Owning Jacob - SA

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 had 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.”

“Can’t you go over the wall?”

The tall man broke in. “It’s topped with broken glass and barbed wire. I’m not sending anyone over that when there might be someone waiting with a shotgun on the other side.”

His scalp showed through his cropped blond hair. He didn’t attempt to hide his antagonism at a civilian presence.

“This is Sergeant O’Donnell,” Norris said. “He’s in charge of the Tactical Firearms Unit. Now if you don’t mind, we’ve got a lot to do, so—”

“If Kale’s in there you might need me,” Ben said, quickly. “I know him.”

“I don’t think—”

“Please. I won’t get in the way.”

Norris considered. “I’ll tell the superintendent you’re here. He might want the negotiator to talk to you.” He went up the steps into the trailer.

The policeman called O’Donnell detached himself and walked away without another word. After a moment the trailer door opened and Norris beckoned Ben in.

The light inside was bright, the atmosphere foul with coffee and cigarettes. The small space seemed full of activity.

A heavily-built man with a moustache and bloodshot eyes was perched with one meaty thigh on the corner of a desk. A small cigar burned down between his thick, nicotined fingers.

The man next to him had sandy hair swept sideways to cover his bald scalp like a groundsheet at Wimbledon. Neither wore uniforms. Both looked tired and crumpled.

Norris said, “Mr Murray, this is Detective Superintendent Bates and Detective Inspector Greene. Inspector Greene is our negotiator. He’ll be handling communications with Kale. Assuming he’s in there,” he added, dryly.

“He is,” Ben said.

The superintendent was the heavily built man. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, with the air of a man who didn’t like being roused in the early hours. “Ken, see where the bloody owner’s got to, will you? He should be here by now.”

Norris quickly left. The man he’d introduced as the negotiator turned to Ben. “What can you tell us about Kale?”

Ben tried to assemble his thoughts. “Uh, he’s... he’s unstable. Unbalanced. Violent, very fit, except for his leg. He got shot when he was in the army. In Northern Ireland.”

An irritable sigh from the superintendent stopped him. “We’re not interested in his CV. We want to know what his state of mind’s like, so we know what we’re dealing with.” He ground out his cigar with an expression of barely concealed impatience.

Ben tried again. “He’s obsessed with his son. Nothing else matters to him. I think...” The words had to be forced. “I think he’d kill both of them rather than let anyone take him away again.”

The negotiator nodded, calmly. “What’s your relationship with him like? Do you think he might listen to you?”

Ben felt them all looking at him. “I’m the reason he’s in there.”

He told them, as clearly as he could, his role in Kale’s madness.

“So he’s not going to chuck his gun out of the window at your say-so, then, is he?” the superintendent commented when he’d finished.

Greene looked annoyed but made no comment. The trailer door opened and Norris put his head inside.

“’Scuse me, sir. The owner’s arrived.”

The superintendent heaved himself to his feet and went out. The negotiator gave Ben the first friendly smile he’d had all night. “It’ll be all right if you wait in here. We’ll let you know if anything happens.”

“What happens now?” Ben asked, struck with a fresh fear at the prospect of action.

“When we’ve got the gates open we’ll see what the situation is inside. If Kale and his son are in there, we’ll establish a line of communication. Get him talking, find out what he wants, reassure him.”

Ben thought of the superintendent’s impatience. “You won’t just rush straight in?”

Greene seemed to know what he was thinking. “The last thing anybody wants is a confrontation. In most situations like this it’s just a case of waiting them out.” He gave him another smile. “Don’t worry. We know what we’re doing.”

So does Kale, Ben thought, but said nothing.

The negotiator left. Ben waited as long as he could stand it and then walked to the door. No one stopped him from leaving the trailer.

He saw the senior police officers gathered by a car. The scrap dealer was with them, an overcoat thrown over his pyjamas. His stomach strained against them like a pregnant woman’s. He looked confused and frightened as he answered their questions. Finally, he was led away.

O’Donnell, the sergeant in charge of the firearms team, went at a half-run to a group of policemen clustered behind a white Land Rover. The superintendent, the negotiator and Norris came back towards the trailer. Ben stood back, but none of them so much as glanced at where he stood in the shadows as they went inside.

Ben shivered and realised how cold he was. He looked down and saw he hadn’t fastened his coat. He zipped it and turned up the collar, but his body had already lost too much of its heat for it to make any immediate difference. His skin felt icy and dead.

There was movement over by the gates. Two policemen in body armour ran towards them in a crouch. Others aimed guns at the top of the wall. The two men huddled over the lock, then the gates were swinging open. The Land Rover’s engine growled to life. It pulled slowly up to the entrance and stopped. Its headlamps shone into the darkened scrapyard, but from where Ben was standing he couldn’t see inside. Armed police disappeared through the gates, black figures briefly lit by the car’s lights. Ben could hear the crackle of radios, make out snatches of words. After a moment the Land Rover drove slowly inside.

He couldn’t bear it. He edged away from the trailer, all the time expecting someone to shout and stop him, but no one did.

He didn’t have to move far to see through the open gates.

Kale had been busy. The Land Rover had pulled up just inside the yard. Its headlamps and the beam from a spotlight on its roof lit the area inside the gates with a harsh, surreal white light. In it Ben could see that the drive leading to the office building had been blocked with wrecked cars. They had been piled on top of each other in an untidy heap three and four deep, crammed between the neater stacks on either side.

The jib of the crane was visible above them. He could just make out the black shape of the office behind it.

The police who’d gone into the yard were making no attempt to climb the barricade.

Nothing seemed to happen for a while. Then the trailer door opened and the negotiator came out. He would have walked past if Ben hadn’t spoken.

“What’s going on?”

Greene looked startled to see him. “Go back to the trailer, please, Mr Murray. We haven’t secured the area yet.”

“I won’t go near the gates, I just want to know what’s happening. Please, tell me if they’ve found anything!”

The negotiator appeared to reach a decision. “Not yet. He’s barricaded himself in, and we’ve been unable to reach him on the scrapyard’s phone. He’s either ignoring it or... or he can’t hear it.”

Ben noticed the hesitation and knew what it meant. His voice was unsteady as he asked, “What are you going to do?”

“We’ll have to try talking to him another way. Now, please, Mr Murray, if you don’t go back to the command post I’ll have to ask you to leave the area.” His face was grim with concentration as he hurried away.

Ben noticed for the first time that the man had put on a bulletproof vest himself. He drifted back towards the trailer in token obedience, but couldn’t bring himself to go back inside. He watched as Greene went through the gates to where O’Donnell stood in the shelter of one of the Land Rover’s open doors. Other police were crouched by the barricade, facing the office building beyond. Ben saw Greene raise something to his mouth.

“JOHN KALE.”

Ben jumped as the amplified voice rolled across the night. The echo hung in the cold air, slowly diminishing. Kale-ale-ah.

“ARE YOU IN THERE, JOHN? THIS IS THE POLICE. NOBODY’S GOING TO HARM YOU. WE’D JUST LIKE TO TALK.”

Talk-alk-alk. The echo died away. There was no answer.

The wrecked cars towered silently around them, broken and blind mechanical corpses. The negotiator tried again. Every now and then he would pause, waiting for some response, a sign of life, and then continue on a different tack, speaking in a steady, reassuring voice. The dark scrapyard absorbed his words, offering nothing in return.

Ben hugged himself. Please, God.

Greene and O’Donnell conferred. Ben could see them talking on the radio, presumably to the superintendent in the trailer. He felt like screaming.

As if in response the scrum by the car broke up. Two officers tentatively began to climb the barricade. Ben could hear the metallic scrape off their progress, the teetering of bonnet and roof under their weight. The wrecks were precariously balanced, but eventually the policemen reached the top. The boom from the office was almost drowned out by a sound like hail hitting a tin roof. One of the policemen climbing the barricade cried out, and then both were tumbling down in a riot of confusion.

The uppermost cars shifted in a screech of metal, then toppled off with an appalling crash. Ben saw the police scatter as the whole thing collapsed. There was chaos, people yelling, pounding footsteps, and over it all the shotgun cracked out again and again. Someone was shouting, “Move, move, move!” and through his shock Ben felt an utterly devastating relief, because Kale was still alive, and if Kale was alive then Jacob would be too.

“Thank God,” he said, not caring that he was crying. “Thank God.”

But his relief turned to shame as he saw the figures running from the yard, carrying the injured to safety, not just the two men who’d been on the barricade but others who’d been caught by the falling wrecks. There were frantic calls for ambulances as they set the bloody, groaning or unconscious figures down away from the gates, shouts that someone was still trapped.

One man’s face was a gleaming black mask that reflected the lights from the police cars as he was dragged out. Ben watched as he was laid down, the protective vest that had proved useless stripped from him and used to support his head.

There were sirens now as the ambulances drew up and the attendants leaped out. In the background he could hear Greene’s voice through the loudhailer. Without realising he was doing it he began moving forwards, walking through the injured policemen with no fixed idea in his mind, only the urgent need to stop this from going further. Someone grabbed him, roughly.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get back! Now!” The policeman’s face was contorted with anger and fear.

Ben felt the man’s spittle fleck his cheeks. “I need to speak to Inspector Gr—”

“You fucking prick — I said move!” The policeman seized him, began pushing him away.

He could see the negotiator standing behind the Land Rover’s open door, framed against the fallen car hulks.

“Greene! Greene!” he yelled as he was propelled backwards.

The negotiator turned and saw him, seemed to hesitate, then came towards them in a stooped, shuffling run. His face looked haggard. “I told you to stay out of the way!”

“Let me talk to Kale!”

The negotiator jerked his head at the policeman still holding him. “Take him back.”

“No, wait! Fucking get off me!” He tried to shrug off the policeman; failed. “At least let me try!” he shouted to the negotiator’s retreating back. “He’s not going to listen to you but he might me! For fuck’s sake, will you listen!”

Greene halted, then signalled to the policeman. Ben felt himself released, but he could sense the policeman poised like a heeled guard dog to take hold of him again, eager to vent his outrage on someone. His breath in Ben’s face was sour with frustration as the negotiator said, “What would you say to him?”

“I don’t know, offer to go in myself if he lets Jacob go.”

The negotiator gave an emphatic shake of his head and turned away.

“All right, all right.” Ben rushed the words out. “He wants his son. All this is because he thinks people are trying to take Jacob away. I’ll say I won’t even try to see him again, that he can have him. I can tell him that I’ll never bother them again if he gives himself up.” He stared at the man, willing him to agree. “Please!”

The negotiator glanced towards the shambles in the scrapyard. He turned his back as he spoke into his radio. Ben heard the superintendent’s gruff voice through a snap of static, but couldn’t make out any words. Greene came back. He gave a terse nod.

“We’re not going to let you speak to him. He’s volatile enough as it is, and we don’t want to risk doing anything that might provoke him into hurting himself or the boy. We’ve got to calm him down and get him talking to us, but you can stay near by in case he asks anything you can help with.” He motioned for Ben to follow. “Keep behind me.”

They went through the gates into the yard. Everything was suddenly much larger. The white lights and the smell of oil and metal lent it the surreal quality of an airport at night.

The sergeant gave him a hostile look as they reached the back of the Land Rover.

“Wait here,” the negotiator told Ben.

“He can’t see to shoot over the cars, but I want you out of the way anyway. If I need you I’ll let you know.”

Leaving him, Greene went to where O’Donnell stood behind the Land Rover’s door. Sirens wailed outside the yard as the loaded ambulances raced away.

Ben looked past the policemen to the office building, just visible above the jumble of wrecked cars. They still blocked the road but now it was in an untidy sprawl, as if they had been tipped out of a bucket. It looked like an adult version of the scrap pile in Kale’s garden.

Facing the shadowy office across the top of the car door, the negotiator raised a loudhailer to his mouth.

“THIS IS IAN GREENE AGAIN, JOHN. WE’RE STILL HERE. NONE OF US ARE GOING ANYWHERE, SO WE MIGHT AS WELL TALK. I KNOW YOU’RE UPSET, BUT THIS ISN’T GOING TO DO ANYONE ANY GOOD. THINK ABOUT WHAT IT’S DOING TO—”

Ben lunged for his arm before he could finish the sentence.

“Don’t say Jacob!” he said quickly as the negotiator furiously turned on him. “Kale calls him Steven!”

The heat went from the negotiator’s eyes. He motioned Ben to get back and put the loudhailer to his mouth again.

He continued in the same measured tones, a reasonable man, offering reasonable alternatives.

It won’t work.

The conviction gripped Ben with a cold certainty. Kale wouldn’t listen to reason. He had his own insane agenda, and rational solutions didn’t figure in it. They wouldn’t be able to talk him into giving himself up, and if they eventually tried to rush him he would shoot Jacob, then himself.

Ben couldn’t see any way out that didn’t end in blood and death. He was shivering uncontrollably.

Greene was trying to convince Kale to answer the phone. He could have been talking to himself in an empty room for all the effect it had.

The negotiator paused, then said, ‘I’VE SPOKEN TO BEN MURRAY, JOHN. HE DOESN’T WANT THIS EITHER. HE SAYS HE DOESN’T WANT TO SPLIT YOU AND STEVEN UP. TALK TO US, JOHN. LET’S SEE IF WE CAN—’

The shout carried clearly from the office building. “Is Murray there?”

Ben tensed at the sound of Kale’s voice.

The negotiator hesitated. “YES, HE’S HERE, JOHN. DO YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO HIM? PICK UP THE PHONE AND—”

“Send him in.”

“YOU KNOW I CAN’T DO THAT, BUT YOU CAN TALK TO—”

The blast of the shotgun made them all duck. This close, Ben could see the muzzle flash through the barricade. “Send him in!”

O’Donnell said, “Shit!”

Greene drew in a long breath.

Ben reached him before he could use the loudhailer again. “Let me go in!”

“I told you to stay back there!”

“Let me do as he says!”

The shotgun bellowed again. “You’ve got five minutes.”

Ben clutched at Greene’s arm. “Please! I might be able to talk to him! If not you don’t know what he might do!”

The negotiator yanked his arm free. “I know what he’ll do if you go in. Get him out of here,” he told O’Donnell.

“He’s got my son in there!” Ben shouted, realising for the first time that it was true.

But the sergeant was already pulling him away, signalling to another policeman. “Take him back to the command post.”

The policeman gripped his arm above the elbow and herded him through the gates.

“All right, I can walk, let go!” Ben said, but the policeman didn’t loosen his hold as they went outside.

The ambulances had gone, but discarded pieces of equipment and uniforms still littered the road like the detritus from a bloody street party. An armoured vest lay in the gutter like a run-over dog. A solitary boot stood upright, its leather glistening and wet. Here and there dark patches that weren’t oil stained the frosted tarmac. Ben wondered how finding some old cuttings in a brass box could have led to this. He was shivering more than ever as they reached the white trailer.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said.

The policeman stood back as Ben leaned against a lamppost. His radio gave a hiss and a tinny voice squawked out. The policeman spoke into it, briskly, then put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You going to be all right?”

“Just give me a few minutes.”

“Go in there when you’ve got yourself sorted. Someone’ll get you a cup of tea.”

Ben nodded thanks without looking up. The policeman left him outside the trailer and jogged back towards the scrapyard.

Still bent over, Ben watched him disappear inside.

He straightened and looked around.

The activity of the police outside the scrapyard had subsided to a tense expectancy. They faced the gates from behind the protection of their cars and vans, waiting to see what Kale would do next. No one looked back as Ben approached them.

He tried not to think of what he was doing as he headed for an empty gap between two police cars, as if even the noise of his thoughts might attract attention. Greene’s voice was blaring from the loudspeaker again, but he barely heard it. When he reached the gap he hesitated. The nearest police were only yards away. Doubt immediately began to batter at him. Just do it.

He carried on walking.

He was past the cars, moving out into the open space in front of the gates. He could see through them to the Land Rover, the tangle of wrecks. He was in plain view now. He quickened his pace praying for a few extra seconds of confusion, shoulders tensing with the expectation of the sudden challenge.

He had gone less than half a dozen steps when it came. It released him like a starting pistol. He sprinted for the gates as shouts and footsteps raced after him. Up ahead he saw O’Donnell and Greene turn, and veered around the other side of the Land Rover as the sergeant started moving to cut him off. His throat and chest hurt as he swerved away from another policeman, and then the tumbled barricade rose up in front of him.

He’d planned to go across where the fallen cars were lowest, but now there was no time to do anything but leap at the first wreck he came to. His foot skidded off an icy wing, but he grabbed on to something cold and sharp and hauled himself upward. There were yells from behind and below him now.

A hand seized his ankle. He jerked his foot and kicked back.

Someone said, “Bastard!” and his foot was released.

The car bodies were icy and rough. He clawed his way up on to the roof of one and jumped from it on to the next as it shifted beneath him. He closed his mind to their seesawing instability as he scrambled over them, hearing the clamour at his back as the police followed. He reached the top, shouting, ‘It’s Ben Murray, I’m coming over!’, and as he slipped and scrabbled down the other side there was a boom and a flash of light from the scrapyard office.

Oh, Jesus, the bastard! he thought as he slipped and fell. He tried to turn it into a jump, pushing himself clear, and landed heavily on the broken concrete of the drive. He curled himself into a ball and wrapped his arms around his head as the shotgun crashed twice more, but the expected shock of pellets ripping into him didn’t come. Above him it sounded as though handfuls of pebbles were being thrown against the cars.

Someone screamed, ‘Back! Back! Get down!’, and for a few seconds he thought the entire barricade was coming over on top of him as it rocked and clattered under the policemen’s retreat.

Then it went quiet.

He slowly uncurled. He was lying at the foot of a car canted over on its side. He looked up at it rearing above him and hurriedly moved from underneath. He felt bruised and scraped in any number of places, and his ankle protested when he put his weight on it, but other than that he was unhurt.

He rubbed his arms to try to stop shaking, but he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering. “Oh fuck,” he breathed. “Oh fuck.” The memory of the shotgun explosions was still reverberating in his head. But they had been to drive the policemen back, not aimed at him.

Kale wanted him inside.

Greene’s voice, unamplified, came from the other side of the barricade. “Murray! Murray! Can you hear me?”

“I’m all right.” The words were an inaudible croak. He put more force into them. “I’m all right!”

He could hear the negotiator’s relief in his pause. “Okay, just stay where you are. Get behind some cover if there’s anything nearby, but don’t move away from the cars. Just stay put.”

Ben didn’t answer. He looked down the drive to the darkened building. Slices of light from the police Land Rover shone through the barricade in fractured patterns, but none reached that far. It waited for him, impassive and silent. Ben started towards it.

“Murray? Mr Murray!” Greene’s voice fell away. “Look, don’t be a bloody idiot...!”

He kept walking. There was frost underfoot. It gave a minute, frictionless crunch with every step. The towers of lifeless cars on either side of him were coated with it. As the shattered patches of light from the Land Rover were left behind and his eyes adjusted, he could see the wrecks shining with a pale luminescence in the moonlight.

His hands were sore and frozen from his scramble over the barricade. The armed police already seemed a long way away.

Greene began calling him through the loudhailer, telling him to go back, but even that seemed distant and unimportant, far less real than his footsteps on the icy concrete. It was between him and Kale now. As it always had been, he realised.

He remembered when he and Colin had come along this same drive. The scrapyard had figured in his thoughts so often since that he could hardly believe he’d only been there once.

He wondered if he’d made a single right decision since then.

He wondered if he was making one now.

He felt exposed and alone as he approached the unlit building. He glanced uneasily at the square black hole of the first-floor window. That was where the shots had come from.

It was wide open, but he couldn’t see inside. He knew Kale would be watching, though. Sighting down the barrel.

He shivered under his bulky coat. He had no plan, no idea of what he would do when he reached the office. There was no chance of him overpowering the ex-soldier, and he didn’t believe for a second that Kale might want to talk, that he could be persuaded to give himself up and let Jacob go.

There was only one reason why he wanted Ben to go inside, and for a second Ben felt a heady disbelief as the nearness of his own death confronted him.

But there was nothing else to do.

God, I’m frightened.

He was almost at the building now. Its shadow lay across his path like a hole in the ground. He walked into it, more conscious than ever of the open window above, resisting the impulse to hurry from beneath it.

Don’t give him the satisfaction.

He could see the ground-floor room where he and Colin had met the fat scrap dealer. Next to it was the open maw of the passageway. It was a solid block of darkness. Ben halted at its edge. At its far end, invisible, were the steps leading up to the first floor where Kale would be waiting.

And Jacob, please God.

There was a smell of damp brick. He felt in his pockets for matches. He hadn’t any. He looked around him, putting off the moment when he would have to go into the blackness. There was a lightening in the sky to the east, and he realised with surprise that dawn couldn’t be very far off. He stared at it for a long moment, then turned and entered the passageway.

He felt his way along by touch. It was impossible to see.

His foot kicked something hard, and he skittered back before he identified it as the first step. He groped around until he found the wall, and a cold steel railing. Holding on to it, he started up, treading as softly as he could. The steps came to a small concrete landing, then turned back on themselves, still rising. He paused on it, out of breath. A small window was set high in the wall. It was almost obscured with dirt, but the steps here weren’t quite so dark. He continued up. He was almost at the top when Kale moved out of the shadows.

Ben stopped. He couldn’t see Kale’s face, but he could make out the barrel of the shotgun aimed at his chest. He put out his hand in a desperate staying gesture, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

“Wait—” he said.

There was a roar of light.

Smoke from the shotgun blast hazed the air. His ears were still ringing as he swiftly reloaded, watching the photographer’s body for any movement. The double impact of the twelve-bore shells had flung it down the steps, crumpling it against the back of the small landing. As his eyes adjusted from the muzzle flash, he made out the black splashes of blood on the walls and floor.

He looked for a moment longer, making sure, then snapped the shotgun shut and went back into the office.

Keeping out of the direct line of the window, Kale crossed over and stood with his back against the wall to one side. He picked up the broken mirror tile he’d ripped from above the toilet sink and tilted it until he could see the barricade. The predictable bastards were starting to come over. He readied himself, then spun round and fired through the window, one barrel straight after the other this time, not both together as he had done with the photographer cunt.

He ducked down, ignoring the pain in his knee, cracking the breech open and pumping in two fresh shells, slithering on his arse to the other side of the window, and then he was up and firing again.

He dropped back to the floor, his bad leg stuck out awkwardly in front of him. He reloaded with one hand while he had another look with the mirror. Shouts and yells, but the bastards had fucked off. The twelve-bore wasn’t accurate at that range, probably not lethal, even with ‘00’ buckshot cartridges which would put a four-inch hole through two-inch wood at ten feet, and blow photographer cunts practically in half at eight, but it had a good spread. He made sure none of them had dropped down on his side before he lowered the mirror.

Keeping well outside the perimeter of chairs, wastepaper bins and boxes he’d set up to mark the area where the police marksmen bastards could get a shot, he went over to the desk. It was tipped on its side in part of the room he knew would be out of any line of fire.

Steven was curled behind it, eyes squeezed shut, hands over his ears, rocking backwards and forwards. Kale felt angry again for being made to use the shotgun. He stroked his son’s head.

“Shh, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

“No bangs! No bangs!”

His son’s hair felt soft and fine under his fingers. He pushed his hands gently down from his ears. Steven shook his head violently. “No bangs!”

“Not many more.”

There were seven shells left. When he was down to two he would use them to make sure the bastards didn’t separate him and his son again.

He stayed there for as long as he dared and then, skirting the area he’d marked out, he went back to the window to check with the mirror. The barricade was still clear. He hoped it had taken some of them out when it went down. He’d rigged it so it would collapse if anyone gave it so much as a sour look.

It’d still slow them up long enough to do what he had to when they cottoned on that they couldn’t talk him out.

The telephone was ringing again downstairs, but he took no more notice of it than before. He returned to the desk. Steven’s eyes were still shut but his rocking wasn’t quite so violent.

Kale lowered himself to the floor and put his arm across his shoulders. He unwrapped a stick of chewing gum, broke it in two and gave half to Steven, half to himself. The boy chewed without opening his eyes.

“They just don’t give you any peace,” Kale said, looking down at him. “There’s no time. They can’t just leave you alone.”

He brushed a strand of hair from his son’s face, then put his head back against the desk and looked at the paling sky through the window.

“We were almost there. I could feel it. I’ve been close before, but not like that. I was near to it in the desert, but I didn’t realise, not then. Not until what happened to you and your mum. It was right in front of me, but I couldn’t see it. There was so much... broken... it took your breath away. It was like that was how things were supposed to be, that was normal. But it was too soon. I wasn’t ready. You’ve got to be tempered first. You’ve got to be nearly broken yourself.

“It purifies you, makes you see more clearly. You’ve got to go through that before you can see it’s not all shit, there’s no such thing as good or bad luck. Everything fits and works together, like a big machine. It’s all part of the same thing, all part of the Pattern.”

He broke, off, tilting his head to listen. Outside, it had gone silent. He turned to Jacob again.

“There’s a reason for it all, for everything,” he went on. “That’s what the Pattern is — it’s the reason. You’ve just got to be able to see it, that’s all. Scientists say everything’s made out of the same stuff, all these little... little bits. They think they’ve found out what the smallest bit is, but then they realise there’s something smaller. So that means that you, me, this floor, that desk — everything — is all connected. And if it’s all connected then what happens to one thing or person, even if it’s on the other side of the world, it’s still part of everything else. Part of us. It still affects us, even though we don’t know it.

“There’s all this...” He frowned, locking his splayed fingers together. “...this meshing going on, all the time. Everything interlocks. So long as the Pattern’s in sync it’s okay. But sometimes you can go out of sync with it, and then...” He clenched his hands together in a double fist. “Things break. Like those wrecks out there. Each one’s sort of... frozen.” He savoured the word.

“They’re like recordings. The Pattern’s there, in each bit of them, and if you could see it you could understand why things happen like they do, you could avoid the breaks. But you’ve got to know how to look.”

He stopped as the loudhailer started up again. He pushed himself across the floor to the window. The sky was lighter now. The wrecks in the yard were no longer just frost-covered shadows. Through the mirror he could see the bastards still weren’t doing anything on the far side of the barricade. Just mouthing off.

He went back to the desk. Steven was rocking again. Kale held his son and rocked with him.

“When you came back it was a sign that I was getting close to seeing it. Things were falling back into place again, I was getting back into sync. Even the way you are is part of it. I didn’t understand at first, but it is. You’re locked in here—” He rubbed his son softly across his forehead. “You see everything as a pattern. I’m trying to see one, and you’re trying to get out of one.”

His expression hardened. “They wouldn’t leave us alone, though. A bit more time, that’s all we needed. Just a bit more time.”

He put his head back, tiredly, then snapped it round at new noise from the yard.

Crouching awkwardly, he left the desk and went to check through the window with the mirror.

There was movement. An engine was being revved. The cars in the barricade suddenly shuddered. As he watched, one of them slewed around and fell. He had a glimpse of a yellow mechanical arm and then the mirror exploded into fragments.

The belated report of the rifle came as the bullet chunked into the wall on the far side of the room. Kale counted to ten, ignoring the cuts from the glass, then fired one barrel blindly through the window. He dodged back before anyone could draw a line on him, moved to a different position and snapped off the second barrel.

He dropped to the floor, reaching for the shells. Five left.

Three more for the bastards. A sound came from behind him.

He slapped the breech closed with only one shell in it and spun round, bringing the gun to bear. The photographer was in the doorway.

It had taken all the strength Ben had to crawl up the steps.

He saw Kale aiming the shotgun at him for a second time but couldn’t move. He’d no idea how long it had taken him to drag himself up there, how long he’d lain unconscious. He was slick with his own blood. He cradled what was left of his left hand in the crook of his right arm. Every now and again, without warning, the pain from it would whirr closer until he almost blacked out. It was the one he’d stretched out towards Kale. The shotgun blast had taken most of it away before smashing into him.

Through the ragged hole in his coat, the armoured vest that he’d picked up from the street outside was visible, its outer fabric shredded above his heart.

It had been damaged before he put it on, looked as though it had been struck by something when the barricade collapsed on the police. Ben had hidden it beneath his own coat so that if Kale did shoot him he wouldn’t see it and blow his head off instead. It had stopped the blast from killing him, but his ribs felt as if they’d been crushed. Each breath seemed to tear something inside his chest. His vision was blurred, either from loss of blood or from cracking his head in the fall. He clung to the doorframe to keep from falling again now, and saw Jacob huddled behind an upturned desk.

Thank God.

Jacob’s eyes were tightly closed. His face had the pinched, set expression he wore when he was upset or frightened. Ben knew the boy didn’t realise he was there. He tried to say something to him but his voice wouldn’t come. He looked back at Kale, noticing without really comprehending that the furniture and various objects had been arranged to form a loose square in front of the window. Standing outside it, Kale stared at him down the length of the shotgun barrel.

He lowered it and came towards him.

Ben saw the stock of the shotgun swinging into his face but couldn’t avoid it A light burst in his head, and a new pain spun into the others. He felt himself hit the floor, but only distantly.

He opened his eyes and saw Kale’s boots. He rolled over and looked up. Kale was a giant, towering above him. The shotgun butt was raised in slow motion. Ben watched, incuriously, for it to begin its descent.

“No, Daddy, no, Daddy, no, Daddy!”

The cry gradually penetrated the fog in his head. Kale was no longer looking down at him. Ben moved his head until he could see Jacob. The boy had his eyes open now, but they were darting about, looking at everything but Ben and Kale as he frantically rocked himself.

“Nonono!”

“It’s all right,” Kale said, but the boy only rocked harder, chanting his denial.

There was a huge grating of metal from the yard. Kale glanced uncertainly towards the window. A grey daylight was coming from it now.

Ben began to drag himself towards Jacob. His hand shrieked, and so did he.

Kale looked from him to the window and back again.

Another huge clamour came from outside. Ben pushed himself along the floor with his feet. His hand left a giant slug-trail of blood. He saw Kale’s face contort. The man pressed the heel of his fist against his forehead as if he were trying to crush it. He took a step forward.

“Get away from him!”

Ben shoved himself the rest of the way and pulled Jacob to him with his good arm. Jacob moaned and rocked, eyes shut again.

Kale gripped the shotgun.

“I said get away!”

Ben stared up at Kale as he held their son. He wanted to speak but the effort to reach Jacob had taken the last of his strength. There was a rushing in his ears. His vision was breaking up. He struggled to keep his head upright as Kale raised the shotgun and levelled it at them.

The room lit up as the sun crested the scrapyard’s wall. Kale winced at the sudden brightness. He looked out across the frosted tops of the cars as the light bounced and splintered from their uneven surface.

Ben saw him frown. Then his face cleared.

Still staring outside, he lowered the gun. Through the rushing in his ears, Ben heard him murmur, “There... it’s there...”

Like a man in a dream, Kale slowly turned back to them. He no longer seemed aware of Ben as he gazed down at Jacob.

A screech of metal from outside made him glance at the window again. Going to the makeshift cordon of furniture, he moved aside a broken chair with the same deliberation he’d applied to rearranging his pieces of wreckage. He stood by the breach he’d made for a moment, letting the sunlight fall on his face. Then, fixing his eyes on his son, he put the shotgun stock to his shoulder and stepped backwards through the gap.

The crash came immediately.

Ben cringed, clutching Jacob to him, but there was no pain, no impact. After a moment he cautiously looked up.

Kale had been hurled sideways by the marksman’s bullet.

It had taken him through the chest. He lay twisted on the floor, one arm thrown above him, the other straight out in a parody of the exercises he performed in his garden. His eyes seemed to be staring at a point above Ben’s head, at something behind and beyond him, and Ben felt an urge to turn and look. But his eyes were drawn to the blood soaking through Kale’s sweat-shirt. He lay in a puddle of it. Streaks and splashes fanned out from him in dark whorls, hieroglyphs of an unknown language which changed and grew as their substance spread across the floor.

Jacob was keening. Ben pressed the boy’s face into his shoulder to spare him the sight of his father’s corpse. The rushing in his ears became very loud. He put his head back against the wall and saw an oblique strip of sunlight running over the ceiling. Motes of dust danced in it, spinning frenzied patterns. He tried to focus on them, and was still struggling to decipher their semaphored message as his vision faded away.