your question about why he didn't ask one of his colleagues at the university to vouch for him.'
The sergeant looked thoughtful. 'It's an offense to misrepresent yourself in a job application.'
Andrew shook his head. 'There's nothing wrong with his qualifications,' he said with a wry smile. 'It's his breeding he's worried about. The man's an anthropologist. It won't be easy admitting he's the unlikely product of a Jamaican road sweeper and a Hong Kong maid when he's made a habit of passing himself off as a dark-skinned Caucasian.'
Andrew, given half an hour to persuade his friend to answer questions, eschewed sympathy in favor of brutal honesty. He listed the options. Assuming Jonathan had nothing criminal to hide, he had a choice of explaining himself and hitching a ride home with Andrew that evening, or keeping up the silence and spending a night in the cells while police made inquiries of his friends and colleagues in London. If he chose the latter, his detention would become public knowledge and he would have to make his own way home if and when he was released. As the police had found no credit cards, cash or return ticket in his pockets or in his briefcase, that could prove difficult.
If Jonathan could not afford his own lawyer, there was a duty paralegal kicking her heels in the waiting room. However, unless he wanted to prolong his agony by explaining his actions to a stranger-bearing in mind the potential charges were minimal-he'd be mad to waste time on a bored young woman who hadn't taken her exams yet. The police doctor who'd tested his urine had hinted at depression, and if Jon persisted in silence there was a strong possibility his next stop would be the psychi-atric department at the local hospital. The knock-on effects of this, when an explanation for his absence reached the university, would be rather more serious than a quiet consultation with a GP in London.
Finally, his agent, who knew more about his author than his author realized, had already blown the gaffe on Jonathan's financial situation, self-esteem problems and inability to sustain relationships ... so it was pointless continuing to save face.
'You could lend me some money to get home,' Jonathan muttered, staring at the floor.
'I could, but I'm not going to. What happened to yours?'
'It was stolen.'
'Why didn't you tell the police?' 'Because they're fascists, and they only arrested me because I'm black.' There was some truth in that, thought Andrew, but now wasn't the time to say it. 'Grow up, Jon!' he said curtly. 'Football hooligans are regularly arrested for running amok, and ninety-nine point nine percent of them are white. Your color didn't come into it. In any case, you are where you are. You can either keep licking your wounds, or you can show .some sense. Rightly or wrongly, you're banged up in a provincial nick with question marks over your behavior. God knows what's been going on, but you can either tell me about it... or you can tell the sergeant. Either way, you need to tell someone.'
Jonathan dropped his head into his hands but didn't answer.
'What happened with Councillor Gardener? How did that go?'
'She called me a pig.'
'She? I thought it was a man.'
'Short, fat and bossy. A bit like you, except she's a hideously ugly middle-aged spinster who spends most of her time making faces.'
Andrew lined up a chair beside him and sat down. 'Why did she call you a pig?'
Jonathan ground his knuckles into his eyes. 'She didn't like me. Accused me of bullying her and said, 'What you can expect from a pig but a grunt?' '
'What did you do?'
'I left.'
'I meant, how did you bully her?'
'I didn't ask her what her flaming qualifications were.'
It wasn't much of an explanation but Andrew made a reasonable guess at what had happened. 'By which I presume you patronized her ... and she didn't like it.'
Jonathan gave an indifferent shrug which Andrew took for assent.
'Who stole your wallet?'
More knuckle-grinding. 'I think it was the woman at the station, but it could have been any of them.'
'What woman?'
'The one who helped me.'
'What was her name?'
'I don't know, she wouldn't tell me.'
'Was this before or after you ran amok?'
'Before.'
'Why did you need help?'
'The police thought I had a bomb in my briefcase so she opened it to prove I was harmless.' Jonathan gave a stifled laugh. 'She said she was being charitable ... and I believed her. That's how stupid I was. Since when did a woman do anything for free?'
Wondering if that was an oblique reference to Emma, Andrew filed the statement away. The minutes were ticking away and he couldn't afford to be sidetracked. 'The sergeant didn't mention a bomb. He said you bumped into other passengers and shouted about being Falstaff.'
'It was a different station. They were watching me from the entrance because I was sweating.'
'Which station?'
