Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

'I'm Detective Inspector Norris. How can I help you, Mr Murray?' He had a flat Midlands accent.

  'Have you found Kale?'

  'We're looking for Mr Kale to help us with our enquiries,' Norris said, noncommittally. 'The constable said you had some information relating to Mrs Kale's murder?'

  Ben ignored this.

  'He's going to go after his son.' He knew it beyond any possibility of doubt. The certainty had hit him like a physical blow in the car. He broke into a sweat again now with the need to convince the policeman. 'The social services put his son in care last week—'

  'Yes, we know.'

  Ben faltered. 'His wife gave evidence against him. He found out and…and that's why he did this. He's going to try to get his son.'

  'Has Mr Kale been in contact with you?'

  'No, but—'

  'Perhaps you could tell me exactly what your involvement is, then, sir?'

  'I'm the boy's stepfather.'

  The policeman took a moment to consider this. 'I see.'

  'Look, I know Kale—I know what he's like. He isn't going to let anything come between him and his son.'

  'I appreciate your concern, Mr Murray, but if the boy's in care Mr Kale isn't going to know where he is.'

  'They're sending him to the same school. He's autistic, there aren't many special-needs schools about. Kale's going to go there—'

  'Just a second.' Norris went over to a man in plain clothes.

  He spoke, too low for Ben to overhear. The other man nodded and picked up a telephone. The inspector came back.

  'I've arranged for a car to be sent. We'll have someone outside all day.' Ben felt relieved, but not entirely reassured. 'You know he's an ex-soldier?'

  'We're aware of his background. Is there anything else you can think of that might help us?' It was phrased as a dismissal.

  Ben couldn't think of anything. He looked out of the small window set in the side of the trailer. The Kales' house was visible through it.

  'What happened?'

  'I'm sorry, sir, we're not an information service. We're in the middle of a murder investigation, so—'

  'For Christ's sake, it was me who got her to testify against him.'

  He hadn't meant to shout. There was a silence in the trailer. Norris regarded him, then sat down. The background noise started up again.

  'Kale was released on bail yesterday afternoon. We know from neighbours that he arrived here about five. There were sounds of an altercation—nothing new, apparently—then Kale was seen to leave and drive away at about five thirty. A man was walking a dog along a path at the back of the house at about eleven o'clock last night. He noticed the Kales' kitchen door was open. By the light from it he saw something lying in the garden. He thought it was a body, but it was difficult to see.' He shrugged. 'There's a lot of scrap metal back there.'

  'I know,'Ben said.

  Norris glanced at him but didn't comment. 'He called the local police station. They sent someone to investigate and found Sandra Kale. At least, they guessed it was her. Someone had dropped part of a car engine on her head. Are you all right, sir?'

  Ben gave a nod. The news of what Kale had used to kill his wife had made the room seem to tilt. He didn't doubt what it was. He'd seen him lift it over Jacob on two occasions.

  He flinched at a vision of the heavy cylinder thudding into the ground.

  'We're still waiting for the pathologist's report on whether she was already dead when her head was crushed,' the inspector continued. 'She'd been badly beaten as well. It's possible some of the injuries were post-mortem, but they probably came first. Either way, the time of death fits when Kale was here.'

  'Didn't anybody warn her that Kale had been released?'

  Norris seemed to hesitate fractionally. 'At the moment I can't answer that.'

  'They didn't, did they? Nobody told her.'

  'As I said, I don't have all the information yet.'

  Whatever criticism Ben might have made caught in his throat when he remembered his own role in events. If not for me she'd still be alive.

  His anger collapsed, taking its energy with it. Will you let me know if anything happens?' He fished in his wallet for a card. 'You can get me any time on the mobile number.'

  The inspector took the card but didn't say if he would get in touch or not. 'Thank you for your help, Mr Murray.'

  Ben didn't take the hint. 'You will watch for him at the school, won't you?'

  'It's taken care of.' Norris signalled to the policewoman Ben had spoken to earlier. 'Will you show Mr Murray out, please?'

  After the warmth of the trailer it seemed colder than ever outside. He went back to his car, ignoring the curious stares of the neighbours. He told himself that the police knew what they were doing, that Jacob would be safe. There was nothing else he could do.

  It never occurred to him to ask if the shotgun was still in the shed.

  He drove along his old route to the hill overlooking the town. He parked in the same spot and climbed over the wall. The woods seemed dead beyond any hope of resurrection. He slipped and fell on the slick ground and rotting leaves as he made his way down through them. Mud smeared his coat and clogged the gash in his hand made by a broken root. He wadded a tissue against it.

  The huddle of oak trees seemed smaller than he'd remembered, more barren and exposed. He found a Snickers wrapper twined in the brittle remains of the grass in the entrance to his den. There was no other evidence that he had ever been there. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

  The hillside running down to the houses looked as though it had been scoured with acid. A pale polythene canopy had bloomed in the Kales' back garden, screening the area inside the dark ring of scrap metal. Children were gathered around the fence at the bottom, trying to see in.

  A branch snapped behind him. Kale, he thought, and spun round to see a policeman in a reflective yellow jacket tramping down the slope towards him. The policeman stopped a yard or two away.

  'Having a good look, are we?'

  Ben's heart was still thumping. 'Not really.'

  The policeman's eyes were unfriendly. 'Mind telling me what you're doing?'

  It must be something in the air up here, Ben thought. Or perhaps it's just me. 'Just walking.'

  'That your car parked on the road up there?'

  'If you're talking about a red Golf it is.'

  'What's the registration?'

  'I haven't a clue.'

  'What's your name?'

  Ben told him. The policeman spoke into his radio, still watching him. He seemed disappointed by the response from it.

  'All right, go on.' He motioned with his thumb towards the road.

  Bloody-mindedness made Ben say, 'You sure you don't want to arrest me?'

  The policeman gave him a psychopath's stare. 'I'm not going to tell you again.'

  Ben took a last look down the hill, then trudged back to his car.

  He went back to the studio, even though the shoot had been cancelled. He'd unlocked and gone in before it occurred to him that perhaps he should be more careful.

  Kale had already killed his own wife, and Ben had no illusions about what would happen if he encountered him again. But he couldn't take the threat to himself seriously.

  He didn't doubt that Kale would kill him, given the chance, but he also knew what the man's first priority was.

  Jacob.

  He tried to reassure himself that there was nothing to worry about. Kale was only one man, and, with his limp, neither an inconspicuous nor a very mobile one. Ex-soldier or not, it was only a matter of time before he was caught.

  And then the entire question of who would have Jacob would be raised again, because no one could doubt now that Kale had forfeited the right to his son.

  Except Ben couldn't quite make himself believe it would be so simple.

  He busied himself with make-work jobs; checking his darkroom stocks, minor repairs; anything to keep himself occupied. He'd almost resorted to cleaning the studio when h
e remembered the film he'd shot at the cemetery.

  He wasn't expecting anything from it but developing it gave him something to do. The first prints were enough to show that the film had been faulty. It happened occasionally.

  The exposure was out, the colours so smudged and without resolution that the flowers were completely unrecognisable.

  The wire mesh of the bin had become a blurred geometric pattern over abstract slashes of spectrum. He tossed them down in disgust. Then he looked at them again. He picked them up, turning them this way and that.

  Actually, he thought, it was quite an interesting effect.

  He printed the rest. It was the ambiguity that appealed to him. It changed mundane objects into something at once less concrete yet more substantial. What should have been representational now only hinted at its nature, provoking a vague sense of familiarity that defied recognition. He was considering how to reproduce the effect intentionally when the phone rang.

  He snatched it up on the second ring.

  'Hello?' he said, breathless.

  'Is that Mr Murray?' He recognised the police inspector's voice.

  Oh, God, please. Please have caught him.

  'Yes.'

  The potential for good news remained for an instant longer, then it was shattered.

  'I'm sorry,' the inspector began, and suddenly Ben didn't want to hear the rest.

  'Kale forced his way into the school this afternoon,' the policeman's heavy voice continued, delivering all of it. 'He's got his son.'

  It was on the TV. There were the school gates, the school itself a squat brick building behind them. There were crying children being led away by adults. There were eye-witness accounts, a police car with its rear end crumpled. There was a corroded bumper lying dented in the kerb, crystalline scatterings of glass.

  The inspector had been apologetic. He'd had two officers stationed in a car right outside the main gates. They'd been warned how dangerous Kale was, told not to take any chances, to radio for assistance at the first sight of him.

  But that hadn't been until the rust-coloured Escort flung itself around the corner in a squeal of tyres and rammed into their car. Before it had stopped rocking Kale had materialised with a shotgun and blasted the radio and dashboard into fragments. He'd smashed the gun butt into the nearest policeman's face, ordered the second one out and clubbed him unconscious as well.

  Then he'd gone into the school, taken Jacob and driven away.

  'We didn't know he was armed,' Norris said. 'If we had…'

  'If you had, it wouldn't have made any difference. Somehow Kale would still have taken Jacob.'

  Even as he added the forgotten shotgun to the list of blame he had to carry, Ben felt the inevitability of it, as though this was the way it had to be, that events were drawing together towards an unavoidable resolution whose shape he could almost make out, but was frightened to see.

  He barely heard the policeman's assurances that Kale would be caught, that the car had been damaged, that a crippled man and an autistic boy couldn't get far on foot. He was remembering how Kale had shot the bull terrier rather than let anyone else take it.

  It's my dog.

  He's my boy.

  He didn't think he'd ever felt so scared.

  The phone rang constantly at first. It wore him down, the hope and fear that each ring provoked. But it was only people wanting to offer their support, asking if there was any news. He told everyone the same thing. Thank you, no there wasn't, he'd let them know. He asked them all not to phone again, explained he wanted to keep the line clear. Eventually the calls dwindled and stopped, leaving him alone.

  That was just as bad.

  It was impossible to sit still. He moved from room to room in the house, just to keep moving, to evade the panic that threatened to overtake him. He poured himself a drink, but left it after the first mouthful. It would only have been an artificial relief and he didn't want to feel dulled. The sandwich he made went uneaten.

  It was a completely different feeling to when Sarah had died. Then it had been disbelief and numbness. Even when she was dying, as bad as that had been, he had known what was happening, had been there with her. Now he didn't know anything, not even if Jacob was alive or dead, his brains blown out like Kale's dog.

  The only thing he was certain of was that Kale wouldn't give up his son again.

  Colin called around later that evening. 'You haven't heard anything?' he asked as Ben let him in, but it wasn't really a question.

  They sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, not really talking.

  'Maggie sends her love,' Colin said at one point.

  Ben nodded, not caring. A distant thought surfaced. 'Aren't you supposed to be going on holiday?'

  'Not till tomorrow morning.'

  'Have you packed?'

  The inanity of it made them both smile. The moment quickly passed.

  'Maggie'll do it.' Colin hesitated. 'Anyway, I've told her I might not be going.'

  'Why not?'

  'Come on, Ben.'

  'There's no point missing your holiday.'

  'I can manage without Donald Duck for a few more days.'

  'I know, but—'

  'Ben,' Colin said, quietly but firmly, 'I'm not going to go, okay? It's my decision. I've told Maggie I'll fly out to them as soon as all this is sorted. So long as the boys can go on the rides they won't even notice I'm not there. I'll make it up to them later, and Maggie…well, Maggie'll have to make do with my Gold Card.'

  Ben looked at him, surprised even through the haze of anxiety.

  Colin shrugged. 'Something like this puts things in perspective.'

  He didn't say any more, but the look on his face was more like the old, pre-suicide Colin.

  He stayed till quite late, until finally Ben told him to go home.

  After he'd gone Ben went into the lounge. He turned on the TV and sat down in front of it. He didn't realise he was tired, would have said he could never sleep, but at some point he slipped into a doze.

  He jerked awake on the settee, heart racing. The TV was showing a snow-filled screen. A soft hiss of static filled the room.

  The house was silent. He saw that it was after two o'clock. He went to the phone and lifted the receiver to make sure it was still working. While it was in his hand he considered calling Norris. But the inspector had promised to let him know if anything happened. He put down the receiver without dialling.

  Where are they?

  His mouth was dry. He went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Even that had to be forced down. He poured half of it away, and as he put the tumbler in the sink his hand caught the edge of the draining rack. The glass slipped from his fingers and smashed.

  He mechanically bent down and began picking the pieces up. The smaller fragments were scattered across the kitchen floor. They reminded him of something. It hovered at the brink of recognition. He stared down at them, unaware that he'd stopped moving as it came to him.

  The shattered windscreen in the road. The damaged police car. The bumper from Kale's battered Escort. Where would Kale go?

  'Oh, Jesus.'

  He ran to the phone, dialled Norris's number. A policewoman answered. Ben's voice shook as he asked to speak to the inspector. His urgency must have convinced her. She told him to hold.

  Norris came on, sounding tired.

  'They're at the scrapyard,' Ben said.

  Chapter Twenty

  The drive to Tunford, the second in twenty-four hours, was both the fastest and the longest. The roads were empty and he kept his foot flat on the accelerator once he reached the motorway. The car rattled. He could feel the vibrations through the steering wheel as he appealed to a God he didn't believe in, offering deals, making promises.

  Let him he all right. I'll believe.

  Take me instead.

  It fell into the empty air.

  He hadn't told Norris he was going. He hadn't planned it himself. The inspector had promised to check out the scrapyard, but it h
ad been impossible simply to sit and wait.

  He was certain that Kale had taken Jacob there. With Kale's own scrap collection out of bounds, there was nowhere else for him to go.

  It was inevitable.

  He resented having to slow down once he came off the motorway. The roads were unlit, and once he instinctively stabbed at the brake as something darted from a hedge in front of him. The flowing tail of a fox disappeared through a fence on the other side. He crashed the gears and accelerated again.

  A police cordon blocked the road. Beyond it he could see the scrapyard's walls, illuminated by a forest of flashing lights.

  Oh God. He wound down the window as a policeman came towards him.

  'What's happening?'

  'Sorry, sir, the road's blocked. You'll have to turn—'

  'Have you caught Kale?'

  'I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to—'

  'Tell Inspector Norris that Ben Murray needs to see him! Please, it's urgent!'

  The policeman grudgingly went back to his car. He crouched down and picked up the radio handset An age past before he straightened.

  He waved Ben through.

  Police cars and vans lined the road outside the scrapyard, canted at crazy angles. Two waiting ambulances stood amongst them. The flashing lights gave the scene a fairground appearance.

  He pulled in as soon as there was room and left the car without locking it.

  Uniformed police surrounded the yard's walls from behind the cover of their vehicles.

  Most of them carried guns. One of them saw him and hurried over. Ben preempted any questions by asking for Norris. The policeman regarded him suspiciously and told him to wait.

  Ben looked towards the yard's tall gates. They were closed, but parked in front of them was Kale's Ford Escort.

  He felt sick.

  The policeman came back and led him through the confusion to what could have been the same white trailer that had been outside the Kales' that morning. It seemed much longer ago than that. Norris stood by its steps, talking to a tall man in a bulletproof vest. Their breath steamed in the cold air. He broke off when he saw Ben.

  'Mr Murray, I don't think—'

  'Are they in there? Is Jacob all right?'

  Norris drew a breath as if he was going to argue, then let it out as a sigh, 'Kale's car's here, so we're assuming he is. We don't know any more than that. The owner's on his way with the key to the main gates.'