A Street Cat Named Bob by Bowen James

Author:Bowen, James [Bowen, James]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2012-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

I’d been in the cell for about half an hour when the door opened suddenly and a white-shirted officer ushered me out.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘Where are you taking me now?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see,’ he said.

I was taken into a bare room with a few plastic chairs and a single table.

There were a couple of officers sitting opposite me. They looked disinterested, to be honest. But then one of them started questioning me.

‘Where were you yesterday evening at around 6.30p.m.?’ one of them asked.

‘Um, I was busking in Covent Garden,’ I said.

‘Where?’

‘On the corner of James Street, opposite the entrance to the tube,’ I said, which was true.

‘Did you go into the tube station at any time that evening?’ the copper asked.

‘No, I never go in there,’ I said. ‘I travel by bus.’

‘Well, how come we’ve got at least two witnesses saying that you were in the station and that you verbally abused and spat at a female ticket attendant?’

‘I’ve got absolutely no idea,’ I said, bemused.

‘They saw you come up the escalator from the tube and try to go through the automatic barrier without a ticket.’

‘Well, as I say, that can’t have been me,’ I said.

‘When you were challenged you verbally abused a female member of staff.’

I just sat there shaking my head. This was surreal.

‘You were then led to the ticket booth and asked to buy a ticket,’ he went on. ‘When you did so, against your will, you then spat at the window of the ticket booth.’

That was it; I lost my cool.

‘Look, this is bullshit,’ I said. ‘I told you I wasn’t in the tube station last night. I’m never in there. And I never travel by tube. Me and my cat travel everywhere by bus.’

They just looked at me as if I was telling the biggest lies in the world.

They asked me if I wanted to make a statement, so I did, explaining that I’d been busking all night. I knew the CCTV footage would back this up. But at the back of my mind I was having all sorts of paranoid thoughts.

What if this was all a fit up? What if they had doctored the CCTV footage in the tube station? What if it went to court and it was my word against three or four London Underground officers?

Worst of all, I found myself anxiously wondering what would happen to Bob. Who would look after him? Would he stay with them or head back on to the street? And what would happen to him there? Thinking about it did my head in.

They kept me in for about another two or three hours. After a while I lost all track of time. There was no natural light in the room so I had no idea whether it was day or night outside. At one point a lady police officer came in, with a surly-looking male officer behind her.

‘I need to do a DNA test,’ she said as he took a position in the corner where he stood with his arms folded, glaring at me.

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