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.

The custody sergeant had a desk telephone and slipped the receiver under the plexiglass screen. I gave her the number and she dialled.

On the third ring, Hawthorne answered.

‘Hawthorne!’ I said.

‘Tony!’

For once, I didn’t correct him. ‘I need your help.’

‘What’s happened, mate?’

‘I’ve been arrested.’

‘What for?’

‘Murder!’

He didn’t speak for a moment and I heard what sounded like a station announcement in the background. ‘Are you still there?’ I asked.

He was still there. ‘Who did you kill?’

How could he ask that? ‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ I almost shouted. I had to control myself. This was the only call I was allowed. I took a deep breath. ‘Harriet Throsby has been stabbed,’ I explained. ‘She’s a critic. She gave my play a bad review.’