My Last Confession

by Helen FitzGerald

  In relation to the alibi, Jeremy’s mother was not corroborating her son’s story. After being discharged from hospital, she had consistently maintained that she’d gone home alone, without seeing her son. Jeremy, on the other hand, insisted he had driven his mother to her house in Haringey and stayed with her all night on the night of the murder. The lawyer agreed wholeheartedly with Amanda’s assertion that Mrs Bagshaw was lying. Her hatred for her son, and her desire to make him disappear, were more important to her than the truth.

  As for the DNA, the lawyer explained, traces of Jeremy’s genetic material were found under the victim’s fingernails.

  ‘Shit,’ I said out loud after I hung up. Danny looked at me, having heard the entire conversation.

  ‘Be careful with defence lawyers,’ Danny warned. ‘You don’t want to be used as a plea in mitigation.’

  ‘I know, of course. I just find it really interesting.’

  And boy, did I!

  I was on a roll. First, I phoned the Scottish Criminal Records Office and asked if the list of previous convictions had arrived from England. It had, and when I received the fax I wasn’t surprised to find that Jeremy had none.

  Next I contacted social services in Oxford and asked if there had been any previous contact. No.

  Jeremy had given me authority to talk to his childhood GP, so I phoned Dr Charles McQuillan of John Street in Oxford who said he’d had little contact since Bella died, just the odd ear infection, but psychological and psychiatric reports at the time drew a blank. A bit of bedwetting, but nothing much else. ‘Looked like a terrible accident,’ Dr McQuillan said.

  Then I rang Mrs Anne Bagshaw, Jeremy’s mum. The alibi stories were so different. Someone was lying. I wondered if she would talk to me.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, and introduced myself, explaining who I was, where I worked, the report I was writing for court, and that the judge wanted to know all about Jeremy’s background and any psychological issues that might affect his response to custody. I went on about how I knew it was very difficult for her, but that I’d seen Jeremy and he was coping all right in prison and that he’d said he didn’t mind if I called and spoke about –

  It was about then I realised she’d put the phone down.

  I felt irritated. Why would she put the phone down? No matter what her son did in the past, or had done now, he was still her son, and should surely –

  ‘I think we got cut off,’ I said after she picked up the second time, and the phone immediately went dead again.

  I was annoyed.

  ‘Don’t hang up!’

  But she did, and my anger grew each time the phone rang out after that. What was going on? She seemed to have completely cut Jeremy out of her life. What kind of mother would desert her son like that?

  *

  Over the next two days, I gained five cases and two reports, which Danny had been entrusted to allocate as Hilary was still off sick.

  Danny’s allocations meetings consisted of the four of us sitting around Danny’s desk with a pile of report requests and orange files in the middle, playing paper, scissors, stone.

  I did a bomb (thumb up, beats everything) each time a sex offender appeared, and while Robert and Danny maintained that bombs are not part of the game, Penny told them to let it be.

  ‘Just leave it,’ she said. ‘I’ll take them.’

  After the game was completed, we spent a half-hour swapping anyway, using arguments like:

  He lives near my house, so I don’t want him ’cause I’ll keep bumping into him.

  He lives near my house, so I do want him so I can do home visits 3.30 each Friday.

  I had her last time. Your turn, Mrs.

  Give me that. I love thugs.

  Give me him, the little bastard.

  So I gained five cases and two reports, none of them sex offenders.

  I also gained a smoking habit.

  How could I resist smoking at work? Smokers had the naughty gene. They were the fun guys who sought out danger, and were undeterred by rain or wheezing. The smokers in my office were rowdy, usually hung-over, and knew all the office gossip. During my six or so fag breaks in those first two days as a reformed-reformed smoker, I discovered the following:

  – Funny-tall-guy Robert shagged social work assistant Jane at last year’s Christmas party. Her love for him lingered, demonstrated by her post-festive-season weight loss, new haircut and broken marriage. Robert insisted it never happened, but two smokers saw it: one in the flesh, and one on a sheet of A4 photocopying paper.

  – Charlie from Govan brought gin into work in his satchel.

  – Charlie from Govan accused his boss, Jill, of bullying him.

  – Charlie from Govan was a wanker.

  – So was his boss, and a bully.

  Smokers! Ah! What would work be without them? They laughed. They moaned the glorious moan of the social worker. They knew how to get the most out of mileage and overtime claims. And most of all, they had cigarettes. I was at the pre-contemplative stage of smoking, which meant I hadn’t yet stood up in a crowd and admitted my addiction. Which also meant I never bought my own.

  So my first week came and went, and by the end of it I was a shit-hot parole officer – if a little over-empathetic – a smoker, and almost as neglectful of my son as Mrs Bagshaw had been of hers.

  *

  It seemed as if Robbie had grown about ten feet and learnt about a hundred new words when I finished up on the Friday, and when I came in he didn’t run to me and hug me and never want to let me go. He looked up at me and then went back to making his magic fairy potion with Chas. So far, they’d put in self-raising flour, water, Nesquik (chocolate and banana), oats and honey, and they were now considering what to add next.

  ‘Loganberries!’ said Robbie.

  He had never said this word before. Indeed, few people I knew had.

  ‘Where did you find out about loganberries?’ I asked him, but he couldn’t be bothered answering me because he and Chas had decided that the fairies in the drying green would probably prefer bubble bath.

  I had no role in Robbie’s life any more, I thought, sighing. I was away every day, and he was with other people, learning from them, hanging out with them, changing. As I bathed him later on I realised that there was no such thing as quality time, only quantity time, and he wasn’t getting that with me. Just like Jeremy’s mother, I’d removed myself from his life.

  ‘Oh shut up!’ said Chas after the story and our family cuddle. ‘Every mother feels this. It’s natural. You’re a wonderful mum and Robbie adores you. You’re just shattered. It’s Friday, so you have two whole days of quantity time ahead of you.’

  Chas took off to the studio the next morning and Robbie and I made pancakes and a huge mess. He sat up at the kitchen bench with a tea towel tucked into his ‘I’m easily distracted’ T-shirt, and broke three eggs against a glass bowl. The first two landed on the floor, but Robbie cracked the last one like a TV chef – a neat bang to the middle with a firm right hand, the left hand moving in for the separation, a quick wrist-flick upwards, and there we had it! A perfect shell-less egg in a bowl. We sang a song to celebrate – something about Donald egg-crackers being the best damn egg-crackers in the world. It was wonderful.

  Afterwards, we walked to the park and tossed burnt pancakes to the ducks. After that we went to the transport museum and I watched the Rob-mobile run from tram to bus to bike to car to ye-oldy-streety-with-ye-oldy-undergroundy-stationy. It was a fabulous day with a lot of laughing. At bedtime when I asked Robbie what he’d liked about the day he said ‘Everything, Mummy’ and hugged me so hard I wanted to weep with joy.

  16

  Back when he’d had his first interview with Krissie Donald, Jeremy had returned to his cell and been surprised to find that the officer who’d escorted him back didn’t lock the door to his cell.

  He took to his bunk to think over what he’d spoken to Krissie about – his love for Amanda, how much he missed her, how he could n
ever see her again. The social worker had offered to supervise a visit, if it would make things easier, but he’d refused. He couldn’t see Amanda full stop. It was too hard.

  While he’d been musing about things, a prisoner had appeared at his cell door, unsupervised. He was scarred, scary and built like a brick shithouse. Jeremy had seen him before – in the quadrangle, and also in Agents. He’d been in the interview room across the way, and he’d stared at Jeremy for a frightening amount of time with Alpha Dog eyes and a small smile on his face.

  Jeremy had sat up, his brain throbbing with what might be about to happen. Was the brick shithouse going to rape him? Would Billy hold him down while the brick shithouse pushed his filthy cock into his bottom? Or maybe the other way around, or maybe both?

  Looking over the shoulder of the large prisoner, he saw an officer on the landing, but the officer just winked. Oh God, both, plus the guard, all three. Shit, oh shit.

  ‘Billy here knows your little friend,’ said the brick shithouse, psychopath grin still there.

  ‘Sorry?’ Jeremy said, trying to control his panic.

  ‘Your social worker friend, Krissie Donald.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Jeremy didn’t know what else to say. As it turned out, he hadn’t needed to because the script had been written for him.

  ‘Billy worked with her boyfriend in the cook’s room a few years back, didn’t you Billy?’

  Billy didn’t answer.

  ‘Billy says there were photos of her all over the guy’s cell. He was in love, wasn’t he, Billy? Billy’s friends with him still, aren’t you, Billy?’

  Billy still hadn’t said anything.

  ‘Oy, Billy, you’re mates with her man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye,’ came a mousey response.

  ‘Knows all about him, where he lives, which is where she lives. I think their friendship’s about to come in handy.’

  Billy watched from his top bunk as the brick shithouse kicked into Jeremy’s stomach, head, legs, arms. He didn’t move.

  Jeremy remembered the feeling of fists pounding into his face, knees, groin. He’d thought he was going to die, and he probably would have if he hadn’t said yes.

  Yes, he understood that she wouldn’t be searched as vigilantly.

  Yes, Billy was sure to get out shortly.

  Yes, he would get her to bring the stuff in.

  Yes, if she didn’t, then the next visit wouldn’t be so pleasant.

  *

  Jeremy looked at Krissie during that second interview and thought about her home situation. She’d already told him she had a son. She’d told him she was in love too, and so she understood how hard it must be for him. It was clear she was kind and naïve, that she was someone with love and hope in her life.

  And he couldn’t do it, so he left the room.

  But afterwards it wasn’t only a beating. It was as bad as he could have possibly imagined.

  The worst thing wasn’t how sore it was being held down, or having the small tub of Flora Light margarine from someone’s lunch spread over his white loaf while his mouth was gagged with an old sock; the worst, most awful thing was that halfway through, Jeremy got an erection. When he thought over the twenty-minute ordeal, often waking in a sweat with the memory of it, it was this that made him most angry of all. While being brutally raped by an ugly stinking dangerous man, with a junkie ned looking down from his top bunk, he had somehow gotten himself a hard-on.

  17

  When Jeremy walked into the interview room to see me for the third time, something had changed.

  ‘You’re looking a bit better,’ I lied. He looked freshly bruised, and broken.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking his seat cautiously.

  I decided not to press him about his bruises. There was no point. He’d talk to someone when he felt ready. Instead, I spent the next twenty minutes doing the ‘final interview’, which involved reading over what I’d written so far and making alterations where necessary. I hated doing this, but he had a right to hear it. I imagined how I’d feel if someone read their version of my life story to me. Pissed off to the point of head-butting is how I’d feel. But being completely upfront about what I’d written was the right thing to do, so I soldiered on, telling Jeremy to stop me if he had any queries or issues whatsoever.

  1. Family details:

  Amanda Kelly, wife, nail technician

  Richard Bagshaw, father, accountant (No contact since subject aged 4)

  Anne Bagshaw, mother, lawyer (No contact since subject aged 16)

  2. Income:

  £120,000 per year: self-employed property developer.

  3. Personal circumstances:

  Jeremy Bagshaw is an only child. He was raised in Oxford, England. His parents divorced when he was four years old after a terrible childhood accident, when the subject killed his three-week-old sister by placing her in the dryer to stop her crying. The subject feels this has impacted on his relationship with both parents. His father left the family home shortly afterwards and has had no contact with the subject since. As far as Mr Bagshaw is aware, his father remarried and moved to Canada. Jeremy’s mother sent him to boarding school at the age of nine. She saw very little of the subject during his years at boarding school, sending him to camp during the holidays, and had no contact with him after he completed his GCSEs. Mr Bagshaw understands that his mother finds it very difficult to see him, as it reminds her of the terrible loss that was his fault. He feels immense remorse for what he did. Psychiatric and psychological reports, provided by Dr McQuillan of Oxford (see attached), state that the subject was bedwetting at the age of four, but displayed none of the other possible precursors to personality disorder, although in the psychiatrist’s opinion it would be difficult to make firm conclusions when the subject was so young.

  Mr Bagshaw’s behaviour and attitude after the age of four do not appear to have caused any concerns. Of very high intelligence, he left boarding school with extremely good results. He then went on to complete a degree in science at Oxford University and then a Masters in Business Administration at the University of London.

  The subject worked with PPC Jams after graduating and then set up his own business in property development. His business is successful and employs three people.

  Mr Bagshaw has no previous offences, and none outstanding. His physical health is good, and he has no history of mental health problems. The subject drinks moderately, and although he has used cannabis and Ecstasy recreationally has never been addicted to illegal substances.

  Mr Bagshaw says his wife is currently staying with her parents in Glasgow and works in the Pine Tree Unisex Salon in Newton Mearns. He finds the prospect of visits from her too difficult at present. Should he be found not guilty, he intends to ‘take things one day at a time’.

  I was about to read Jeremy the conclusion – that he was aware a life sentence would be the only option available to the court should he be found guilty, and that in my opinion he would find this sentence very difficult, but that there appeared to be no issues in relation to self-harm or suicide – when Jeremy suddenly reached out and slapped my hand and the report down to the table.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, suddenly scared, his hand still on mine.

  Jeremy looked over my shoulders to see if anyone was looking and leaned

  in towards me, the terror on his face sending a chill up my spine. His words came out almost in a whisper.

  ‘I’m in danger,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m in danger,’ even softer this time.

  ‘What is it?’

  But he was crying so hard he was unable to get the words out, and I found myself moving to the other side of the desk without even thinking about professionalism and distance and being seen as a soft touch, and putting my arm around him.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Tell me.’

  ‘Please, just go back to your seat. If I tell you it might happen again … or worse.’

  ‘Tell me w
hat’s happening.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m in danger. Krissie, listen to me. We’re both in danger.’

  18

  What the hell did Jeremy mean, we were both in danger? He’d rushed from the interview room after blurting that out, leaving me confused and worried and in desperate need of advice. I drove as fast as I could back to the office, but when I got there Danny was on home visits, Robert was at Shotts Prison, Penny was banging things around on her desk (and in any case was the last person I wanted to talk to), my boss was still off sick, and my boss’s boss was in a risk management meeting with his boss and the police.

  I hate being new. You spend days pretending to read things people give you, meeting people you immediately forget, wondering how to go about asking for a stapler that works. Throughout my four-storey office building, everyone but the smokers stuck to their sections like rabbits in winter, scampering out to collect every now and again, but otherwise hibernating in their miserable dark holes. Secretaries were really spies disguised, checking on overuse of staplers, amongst other things, and taking notes. Bosses were formidable giants behind closed doors, rarely available, especially at times of crisis. They weren’t to be confused with those of us who did the work, who visited the prisons and the hospitals and the houses, and whose names would be in the paper should anything go wrong.

  I decided to wait for my boss’s boss – allegedly called Peter McDonald – to get out of the meeting, tell him about what Jeremy had said, and then settle on how to proceed.

  Anxious and worried at my desk, I dialled reception to leave a message for him, hoping he’d call me back with the advice and support I urgently needed.

  ‘How did you get this number?’ came an accusing voice.