The Twist of a Knife

6 One Phone Call

After he had arrested me, Mills went out to the car, leaving me alone with his boss. I was completely dazed. Perhaps I was even in shock. In all my time on the planet all I’d ever managed was a speeding ticket and now I was being arrested for murder? I couldn’t get my head around it. I asked her if I could make a phone call.

‘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.

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 dreadful: 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.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I said, but without conviction.

‘You can change out of that jumpsuit now. We’ve left you some clothes you’ll find more comfortable.’

I noticed the clothes for the first time, piled neatly at the end of the bed. A pair of grey tracksuit trousers, a grey sweatshirt, elasticated shoes … poor cousins to trainers.

The sergeant left and with the clank of the key turning in the lock came the awful realisation of what had happened to me. My freedom had been taken away from me. I was going to be forced to stay in this horrible place for possibly ninety-six hours. I could still hear the laughing man and the screaming woman. There were other sounds too: hollow echoes, more doors slamming, the buzz of an electric switch. Of course prison is horrible. I’d visited enough of them to know that for myself. But I had never experienced what it meant to be a prisoner, and that was much worse. I had never felt more alone. I almost wanted to cry.

I curled up on the bed, feeling the plastic crackle beneath me. I dragged the pillow towards me, then threw it away once I’d smelled it. I drew up my legs, closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come.