Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  'No.'

  The word dropped into the room like a bomb.

  Rogers spoke patiently. 'I understand how you feel, but—'

  'You don't understand anything.'

  Rogers turned to Kale's solicitor. 'Mr Barclay, would you advise your client that he doesn't really have a choice in this. Co-operation is in his own best interest'

  The solicitor nodded, but Kale spoke first. 'He's my boy. We don't need people interfering.'

  Rogers sighed. 'Mr Kale, we're trying very hard to do the best thing for everyone. But our main concern is Jacob's welfare. Now, I'm sorry to have to be blunt, but we are going to interfere, as you put it, and it will be much easier for all of us if you work with us rather than against us. It needn't be a problem, but if you refuse to co-operate then we may have to consider further options. One of which would be to take Jacob away from you, and I'm sure you won't—'

  'You're not taking him away!' There was a wildness in Kale's voice that hadn't been there before.

  'I'm simply pointing out the alternatives. I'm not saying—'

  'Nobody's taking him again!'

  Now Carlisle spoke up. 'No one wants to do that, Mr Kale. All we're—'

  'He's done this, hasn't he?' Kale turned his glare on Ben. 'Your bitch took him once and now you're trying to do the same.'

  He spoke as if there were only the two of them in the room. Ben couldn't look away from the intensity in his eyes.

  There was hate, but also something he never thought he'd see in Kale, something like panic.

  Carlisle was making a placatory gesture with his hands.

  'Look, Mr Kale, I've been involved with you and Jacob from the start, and I can promise you that no one in this authority wants to take him away from you, or to split up your family in any way.' He shot a frigid glance at Ben. 'I understand how hard this must be, but we really are trying to help you. We're not acting on any one person's say-so. Our investigations show there are areas for concern, and your wife—'

  He stopped dead. His eyes widened at the size of his blunder.

  Kale turned to him. 'What about my wife?'

  Ben felt the sudden tension in the room. He was aware that Sandra was sitting very still, her head down.

  Carlisle's face was crimson. 'Er, I was just about to say that, er….'

  'What about my wife?'

  Oh God, Ben thought.

  Rogers tried to take charge again. 'We're getting away from the point here,' she said, but Kale's attention was on Sandra.

  'What have you told them?'

  'You're not helping yourself, Mr Kale,' Rogers snapped. 'This isn't achieving anything.'

  Sandra didn't lift her head from her chest.

  'Look at me,' Kale told her.

  'Mr Kale, I must insist—'

  'Look at me!'

  Sandra shut her eyes. Kale stared at her, incredulous.

  He backhanded her.

  The sound of it was shockingly loud in the quiet room.

  Both she and the chair would have fallen if her knees hadn't struck the underside of the table. It shook with the force of it As the chair banged down on all four legs Kale hit her again.

  This time it knocked Sandra to the floor. The expressions of shock around the table were giving way to movement.

  The policewoman was first out of her seat. 'All right, that's enough—' she began, reaching to restrain Kale as he stood up.

  He jackknifed his elbow into her stomach and slammed the back of his fist into her face. She pitched into a set of steel filing cabinets and slid down it.

  Kale's solicitor said, 'For God's sake!' and put his hand on his client's forearm.

  Kale wrenched him out of his chair and slammed his head against the table top.

  As the solicitor collapsed, Kale bent and lifted Sandra by the front of her sweater. He punched her twice, very quickly.

  By then other people were moving.

  Ben saw Carlisle clutch at his shoulder, saying, 'Please, Mr Kale!' before Kale spun him into the wall and jerked his knee into his groin. The social worker doubled up and Kale turned back to where Sandra was trying to crawl away.

  The policewoman was speaking urgently into her radio, blood streaming from her nose as Carlisle's manager grabbed Kale from behind.

  Kale stamped on his shin and threw him into the psychologist, who was half out of her seat. They both went sprawling. Rogers was yelling something into a telephone as the policewoman flung herself at Kale again. He batted her aside, then bent and pulled Sandra's head around by the hair.

  Without knowing he was doing it, Ben stood up. The scrape of his chair made Kale turn.

  They looked at each other across the table.

  Kale let his wife drop and wrenched the table away. It screeched across the floor and crashed on to its side. Ben picked up his chair and threw it at Kale's legs. Kale staggered as it struck his crippled knee. He kicked it away and came on.

  The door flew open. A security guard burst into the room, looked around and said, 'Christ!'

  Kale headbutted him as two more guards followed. Pivoting on his bad leg, Kale kicked one in the stomach and jammed the heel of his hand under the other's chin. The one he'd headbutted clutched him round the knees. Kale punched him on the back of his neck.

  The guard let go but the door swung open again and two policemen ran in. The room seemed full of uniforms as they swarmed over Kale. He struck out at them, grim and silent, but then his leg buckled and he went down. Even then he continued to fight, still without uttering a sound. Someone yelled for handcuffs, and it was only as they were wrestled on to him that he cried out.

  'NO!' he bellowed. 'NO! YOU'RE NOT TAKING HIM! HE'S MY BOY!'

  He bucked and thrashed as his arms were pinned behind his back. A security guard grunted as he was caught by a flailing leg.

  'Right, let's get him out,' one of the policemen panted. Still struggling, Kale was half carried, half dragged towards the door.

  'NO! NO!' His eyes locked on to Ben's as they bundled him into the corridor. 'HE'S MY BOY! HE'S MY BOY!'

  The door swung shut behind them.

  A quiet descended on the room. The psychologist was gently weeping as she nursed a broken wrist. People began picking themselves up, helping those who were still huddled with their injuries. One of the security guards lay on the floor in the recovery position, attended by Rogers.

  The policewoman, her own face bloodied, was cradling Kale's wife in her arms. Sandra was moving her head slowly from side to side, tears cutting tracks down her swollen cheeks. She looked at Ben from eyes that were almost puffed shut.

  'Oh, God, what have I done?' she moaned.

  He had no answer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ben finished arranging the flowers and stood up. The cheerful splash of colour looked out of place on the dead winter grass covering the grave. The old flowers were a limp and sodden mess. He bundled them in the paper the fresh ones had been wrapped in and put them on the ground to take away with him. His hands were icy from handling the wet stems. He put his gloves back on and hunched his shoulders. There was no wind but the cold penetrated his heavy coat and struck through the soles of his boots.

  He'd felt a need to visit Sarah's grave. No, that wasn't quite right—he'd felt he ought to visit it. But now he had changed the flowers he was at a loss.

  There was another bunch already there, not yet wilted, so he knew her parents had been recently. He wondered if they felt any closer to their daughter when they stood over the ground where she was buried. He wished he did. He wanted to be able to talk to her, to tell her what had happened, but the idea of a graveside monologue, even a silent one, seemed theatrical and false. So he stood there, stamping his feet, not knowing why he was staying but unable to bring himself to leave.

  A sense of oppression had persisted for the three days since Kale had gone berserk. He couldn't explain it. He knew he should have felt vindicated, that Kale couldn't have chosen a more blatant way of proving him righ
t if he'd tried. But a feeling that what had happened was his fault, that he was somehow responsible, obstinately refused to be shaken. It wasn't helped by the suspicion that other people also held him to blame.

  He'd spoken to the policewoman after Sandra Kale had been led away to an ambulance. She was holding damp paper towels to her bloody nose, waiting to be attended to herself, and as Ben stood there unharmed he felt compelled to say something.

  'The back-up got here pretty quickly.'

  She looked at him without comment over the top of the wet grey paper. Blood had turned it dark, soaking into it as if it were a litmus test for violence.

  'The officers who were here,' he said, unsettled by her silence. 'It didn't take them long to respond.'

  She took the paper towel away from her nose and examined it 'They were on stand-by. The local authority requests it if they think someone could become aggressive.'

  Ben had been surprised. He'd thought that he'd been the only one who knew what Kale was capable of. 'So you thought he might get violent?'

  She had put the paper towel back to her nose. The look she gave him over the top of it was unreadable. 'We were asked to provide it because of you.'

  Kale had been charged and held in custody, and, with Sandra unfit and unwilling to look after his son, Jacob had been taken into care.

  Ben had been told he'd been placed with a foster family, one living near enough for him to attend his own school, but that was as much as anyone would say.

  His offer to take him had been brusquely refused. The social worker—not Carlisle, who was still recovering—pointed out that he hadn't yet applied for a residence order. Besides which Jacob hadn't been taken into care permanently. It was hoped that he would eventually be returned to his father.

  Provided that Kale wasn't sent to prison, of course.

  Ben told himself he should be pleased, but somehow he couldn't manufacture any satisfaction. The memory of Kale being handcuffed and dragged out was too vivid.

  He felt he'd made things worse, not better.

  He felt like he'd broken something.

  The day after the case conference he'd considered getting in touch with Sandra Kale. In the end, though, he hadn't. He couldn't imagine she would want to talk to him, and he wouldn't have known what to say anyway. 'Sorry' was pathetically inadequate when someone's life had been wrecked.

  Instead he'd burned all the photographs and negatives he had of her. It seemed an empty gesture, and as he watched the paper and cellulose flare and blacken he'd been seized by the urge to add to it. He'd fetched the telephoto lens and polarising filter and carried them outside to the fire. He'd thrown the filter on straightaway, but hesitated with the lens. It ran through his mind that it was an expensive piece of equipment. If he wanted to atone it would be better to sell it and send Sandra the money.

  He'd weighed the familiar heft of it in his hands, then tossed it into the flames.

  A man with two children came to the next grave. Ben and the man nodded in acknowledgment, then pretended the other wasn't there. The children were subdued but their voices still cut through the cemetery's silence.

  With a last look at Sarah's grave, Ben picked up the dead flowers and walked away. He detoured towards a bin on his way out. It was full of other flowers that had been discarded. Broken stems protruded through its wire-mesh sides, and the once-bright petals of chrysanthemums, roses and carnations were crushed and faded, turning to rot. He dropped his own on top, then paused. After a moment he went to the car for his camera.

  He used a full film, photographing the bin from different angles. He would have gone on except that an elderly woman was watching him suspiciously. When she began walking over with an intent swing to her walking stick, he packed up and left.

  As he drove away he was struck with his own morbidity.

  The symbolism of a rubbish bin of dead flowers in a cemetery, a graveyard within a graveyard, was so obvious as to be hackneyed.

  He'd be reading the death notices in the newspapers next. He tried to laugh at the thought, but the mood wasn't so easily broken. He knew he was waiting for something to happen, without knowing what.

  When he was a teenager he'd had recurring dreams that woke him in a blaze of terror, convinced he was on the verge of some unspecified calamity that he could never quite see. It was like that now. His rational mind insisted it was just anticlimax, that he was simply unsettled, but it lacked conviction.

  Nothing had been resolved. In spite of everything this was only a lull, a hiatus. Everything else had been a prelude. Now that Kale's psyche had been stripped bare, the civilised skin of restraint and control finally shed, Ben couldn't begin to imagine what the man might do, or where he would stop.

  He was frightened of finding out.

  It was on the news two mornings later. He'd been to a match with Colin the evening before, a Spurs-Arsenal derby that Tottenham had lost miserably, and he was preoccupied with that as he made his breakfast.

  It was the first time they had been out together since the attempted suicide. On the surface Colin seemed to be back to normal. He never mentioned what had happened, or the girl who had triggered it, and had gone back to work after a few days as though it had never happened.

  Even so, Ben got the impression that something was missing. It was as if a part of Colin had died back there in the car. Or perhaps before, when the girl finished with him. Talking to him now was like listening to music through a Dolby system. It was a muted, filtered version, all the brightness and crackle skimmed off.

  Ben hoped it wouldn't be permanent.

  The news was on the radio but he wasn't paying any attention to it. Colin and Maggie were due to go on holiday the following day, taking Scott and Andrew to Disneyland, and as the report of a woman's murder droned on in the background Ben was wondering if Colin's fragile psyche would be up to the sight of Maggie rubbing shoulders with Minnie Mouse.

  He was pouring milk on his cornflakes when Sandra Kale's name leapt out at him.

  He jerked as if struck.

  '…body was found in the garden of her house last night by a neighbour,' the newsreader was saying. 'It's thought she was beaten to death. Thirty-one-year-old Mrs Kale was the wife of John Kale, who last year made the headlines when he was reunited with his kidnapped son after six years. Police are looking to interview Mr Kale, who was released from police custody on bail yesterday, after assaulting social workers last week.'

  The newsreader went on to the next story.

  Ben heard something dripping and saw that he was still holding the milk bottle at an angle. He put it down but made no attempt to stem the spreading white pool that was trickling off the edge of the work surface. He felt dizzy, then sick. Then both passed. He looked around the kitchen, seized with the need to do something, but without any idea of what. Numb, he sat down.

  My fault. My fault.

  He stood up again, unable to bear being still. He went to the phone and dialled Directory Inquiries for the number of the police station in Tunford. The policeman who answered didn't sound like the one he had seen after Kale had shot the dog. He gave Ben the number for the incident room. When he rang it a policewoman politely asked who he was and why he was calling. He tried to explain, but knew he wasn't making a very coherent job of it. He wasn't really sure himself. The policewoman said she would pass on his message and thanked him for getting in touch.

  He hung up and stared into space. Then he wiped up the milk and went out. There was no reason for him to be at the studio so early, but he needed to get out of the house. He hadn't gone a mile before it occurred to him where he really wanted to go.

  He turned around and headed for Tunford.

  Colin called him on his mobile when he was on the motorway. 'Have you heard?' Ben said he had. 'I'm on my way up there now.'

  'To Tunford? Is there any point?'

  'I don't know.'

  He did, though. He needed to know that Jacob was safe, to make sure that the police were protecting hi
m. But he didn't want to discuss it, didn't even want to think about it, until he knew for sure.

  'Will you phone San—' Shit. '—I mean Zoe, for me. Ask her to cancel today's shoot. Tell her…well, just tell her what's happened.'

  Zoe would be able to think of a better excuse than he could.

  A heaviness grew in him the closer he drew to the town.

  It was a cold and bright morning. The sky was a clear, arctic blue. He passed familiar landmarks; this was the turnoff he always took; that was the road that led to the woods; there was the police station; the pub. It was all unchanged, bleak and battened down for winter. He could almost believe the news report was wrong.

  Then he turned on to the Kales' street and saw the cluster of police vehicles and knew it wasn't. Neighbours stood watching from doorways or bunched in small groups. Some of them were being questioned by uniformed police officers. He drove past, stopped and got out. The Kales' front door was open. Yellow tape sealed off the path and garden. A large white trailer with a band of black checks running down its length was parked outside. Steps ran up to a door, and as Ben approached it opened and a policewoman emerged. She saw Ben and came towards him.

  'Can I help you, sir?'

  He tore his eyes from the sight of a man in plain clothes on his hands and knees in the Kales' hallway, examining something on the carpet.

  'I need to speak to whoever's in charge.'

  She greeted this with a stony lack of emotion. 'Can you tell me what it concerns?'

  'It's about the murder.' It sounded ridiculously melodramatic.

  The policewoman asked him his name and went back into the trailer. A moment later she re-emerged. 'Would you like to come in?'

  Ben went up the steps. The inside of the van was like a miniature office. A middle-aged man in a grey suit was talking to a beefy constable with a clipboard. He turned to Ben as the constable went out.