Patrick is arrested and imprisoned over allegations involving Laurence Coleman

Patrick Hazlewood’s arrest over an accusation involving Laurence Cedric Coleman turns a late-night police visit into imprisonment and a public prosecution, while leaving Patrick afraid that the case may reach Tom Burgess. The accusation is not the one Patrick first fears: at the interview he learns it concerns a young man he encountered at the Argyle Hotel, not Tom. Yet the distinction offers no safety. Police pressure, a vulnerable accuser, and Patrick’s own defiant response carry the case from his flat to a courtroom where the machinery of prosecution seems to proceed without anyone fully registering its human consequences.

The arrest and search

The arrest begins at a quarter past one in the morning, with a knock designed to announce itself to the whole neighbourhood and to persist until answered. Patrick has slept through the buzzer and finds a policeman outside his flat; he knows it cannot be Tom, who has his own key, but does not know who has come. The officer identifies Patrick by his full name and presents a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of gross indecency with Laurence Cedric Coleman. Patrick asks who Coleman is. One officer answers with a sneer, treating denial as a familiar response before the accusation has even been explained.

Patrick goes quietly and is not handcuffed. He hopes that making no fuss may make the situation less awful for Tom, a thought that already connects his own arrest to the danger he believes may face the man he loves. The red-faced officer, later identified as Slater, mentions a search warrant, but Patrick sees no such document. As Slater leads him away, two uniformed men enter the flat, grinning. Patrick knows his journal is open on the desk in his bedroom and expects them to find it. The arrest therefore threatens more than immediate confinement: the search may expose private writing and the relationships it records.

On the drive through town in the Black Maria, Slater chats with a plain-clothed colleague about another case and boasts of having struck a suspect with a truncheon. The officers laugh at the man’s distress. Their casual joking stands in sharp contrast to the gravity of the arrest: for the policemen, coercion becomes an anecdote, while Patrick is being taken into a process that could reveal his private life and implicate people close to him.

The allegation and Patrick’s response

At the interview, a photograph identifies Coleman as the dark-haired youth from the Argyle. The officers ask whether Patrick approached him outside the Black Lion cottage, solicited him for sex, and committed acts of gross indecency with him in the public conveniences. Patrick feels relief because the allegation is not about Tom. He denies the charge. The relief, however, does not make the accusation harmless; it only clarifies which encounter the police are using to build their case.

Slater then changes tactics. He points to the supposed advantages of a guilty plea, warning that it would spare trouble not only for Patrick but for his associates. He invokes the pain that cases like this can cause family and friends, presenting the threat as sympathy. The appeal unsettles Patrick: perhaps, he thinks, the case really is about Tom after all, and Slater is offering a way to protect a colleague and friend. The scene makes the law’s pressure intimate. The possibility of exposure works through Patrick’s attachments, not merely through the prospect of punishment.

Patrick answers by looking Slater in the eye and admitting, in deliberately blunt terms, that he met Coleman and had sex with him in the lavatory, adding that they both wanted it. This is not a change of plea; it is a refusal to let Slater turn fear for other people into an easy confession. Slater replies that the admission will make the jury’s task straightforward. Patrick’s candour, meant to resist the officer’s manipulation, is immediately recast as evidence that will simplify the prosecution.

Imprisonment and trial

The account places the arrest within the confinement that follows. In his cell, Patrick describes one high window made of thirty-two dirty panes. He wakes before the door’s bolts are drawn and watches the dim squares, hoping the sun might cast a patch of light on the floor; it never does. At night, another prisoner repeatedly cries out to God. At first Patrick expects someone to silence him, but comes to understand that the prisoners listen or answer with grief of their own. Only the warders threaten the man with solitary confinement. The cell’s quiet, lightless routine gives the arrest a continuing consequence: the accusation has removed Patrick from ordinary life and placed him among people whose pain is heard but not answered.

The trial takes place in a small, stuffy courtroom that feels more like a school hall than a grand chamber of justice. Before proceedings begin, the public gallery is warned that the case contains material considered offensive to ladies. Every woman leaves at once; most blush deeply. The spectacle of their departure makes the social shame surrounding the charge visible before the evidence is heard.

The prosecutor, Jones, presents the case while Coleman stands shaking in the witness box and avoids Patrick’s eyes. Cross-examination reveals that Coleman has been involved in a petty theft, and Patrick concludes that the accusation was made to get Coleman out of trouble. Even that recognition does not bring Patrick fully back to the moment. He feels dazed, attending instead to a uniformed man behind him who absent-mindedly bites his nails and to the sound of saliva in his mouth. The future is about to be decided, but Patrick cannot comprehend the proceedings as they unfold.

The fear of what the case may expose

Marion Burgess later seeks permission to visit Patrick in prison. He initially means to refuse, but changes his mind because she is his only link to Tom, from whom he has heard nothing since the arrest. Patrick has even imagined that Tom might appear at HMP Wormwood Scrubs to serve a sentence, simply so they could see one another. He hopes Marion may bring a message, though he does not know whether Tom will come with her. The silence between them makes the arrest’s threat extend beyond the courtroom: Patrick cannot tell whether Tom is absent by choice, by necessity, or because the case has put him at risk.

When Marion appears at the trial, the two exchange small nods, a swift and civil acknowledgement rather than a conversation. Patrick’s immediate thought is what will happen to Tom and how Tom could forgive his stupidity. Tom’s name is not raised again during the rest of the trial, though Patrick says it remains on the tip of his tongue. The episode thus closes not with certainty about the case’s effect on Tom, but with that uncertainty still pressing on Patrick. The arrest exposes the danger of a criminal accusation while preserving the most consequential fact as silence: Patrick fears that the prosecution may reach the man who has not appeared.