‘You can do that from the station,’ she said.
‘But I’ve got a phone here.’
She scowled at me but in a way that suggested she was enjoying every minute of this. ‘Did you really kill her because she gave you a bad review?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ I tried to appeal to her human side. ‘Look, if you’re annoyed with me because of what happened the last time we met, that really wasn’t my fault. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose—’
‘It’ll go easier for you if you come clean,’ she interrupted.
She had no human side. For the next few minutes, she said nothing, sitting at my table like some sort of malevolent Buddha, unmoving and imperious, letting me sweat it out as I wondered what was going to happen next.
Then Mills returned. Cara got up and let him in – she wouldn’t even allow me to answer my own door phone and I marvelled at the way that, when the police take control of you, they assume almost total power. Mills was carrying a pile of oversized plastic bags, which he placed on the table. ‘You’re going to have to get changed,’ he said.
‘What?’ I was wearing a T-shirt and the same jeans I’d had on the night before. ‘Why?’
‘We need your clothes.’ He searched in the pile and pulled out a pale blue onesie with a zip up the front. It was made of a very thin fabric, like paper.
‘I’m not putting that on!’ I protested.
‘Yes, you are,’ Mills assured me.
‘I’ll leave you two men together,’ Cara said and left the room with a half-concealed smirk. She didn’t go far, though. I could still feel her presence out in the hallway. She was probably watching through the crack in the door.
Mills made me strip off and put on the jumpsuit. He put plastic bags over my hands. ‘Where’s your bedroom?’ he asked.
We went up together and he made me show him the clothes I’d worn the night before. All of these went into the plastic bags, which he carefully labelled and sealed. After what had happened the last time we met, he wasn’t going to make any mistakes. Finally, the three of us left together. I was feeling ridiculous in the outfit they’d given me. It rustled as I walked. But from the research I’d been doing half my life, and, indeed, from what Hawthorne had told me when I was writing Injustice, I knew they weren’t doing all this just to humiliate me. They were keeping the evidence clean, preventing any fibres transferring themselves from me to their police car and vice versa. My humiliation was just an enjoyable extra.
Their car was parked outside – not a police car but a tatty Ford Escort. I asked them where we were going, but of course they didn’t tell me, and once again I felt the whisper of terror that comes from having handed over all choice, all control to representatives of the state. I was a parcel in their hands and they could deliver me where they liked.
That turned out to be Islington, a couple of miles away. We drove past Marks and Spencer and the Vue Cinema, then turned off into a series of streets I had never visited. Another left turn brought us to a surprisingly handsome low-rise building that might have been a council office designed for the more upmarket residents of the borough. My two arresting officers made no comment and there was no sign of any police activity outside. We slowed down and stopped in front of a rather more menacing wall that abutted the building, topped with spikes and razor wire. A gate opened and we drove into a car park filled with police vehicles, gravel, security cameras and despair. As the gate swung shut behind me, I felt utterly cut off from my own life. I can’t quite describe my sense of emptiness, a sense of disbelief that wrenched me from the world I had always known.
A side door led into the custody office, which was small and utilitarian, painted in drab shades of grey and white with official forms pinned to every wall. It reminded me of an old-fashioned bank or building society on a particularly bad day. There were three uniformed officers sitting behind desks with plexiglass screens and computers. I was placed on a stool opposite. But I wasn’t here to take out money. In fact, I was the one being deposited.
‘Name?’ the custody sergeant asked, sweetly. She was in uniform, very neat and well presented, and it struck me that in another life she would have done well as a receptionist, perhaps at the Savoy.
I was about to reply, but then realised she had not expected me to answer for myself. Why should I when I was nothing more than an object to be processed? She had been addressing Cara Grunshaw.
‘This is Anthony Horowitz,’ Grunshaw said. ‘He has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Harriet Throsby. It is necessary for him to be held in custody in order to interview him and secure evidence.’
They were lines that could have come out of the world’s worst-written play, delivered by actors who had never learned to act. Of all the languages in the world, officialese is the grimmest, lacking any sense of humanity. And the custody sergeant, for all her smiles, was no better. ‘I have heard the reason for the arrest and the need to detain you,’ she told me, once Grunshaw had finished. Her voice mangled the lines, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was saying them. ‘You will be held here to secure and preserve evidence and to obtain evidence by questioning. Is there anything you wish to say at this stage?’
What could I possibly say?
‘I would like to assert and to place on record the possibility that, as evidenced from the two previous statements, you and your colleagues have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. You’re all idiots. This is completely crazy. And if you don’t let me go, I’m going to sue the whole lot of you …’
But I didn’t say that. This probably wasn’t a good place to make enemies.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ I said.
They all smiled. They’d never heard that one before.
‘Would you like someone informed you are here?’
Oh God! That was a difficult question. Of course I had to tell my wife. But at the same time, I couldn’t. It wasn’t as if there was anything she could do and what was the point of worrying her when, surely to goodness, I’d be out of here before she noticed I was missing. Hilda Starke? My agent hadn’t come to the first night of Mindgame: she was on holiday in Barbados. I wasn’t even sure what the time was over there. She might be in bed or, worse still, sunning herself on the beach. She wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted and anyway, I wasn’t sure how she could help. The only lawyers I knew were the ones who had helped me buy my flat and I wasn’t even sure they had a criminal division. Hawthorne? No, not yet. He was the ace up my sleeve. There was still a chance this would sort itself out. I would only use him when I had to.
What would happen if all this got into the press? I don’t know why I asked myself that question just then, but suddenly I could see it: the headline. ALEX RIDER AUTHOR ON MURDER CHARGE. My children’s books would collapse. On the other hand, it might help my crime-fiction sales. I couldn’t believe I’d had that thought. This wasn’t, under any circumstances, the sort of publicity I wanted. I was still clinging to the hope that the police would hold me for a few hours and then let me go.
‘Not for the moment, thank you,’ I said.
The process continued, everything done by the book. I was made to stand on a yellow mat (the words SEARCH MAT were helpfully written on the surface) and searched with a metal detector, even though I wasn’t wearing my own clothes and had no pockets. I was escorted to a second room and photographed. After that, images of my fingerprints were taken. I was quietly disappointed that this was done not with an inkpad, but digitally against a glass panel, although I really should have known. Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman in a stretch-cotton tracksuit had been brought in and was being processed alongside me, a torrent of swear words pouring out of her mouth. As the shock of my arrest wore off, I found myself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. I don’t think I’m a snob. But the criminal class was one I’d never wished to join.