The Big Read: Jacob still gets the last laugh

Heh heh heh. An ugly sound echoing through the silence of our collective shock. A humourless, dusty wheeze, the kind you expect from a cartoon baddie whose villainy has desiccated him. It seems a cruel sound, a pure expression of power mocking the powerless. It's tempting to project all kinds of evil onto that sound; to plunge into a morality play haunted by dead-eyed Faustian patriarchs.