‘Well, I can tell you exactly how much time you’ve spent frequenting these forums, Mr Pick, because we have the data right here. Since Thursday January the seventeenth, the day you were suspended from your job at Ealing College, you have spent roughly four hours a day on these forums.’
‘Owen, you still don’t need to say anything. This is all complete nonsense.’
‘Owen, you’ve said some pretty dreadful things on these forums. You’ve joined in discussions on how to rape women, which sort of women deserve to be raped, and why. And you’ve referred to women in such derogatory terms that I can barely bring myself to repeat the terminology. You sit here, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, with your big, sad eyes, while thinking these things, expressing these vile, vile opinions about women.’
Her voice is raised, her eyes flash. For the first time since Owen first set eyes on Angela Currie, she is showing some genuine personality. She turns the papers around so he can seethe words he typed in a frenzy of euphoria at meeting people he could relate to.
The words swim in front of his eyes.
… Slag … Mouth …
… Fist …
… Whore … Hard …Face …
… Slut …
… Bitch … Bleed … Hole …
He closes his eyes.
He didn’t mean any of those words.
He’d just been joining in. The new boy. Getting carried away.
‘Can you confirm that these were written by you?’
He looks at Barry.
Barry just blinks at him. He is disgusted.
Owen nods his head.
‘Please affirm verbally, Mr Pick.’
‘Yes. I wrote these words. But I didn’t mean them.’
‘You didn’t mean them?’
‘No. Not really. I mean, I am, Iwascross about a lot of things. I was cross about being reported for things I hadn’t done at work …’
‘Hadn’t done?’
‘Hadn’t done in the way those girlssaidI’d done them.’
‘You mean they misread your intentions?’
‘Yes. No. Yes. I don’t have the slightest interest in teenage girls. Not in that way. They look like children to me. So whateverit was they thought I’d done, it had to have been done entirely innocently, unintentionally.’
DI Currie nods. ‘So you were cross about that, and you went to these places on the internet’ – she stabs a piece of paper with her fingertip – ‘and you said disgusting, violent things about women, because you were angry?’
Owen nods. ‘Yes. That’s right. But I didn’t mean any of it.’
‘Just like you didn’t mean to flick sweat on those girls or ask them if they liked girls or boys?’
‘What? I didn’t say that …’
‘They say you did, Mr Pick. Nancy Wade says you made her fear for her life while she walked alone in the dark. Your neighbours identified you as a potential sex threat when their daughter’s friend said she’d been accosted close to their home last month and a police officer was sent to ask you about that. You have spent dozens of hours in chat rooms and on forums discussing the best way to rape women and we have found traces of Saffyre Maddox’s blood on the wall and in the grass beneath your bedroom window, Saffyre Maddox’s phone case also beneath your bedroom window, and now, Mr Pick, we have been told of the existence of a large amount of the prohibited drug, Rohypnol, in one of your bedroom drawers – Rohypnol being, as I’m sure we’re all aware, a very well-known example of what is known as a date-rape drug.