Cara Grunshaw and Derek Mills had retreated to a distance, but whenever I looked at them, they were staring in my direction, watching me being processed like an oven-ready chicken and clearly relishing the entire business. Worse than that, they were waiting for me to be delivered back to them. All this was being done for their pleasure. Eventually, I would be placed in their hands, the door would slam … and what then? I wondered how long they could keep me. When they finally realised their mistake, as surely they would, how would they make up for it? Could I sue them for wrongful arrest? That, at least, was a pleasant thought.
I was taken down a narrow corridor and into a third room. I call it that, but it had no walls, no door, no obvious shape. It had the feel of a storage area. There was another police officer sitting at a table, surrounded by cardboard boxes. Bizarrely, this turned out to be the surgery. The officer pulled the bags off my hands and used a wooden paddle to scrape some of the detritus from under my fingernails. I assumed they were hoping for traces of Harriet Throsby’s blood and that thought cheered me up a little as I knew they wouldn’t find any. Next, the officer used a swab to take some cell samples from the inside of my mouth and it was while he was setting about this intimate process that I realised he hadn’t so much as said hello to me. I hoped a rectal examination wasn’t about to follow.
In fact, it was almost over. The officer plucked a few hairs off my head and carefully deposited them in a plastic bag. He now had different bits of my DNA in a whole variety of containers and each one of them would prove that I was innocent. That was all that mattered.
I was escorted back to the custody sergeant.
‘You are entitled to free legal advice,’ she told me.
‘No, thanks.’ I hadn’t done anything wrong. That was what I told myself. Somehow this would sort itself out. I didn’t need a lawyer yet.
‘Would you like to read a book called The Code of Practice, which explains all our police powers and procedures?’
I was tempted. It didn’t sound like a smash-hit bestseller, but I had nothing else to read. ‘No, thank you,’ I said.
‘You can now make a phone call, if you wish. You will only be permitted to make one phone call so please consider carefully who you would like to speak to.’
I had been thinking of nothing else. This was the reason why I didn’t need my agent or a lawyer or even my wife. There was only one person in the world who could get me out of this mess and all along I’d been waiting for the opportunity to make the call. ‘I have a friend …’ I said.
The custody sergeant had a desk telephone and slipped the receiver under the plexiglass screen. I gave her the number and she dialled.
On the third ring, Hawthorne answered.
‘Hawthorne!’ I said.
‘Tony!’
For once, I didn’t correct him. ‘I need your help.’
‘What’s happened, mate?’
‘I’ve been arrested.’
‘What for?’
‘Murder!’
He didn’t speak for a moment and I heard what sounded like a station announcement in the background. ‘Are you still there?’ I asked.
He was still there. ‘Who did you kill?’
How could he ask that? ‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ I almost shouted. I had to control myself. This was the only call I was allowed. I took a deep breath. ‘Harriet Throsby has been stabbed,’ I explained. ‘She’s a critic. She gave my play a bad review.’
‘It’s had a lot of bad reviews,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I’ve seen the newspapers.’ He paused. ‘Have any of the other critics been murdered?’
I ignored this. ‘You’ve got to get me out of here.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In Islington. Tolpuddle Street.’
‘There’s not much I can do, mate. They can keep you for ninety-six hours.’
‘Ninety-six!’ Somehow, with my brain whirling, I managed to do the maths. ‘That’s four days!’
‘They’ll need to see a superintendent to get permission to keep hold of you after the first twenty-four. Who’s the arresting officer?’
‘That’s the thing. It’s Cara Grunshaw.’
The custody officer was gesturing at me. My time was up.
‘Say hello from me!’ Hawthorne said.
‘Hawthorne – she hates you,’ I hissed into the phone. ‘And she hates me even more.’
‘Yeah, you’ve got a point there. That’s not good news.’
Was he doing this on purpose? Then I remembered. I’d refused to work on the fourth book. We’d had an argument. I should have known he would leave me in the lurch. ‘Can you do anything to help?’ I asked, suddenly miserable.
‘Not really. I’m on the tube.’
‘Can you talk to Detective Inspector Grunshaw?’
‘I doubt she’d listen to me.’
‘I shouldn’t have rung you, should I.’
‘Not really. This is what I’d do if I were you—’
I almost heard the tube train as it plunged into a tunnel. I certainly felt the darkness close in on me. The phone went dead. I handed the receiver back to the custody sergeant. I was on my own.
Cara Grunshaw stepped up to me. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she said.
I watched as she and Mills walked out through a door that opened for them but wouldn’t do the same for me.
A few minutes later, an older man – a police sergeant, I think – came for me and led me through a quite different door that took me further into the building. There was a barred gate on the other side and I could see a short corridor with eight cells. Now I could hear the woman who had been arrested at the same time as me. She was still screaming swear words. In another cell, a man was cackling with laughter. The air smelled dreadfuclass="underline" a mixture of sweat, urine, detergent and cheap, microwaved food. The sergeant unlocked the cell and led me through.
‘I’ve put you in at the end,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit quieter there.’ He was trying to be kind, but he could have been the ferryman taking me to hell. ‘My son’s read your books,’ he added as we continued on our way.
‘Has he?’
‘He used to read them when he was small. He’s twenty-eight now, but he’ll be amazed when I tell him I met you here.’
‘What does he do?’ I asked, hoping he wouldn’t tell anyone else.
‘He’s a journalist.’
We reached the door and he opened it with another key. ‘I’ll bring you in some supper in half an hour. Do you have any allergies?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, I’ll bring it anyway. I’m sure I can trust you not to throw it at the wall. Honestly, some of the people we get in here!’
My cell.
It was rectangular with a concrete floor, a bed moulded into the wall and, behind a screen, a metal toilet with a push-button flush and no seat. There was a barred window with milky glass so that it allowed no view, but that didn’t matter because it was too high up to look through anyway. I could make out the glare of a sodium light and I got the feeling that the evening had arrived and it was already dark. I had no watch. A CCTV camera looked down at me from the corner. I wondered if Mills and Grunshaw were examining me at this very minute.
I sat on the bed. It had a blue plastic mattress, a scrubby blanket and a pillow that had played host to too many heads.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ the sergeant asked.