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.