was asked if he saw.
-- AS mentions that SJL had lost a chequebook, a postcard, and a diary ON THE FRIDAY NIGHT apparently when she was at Mossops with AL. The pub landlord claims, according to AS, that he found these items and called SJL's bank on the Monday MORNING -- so that would be when the real landlord, not CV, was still around. On the Monday, her colleagues recalled SJL being preoccupied with this and calling her bank to cancel the cheques. At some point she learned they were in the pub and at around 12.40, right before she left, she called THE PUB LANDLORD'S WIFE to arrange to pick her stuff up at 18:00 that day but never showed up.
Some things to note here. If the landlord found them on the Friday night and called the bank on the Monday morning that suggests this was the real landlord and not CV, as the real landlord would have still been around on Monday morning when according to DV there was a stock take going on. There is a lot of confusion here over who did what. There is no mention in AS book of an interim/temp landlord.
According to AS, SJL and AL did not go into the pub on the Friday. (Does AL give a later interview where he claimed they did?)
AS goes on to say that the police collected these items fairly soon after as they needed the diary to see what male friends SJL might have had, which could have been connected to her disappearance. There is no suggestion at all that she went near the pub that lunchtime or planned to. Or that she lost her items on the Saturday. There is no mention of a temp landlord finding them on the Saturday, it's stated that the landlord found them and she spoke to his wife on the Monday at 12:40, so the question is which wife did she really speak to.
-- AS mentions a few times that SJL had told her friends she planned to break up with AL. She had other lovers in the recent past and there is a strong likelihood that she had cheated on AL with a wealthy male who lived in Park Lane and who was one of AL's mates. It seems she very likely and by her own admission stayed the night with him on a weekend when AL was away but he denied it, and said while she had been in his flat that night she had left, then returned on the Sunday morning (that seems very unlikely to me...). This is the chap who lived in the Bahamas. This is one of the things that DL objected to being reported even though it could have had a bearing on SJL's disappearance.
-- SJL had gone to a party without AL the weekend before she disappeared and told people there that (1) she was about to do a deal that would net her 3000 quid in commission, that (2) she was planning to buy a property with another person. These things seem to be unlinked to her work at Sturgis. So she was doing stuff on the side.
-- SJL was severely dyslexic and made spelling errors in many words, including in taking dictation, meaning that Kipper could have been a mispelling of another word.
-- There is a lot of confusion over the sightings of SJL's car on Stevenage Road. That road was not a through road and the car was left abandoned right at the end of it. The timing of the sighting by WJ i.e. that the car was there at 12:40 is noted as being very odd by AS since that is when SJL was supposed to have left the office so how could her car be there.
-- After the police reconstruction, as DV notes, two other witnesses came forward to say they saw SJL on Shorrolds Road at lunchtime. These are named in AS's book--one is the unemployed cellarman that DV tried to track down. His statement is seen as credible by the police since he went to collect his unemployment benefits that lunchtime so he could time his sighting. He and the second witness crucially also said that the woman they saw on Shorrolds had lighter hair than the woman in the photo of SJL that was circulated -- in fact SJL had had her hair lightened so it was blonder when she disappeared. DV has cast doubt on this sighting, I suppose because it goes against his theory that SJL never went to Shorrolds.
-- SJL's acquaintance/work colleague (it seems they saw each other for work purposes), BW, claimed she saw SJL that Monday in her car on the Fulham Palace Road driving toward Hammersmith, just after 14:30. BW was on her bike and riding in the opposite direction. She claims SJL was with a male, seemed relaxed, and SJL didn't notice BW waving to her. BW appears to have seen SJL's straw hat in the car although this is odd to me as that was in the back window and BW was facing SJL's car as it passed her on her bike, we don't know the speed it passed at but if this was a fleeting glimpse, how did she notice something in the back window?
Remember this sighting was AFTER a ton of publicity about SJL being abducted by a male.
If the timing is correct and this really was SJL, it does beg the question what she was doing for 2 hours and why she risked losing her job to go out for so long?
-- When SJL left the office she just grabbed her purse but not her handbag. Her purse was found in her abandoned car, suggesting to me that if she had gotten out of her car elsewhere (so if she was not in it when it was driven to and abandoned in Stevenage Road) she had nipped out on a quick errand, because leaving her purse in the car would have been inviting it to be stolen. The keys and house particulars her office says she took with her were not in the car. So that suggests either she never took them, as DV claims, or she did take them and they got left somewhere else.
More notes later.