He grunted, which I took to be confirmation.
My father, however, wasn’t finished yet.
‘I think it’s monstrous that you come in here without any appointment, force your way into my property, and arrest my son without so much as a by-your-leave. I intend to complain to the Home Secretary.’
He was going even redder in the face and I was seriously worried that his blood pressure was going through the roof and that he might easily have a seizure.
‘Pa,’ I said loudly. ‘It’s fine. Calm down. They are only doing their jobs. I’ll be back here before you know it.’
I went to make a movement towards my father and that was my error.
The two constables holding my arms must have sensed the tightening in my muscles and they clearly mistook it as an attempt to flee.
In a flash, a pair of handcuffs were out and being snapped tightly onto my wrists, which did nothing to help calm my father. Only the arrival of my mother on the scene did that. She had always been the pragmatic one in the relationship.
She took one look at the situation and went straight over to stroke my father’s arm. ‘Now, now, dear,’ she said to him. ‘We won’t help William by getting all upset, now, will we?’
My father looked down at her and smiled, the tension instantly draining out of his features. Not that my mother couldn’t also give her own acerbic opinions when she wanted to. She turned to the detective sergeant. ‘You’re going to look very foolish when you find there’s no evidence.’
The policemen ignored her and went about their business, collecting my suitcase and possessions from my bedroom and taking them out to their cars.
‘Mobile telephone?’ the DS said to me.
‘In my left trouser pocket,’ I replied.
He removed it.
‘Laptop?’
‘In my Jag.’
‘Where are the keys?’
‘In the other trouser pocket.’
He took those too. Then it was my turn to be taken to the police car.
I turned my head. ‘Pa,’ I called over my shoulder as I was taken out. ‘Don’t forget to call Simon Bassett. Look up the number on the internet. His firm is Underwood, Duffin and Wimbourne in Chancery Lane, London.’
‘I’ll do it straight away,’ my father replied, having finally regained his composure.
I took one last look at the castle as I was placed in the back seat of the marked police car and wondered, in spite of what I’d said to my father, how long it would really be until I was back here. They wouldn’t have arrested me now, and not before, unless they had found something else, something new.
‘How did you know where I was?’ I asked as we drove away.
‘Dead easy,’ said one of the constables. ‘We traced your phone.’
That was sneaky. Now I rather wished I had left the charger in the kitchen and let the battery run down. But why? I asked myself. I have no reason to hide. I’ve done nothing wrong. Have I?
It took nearly three and a half hours for us to get back to Banbury, which gave me plenty of time to think but still I couldn’t come up with a single reason why the detective sergeant should consider it necessary to have gone all the way to North Wales to arrest me today when I’d been voluntarily at his police station only yesterday.
He had simply to invite me back and I would have come, meek and mild, to his own front door without the need for histrionics, henchmen and handcuffs.
But we didn’t go in through the police station front door this time. Instead, the cars pulled into the yard behind the building and I was ushered through a rear door into the lobby of the custody suite, where the cuffs were finally removed.
‘Name?’ asked the burly uniformed custody sergeant behind the high desk.
‘Bill Russell,’ I said, rubbing my wrists.
‘William Gordon-Russell,’ said DS Dowdeswell, and the uniformed sergeant typed the longer version into a computer on the desk.
‘Date of birth?’
I told him.
‘Address?’
I told him that too, and he entered it.
‘Offence?’
I said nothing.
‘Murder,’ announced the DS with a bit of a flourish.
The custody sergeant glanced up at him and then back to his screen.
‘Murder,’ he repeated, typing it into the computer. ‘Any medical concerns? Or medications?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Other than I take a statin each night for high cholesterol.’
‘Mental health problems?’
‘No,’ I said. There had been plenty of those in our family but they were not down to me.
He typed some more then looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘Mr Gordon-Russell, I authorise your detention here at Banbury at twelve-thirty p.m., in line with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Do you need to let anyone know you are here?’
‘Has my solicitor arrived?’ I asked.
‘No one has asked for you. But I can arrange for you to see the duty solicitor if you want.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait for my own.’
The DS next to me snorted slightly as if to imply that he wouldn’t wait too long.
‘Anyone else?’ asked the custody sergeant.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No one else. No one at all.’
The only person I really wanted couldn’t be here; indeed, I was only in this situation because she couldn’t be here.
Oh, Amelia! Help me.
‘Empty your pockets,’ instructed the sergeant.
I took out my wallet, a handkerchief, Douglas’s key and a few coins and placed them in the grey plastic tray provided. Next came the keys to the four padlocks on my house, which caused DS Dowdeswell to raise his eyebrows. He picked them up from the tray.
‘Belt?’ said the custody sergeant.
I removed my leather belt and put that in the tray.
‘Watch?’
It joined my belt.
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Any drugs?
‘No.’
‘Phone?’
‘I’ve already got that,’ said DS Dowdeswell.
The custody sergeant nodded and made another note in his computer.
‘Remove your shoes,’ he said.
I nearly said please to him, like my grandmother would to say to me as a small child, but the sergeant wasn’t asking, he was ordering.
I removed my shoes and put them in the tray with the other stuff.
I was then searched — thankfully more of a frisking than a full-body strip search. Nothing found.
Next I was photographed and fingerprinted, and then a DNA sample was taken by a none-too-gently swabbing of the inside of my cheek.
‘Sign here,’ said the custody sergeant, pushing a sheet of paper across the desk towards me.
‘What is it?’
‘Custody report. Confirms you have been told your rights.’
I signed even though I didn’t know if I’d been told my rights or not.
‘Cell number seven,’ said the sergeant to another uniformed officer, and I was escorted by him past the line of other doors and into cell seven.
The door was slammed shut behind me, leaving me alone in a space about six feet by ten, painted throughout in calming cream.
A solid bed was built-in down one side of the cell, complete with a thin blue plastic-covered mattress. On the wall opposite the door, there was a small frosted-glass window and, in one corner, a stainless-steel lavatory with no movable seat, plus a tiny washbasin built totally into the wall with pushbuttons for taps.
All of it had been constructed to avoid there being any fixture or fitting from which an inmate could hang themselves.
I kept telling myself that wasn’t a consideration and I should not fret. The whole custody procedure had clearly been specifically designed to unnerve the prisoners — and it was working.