James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

She produced a little kit, with loads of swabs and test tubes.

Suddenly I felt like I was at the dentist.

‘Open wide,’ she said.

She then stuck a long, cotton bud into my mouth, gave it a bit of a scrape around the inside of my cheek and that was that.

‘All done,’ she said, putting the bud in a test tube and packing her stuff away.

Eventually, I was let out of the cell and taken back to the desk at the front of the station where I signed for my stuff. I had to sign a form saying that I was released on bail and told that I had to return a couple of days later.

‘When will I know if I am being formally charged?’ I asked the duty officer, suspecting that he couldn’t really tell me that. To my surprise he said that I’d probably know when I came back in a couple of days’ time.

‘Really?’ I said.

‘More than likely,’ he said.

That was good and bad, I decided immediately. Good in the sense that I’d not have to wait months to find out if I was going to be charged, bad in the sense that if they were going to charge me I could find myself spending time inside very soon.

I really didn’t relish that prospect.

After finally being let free, I emerged into the streets behind Warren Street in pitch darkness. There were already little groups of homeless people hunkering down for the night, hiding themselves away in alleyways.

It was approaching eleven o’clock. By the time I got back to Seven Sisters tube station it was close to midnight and the streets were full of drunks and people being turfed out of the pubs.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I got inside the flat.

Dylan was watching television with Bob curled up in his usual spot under the radiator. The minute I walked through the door, he jumped up and padded over to me, tilting his head to one side and looking up at me.

‘Hello, mate, you all right?’ I said, dropping to my knees and stroking him.

He immediately clambered up on to my knee and started rubbing against my face.

Dylan had headed off into the kitchen but soon reappeared with a cold tin of lager from the fridge.

‘That’s a life saver, thanks,’ I said, ripping the ring off the tin and taking a slug of cold beer.

I sat up for a couple of hours with Dylan, trying to make sense of what had happened to me. I knew the ticket collectors at Covent Garden tube didn’t like me – but I didn’t think they’d go so far as to try and frame me for a crime I didn’t commit.

‘There’s no way they can fix the DNA to match yours, mate,’ Dylan reassured me.

I wish I could have been so certain.

I slept fitfully that night. I’d been really shaken by the experience. No matter how much I tried to tell myself it would work out fine, I couldn’t erase the thought that my life could be about to take a terrible turn. I felt powerless, angry – and really scared.

I decided to give Covent Garden a wide berth the following day. Bob and I played around Neal Street and one or two other places towards Tottenham Court Road. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was too worried about what was going to happen when I turned up at the police station the following day. Again that night I struggled to get much sleep.

I was due to report at the Transport Police station at midday but set off early to make sure I was on time. I didn’t want to give them any excuses. I left Bob back at home – just in case I was going to be kept there for hours again. He had picked up on my anxiety as I’d paced around the flat eating my toast at breakfast.

‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll be back before you know it,’ I reassured him as I left. If only I’d been as confident of that as I sounded.

It took me a while to find the station, which was hidden away on a backstreet off Tottenham Court Road. I’d arrived there in the back of a van and left after dark, so it wasn’t surprising that I had trouble finding it.

When I did locate it, I had to sit and hang around for twenty minutes, during which time I found it hard to concentrate on anything. I was eventually called into a room where a couple of officers were waiting for me, one man and a younger woman.

They had files in front of them, which looked ominous. I wondered what they’d dug up about my past. God only knows what skeletons were hiding in that particular cupboard.

The male officer was the first to speak. He told me that I wasn’t going to be charged with the offence of using threatening behaviour. I guessed why that was.

‘The DNA didn’t match the saliva on the ticket collector’s booth did it?’ I said, feeling suddenly empowered by what he’d told me.

He just looked at me with a tight-lipped smile. He couldn’t say anything; I knew that. But he didn’t need to. It seemed obvious to me that someone at the tube station had tried to fit me up, but had failed.

If that was the good news, the bad news wasn’t long in following.

The lady told me that I was being charged with illegally busking, or ‘touting for reward’, to give it its formal title.

They shoved a piece of paper towards me and told me I was to report to court in a week’s time.

I left the station relieved. ‘Touting for reward’ was a relatively minor offence, certainly compared to threatening behaviour. If I was lucky I’d get away with a small fine and a rap across the knuckles, nothing more.

Threatening behaviour would have been a completely different matter, of course. That would have left me open to a heavy punishment, maybe even imprisonment. I’d got off lightly.

Part of me wanted to fight back at the injustice of what had happened to me. The description of the person who spat on the window bore no relation to my appearance. I held on to the paperwork and thought I could do them for wrongful arrest.

But, to be honest, the main thought in my mind as I headed home that afternoon was relief and a sense that I’d turned some sort of corner. I wasn’t sure yet what it was.

I still had to get past the court hearing. I went to the local Citizens Advice centre and got a bit of legal advice. I should probably have done that earlier, but I’d been too messed up to think of it.

It turned out that because I was on a drug rehab programme and living in sheltered accommodation, I was eligible for legal aid. But the truth was I didn’t think I needed a solicitor representing me in court, so I simply got some advice about what to say.

It was pretty straightforward. I needed to front up and admit that I was guilty of busking: plain and simple. I simply had to go along, plead accordingly and hope the magistrate wasn’t some kind of sadist with a hatred for street musicians.

When the day came I put on a clean shirt (over the top of a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Extremely Unhappy’) and had a shave before heading to court. The waiting area was full of all sorts of people, from some really scary-looking guys with shaven heads and Eastern European accents to a couple of middle-aged guys in grey suits who were up on driving offences.

‘James Bowen. The court calls Mr James Bowen,’ a plummy-sounding voice eventually announced. I took a deep breath and headed in.

The magistrates looked at me like I was a piece of dirt that had been blown in off the street. But under the law there wasn’t too much they could do to me, especially as it was my first offence for busking.

I got a three-month conditional discharge. I wasn’t fined.

But they made it clear that if I did reoffend I could face a fine – and even worse.

Belle and Bob were waiting for me outside the courthouse after the hearing was over. Bob immediately jumped off her lap and walked over to me. He didn’t want to be too melodramatic about it all, but it was clear he was pleased to see me.