The World According to Bob

The most obvious explanation was that this was someone just trying to muck up my day. Sadly, it was pretty common. I’d seen it happen to other vendors and buskers over the years. Someone with a grudge or just an evil streak would make an accusation which the police would be obliged to check out. Sometimes they’d do it simply to get the person away from their pitch and then claim it for themselves. There were a few people around who, I knew, didn’t like the fact that I’d made the tube pitch a success and would love to have taken it over. It was nasty, but it was a fact of life, unfortunately.

The other, more sinister, possibility, was that it was someone trying to undermine my book. By now pretty much everyone in The Big Issue community knew about it. More newspapers had picked up on the story and several vendors had made comments, positive and negative.

I’d been told by one of the co-ordinators that someone had been putting it around that I shouldn’t be allowed to sell the magazine any more. I knew this already because one vendor in central London had made his objections plain and to my face. He had also called me ‘a f***ing hippy poser’, which was rather charming I thought. Stupidly, I’d imagined that I was doing something positive for the magazine. Instead, it felt at times like I’d turned into every vendor’s Public Enemy No 1.

By the time we got to the station both of the police officers were on first name terms with Bob. They seemed really smitten with him, so much so that he was their first priority when we arrived at the station.

‘Right let’s get Bob settled before we take you into the custody suite,’ the older officer said.

We were soon joined by a blonde, uniformed female PC in her late twenties. She immediately focussed on Bob, who was still wrapped around my shoulders, trying to take in the unfamiliar scenery.

‘OK, is this Bob?’ she said, reaching up to him and giving him a stroke. He seemed to take an instant shine to her and was soon rubbing his face on her hand, purring away as he did so.

‘Do you think he’d mind if I picked him up?’ she said.

‘Sure, if he will come to you then go for it,’ I said, sensing that he was already really at ease with her.

As I suspected, he let her scoop him up.

‘Why don’t you come with me and we can see if we can sort you out with something nice to eat or drink?’ she said.

I watched as they headed behind the main reception desk to an office area with desks and photocopiers and fax machines. Bob was fascinated by all the red lights and buzzing machines and was happy in there. So I left him there as I headed off with the officers.

‘Don’t worry, he’s safe with Gillian,’ the younger officer said to me as we went through a set of doors into the custody suite. I felt certain he was telling the truth.

As we headed into an interview room, I suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach. It had been explained to me that I was being questioned about one of the so-called ‘trigger offences’. These were offences in which drug users or dealers committed crimes like shoplifting, robbery and assault in order to buy drugs. So as a result of this, I knew that I would probably need to be tested for drugs as well as fingerprinted.

How times had changed? A year or so earlier and I’d have been seriously concerned about this. But now I had no qualms at all as they conducted the so-called Cozart test and swabbed my mouth for traces of heroin or cocaine. I knew I was clean. I told the officers this but they said they had no option.

‘It’s regulation now I’m afraid,’ one of them said. Once that was over, they sat me down and asked me some questions.

They asked me whether I’d been in a location somewhere in Islington a day earlier. The address didn’t sound at all familiar. They then mentioned the name of a woman.

Years earlier, at the depths of my drug addiction, when I’d been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting I’d learned to simply answer ‘no comment’ to any questions like this. But I knew this was really irritating for the police, so I tried to be co-operative.

‘I’d like to help you, but I honestly don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said.

They didn’t get angry or pushy in their questioning at all. There was no ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. They just nodded at my answers, took down some notes and that was it. After about ten minutes, or less, we were done.

‘OK, Mr Bowen, well we need you to stay here for a bit while we look into this further,’ the younger officer said.

By now it had turned into a very bright, sunny afternoon outside. I was impatient to be reunited with Bob and to get back to work. But the clock kept ticking and before I knew it the shadows were lengthening. It was really frustrating and I was also worried about Bob. At one stage a duty PC offered me a cup of tea so I asked about him.

‘It’s OK, he’s with Gillian still downstairs,’ he said. ‘Think she’s been out to get him some treats, so he’s a pretty happy chappie down there.’