‘That’ll be up to you. Do you have one?’
Tessie’s friend Barry is a lawyer. But he’s not Owen’s lawyer. ‘No,’ he says.
‘Well, we can assign you one if necessary.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No. I’m sure I’ll be fine.’
‘Let’s see how we go, shall we?’
Owen nods.
And then, like a house falling on him from the sky, its shadow getting bigger and bigger, faster and faster, he suddenly remembers something.
In his underwear drawer. Shoved in in a slightly shameful rush after his night out with Bryn, with the intention of putting them in the public bin on the street corner next time he was out, and then completely forgotten about.
The date-rape drugs.
A terrible overdose of adrenaline hits the pit of Owen’s stomach. His head spins. His heart stops and then races, sickeningly. ‘Oh my God,’ he whispers.
‘Everything OK?’ says DI Currie, peering at him in her mirror.
‘I think I’m going to …’ He puts his hand over his mouth. He suddenly realises he’s going to be sick. ‘I’m going to …’
DI Currie tells the PC to stop the car. They pull over by a grass verge and DI Currie exits and opens his door just as Owen tips forward and throws up, noisily, painfully. His skin ripples with goosebumps and his head throbs with the force of it. He gasps and throws up again. DI Currie appears in front of him, a tissue in her hand. She looks down at him. Owen can’t tell if it’s pity in her face, or disgust. He takes the tissue and dabs his mouth with it.
‘All OK?’ she asks him.
He nods.
‘Ready to keep going?’
He nods again.
She smiles and waits for him to put his legs back into the car before closing the door and going back to the passenger seat.
‘Something you ate?’ she asks a moment later, looking at him in the mirror.
He nods, his fist balled against his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Must be.’
She smiles, but she doesn’t look as though she believes him.
32
‘Mum,’ says Georgia, walking into the bathroom without knocking. ‘They just arrested him!’
‘Who?’
‘The policewoman detective person. She just went into the house over the road with another cop. Came out with the creepy guy. Put him in a car and drove him away! There’s journalists and all sorts out there, taking pictures! Come and see!’
Cate dries her hands on the backs of her jeans. It’s been two hours since DI Currie was here talking to them, since Roan left for work. She’d thought things might be winding down, but apparently not. She goes to the front door with Georgia.
There are people hanging around, a couple of small film crews packing their things away. Cate goes outside and wanders over to a young woman in a yellow anorak with a furry hood and says, ‘What’s been going on? Where have they taken that guy?’
‘Owen Pick, you mean?’ The woman, whom Cate assumes to be a journalist, shoves some wires into a black bag and zips it up.
‘I don’t know his name – the guy who lives in that house? Youngish, with dark hair?’
‘Yeah. Owen Pick. They’ve taken him in for questioning.’
