She tried asserting herself again.
‘Now look, it would take only the most elementary of checks to establish who I am, and that the information I have given you is correct. Can’t you check online? I present a television programme back home. My presence here is completely innocent. And I’m not prepared to cooperate with you further until I’m allowed some sort of representation. I should like to contact the British Consulate in New York...’
Suddenly the door of the interview room swung open yet again. A younger man, of average height and build swept into the room. His dark blonde hair was slicked back, and he was wearing a neat black suit, white shirt, black tie, and heavily tinted spectacles. In different circumstance Jones would have found it difficult to take him seriously. He must surely have been sent round directly from Central Casting. He wasn’t just the complete stereotype of some kind of special agent. He was straight out of Men in Black.
Jones stopped speaking. The Man in Black slammed the door shut behind him and advanced swiftly towards her. His walk was a strut, his head jutting forwards and his shoulders pushed back. He smashed his fist down on the table with tremendous force. The noise it made reverberated around the room. His hand must hurt like hell, Jones thought — but the man did not flinch.
He leaned closer to Jones. The tinted glasses made it impossible to see his eyes properly. His breath smelt of garlic.
Jones instinctively backed away.
‘I would advise you to continue to cooperate fully, Miss Jones.’
The Man in Black’s voice was low and full of menace. Jones had little doubt that his use of the prefix ‘miss’ instead of ‘doctor’ was deliberate. It seemed clear that he had been observing the interview through the video system.
‘We are investigating three deaths here, Miss Jones. Several more people have serious injuries. And I don’t give a fuck who you are. You can be a four-times fucking Nobel prize winner for all I care. You will answer all questions put to you, and you should know that we have every damned right to detain you here for as long as we damned well please.’
Jones asked herself for the umpteenth time how she had got herself into such a situation. She knew that the American police force lived by vastly different rules to the police back home, but this was surely especially heavy. And she didn’t even know whether the Man in Black was a police officer or something more sinister. He certainly liked to give the impression of being something more sinister, Jones reckoned.
‘Would you please tell me who you are?’ she plucked up the courage to ask. ‘Are you FBI? Who are you?’
The man’s face was still only inches away from Jones’s. She had never before met an American who smelt so strongly of garlic, as if, almost, he’d been pickled in the stuff rather than had merely eaten it.
‘None of your goddamned business,’ he snarled.
He stared at Jones for several seconds before straightening up and backing off, nodding slightly towards Detective Grant.
‘I will ask you again,’ said Detective Grant, sounding exaggeratedly patient. ‘Apart from the dean, is there anyone in Princeton who can vouch for you?’
Sighing, Jones gave Ed’s name and address.
‘Right then, ma’am. I am now going to arrange for everything you have told us to be checked out. Meanwhile you must remain in custody.’
He turned to the uniformed officer standing by the door.
‘All yours, Dave.’
Dave stepped forward.
‘Stand up and put your hands behind your back,’ he ordered.
Oh God, thought Jones. She was going to be handcuffed again. But she made no further attempt to protest.
The officer called Dave, this time unaccompanied — which made Jones absurdly hopeful that maybe Princeton Plod was finally realizing she presented no threat to anybody — marched her back to her cell.
Once her cuffs had been removed, Jones sat on the wooden bench bed and reflected again on her predicament. How could she have been so stupid as to go alone to a designated crime scene at such a crazy time of day. And in America too, the home of the trigger happy.
She groaned out loud. She hoped the worst might be over, but if the American authorities did start checking her out back home before releasing her, eyebrows were sure to be raised among the hierarchy of both the university which currently employed her and the more exalted one which was about to appoint her chancellor. Not to mention the BBC. And her sons didn’t even know she had left the country. They would be worried sick.
There was what seemed like another interminable wait before they came for her again.
Once more it was Detective Grant, and Dave, carrying Jones’s bag, and the black leather jacket she had worn on her journey over.
‘Your story has checked out and you are free to go now,’ said Grant.
‘I should hope so,’ Jones snapped, in a vague attempt at some kind of bravado. She was relieved, nervous, and angry all at the same time.
Detective Grant and Dave both ignored her. Grant handed her a brown envelope.
‘Your watch and everything that was in your pockets are in there,’ he said. ‘Just sign here for it.’
He held out a clipboard and passed Jones a pen.
Jones signed, tore open the envelope and straight away slipped on the old Longine. Somehow it made her feel less like a victim. She checked the time. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. She had been in police custody for almost seven hours.
‘We’ve looked through your papers and replaced them in your bag,’ Detective Grant continued.
Jones took her bag from Dave, lifted it on to the wooden bench, and quickly made sure that both her laptop and her documents were inside, along with the few clothes she had brought with her for what she had always planned would be a short stay.
‘We’ve checked you out of the Nassau, and your credit card will be debited,’ said Detective Grant. ‘We assume you will have no wish to stay on now.’
He made that sound like an order. Jones picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and wordlessly followed the two police officers out of the cell, along the corridor and up the stairs to the main foyer.
‘So where do you suggest I go?’ she inquired, a certain irony in her voice.
‘That, of course, is entirely up to you, Miss Jones.’
The reply came from behind Jones and slightly to her right. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. The Man in Black was leaning against the wall by the glass box which enclosed the reception area.
‘Dr Jones,’ she corrected.
‘Indeed. I understand you are leaving Princeton now, Dr Jones.’
It was another order. Jones felt an overwhelming urge to protest, to argue. She was being more or less run out of town, it seemed, a bit like a character in a Western B-movie.
On the other hand, if she refused to leave, what exactly would she achieve apart from making her life even more difficult? She still had little real idea why she’d travelled to Princeton in the first place. Except that she had felt compelled. Maybe it was one of those bonds of consciousness which RECAP had been set up to study, she thought wryly.
‘You’re right, I don’t think I do have a reason to remain here,’ she responded.
‘Good.’
The Man in Black straightened up, turned on his heel and disappeared behind reception back into the interior of the station.
Jones was suddenly struck by the feeling that there was something vaguely familiar about him, but she just couldn’t place it. In any case, she couldn’t think when she would ever have been likely to have met him, or indeed, anyone like him.
‘Perhaps we can provide you with transport to Princeton Junction, Dr Jones?’ Detective Grant suggested. ‘As it happens I need to go that way myself, so why don’t you let me give you a ride?’