She’s still speaking. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned …’
The funny thing about your life changing in a moment is that you are the same person after the change. I, Joanna Oliva, wife of Reuben Oliva, still wonder how long it took her to memorize the caution and whether or not she felt a frisson of power the first time she said it to somebody. My main thoughts are still what Reuben will think of me, and whether or not he will look at me differently, even though it is trivial against the backdrop of what I have done, like a cancer patient worrying about losing their hair in the face of a life-threatening disease.
‘… something which you later rely on in court …’
The night seems to become colder around me and I draw my coat sleeves down over my hands, even though the action strains and pulls at the wool.
‘… anything you do say may be given in evidence …’
And, with those words, I begin the process of no longer being myself. I’ve gone through the veil, to the underworld. I’m not myself any more. I’m not Joanna. I can’t go home and sit in bed with Reuben and play our end-of-the-night game.
‘Do you understand,’ the woman is saying to me, ‘what I’ve said?’
I nod because I don’t know what else to do. And they load not-Sadiq into the ambulance and close the doors with soft clicks in the night.
‘You’ll come to the station,’ she says. It’s not a request.
‘Of course,’ I say, wanting to please her, momentarily distracted by the glint of her wedding ring.
Reuben and I didn’t choose rings, in the end. He thought they were clichéd, which made me laugh. Laura was impressed. She loved the unconventionality of our wedding.
The policewoman searches me then. She gestures and, just like airport security, pats me down. ‘Do you have anything on you that might cause danger to you or others?’ she asks.
‘No.’
The policewoman tries to lead me by the arm over to their car but I walk willingly, like a well-trained dog keen to please. I get into the back of the car myself. The door handle is slick with rainwater.
She sits next to me in the back seat. I daren’t touch my mobile phone, though I want to. Reuben will be worried.
I close my eyes and pretend I am in a taxi, that some chatty Uber driver is talking to me. The other police officer gets in the driver’s seat and stalls the car before pulling away. I wonder if she took lots of attempts to pass her driving test, like I did.
My brown leather handbag is resting at my feet. I could reach it. Touch it. But perhaps that would be a crime.
‘Which station are we going to?’ I say. I wait a few seconds before looking up at them.
They don’t answer. They don’t speak. We just drive on in silence, the night streaking by.
I feel less and less human for every mile we travel.
It is only a ten-minute journey. The car comes to a shuddery stop and I reach to get out, but it is locked. The woman walks around to my side of the door, opening it like we are at the BAFTAs. She doesn’t look at me, just stands aside like a footman. I look up at the building. Paddington Green Police Station. I’ve never been here. I’d never been to Little Venice before tonight. And now they will be significant to me.
I step out of the car. The police station looks more like a hospital. Wide and flat and sprawling with a tower on its top like a growth. My eyes track it upwards. Floor after floor. What are they? Offices? Cells?
We’re around the back of it, in some sort of secure area. I hear the gates closing behind us.
‘This way,’ the woman says to me.
She doesn’t have a name badge and she doesn’t speak into a radio. She walks next to me, her right hand extended, ready, I guess, in case I make a sudden movement. I look up at the sky instead, taking in the grey expanse of it, before I am inside. I try to send Reuben a message with my mind. He’s always known what I’m thinking better than anybody. Reuben, I say into the night, looking at the low-hanging orange moon, I’m in trouble.
The air is cold against my face as I walk. My heels on the tarmac sound like bangs in the night. I can’t believe I’m still wearing them. What must I look like?
The policewoman pushes a side door open. Immediately I can smell something familiar. I feel nostalgic when I realize that it’s the old people’s home that Mum’s mum was in. Urine mingled with the smell of overcooked stew and dumplings; a sweaty, potatoey, clammy smell.
We enter a brightly lit room. Everything is some shade of blue. The chairs are navy. The desk is teal. The walls are sky blue. I am walked through a scanner, like at an airport. A man is standing there. He’s swarthy. Maybe Spanish. Italian. There’s something catlike about him. Slanted eyes. He smiles at me, which surprises me, and he has pointy incisors.
The machine beeps loudly, three times.
‘Coat off. Why’s she still got her coat?’ a cockney man behind the desk says to the woman who brought me in.
‘Hang on,’ the woman says.
‘And your bracelet,’ the man says to me, rolling his eyes.
My fingers trace over my wedding bracelet. ‘Oh, I … it doesn’t come off,’ I say. My words sound slurred.
‘Got to come off.’
I show it to him, wordlessly. It catches the overhead strip lights.
‘It’s got screws,’ he says, seemingly to himself. ‘Too risky.’
He disappears down the corridor and comes back with a screwdriver. One by one, he removes the tiny screws I didn’t even realize were there, and my lifetime bracelet is off, my arm feeling bald and raw underneath it.
The woman swings my handbag on to the high desk which another woman sits behind. My eyes are drawn to the side pocket where I saw her put my phone. I can see it poking out, on a bed of receipts and chewing-gum packets and a notebook.
There’s an annex behind the desk, a small room, and it’s got a whiteboard in it that a man is writing on. It’s divided into grids, with times. The man is writing my name down, which he’s reading off something that has been given to him. He’s in full uniform. White shirt with black shoulder pads with numbers on: 5619. A black tie, embossed with a crest at the bottom.
There’s something behind him, too. I crane my neck to see. Three miniature televisions are suspended from the ceiling on sturdy brackets. Some people must try to pull them off, I presume. Something opens up in my chest. A hollow feeling. Fear, I suppose. The televisions are CCTV. Of the cells. Little people moving around in the greyish-green boxes, like tiny captive holograms. I close my eyes.
‘Let’s try scanning you again,’ the man says. He’s holding my coat.
I walk towards the scanner. Finally, it doesn’t beep any more. As if this triggers something, another woman appears by my side.
‘I’m the Custody Sergeant,’ she says.
I look at the clock. Midnight. Reuben will be frantic. That phone call. And then nothing. I have hardly thought about it since I called the police. Why didn’t I call him again, before it was too late?
I look back at her. She’s blonde, with inch-long mousy roots. She’s in her late thirties, maybe. She’s wearing reddish brown eyeliner which has clumped together in little brick-coloured balls at the roots of her lower lashes. ‘I’m Sergeant Morris. You have the right to a solicitor –’
‘Okay,’ I start to say. Do I know any solicitors? I think of all my friends. Reuben says I’ve got so many. But no solicitors, I am sure.
‘You have the right to have somebody informed of your detention,’ she says, talking over me like a robot. ‘You have the right to consult the Codes of Practice. Do you have any questions?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘How do I get a solicitor?’
‘We can contact the duty solicitor or you can call somebody else,’ she says, ‘so long as it doesn’t interfere with our investigation.’
My mind reels. ‘I get one call?’ I say.
‘Yes.’