Jacobs- Originally posted by Adam Langley

Did I ever think it as a bad thing? No, of course I didn’t. I was in love.

No one believes me of course, when I tell them that. They all believe the papers, who think two and two making five justifies writing articles filled with words like “Stalker”, and “Suspect”. Which have you afraid to leave the house in case some suburban Charles Bronson with nothing else better to do reads one and decides that he would get a medal for beating you to a pulp. Which have your Mum come home in tears from the shop, after some jumped-up little Hitler tells her as loud as he can in front of everybody “We don’t want your custom anymore, Mrs. Jacobs, not while you live under the same roof as that animal you raised.” She’s out at the moment-She’s found a supermarket three miles away where no-one knows who She is. It’s not right. They have ruined her life by coming after me.

And mine. Sensationalist pricks, the lot of them.

To add insult to injury, they are all out there right now, camped out on my lawn, trying to look through the window like some carnival audience. See the Beast of Bexley, roll up, roll up, no eggs and rotten fruit inside the tent please, children are advised to stay away, roll up, roll up!

If they are the audience, then DCI Parks is definitely the ringmaster. You should see him, really, it’s hilarious when you first meet him - He can’t be an inch over five foot six, and he wouldn’t even be that if not for the absurd curly ginger hair he has somehow managed to cultivate. He wears these massive tortoiseshell glasses which can probably pick up Sky, and come rain or shine he seems to almost always have a cold; a bunged up nose, throat that makes his voice sound sounds sore and shaking, like a washing machine on a high rinse. The man looks like he would be more at home in a comedy sketch show, especially with his scuffed black trousers, brown shoes, purple shirts, and a ridiculous-looking brown Mac which flaps and scrapes along the floor behind him as he walks.

All in all, when I first met Parks, I was glad. I thought he would be a reasonable man. Course, I know better now.
“Doesn’t look good for you, does it Jacobs?” He strolls into the living room like he owns the place, ignoring the two uniformed officers standing at either side of the door, and flops down in one of the muddy-brown armchairs in front of the telly. The Police have been all over Mum’s house these past couple of days, most likely so they can do discreet little searches for additional evidence, but officially as “protection”. They never bother to say who they are protecting. I tell myself it’s nice to have some company for a change. Neither my Mum nor I get that many visitors at the best of times. Never did, not even before I moved to Manchester on my first real teaching job.

“I don’t know what you mean, Inspector.” I reply.

I am sitting on the sofa underneath the window which faces onto the street and into the murder of Journoes nesting on the front lawn. I sit here all the time these days. Even sleep down here some times. Well, you can’t be too careful.

“Well…” Parks shifts in his seat and gives me what he no doubt believes is a winning smile. “I mean that you have been found out, my son. Some blabbermouth down the station must have had a quiet word with the papers and told them about that unpleasantness in Hyde. Unless of course, you told them all about that incident?”

“Why on Earth would I do that?”

“You’re right. I apologise. You just seemed so eager to talk about it the first time we met, is all. How the experience straightened you out, opened your eyes, made you whole again, etc, etc.” He waves his hand in an airy, bored gesture. “Just seemed to me that you weren’t ashamed of the things you’ve done, and you’re all in control now. Right? That is why you admitted it to me in your first interview, wasn’t it?”

“I thought I wouldn’t get in as much trouble if I admitted to having previous.”

Parks frowns. Then, he smiles. His shoulders begin to shake. Suddenly, his head is thrown back and he is bellowing with laughter. Over by the door, the two coppers slowly crack a pair of grins.

“You thought…haha….hahahahaha…Oh, Jacobs….Oh, Jacobs, you do make me laugh. How ******* old are you, ******* five? If you have previous, then of course you are going to be more of a suspect, you stupid bastard.” He says the last part as though he were talking to a child.

“Have you just come to my house to swear, Detective?” I ask with a tinge of impatience “Or are you here with an actual job to do? Only I have enough Police in here giving me filthy looks and cursing as it is.”

“Yes, right, of course, sorry. I forgot how the Taxpayers were so very kindly paying for you to be kept at home with a four good Coppers whose sole purpose these days is to make sure you don’t top yourself or to prevent some civic-minded individuals firebombing you in the middle of the night. I can be so insensitive sometimes, eh?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I look out the windows at the Journoes again. If you wait until about eight-thirty, you can just about make out the preened and made-up reporters give their usual report from just by the front door. They would just love to be able to swarm on me and tear me to shreds. You can see it in their faces. That almost animalistic urge to finish their prey.

“Jacobs? Earth to Jacobs? Sorry if I am interrupting anything, but I do actually have a reason for dragging myself over here you know…” Parks actually has the nerve to sound impatient.

“What’s that, Inspector?” I ask, standing up and closing the curtains. That’s quite enough for one day, you Vultures.

“Well...” Parks leans back in his chair, “I don’t think I need to tell you that the Media’s interest in you has increased ever since your little adventure in Hyde became public knowledge. And since the Higher-Ups have quite rightly deduced that this entire thing has become a bloody circus, they have decided that you would be much better off in our custody. We wouldn’t put you in an actual prison environment, because to be brutally honest we haven’t found anywhere with space on its secure wing yet, and it would look pretty bloody awful if we allowed someone to get beaten to death in prison, even if that someone happened to be you. You would be staying in the cells at the station.”

I frown and look Parks in the face. “So the press would leave my Mum alone?”

Parks raises his eyebrow sardonically. “If you were a Journalist, would you leave her alone? The Press love a damning testimonial, especially if it comes from a family member.” His voice softens. “Whichever way this goes, your Mum can expect phone calls from Investigative Journalists and all sorts for years, assuming she isn’t prepared to change her number every few months. I’m fairly certain they would move off your lawn, though. And that would give her a chance to get away. She could sell this place; buy a statement, and I’ll take you down the station. So how about it?”

I recognise that tone of voice. Parks has adopted the same pose as his predecessor down in Hyde; a friend who wants to help you but needs to be cruel to do it. His voice suggests that despite all the shouting and the threats and the thinly veiled insults, he is still on my “side” . In short, he’s gone into “Good Cop” mode. This, in my personal experience, makes him all the more likely to stab me in the back.

It was a “Good Cop” who got me back in Hyde. Thompson, her name was. Just an ordinary-looking brunette woman with brown eyes and a petite figure in a blue trouser suit. She came in about halfway through my tenth interview and told me that they were willing to look into the possibility that Samantha had been the one to instigate it. All I needed to do was to offer a complete statement and the police would have no reason to hold me.

So I gave them a statement, more honest this time, about what had happened in the classroom with Samantha. I told her how I had kept Samantha behind, not out of lust, but of disappointment; how Samantha’s performance in classes had gotten gradually worse ever since she had found herself a boyfriend. And after all the effort we had both put into her coursework! I had helped her every step of the way-we had even exchanged mobile numbers so if she needed to talk about an assignment, she could just text me. And text me she did-we kept up a correspondence by phone which slowly evolved from advice between teacher and student to banter between friends. Her Parents actually came in to see me about it once-can you imagine? They seemed to think that it was “Inappropriate” for their daughter to have friends.

Inappropriate? Thompson didn’t seem to think so.

So I told Thompson everything. I told her how I had kept Samantha behind to discuss her grades. I told her how we argued about her boyfriend and how he might be holding her back. I told her how Samantha had laughed at me, how she had accused me of being jealous, that I should stay away from her. I told Thompson that I had grabbed Samantha just to try and make her see reason…and I told Thompson that all of a sudden, we were drowning in each other’s eyes. I told Thompson what had happened after, and the cocktail of emotions that ran through me. I told of her of the exaltation I felt when I realised that I had finally found what I had been looking for in the eyes of this girl, innocent and pure and crying with the happiness of her own realisation as we moved in the bright shafts of sunlight that gave the walnut-brown desks an almost heavenly glow.

All the time I was talking, Thompson just sat there, taking notes and nodding politely.. She just sat there with her little notebook and when I was done talking she thanked me and left. An hour and a half later, she came back and arrested me. I can’t remember saying anything incriminating. I must have said something that contradicted or confirmed something that Samantha’s Parents-it had to have been them, petty minded little Tories that they were- might have said. There is no other explanation for my four years in some Manchester Prison. It explains why I had to move back into my Mum’s house after years of living as an independent human being.

My life was the way it was before I met Kara because of one “Good Cop”.

So as you can imagine, I am rather sceptical.

“So am I to believe that as long as I say what you want me to say, you will just put me in a cell and get the press to leave my Mum alone?”

“I never said that we wanted you to say something. All I said was that we were interested in you making another statement, as a matter of record more than anything. If you did that, it would be a lot easier for us to try and get everyone to leave your Mum alone. After all, it’s not the cave; it’s the monster, right?”

I allow myself a small smile. “That’s what I am now, is it? A monster?”

Parks heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Are you going to get all sensitive again? Going to start crying like you did when we arrested you?”

“No. I just wish you were honest. You are here to give me a deal; my Mum’s safety for a confession you can use in court to have me sent to the nonce wing in some inner-London jail.” I walk over to the chair next to Parks and sit down. I remember reading somewhere that if you sit next to someone in a position of power, they are less intimidating. It doesn’t work.

“I never said anything of the kind, Jacobs”, says Parks patiently. “I said as long as you gave an official statement, we would try to divert attention away from your immediate family. We can’t really tell the media to leave your family alone, for reasons I’m sure you know, but I’m sure that once it comes out that you made another statement and are back in our custody, then the media will probably lay off long enough for your Mum to go and stay at an Aunt’s or something…”

“And if I refuse to “make another statement”? If I stick to my original story? What happens then?”

Parks looks at me incredulously. “You don’t think anyone honestly believes what you told us, do you? With your record? Jacobs, Kara Lonsdale was found just fifteen minutes away from your house. We found your DNA all over the scene, for Christ’s sake. Eyewitnesses placed you at walking away from the scene at the appropriate time, and even more people were quite willing to tell us how you were basically stalking her. Not that you thought that you did that at all-you thought you loved her. That’s what you told us, isn’t it? You “loved her”. Just like you “loved” Samantha Baker. The only difference here, to my mind, is that Baker was lucky. Someone found her before you choked the life out of her-”,

I leap up, incensed. Suddenly and without warning, my blood is boiling. Red clouds my vision. There is heaviness in my stomach, making me feel sick and angry and defiant. How dare he? How dare Parks say that? After all he has put me through with the house arrest and the investigation and how he dredged up things best left forgotten; he dares to tell me how it happened? How my life changed forever?

How Dare He?!

“I. Wasn’t. Stalking her.” Through gritted teeth.

“Oh, so it was a coincidence then” Parks says contemptuously. “It was a big coincidence that the dead girl found covered in your DNA was the same one who you spent so much time talking to and texting and emailing to the point she begged you to leave her alone. It was just a cruel trick of fate the girl who was strangled a few yards from your home died in the same way as the last girl you grabbed by the throat…”,

“The shoulders.” I glare at Parks. “I grabbed her by the shoulders. She wasn’t” I hiss “Unwilling. She loved me as much as I loved her, for god’s sake!”

More so! Her Boyfriend was nowhere near good enough for her. An immature, insensitive, moronic excuse for a human being like that could never dream to come close! I saved her! I saved her from a lifetime of intellectual drudgery and the possibility of ending up a used husk like the other sluts I was forced to teach. She was special. I would never do something like that to someone so special!

I am pacing up and down the room now. I barely notice. “I gave her what she needed! I gave her care. I gave her knowledge. I gave her love. Because we loved each other. She was never unwilling. Never.”

I stop pacing. I am breathing hard. Over by the door, the Sentries both look on edge, like cats waiting to spring on prey. Parks has stood up and is slowly adopting his usual air of sardonic contempt again, and is looking at me over his glasses.

“Are you finished?” Parks asks innocently.

“Shut up.”

“Only I was wandering if we could get this over with before your Mum got home from the shops.”

“I said, Shut Up.”

“Okay, fine.” He stretches out and makes for the door. “You want to do this the hard way, that’s fine.” He looks over his shoulder at me. “Although, Jacobs, I think you should bear in mind that you are not helping your case at all.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you Inspector.” I stand still, trying not to let my arms and legs quake with fatigue. I forgot how tired I get when I go off on one.

“Oh, I know you are.” Parks turns around and looks at me. The expression on his face is that of a man who has completely given up.

“I don’t want to confess. I don’t want to confess to something I didn’t do.”

Parks looks at me with that same expression for a long, long time. Finally, he just shakes his head and leaves.

I sit down in my Mum’s favourite chair and bury my head in my hands. Outside I can hear Parks fight his way through the throng of Journalists to get to his car. Inside, I hear my two sentries quietly slip out to the kitchen, most likely to discuss me and my guilt.

No, my possible guilt. I’m not guilty. I loved Kara. I’ve learnt my lesson. The only reason I was so angry was because Parks lied. They all lie. That’s why I was angry. Yeah. I was angry with the Samanthas of the world, that scum who lie to stay out of trouble. I never hurt anyone. She was willing. They both were. I was in love. That could never be a bad thing, could it?

I couldn’t have hurt her. Not the way the papers say…..