Or maybe they don’t care about facts. Maybe they only care about statements. Versions.

‘July of last year?’ I repeat, playing for time.

‘Yes. 2018. The last time you were involved with the police.’

He makes it sound as if I’m some serial offender, in and out of Wormwood Scrubs. ‘If you mean the business on the Tube, I don’t see what that’s got to do with this.’

‘I would say it suggests a certain impulsive streak in you that very well may have reared up again on Monday night,’ Parry says.

I flush, angry now. ‘“Impulsive streak”? You’ve got to be joking? What is it you want to know about it that you can’t read in the statement I made to the police at the time?’

He isn’t backing off. ‘Just give us the highlights, Jamie. Or do I mean lowlights?’

I glower at him. I don’t like the edge of disrespect to his tone, which echoes, if anyone, Kit. Not a generational fault, however, since his partner is casting him a glance that suggests a level of disapproval of his own.

‘Mental illness isn’t like that,’ I say in a flat tone. ‘It’s complex, personal. Different for every sufferer. Weren’t you taught that in training? Half the people you deal with must have mental health issues.’

Parry bows his head in apology. No doubt he’s remembering warnings of the myriad new ways members of the public might complain about how they’ve been misspoken to or wrongly defined by police officers. The organizations that will rally to support them, the activists and the trolls. He tries again: ‘Let me rephrase. Please would you tell us how any mental health issue you suffer from specifically affected your actions last July.’

‘Do I have a choice?’ I direct the question at Merchison, but it’s Parry who has the baton and he’s keeping a tight grip on it.

‘You always have a choice, Jamie,’ he says. ‘A man like you.’

14

July 2018

It had been building, I knew that. But the problem with phobias involving commuter transport is you either face them or lose your job. You have to get to places at a time that suits other people’s preferences, not your own.

I didn’t work at the Comfort Zone then, I was still in my ‘real’ job, an erroneous distinction if ever there was one, since standing for nine hours serving coffee feels a lot more real than nine hours sitting in a meeting talking shit, drinking coffee served by someone else. Anyway, the office was in North London and to get there for 9.00 I’d catch the 07.35 overland train into London Bridge and then take the Northern Line to Chalk Farm.

The train was without exception overfull, but at least you could position yourself at the window facing out, deceive the brain into thinking you could touch the world beyond. The Tube offered no such trickery: look out of the window and you’d see only how terrifyingly close you were to the black walls of the tunnel, tunnels built for compact trains intended for a working population a fraction of today’s size. No walkways, no escape routes; only the popping veins of the cables and the blackened, peeling panels.

As for overcrowding, the Tube made the overland train look like the Orient Express: bodies were crammed into every last column of vertical space, the necks of those who’d pressed on last bent painfully forward in line with the curve of the doors – doors that locked like a crocodile’s jaws.

But I had no alternative. The roads were clogged, making driving as slow-moving as walking. The bike I’d bought was stolen from outside the Hope & Anchor even before I’d had a chance to test my fitness for it, and still so new it hadn’t yet been insured. And now, in July, there was a heatwave. The papers were full of the soaring temperatures, the inhumane conditions. Tube Hotter Than Legal Limit for Cattle! The older, deeper lines took a hammering: close to forty degrees, with explanations of how the extra heat was caused by a combination of friction from braking and inadequate ventilation.

The Northern Line is the oldest and deepest of all. It is also the longest continuous tunnel on the network at over seventeen miles.

The day it happened, I had a gut instinct there was something different about the journey. I was like the birds that bolt when the earth quakes ten thousand miles away – except I didn’t bolt. I couldn’t. I was trapped.

As the train swung between Euston and Camden Town, the mass was swaying towards me, forcing me painfully against the protruding flap of the emergency lever. I’d read so much about crush dynamics, I was practically an expert. A crush is seven passengers per square metre, when bodies are so jammed together they start to move as one, like fluid. A typical Northern Line train of six carriages had a capacity of eight hundred, but there were thousands on this one, and now it was happening – it was really happening: I couldn’t inflate my lungs.

Cheek flat against the partition, I gasped a plea to anyone who would listen: ‘Please can you move a bit, give me some space.’

‘No chance, mate. It’s sardines in here. Same for everyone.’

I thought, I need a doctor, I’m going to die.

A press of hot faces, hot chests, hot breath. My vision red and black, crinkling at the edges. Scrabbling waist height with my right hand, without even being able to see what I was doing, I lifted the flap and pulled the emergency lever. At once, an alarm rang out, though the train continued to move. Dozens of low voices asked the same few questions:

‘Has something happened?’

‘Did someone just pull the alarm?’

I know now that when the alarm sounds while the train is in a tunnel, the driver will override the automatic brake and continue towards the next station; he’ll call ahead for help but must get his train to the next platform before that help can be administered. Obvious, when you think about it.

But what happened that July morning was that the train did start to brake, about five seconds after I pulled the lever, before coming to a halt in the tunnel. Instantly, I understood that I had made the situation much, much worse, and now I was assaulted by hate-filled voices:

‘Was it you?’

‘For fuck’s sake, why did you do that?’

The cause of our captivity passed through the carriage and into those beyond, provoking a thousand muttered curses, the collected humidity of that human breath raising the temperature. My ears were primed to pick out the most frightening comments, the ones that served my own catastrophic thinking:

‘There’s literally no air in this thing.’

‘It’s like an oven, isn’t it?’

‘When are we going to get out of here?’

The shock of what I’d done receded and in its place roared a need to escape that was so extreme, so fanatical, I lost my mind and began scratching at the partition with my nails. My hearing was briefly fuzzy – I must have been on the verge of passing out – before returning with hideous clarity at the sound of my own roar, a wild, animal response to captivity. A babel of voices and accents:

‘He’s a maniac, what’s the matter with him?’

‘Fucking idiot.’

‘Don’t be so horrible. He’s having a panic attack, he needs help. We need to give him some space.’

‘There is no space.’

I thought how unexpected it was that the angriest voices were female and the only helpful one male. It was he who appealed to seated passengers, calling out, ‘Will someone give this guy a seat. He needs to calm down.’