Owning Jacob - SA

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 right 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 him. 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.

“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 he 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.