The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Street-wise Cat

Chapter 13 Public Enemy No 1

Another summer was on its way and the midday sun was already blazing as Bob and I settled ourselves in a shady spot outside Angel tube station. I had just got out a bowl and filled it with some water for Bob when I saw two men approaching.

They were both dressed casually, in jeans and jumpers. One was in his late twenties while the other was, I guessed, a decade or so older, probably in his late thirties. Almost in unison, they produced badges from their pockets showing they were police officers, members of the CSU, Community Safety Unit for Islington.

‘Hello there, Sir. Can you tell me your name?’ the older of them asked me.

‘Erm, it’s James Bowen, why?’

‘Mr Bowen, I’m afraid we have had an allegation of assault made against you. It’s a serious matter so we are going to have to ask you to accompany us to the police station to answer a few questions,’ the younger guy said.

Plain-clothes policemen were a fairly frequent fixture on the streets and I’d encountered my fair share of them. Fortunately, unlike some of their colleagues, who could be a little aggressive and anti-Big Issue vendors, these two were perfectly polite.

When I asked if I could take a minute to pack up my pitch and sort Bob out, they told me to take as much time as I wanted. They then told me that we were going to walk towards their HQ at Tolpuddle Street.

‘Shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes,’ the younger officer said.

I was surprised at how calm I was. In the past I’d have started panicking and would probably have protested, possibly even violently. It was a measure of how much more controlled and together I was these days. Besides, I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t assaulted anyone.

The police officers seemed pretty chilled too. As we made our way to the station, they were walking along quite happily in front of me and Bob. Occasionally one would drop back to walk with us. At one point, the younger of the two asked me whether I understood what was happening and whether I knew my rights.

‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.

I knew I hadn’t been charged with anything and that I was just helping them with their enquiries. There was no need to call a lawyer or anything like that, at this stage at least.

Obviously, my mind was churning away, trying to work out who might have made this ‘allegation’. I had a few thoughts already.

The most obvious explanation was that this was someone just trying to muck up my day. Sadly, it was pretty common. I’d seen it happen to other vendors and buskers over the years. Someone with a grudge or just an evil streak would make an accusation which the police would be obliged to check out. Sometimes they’d do it simply to get the person away from their pitch and then claim it for themselves. There were a few people around who, I knew, didn’t like the fact that I’d made the tube pitch a success and would love to have taken it over. It was nasty, but it was a fact of life, unfortunately.

The other, more sinister, possibility, was that it was someone trying to undermine my book. By now pretty much everyone in The Big Issue community knew about it. More newspapers had picked up on the story and several vendors had made comments, positive and negative.

I’d been told by one of the co-ordinators that someone had been putting it around that I shouldn’t be allowed to sell the magazine any more. I knew this already because one vendor in central London had made his objections plain and to my face. He had also called me ‘a f***ing hippy poser’, which was rather charming I thought. Stupidly, I’d imagined that I was doing something positive for the magazine. Instead, it felt at times like I’d turned into every vendor’s Public Enemy No 1.

By the time we got to the station both of the police officers were on first name terms with Bob. They seemed really smitten with him, so much so that he was their first priority when we arrived at the station.

‘Right let’s get Bob settled before we take you into the custody suite,’ the older officer said.

We were soon joined by a blonde, uniformed female PC in her late twenties. She immediately focussed on Bob, who was still wrapped around my shoulders, trying to take in the unfamiliar scenery.

‘OK, is this Bob?’ she said, reaching up to him and giving him a stroke. He seemed to take an instant shine to her and was soon rubbing his face on her hand, purring away as he did so.

‘Do you think he’d mind if I picked him up?’ she said.

‘Sure, if he will come to you then go for it,’ I said, sensing that he was already really at ease with her.

As I suspected, he let her scoop him up.

‘Why don’t you come with me and we can see if we can sort you out with something nice to eat or drink?’ she said.

I watched as they headed behind the main reception desk to an office area with desks and photocopiers and fax machines. Bob was fascinated by all the red lights and buzzing machines and was happy in there. So I left him there as I headed off with the officers.

‘Don’t worry, he’s safe with Gillian,’ the younger officer said to me as we went through a set of doors into the custody suite. I felt certain he was telling the truth.

As we headed into an interview room, I suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach. It had been explained to me that I was being questioned about one of the so-called ‘trigger offences’. These were offences in which drug users or dealers committed crimes like shoplifting, robbery and assault in order to buy drugs. So as a result of this, I knew that I would probably need to be tested for drugs as well as fingerprinted.

How times had changed? A year or so earlier and I’d have been seriously concerned about this. But now I had no qualms at all as they conducted the so-called Cozart test and swabbed my mouth for traces of heroin or cocaine. I knew I was clean. I told the officers this but they said they had no option.

‘It’s regulation now I’m afraid,’ one of them said. Once that was over, they sat me down and asked me some questions.

They asked me whether I’d been in a location somewhere in Islington a day earlier. The address didn’t sound at all familiar. They then mentioned the name of a woman.

Years earlier, at the depths of my drug addiction, when I’d been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting I’d learned to simply answer ‘no comment’ to any questions like this. But I knew this was really irritating for the police, so I tried to be co-operative.

‘I’d like to help you, but I honestly don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said.

They didn’t get angry or pushy in their questioning at all. There was no ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. They just nodded at my answers, took down some notes and that was it. After about ten minutes, or less, we were done.

‘OK, Mr Bowen, well we need you to stay here for a bit while we look into this further,’ the younger officer said.

By now it had turned into a very bright, sunny afternoon outside. I was impatient to be reunited with Bob and to get back to work. But the clock kept ticking and before I knew it the shadows were lengthening. It was really frustrating and I was also worried about Bob. At one stage a duty PC offered me a cup of tea so I asked about him.

‘It’s OK, he’s with Gillian still downstairs,’ he said. ‘Think she’s been out to get him some treats, so he’s a pretty happy chappie down there.’

Eventually, the two officers who’d first approached me, came back into the interview room.

‘I’m afraid I think we’ve wasted your time and our time,’ they said. ‘The person who made this accusation on the phone hasn’t been willing to come down to give a formal statement. So there’s no corroborating evidence against you and so there will be no charges.’

I was obviously relieved. I felt angry as well, but decided to bottle it up. There was no point in making a formal complaint or threatening legal action, especially as everyone had been so decent. It was best to just get the hell out of there and get back to work.

My main concern, once more was Bob. What had they done with him for all this time?

I had to go down to the reception area to sign out. Bob was there with Gillian, looking as content as when I’d left him. But the moment he saw me his tail started swishing and his ears perked up. He leapt into my arms.

‘Gosh, someone’s pleased to see you,’ Gillian said.

‘Has he been a good boy?’ I asked her.

‘He’s been a star. Haven’t you, Bob?’ she said.

I saw that she had set him up in a corner of her office. She told me that she’d been out to the shops and bought him some cat milk, a pouch of meaty food and an enormous packet of his favourite treats. No wonder he was so happy, I thought.

We chatted for a moment or two while they got my bag and tabard from wherever it had been put during my interview upstairs. Gillian told me in normal circumstances he’d have been placed with any stray dogs that were being held.

‘If you’d been kept in overnight we’d have had to think about putting him there,’ she said. ‘But luckily that won’t be necessary now.’

I’d soon been officially released. The two officers were apologetic again.

‘Just someone being spiteful I guess,’ I said to them, shaking their hands as I left.

By the time I had left the station it was getting towards sunset. All day I’d been paranoid that someone had stolen my pitch so I headed back to Angel just to check. To my relief, there was no one there.

‘You all right, James?’ one of the flower sellers asked me.

‘Yeah, just someone’s idea of a joke. Reporting me for assault.’

‘Really? What’s wrong with people?’ he said, shaking his head in disgust.

It was a good question, one to which I had absolutely no answer unfortunately.

Around a week to ten days later, Bob and I were selling magazines during the rush hour, when an attractive, blonde lady came up to us. Bob seemed to recognise her and arched his head towards her when she knelt down beside him.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said to me as she made a fuss of him.

So many faces were flashing past us each night outside the tube, it was hard to register everyone. She could obviously see I was struggling.

‘Tolpuddle Street station? I was the one who looked after Bob the other week,’ she smiled.

‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry,’ I said, genuinely mortified. ‘It’s Gillian, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like you are both doing well,’ she said.

Community police officers had stopped to talk to us over the years, but she didn’t seem to be ‘on duty’.

She wasn’t in uniform for a start.

‘On my way home from the end of my shift,’ she said, when I mentioned this.

‘We didn’t really have much of a chance to talk when you were at the station the other day, for obvious reasons,’ Gillian said. ‘So how did you two get together?’

She smiled and laughed out loud a couple of times as I recounted our early days together.

‘Soul mates by the sound of it,’ she said.

She could tell that I was busy and that the rush hour was about to begin, so was soon on her way.

‘I might pop in and see you again if that’s all right,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ I said.

She was true to her word and was soon stopping by to see us regularly, often bringing gifts for Bob. He seemed to have a genuine soft spot for her.

Gillian was generous to me as well. On one occasion she brought me a coffee, a sandwich and a cookie from one of the smart local sandwich bars. We chatted for a little while, both of us skirting around what had happened at the station a few weeks earlier. A part of me was curious to find out who had made this allegation against me, but I knew she couldn’t go into too much detail. It would have been too risky for her.

I explained to her what was happening to us with the book and how it seemed to have generated more animosity than anything else.

‘Ah don’t worry about that. People are always jealous of other’s success. It sounds great,’ she said. ‘Your friends and family must be so proud of you.’

‘Yeah, they are,’ I said, giving her a sheepish smile and lighting up a cigarette.

Of course, the truth was that I didn’t have too many friends. Aside from Belle, there was no one to whom I could turn – in the good times or the bad times. I had Bob and that was about it.

It was, in part, the life that I’d made for myself. I was a product of the environment in which I’d spent the past decade.

When I’d been on drugs I’d withdrawn from the world. My most important relationships back then were with my dealers. But even now that I was clean, I found it hard to establish friendships. There were several reasons. Money, for a start. To make friends you had to go out and socialise, which cost money so I very rarely did that. But on a deeper level, I also found it hard to trust people. During the worst period of my drug dependency, I’d stayed in hostels where you knew that anyone could rob you of all your possessions any moment. Even when you were asleep. So I’d become very wary. It was sad, but I still felt that way to a large extent. The events of the past couple of weeks had underlined that. Someone had made a fictitious assault accusation against me. For all I knew it could have been someone I saw every day of the week. It could have been someone I regarded as a ‘friend’.

So as I looked at Bob interacting with Gillian, a part of me wished my life could be as simple and straightforward as his. He had met her in strange circumstances but had immediately sensed he could trust her. He knew in his bones that she was a decent person and so he had embraced her as a friend. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I needed to do that more. I needed to take that same leap of faith. To do that, however, I had to change my life. I had to get off the streets.