Owning Jacob - SA

Chapter ten

The floodlights caught the fine drizzle as it fell and turned it into beads of silver. The harsh glare bathed the football pitch in unnatural brightness, shifting once-familiar colours into an unreliable spectrum and giving objects a hard-edged focus that was both more vivid and unreal. Beyond the light there was only blackness, so that the floodlit pitch seemed to exist by itself in an ocean of shadow.

Ben’s head hung between his knees. Next to him Colin squatted with a football between his legs. His hands were bulky in the goalkeeping gloves, and his track suit was smeared with mud. He nudged Ben and offered him a plastic bottle of water. “You okay?”

Ben nodded without lifting his head. He was still too winded to speak. His throat hurt as he drank. He lowered the bottle after a couple of swallows, swilling the last of it in his mouth before spitting it out. He was thirsty but he knew if he had any more it would only give him a stitch in the second half. He handed the bottle back.

Colin’s Adam’s apple jerked as he drank deeply, eyes shut.

Ben felt the burning in his thighs and calves and wished he played in goal himself. His breath was beginning to come back, but his chest still ached.

Colin’s chin shone wetly when he lowered the bottle. He wiped it with one gloved hand. “How’s the leg?”

Ben examined the scrape on his shin. Dried blood and dirt obscured it. “I’ll live.”

Colin looked over to where the opposing team were sprawled around the goal mouth in a mirror image of their own.

“He’s a dirty bastard. He has somebody down every game.”

The match was a ‘friendly’ between Colin’s firm and a rival practice. The teams were supposedly made up of lawyers from each, but a blind eye was turned to ringers such as Ben, provided they weren’t too good. Which, right then, he certainly wasn’t. He kneaded his calf muscle and looked over at the player Colin had indicated. He was in his twenties, with curly black hair and an arrogant strut. He had brought Ben down with a late tackle, unnoticed by the referee, and run on without a backward glance. Ben hadn’t seen him before, but then he hadn’t played for weeks. He felt every one of them now in every part of his body.

Since seeing Kale’s ripped torso and corrugated belly he’d been making an effort to get fit. He’d been drinking less and cutting down on joints, even doing sit-ups and push-ups at home. It didn’t seem to help. Having a bruised and scraped leg helped even less. During the game he had been too busy to dwell on it, but now, with time to catch his breath and thoughts of Kale and Jacob still in his mind, he looked over at the laughing player with a gathering of animus.

The second half was easier than the first. Either he had caught his second wind or was pacing himself, and he no longer envied Colin his stationary spot in the net quite so much as he huffed around in midfield.

There was still no score when the ball came to him on the break. He ran with it, seeing the greyhound-thin shape of one of the forwards sprinting towards the goal. He swung his leg into the pass, and suddenly he was sprawling face down in the wet grass. He looked up to see the curly-haired player running off down the pitch.

Ben was barely aware of the whistle blowing as he scrambled to his feet. The other player turned around just as he reached him. Ben threw a punch and felt the jar shoot along the length of his arm. He was hit himself, and then they both slipped in the mud and fell over.

They scrabbled about on the ground for a few seconds before they were dragged apart. As Ben was pulled to his feet the curly-haired player caught him on the cheek. Ben kicked him on the thigh, then other players were between them. Colin had both his hands on Ben’s chest, pushing him back.

“All right, Ben, all right, cool it.”

“The bastard hacked me!”

“I know, I know, but—”

“The cunt!”

“Look, calm down, will you? I’ve got to fucking work with these people!”

The intensity in Colin’s voice penetrated even Ben’s anger. He looked at his friend, took in the thinning hair stuck darkly over his scalp with the rain, the face that was beginning to show incipient jowls where a jawline used to be, and felt as though he were looking at someone he didn’t know. The heat went out of him.

“Sorry.”

Colin took his hands from his chest, giving him a warning look. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry. I lost it a bit”

“Jesus, Ben!”

Ben mutely accepted the reproof. The referee, an older solicitor from Colin’s firm, beckoned him over. He hung his head as he stood next to the player who had fouled him, saying nothing as they were first told off, then sent off.

His shoes squelched desolately through the mud as he made his way from the pitch to the sports hall’s changing room. Good move, he thought, hitting a lawyer with twenty other lawyers as witnesses. His opponent walked parallel with him, a few yards away. The heavy slap of the ball being kicked resumed behind them.

“Fucking bastard.”

Ben looked around. “What?”

The other player’s lip was swollen. He gave Ben a look of contempt. Their studs made clacking noises as they reached the path.

“You heard, wanker.”

The hot anger that Ben thought had gone suddenly boiled up in him again. “If you’ve got something to fucking say, fucking say it!”

“Fuck off.”

“Are you going to make me?” He felt disbelief as he heard himself, but the desire to lash out was a thick pumping of blood behind his eyes. He could barely contain it.

The other man looked away with a snort of derision. “You’re not fucking worth it,” he said, but Ben was attuned enough now to see his uncertainty. It fuelled him.

“Come on, you curly-haired twat!” He had his fists balled. “Come on!”

The other man kept his head averted, “Just leave me alone.”

There was a moment of savage joy when Ben almost hit him anyway. It burst as swiftly as an overfilled balloon. He stopped and let the other man go into the sports hall ahead of him as the shame rose up. He wanted to chase after him and say he was sorry, that he wasn’t really like that.

Aren’t I?

He could exorcise his frustration on a football pitch, with someone he didn’t feel threatened by, but not when it mattered. He would never have dared do it with Kale. So what did that make him? Lavish with self-disgust, he went into his team’s changing room to get showered.

Both teams went for a drink afterwards, filling one side of the pub with the smell of wet hair, deodorant and talc. Some of the players ignored him, especially on the opposing side, but others grinned and made boxing jokes.

He’d only gone to the pub because he’d hoped to restore some of his self-esteem by apologising to the curly-haired player. He’d visualised shaking his hand, buying him a drink, laughing about how stupid they’d been in the heat of the moment, until he’d begun to feel as though it had actually happened. But in the pub there was no sign of the other man. Ben heard someone say that he’d gone straight home.

He stood with Colin at one end of the bar. He could tell by Colin’s stiffness that he had something to say. Knowing he had deserved it, Ben waited.

“It’s no good taking it out on everybody else,” Colin said finally, when no one else was in earshot. He occupied himself by unwrapping the cellophane from a cigar. It was a habit he had only recently acquired, and Ben still wasn’t used to seeing him smoking them.

“Taking what out?” he asked, even though he knew.

“This business with Jacob. I know it’s frustrating but you’re going to have to get hold of yourself.”

“I lost my temper, that’s all.”

Colin just looked at him. Ben sighed.

“All right, I’m sorry. But it’s just... shit, it’s just so frustrating!”

“Kale’s only stopped you seeing him once. He might change his mind once things settle down.”

“He might let me sleep with his wife as well.”

Ben wondered if he’d really made that particular comparison.

Colin lit the cigar and puffed on it self-consciously. “I admit it isn’t very likely, but you’re just going to have to be patient and hope he comes round. You can’t do anything on the basis of one visit.”

“It isn’t going to make any difference whether it’s one visit or twenty. Kale isn’t going to budge. He doesn’t have to, he’s got Jacob now. Everything’s on his side.”

Colin tapped his cigar into an ashtray, frowning. “He can’t stop you from seeing him indefinitely.”

Ben swirled the beer around in his glass. “Can’t he?”

He’d already told Jacob’s social worker what had happened.

Carlisle had listened with the weary expression of someone who’d heard it all before. He’d grudgingly agreed to contact the Kales, but his manner grew downright frosty after Sandra told him that Ben had arrived late and drunk. Ben’s protests that she was lying were met with a stony insistence that the local authority couldn’t intervene in ‘personal squabbles’.

Incensed, he’d gone to see Ann Usherwood. He’d expected reassurances and promises of action. Instead she warned him that the social services were notoriously reluctant to become involved in arguments over contact. If Kale continued to prevent him from seeing Jacob, Ben could eventually take him to court, she conceded. But such disputes were always expensive and messy, and any rulings difficult to enforce.

Thinking about Kale, Ben knew it might be impossible.

As a last-ditch attempt he had phoned Sandra Kale, calling when her husband would be at work in the hope of persuading her to appeal to him.

“I know we got off to a bad start,” he’d said, before she could hang up. “But I’m not trying to take Jacob away again. I only want him to let me see him occasionally.”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” she’d said, indifferently. “He’s John’s kid, not mine.”

“But you’re his wife. Can’t you...?”

“No, I can’t,” she’d cut in. “So why don’t you just fuck off?”

It took an effort not to shout at her. “I’m not going to just give up.” He could hear her breathing.

“You would if you’d any sense,” she’d said, ending the conversation.

But he couldn’t. The alternative was to let each month put more distance between himself and Jacob. The boy was only six, and autistic He didn’t make the normal associations, might not remember a relationship with someone from a half-forgotten life. And then Ben’s last memories of his marriage to Sarah, the family he’d thought he’d had, would be proved ultimately worthless, would turn to dust and blow away.

He stopped playing with his beer and took a drink of it instead. “I just don’t know what else I can do,” he said, setting down the glass. “Kale’s already made up his mind, and I can’t see him having a spontaneous change of heart.”

The cigar sent aromatic smoke around Colin’s head. “Is there anyone else you could speak to? Somebody like a neighbour or friend, who could act as an intermediary. Talk some sense into them.”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said. But even as he spoke he’d already thought of someone.

It was the first Saturday he had taken off in weeks, since the hangover hell after the night with Zoe. He woke early and cooked himself scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes. He ate them at the kitchen table, which seemed too big now he was the only person who sat at it. Afterwards he was still hungry, so he had a dish of cereal. He’d noticed he was tasting his food more since he had cut down on the joints.

He would have set off straightaway, except for the feeling that he ought to visit the cemetery. He’d only been once since the funeral, but that didn’t bother him. He didn’t feel the need to stand over a patch of ground when he carried thoughts of Sarah around with him every day. That morning, though, he felt an impulse to go.

The wind held a hint of rain as he made his way to the grave. Sarah had told him that she wanted to be buried during a drunken ‘when I die’ conversation one night. Ben had said he wanted to be cremated except for his penis, which she could save as a keepsake. The memory of her laughter was carried away on the wind before he had a chance to smile.

The grave was part of a row of other new ones. There was no stone yet because the ground had to be left to settle. The grass was growing over it nicely, though, which pleased him. He put the flowers he’d brought in one of the two earthenware vases at the grave’s head. Someone, her parents probably, had recently left another bunch. They were nearly dead, but he left them where they were because he didn’t want to risk upsetting her mother by throwing them away.

He felt a twinge of conscience that he hadn’t been in touch since the whole mess with Jacob had come out. He hadn’t wanted to make things worse, but enough time had passed now to soften what had happened. Wiping his hands dry, he told Sarah that he would make the effort, but reminded her that her mother was a difficult cow, so he couldn’t promise anything.

He stood remembering while the wind plucked at him, then went back to his car.

Islington was ten miles north of Tunford. Ben came off the motorway at the same junction and followed the same route for a while before turning off. The road signs led him past an industrial estate and then back out into a brief splash of green countryside before the town began.

The house was on a short terraced row with a corner shop at one end and a rubble-filled space bordered by a tall wire fence at the other. Inside it were yellow JCBs and workmen’s huts, quiet and deserted for the weekend. A lot of the houses were boarded up, waiting their turn at demolition. Others were obviously still tenanted. The number Ben was looking for had neat flowered curtains and a colourful window box on the downstairs sill. He parked outside and climbed from his car before he had chance to have second thoughts about what he was doing.

He didn’t know what he hoped to gain by visiting Jeanette Kale’s parents. He had no reason to think they would have any more time for him than Kale. Kale had lost a wife, they’d lost a daughter, and Ben was the nearest thing to a scapegoat they had. When he’d seen them interviewed on TV, though, Ron and Mary Paterson hadn’t seemed bitter. He thought they might be prepared to listen to him, if nothing else.

It wasn’t much to hang a Saturday morning on, but it was all he had.

The Patersons had moved out of London after their grandson went missing. Ben had traced them by going through the recent newspaper reports in the library until he found a reference to the town where ‘baby Steven’s’ grandparents now lived. Then he had gone through the telephone directory until he found their address. He’d considered phoning before making the journey, but in the end he’d decided not to. Over the phone it would have been too easy for them to say no.

He knocked on the door. It was grimy from the dust thrown up by the destruction of its neighbours, but the underlying blue paint was sound. They’re not going to be in, he thought, but was proved wrong by a muffled ‘It’s not locked’.

He went inside. The door opened straight into the kitchen.

The walls were covered with a yellow floral paper. In the doorway a small rubber mat covered the brown-and-cream swirl-patterned carpet. A sturdy drop-leaf table stood against the wall facing him, a potted geranium in its centre. There was a smell of old cooking, not rancid like the Kales’, but one that spoke of Yorkshire puddings and roast meats. It reminded Ben of his childhood visits to his grandparents.

An elderly man was standing by the sink. He wore brown pleated trousers and a white vest. A peeled hard-boiled egg was in one hand, while the other was cupped underneath it to catch the crumbs. He looked at Ben without saying anything, flecks of yolk around his mouth. Ben recognised him from the TV as Jeanette Kale’s father. He felt suddenly embarrassed at seeing him like that, knowing he wasn’t whoever the man had been expecting.

He hovered in the doorway, uncertainly. “I’m sorry, I heard you say it wasn’t locked. I’m Ben Murray—”

“I know who you are.” Paterson turned back to the sink and went on eating the egg. He pushed it into his mouth and delicately brushed his lips with his fingers.

“I’m sorry if I caught you by surprise.” Ben somehow felt he was the one at a disadvantage.

Small dewlaps of flesh swung under Paterson’s arms as he wiped his hands on a towel. He had the fleshy build of a once-powerful man overtaken by time. He hung the towel on a hook by the sink. “What do you want?”

Ben was already sure it was a wasted journey. “I’d like to talk to you and your wife. About Jacob.” If he says ‘Steven’ I’ll just turn around and go.

“What about him?” The man’s look was neither hostile nor encouraging. It compelled Ben to be direct. “John Kale won’t let me see him. I wondered if you could help.”

Paterson turned back to the sink. “There’s nothing we can do to help you.”

“I thought you could perhaps talk to him. Explain that I’m not trying to take Jacob from him. I just... I just want to see him every now and again.”

Jacob’s grandfather shook his head without looking around.

Ben remained by the open front door, unable to bring himself to leave but not knowing what else there was to say. A mechanical whine came from a doorway on the other side of the kitchen.

Paterson glanced at him, then went out. The noise grew louder, an electric motor of some kind. It stopped and he heard voices. There were other sounds he couldn’t identify, and then the door at the far end was pushed back. A woman in a wheelchair came through with Paterson pushing it, and Ben realised the whine had been from a chairlift.

Mary Paterson was stick thin, with hair that must once have been red but was now turning orange from the grey in it. Her eyes were beady and dark, like a bird’s as she regarded Ben.

“Shut the door,” she said.

They sat around the drop-leaf table, drinking tea. A plate of digestive biscuits had been put out next to the geranium. Ben had taken one out of politeness and then found his hand straying back of its own accord until the plate was half empty. He didn’t even like digestives.

“She left him, you see,” Mary said. She was still in her wheelchair, lower than either Ben or her husband, who sat in the hard-backed dining chairs. She looked like a wrinkled child.

“She came back to live with us a few months after Steven — after Jacob...” she corrected herself, annoyed at the slip, “...after Jacob went missing. We’d moved back up here by then. We’d only gone down to London to be near my sister, when Ron took his early redundancy. But after what happened at the hospital... well, you tell yourself it isn’t your fault, but if Jeanette hadn’t come down to stay with us...” She left the sentence unfinished. “John never said as much, but we always felt he blamed us. Partly, anyway. And then when she left him and came home that was the final straw. I don’t think he ever forgave us for that.”

“But Jacob’s your grandson. Surely you’re entitled to see him?”

She looked across at her husband. A wordless message seemed to pass between them. “So are you. But with John Kale that doesn’t make a lot of difference, does it?”

Ben didn’t know whether he was pleased to have found someone else against whom Kale was exercising his unreasonableness, or frustrated that another avenue had come to a dead end. Sympathy for the Patersons overruled either. “What has Kale said?”

“Not a thing.” Ron Paterson broke a biscuit in half over his plate, then in half again. He had put on a shirt, explaining that he had thought Ben was a friend of his when he’d knocked on the door, a widower he went shopping with every Saturday.

He noticed what he was doing to the biscuit and put it down.

“We haven’t spoken to him. Only that woman. She told me not to bother phoning again.” His lips set in a stern line.“Trout-mouthed little tart.”

“Ron,” his wife warned. His nodded acknowledgment was also an apology. She turned to Ben. “We’ve written, but we haven’t had any reply. Not that we expected one. But you still hope, don’t you?”

Not any more, Ben thought. If Kale wouldn’t even let Jacob’s grandparents see him, there was no chance for him.

“It isn’t any of my business, but why did Jeanette leave him?”

Again they shared a silent look of communication. “He’d changed,” she said. “He’d always been a quiet type. Deep. But after Stev... after Jacob disappeared he wasn’t the same. No disrespect intended, but it shattered him. Shattered them both, but in a different way. He got harder.” She frowned, shaking her head. “No, not harder exactly, that’s not right. But like he didn’t care. And Jeanette... well, she never really got over it. You’d have thought they’d have helped each other, but it went the opposite way. Perhaps Jeanette was as much to blame as John, I couldn’t say. But she needed someone to support her, to help her through it. And he didn’t do that. I suppose it was his way of coping with what had happened, but he just got more wrapped up in himself. More intense. They’d come around to see us, and he’d sit for hours, staring at nothing, not saying a word. And most of the time he was away anyway, you know, serving overseas. Jeanette was left by herself down in Aldershot So in the end she came back home.”

Ben dreaded the next question, but it had to be asked. “Kale said... he told me that it was my wife’s fault that Jeanette died. What did he mean?”

She didn’t answer. Her husband folded his hands together on the table. His knuckles were white. She reached out and patted them. Her own hands were swollen and deformed.

“He meant she killed herself.” She drew in a deep breath that had only a hint of tremor in it. It seemed to inflate her bony frame. “But I don’t know.” She gave her husband’s hands a squeeze before removing hers from them. “I don’t know. They say she walked out into the traffic without looking, but whether she meant to, or just didn’t think...” She shook her head. “John had been around the day before. He was on leave. Compassionate leave.” She gave a humourless laugh at the thought. “He turned up and said she was going home with him. Like that. No asking, no talking. Just straight out with it. Ron told him she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want to, and... and John knocked him down.” She glanced at her husband.

His hands were clenched tighter than ever. He spoke without looking at either of them. “If I’d been ten years younger he wouldn’t have done it. Soldier or not.” His voice was gravelly with emotion. His wife’s hands twitched on her lap, as if she were about to touch him again. This time she didn’t.

“John walked out after that without another word,” she went on. “The following morning Jeanette went for a walk, and the next we heard she was dead.”

Oh Sarah, what did you do?

“We haven’t seen John since then, except at the funeral,” Mary said. “And he didn’t speak to us there. So I don’t think there’s much we can do to help you. I’m sorry.”

Ben couldn’t look at either of them. “He blames me,” he said. Me and my wife. He blames us for Jacob being autistic.” He felt as though the words had been cut out of him. He had to go on to fill the silence that followed. “The doctors say it isn’t caused by anything like that, being taken from his mother, but he still thinks it’s our fault.”

He heard Mary Paterson’s chair creak as she stirred. “I think sometimes things just happen. It doesn’t do any good trying to guess why.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, and it was only after he’d said it that he realised it was the first time he had apologised for what Sarah had done.

“You’ve got nothing to apologise for.” She sounded weary. “You weren’t to know. And your wife... losing a child does strange things to you. Your wife did what she did because of it, and our Jeanette did what she did. One way or another you never get over it.”

That was as much absolution as Ben could hope for. He wanted to thank her, but when he looked across he saw her face was drawn and pale.

“You’ll have to excuse me now,” she said. Her voice was slurred with fatigue. “Ron...”

In response her husband stood up and silently pushed her out of the room. Ben heard the chairlift start up, then her husband returned. His face was stoic.

“Is she all right?” asked Ben.

“Just tired. It’s arthritis. Some days are better than others.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

“She’s glad you did.” He didn’t sit back down, though, or invite Ben to stay any longer. Ben stood up to leave, but there was one more thing he had to ask. “Do you think Jacob’ll be all right with him? With Kale, I mean?”

“He’s his son. He’s been missing him for the last six years.”

That wasn’t what Ben had asked. He rephrased the question. “He’s your grandson, as well. How do you feel about Kale bringing him up?”

Paterson seemed to deliberate before he spoke. “I don’t know John Kale any more. I can’t say what he’s like now. The last time I saw him I thought he was a man on the edge. And that was before he got shot up in Northern Ireland. But it isn’t for me to say.”

“What about his wife?”

Paterson’s expression darkened. “That one. I’ve heard—” He broke off.

“What?” Ben asked.

“Nothing.”

Ben would have liked to have pushed, but he could see the old man had said all he was going to. He went to the door.

“Can I ask a favour of you?” Paterson asked, abruptly.

“Photographs... we haven’t got any. Of Jacob, I mean. I wondered if you could let us borrow some. It’d mean a lot to Mary.” There was a minute trembling in his lip. “Just so we can see what he’s like.”

He tried listening to the radio as he drove back to take away the silence in the car, but soon switched it off again. The quiet oppressed him, but the noise and chatter ran against his mood. He reached a junction where he had turned off earlier.

A road sign pointed to Tunford. The indicator arrow on his dashboard clicked softly as it winked on and off, pointing in the opposite direction. Ben flipped it the other way and followed the sign.

He didn’t know why he was doing it. But he couldn’t come this close to where Jacob was and just go home again.

He tried to keep his mind clear as he approached the town, as though if he didn’t think about what he was going to do something would occur to him. There was an acid tightening in his gut as he came to the shops, but no inkling of a plan.

If Kale’s car isn’t there I’ll stop and knock at the door. He took the first of the turnings that would lead him to the house.

A group of small boys were playing football in the middle of the road. They grudgingly moved to the pavement as he drove past. There was a sudden bang that made his foot leap for the brake before he saw them sprinting away, and understood that they had kicked the football at the car. Little bastards. His grin of nervous relief faded as he turned on to Kale’s street.

The rust-coloured Ford Escort was parked outside the house.

Ben gripped the steering wheel, agonising over whether or not to stop anyway. He slowly cruised past. He saw the piles of junk in the garden, gathered now into two big piles instead of several smaller ones; he saw the guttering hanging loose from the eaves, but he didn’t see either of the Kales or Jacob.

He stayed rigid with indecision until the house disappeared from the rear-view mirror, and the moment when he might have stopped was gone. He continued to the end of the street, deflated, as if he had failed some kind of test.

The road curled away around the last of the houses before climbing a hill behind them. Ben hadn’t followed it this far before, but he didn’t want to turn around and go past the Kales’ again. The hill was covered with scrubby woodland, so that he soon lost sight of the town. Towards the top there was an overgrown lay-by leading to a wooden five-barred gate, thick with nettles. Impulsively, he pulled into it and switched off the engine. It ticked like a time bomb as it cooled. He sat in the car for a while, then got out.

The wind had picked up. It slapped his coat around him, watering his eyes and tugging at his hair. The field beyond the gate dropped steeply to a flooded gravel pit. Each gust sent a shiver racing across its surface like goosebumps. He turned away and went across to the other side of the road.

An old and uneven stone wall bordered the woods. Through the trees he could see snatches of the houses below. The branches thrashed in the wind, their remaining leaves showing dark green, pale green as they whipped about. Others were wrenched off, spinning through the fast air, abandoned to the death of another season. Ben thrust his hands in his pockets and faced the wind. He felt as though he had been torn loose from everything that had anchored him, that he was on the verge of being ripped up and blown away himself.

A section of the wall had tumbled to a low heap of individual stones. It was topped with rusted barbed wire, but the posts that had held it up had also slumped and given up.

Ben stepped over it into the woods. The trees were mostly scrubby and stunted oaks. He picked his way through them, no longer able to see the town as he descended. He came to a path, little more than a worn track. He followed it without really caring where it led, wanting only to lose himself for a while in an unfamiliar landscape.

The path meandered gradually down the hillside, snaking around the trees, broken every now and then by exposed roots. It was uneven enough to make him watch his footing, and when it suddenly emerged from the trees on to an open slope he was surprised to see how close to the houses he’d come. Their back gardens butted up to the field at the bottom of the hill like an uneven strip of patchwork quilt. He could see the tarmac ribbon of road he’d driven on continue from where they ended and curve away up the hill to his right. He couldn’t make out which was Kale’s house, but he knew it couldn’t be far away.

He went back into the woods and began to head in its direction. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t just walk out in the open, but something in him didn’t want to be seen, not just by Kale but by anyone.

The grass was longer off the path, still wet from the last rain, and the bottoms of his trousers were soon soaked through. He slipped and skidded across the hillside, trying to gauge whereabouts on the street the Kales lived. He needn’t have bothered. He could hardly have missed it.

When he next paused to get his bearings he saw it immediately. The rear of the house was a scrapyard in miniature, a Pyrenees of metal crammed into the confines of a semidetached garden. Ben carried on through the woods until he was looking directly down on the sprawl of junk. He could see now that it wasn’t a solid pile, as he’d first imagined.

There was a clear area at its centre.

In it were Kale and Jacob.

The tree line was about a hundred and fifty yards from the garden, too far away to make out any details, but Ben could tell it was them. Jacob was sitting on something low to the ground. He was occupied with an object in his hands, and although Ben couldn’t see what it was he guessed it would be some sort of puzzle. He felt a lump form in his throat at the familiar sight.

Kale was a few feet behind his son. He was standing with his legs braced apart, and had something gripped in both hands behind his neck. It looked heavy. As Ben watched he slowly hefted it above his head, then lowered it in front of him until he was holding it outstretched directly over Jacob’s head.

Ben stiffened, but Kale was already raising the weight again.

Keeping his arms straight, he reversed his motion until it was again grasped behind his neck. He held it there for a second, then repeated the entire procedure.

Jacob continued to play, unconcerned with what was going on above him. The scene had the appearance of being a routine they were both used to, and Ben felt his anxiety give way to fury. It increased with each repetition until he was quivering with a hatred for the man he had never felt before. Whether Kale was doing it as a test of strength and endurance or just showing off, there was no excuse for it. It was fucking irresponsible, dangerous, stupid... the epithets trailed off as he saw Kale’s movements begin to slow. The arms were taking an age to thrust the weight above his head. Once there they hesitated. Even at that distance there was an unmistakable wobble in them.

Oh, please, God, don’t do it...

They began inexorably to descend. The weight came to a halt over Jacob’s head. It stayed there longer than before, hovering unsteadily. Ben could almost feel the strain on muscle and tendon. Jacob played on beneath it all, oblivious.

Please... lift it. Fucking lift it.

Slowly, the arms began to rise. They got so far and then stopped. The weight began to pull them back down. It halted above Jacob and slowly came up again. Now it looked as though Kale was deliberately rocking it from side to side as he struggled to raise it over his head. There was a long moment of impasse. Then he managed it, and in the same movement he pivoted and let it drop.

The weight landed next to Jacob. Ben saw him turn to look at it, then go back to his puzzle as Kale collapsed to his knees.

“Oh, you fucking mad bastard,” Ben said out loud. “You fucking mad bastard!” He wanted to run down the hill and fling himself at the fence, climb over and club Kale with some of the metal he was so fond of. He wanted to hug Jacob and carry him away, back to safety, back to his fucking home, where he belonged.

Except he knew if he tried Kale would beat him to a pulp.

Kale had come to his feet but was still bent over, in the attitude of a man fighting for breath. Behind him, there was a movement as a figure appeared in an upstairs window. The yellow hair identified Sandra Kale. She seemed to be looking down at her husband.

At that distance Ben couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she was naked.

The tableau held for a while. Then Kale limped over to a shed that was half obscured with junk. He went inside, closing the door behind him. When Ben looked back at the bedroom window it was empty.

But he had seen enough. He felt as weak as if he had been the one lifting the weight. The memory brought a fresh resurgence of anger. Tamping it down into a hard core of resolve, he took a last look at Jacob and began to make his way back to the car.