Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  As they went out he noticed the shotgun lying on a shelf to one side of the door. He remembered what it had done to the dog's head. At least he keeps the place locked, he thought as he watched Sandra snap the heavy padlock shut. He followed her back to the house.

  The kitchen began misting up as soon as they closed the door. They were both soaked, but at least he'd had a coat on. Her clothes were stuck to her. The outline of her bra was etched under her sweater. Her nipples stood out through both layers of fabric.

  'You're dripping all over the carpet,' she told him. 'If you're going to stay you might as well take your coat off.'

  He did, draping it over his bag.

  She handed him a towel. 'Here.'

  It was already damp and didn't look too clean, but he took it anyway. Sandra rubbed her hair vigorously with another.

  'I'm wet through.' Without any coyness she pulled off her sweater and dropped it on a chair. The skin of her arms, chest and stomach was pale and covered with goose bumps. Her white bra was semi-transparent.

  'Don't mind, do you?' she asked, pushing her wet hair back with her fingers so that it hung behind her ears. Her heavy breasts lifted with the movement.

  'No.' He tried to remember what he'd been going to say next 'Look—'

  'Coffee?'

  'Uh, please.'

  There was a small roll of flesh above the waistband of her skirt. She went to the sink and filled the kettle. To the left of her spine below her bra strap was a mole the size of a small fingernail. He hadn't noticed it when he'd watched her through the long lens.

  He made himself look through the window at the scrap metal.

  'Why only wrecked cars?'

  'What?'

  She pushed the kettle plug into the socket with a firm jab from the palm of her hand. A muscle jumped down the side of her ribs.

  'All the scrap. Why is it just cars? Why not bits of fridges and washing machines as well?'

  'Because a car wreck's violent. One minute it was driving around, the next it's junk. And somebody with it. He thinks each piece he brings home is some sort of memento of that somebody's life being smashed.'

  She had turned to face him, but for a moment she seemed to forget he was there. Then she came back from wherever she'd been and smiled.

  'I can't see the point in looking for reasons,' she said. 'Things happen, don't they? You just have to make the most of what you've got.'

  Ben didn't say anything because she had started walking towards him. She didn't take her eyes from his. The smile was still on her mouth. She came close and stood in front of him. He was surprised at how small she was. He could feel the fabric of her bra brushing his shirt. The weight of her breasts was an implied threat.

  She rested her hands flat on his chest. They felt cold, then the heat of them came through.

  'What have you got?' she asked, looking up at him.

  She began to slide one hand lower. It burned a slow path down his stomach. There was a thrumming in his head, twinning the one in his crotch. Her hand reached it, pressed against it, and a vibration went through him as though she had struck a tuning fork. He stepped back slightly for balance and something crunched under his shoe.

  He looked down. One of Jacob's puzzles was crushed under his heel. Tiny silver balls had spilled from the broken plastic. He lifted his foot and more of them escaped, running like beads of mercury across the dirty carpet.

  'Don't worry about it,' Sandra told him. 'John's bought him loads of them. They're all over the place.'

  But Ben felt something shifting inside him, something that had nothing to do with the pressure of her hand. He took another step backwards. She looked surprised, then her expression grew closed at whatever she saw in his face. Her hand fell to her side.

  'Well,' she said, looking away. She self-consciously folded her arms across her breasts. 'Sorry if I'm not good enough for you. I expect you're too used to models.'

  Ben couldn't think of anything he could say that would make things any better. The kettle clicked off, its steam adding to the fog on the window. He moved further away, careful not to step on any of the silver balls. He tried to reassemble his reason for being there.

  'I'm going to tell the social services that I don't think your husband's mentally fit to look after Jacob,' he said.

  Sandra went to where her sweater was discarded on the chair. 'Do what you like.'

  'All that stuff in the shed. He's self-destructive. I'm not going to let anything happen to Jacob because he's got some fixation.'

  'Bully for you.' She felt the wet sweater and dropped it back down with a grimace of annoyance. She picked up a sweat-shirt from another chair.

  'Will you back me up?' She paused in the act of pulling on the sweatshirt and stared at him. 'Back you up? Don't be fucking stupid!'

  'You've just told me what he's like.'

  'That doesn't mean I'm going to say he's some sort of nutter so you can get his son taken off him.'

  'He needs help.'

  She laughed, harshly. 'Don't we all!' She jerked the sweatshirt over her head. 'And don't pretend you're bothered about John. You don't give a shit about him. You're only worried about the kid.'

  'Wouldn't you be?'

  She raised a shoulder indifferently. 'He'll just have to take his chances with the rest of us. And since that's all you came for you can fuck off. I've got to get tea ready.'

  Ben went to his bag and took out the photographs of her and the men in the bedroom. Her expression became hunted as he held them out.

  'What are they?'

  When he didn't answer she came forward and took them. She stared at the first one, then quickly at the next few. She flung them at him.

  'You bastard! You fucking-!'

  He thought she was going to hit him, but she let her arms fall. She hung her head.

  'I hope you enjoyed watching. You fucking shit.'

  His cheek was stinging from the edge of one of the photographs. He put his fingers to it. They came away coloured with blood. He groped in his pocket for a tissue. His arms seemed sluggish. He felt he was moving through a mire of shame.

  'So what are you going to do with them?' she asked. 'Do a Quilley? Blackmail me into saying John wants locking up?'

  He held the tissue to the cut. 'I only want you to tell the social services what you've told me.'

  'So you can get Jacob taken away? What do you think he'd do to me if I did that?'

  'What will he do if he finds out you've been sleeping with other men while he's at work? And taking money for it?'

  She covered her eyes. Something inside Ben was curling up and withering. He did his best to ignore it.

  'They probably won't take Jacob off him, anyway.' You fucking hypocrite. 'But if somebody doesn't do something, sooner or later he's going to kill one of them. Either Jacob or himself. You'll lose him then, either way.'

  Her throat was jumping in little spasms. She wiped her hand across her cheeks, dragging the skin like a rubber mask. Streaks of mascara followed her fingers.

  'You think you can leave things behind,' she said. You think you've got away from them, but you never do. You take it all with you. When I met John I thought…' She didn't finish. The smeared mascara made her face look like something left out too long in the rain. 'We haven't had sex in a year.'

  I don't want to hear this, Ben thought, but he didn't move. He owed her that much.

  She stared at the photographs scattered on the floor. 'Not since before all this started. He isn't interested any more. He's like one of these bloody monks. Sex is "impure", it'll stop him seeing his Pattern. Specially with someone like me. He doesn't say as much, but I can tell by the way he looks at me. I'm a cheap tart. More pricks than a pin-cushion, that's me. So one day I thought, right, if that's what he thinks I am, I will be. The next time a bloke in the pub made a pass at me I said okay. And after I'd done it once there was no reason not to do it again, was there? The money came in handy. That's something else John isn't interested in. We could
have sold the story to the newspapers for a fucking fortune, but oh no! That would have been "impure" too, wouldn't it?'

  The flare of indignation died. She raised one shoulder in a shrug. 'I let blokes come around every now and again. Not many, because most of them are too frightened of John. But there are some who get a kick out of it. Sometimes I even kid myself it's me they want. You'd think I'd have learned by now. Even John was only after something he thought he saw in me, and now he doesn't even want that any more.'

  She looked Ben up and down. He felt burned by the contempt he saw. 'But it doesn't matter, does it? I'm only a fucking whore. I should be used to selling myself.'

  He pulled to mind an image of Jacob sitting beneath the suspended, mud-smeared engine, imagined it dropping. He tried to crush his conscience with it. 'Will you help me?'

  Sandra stared dully at the photographs on the floor. She looked old and beaten. 'Do I have any choice?'

  'We can keep whatever you say confidential. He doesn't have to know.'

  'Just get out.'

  He picked up his bag and coat.

  She was still standing among the photographs when he left.

  When he got into the car he realised he was still holding the tissue he'd used to staunch his cheek. The blood on it formed a Rorschach pattern of spots and swirls. He screwed it up and thrust it into his pocket without trying to see what it told him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Colin tried to kill himself in the same week that the social services agreed to hold a case conference about Jacob. Ben had presented them with the photographs of Kale's activities in the back garden, and told them of Sandra's willingness (if it could be called that) to verify that her husband was mentally ill and a threat to his son. That would have been enough to spark an investigation in itself, but his news that she had a past they had completely overlooked was like dropping a lighted match into a box of fireworks.

  Ben told himself he had no choice. He was under no obligation to Sandra, and he couldn't afford to ignore anything that would strengthen his case. He tried to convince himself that it would eventually have been discovered anyway, that he was protecting her enough by keeping quiet about her more recent affairs.

  It didn't make him feel any better.

  Her request for confidentiality was agreed to by the local authority, although not happily. In spite of everything, Ben still felt they didn't believe that Kale was actually dangerous.

  He didn't know if this was a reluctance to accept that their original assessment had been wrong or simple miscalculation, but Carlisle in particular responded with the grudging compliance of a child that'd had its fingers smacked. By now there was no disguising the antipathy the social worker felt for him. He obviously regarded Ben as a troublemaker who was trying to split up the newly formed family. Ben hoped that wouldn't blind him to the risk Kale posed to Jacob.

  He was trying to be realistic about what to expect. Even now Ann Usherwood insisted there was no chance of him getting Jacob back. That wasn't something the case conference would even consider.

  'As I've said before, Mr Murray, a definite threshold of risk would have to be reached for them to even consider taking Jacob from his father, and this falls well short of that. They might put him on the Child Protection Register, and insist on close monitoring while his father's mental health is assessed, but that's probably all. I really think you should put anything else out of your mind.'

  He couldn't, though. The feeling remained that it wouldn't be so simple. It was no longer just a matter of Jacob and Kale, now it was Ben and Kale as well.

  He couldn't see it being resolved in a reasonable way. Kale wouldn't permit it.

  He was still fretting over what might happen when Maggie called to tell him that Colin had fed a hosepipe from the exhaust into his new BMW, locked himself inside and turned on the engine.

  In some ways it was more of a shock than when Sarah had died. That had been a fluke, a capricious trick of a random universe, devastating but no more so than if she'd been in a plane crash or struck by lightning. But Colin's attempted suicide seemed to contravene some undefined natural law. Ever since Ben had known him he had been the reliable, orderly one of the two of them. For him to try to kill himself was unthinkable.

  But then so was his having an affair.

  Ben had wanted to go to the hospital straightaway, but Maggie told him not to. Colin was out of danger, she'd said, and both she and the boys were there. 'He doesn't need anybody else.'

  She had sounded cool and self-possessed, as if her husband were recovering from a bout of flu rather than a failed suicide attempt. Ben supposed it was shock, but when he called round to the house the evening after Colin had been discharged she greeted him with the same degree of control.

  'You can't stay long. I don't want him to get tired,' she told him. Her smile was as unyielding as ceramic. He'd braced himself for tears, bewilderment or recrimination. Instead she exuded the self-satisfied confidence she normally assumed for her dinner parties.

  He was still wondering at it as he followed her to the lounge. Colin was sitting in an armchair in front of the TV, but the sound was turned down so low he couldn't have been following what was on. He looked embarrassed when Maggie led Ben in.

  'Look who's come to see you,' she announced, with a falseness that made Ben wince. She told them she would be in the kitchen if they wanted her, then left. The aftertaste of her presence hung in the air with her perfume, inhibiting conversation even more.

  He sat on the edge of the settee. 'So how are you feeling?'

  'Okay.' Colin looked at his hands, the TV, and finally his hands again. His face was pale, thinner than the last time Ben had seen him. The enormity of what he'd tried to do stood between them. So did Ben's sense that he'd let him down. He felt he didn't know him any more.

  'Do you want to talk about it?'

  Colin switched his attention back to the TV. 'What is there to talk about? I tried to kill myself. I didn't.' He shrugged, then broke out coughing. 'Sorry,' he said when the spasm had passed. 'Still a bit wheezy.'

  'Why did you do it?' The question that had been pushing at Ben finally surfaced. 'Why didn't you fucking say something?'

  'There was nothing to say. Jo finished with me.' Colin gave a wan smile. 'Another fucking cliché, eh?'

  Ben found he was vetting all his questions and responses before voicing them.

  'When?'

  'Last week.'

  The first thing he felt was relief that it had been a sudden thing; that he hadn't been so wrapped up in his own problems that he'd missed the signs. Then he felt ashamed for feeling that way.

  'What happened?'

  'She's been offered the chance to work for the record company's New York office. She's going next month, but she said it was better to finish now so there were no loose ends. End of story.'

  'That's what made you…you know…'

  'Try to kill myself? I suppose I didn't like thinking of myself as a 'loose end'.'

  'Does Jo know?'

  'I doubt it. Most people at work just think I'm ill. There's no reason for her to know anyway. I didn't do it to make her change her mind, or to spite her. I did it for me.'

  The matter-of-fact way he spoke was unnerving.

  'You're not going to try anything again, are you?'

  Colin put his head back and stared at the ceiling. 'No, I don't think so,' he said, thoughtfully. 'To tell you the truth I can't even really remember how I felt when I did it. It might be the sedatives they've pumped into me, but it all seems a bit distant now. I can't imagine getting that worked up about anything at the moment. I just feel sort of hollow.'

  Ben remembered how he'd felt after Sarah had died, and then again when Jacob had gone to live with Kale. But he'd never felt suicidal. He wondered if that said anything about him.

  'What about Maggie and the boys?' he asked, feeling obscurely cheated. 'How've they taken it?'

  'Oh, okay. Maggie's been very good. Andrew doesn't really und
erstand what's going on, but I wish Scott hadn't found me.' He pursed his lips. 'Or, at least, I wish it had been someone else.'

  Maggie had told Ben how their eldest son had gone into the garage and seen his father sitting in the locked car with the engine running. Ben didn't like the boy, but he wouldn't have wished that on him.

  'What did she say about Jo?'

  Colin glanced uneasily towards the door. 'She doesn't know about her.'

  'Even now? She must have some idea!'

  'She thinks it was pressure of work that got to me.' Colour had come back to Colin's face, but it only emphasised its shadows.

  'So aren't you going to tell her?'

  'What for? It's finished. There's no use upsetting her any more than she has been.'

  Ben made no comment, but he was thinking about how Maggie had behaved. He wouldn't have called it upset.

  'The doctor's signed me off work,' Colin continued, 'so I think we're going to go away somewhere in a week or two. Try and put all this behind us.' He didn't sound enthusiastic.

  Before Ben could answer, the door opened and Maggie came in. The smile could have been on her face since she left.

  'I think that's enough chat for one night. Don't want to tire him out, do we? Doctor's orders.'

  She stood by the open door, waiting for Ben to leave. He looked at Colin, expecting an objection, but none came. Colin was looking down at his hands again.

  Ben stood up.'I'll be in touch. We'll go for a beer before you go away.'

  Colin nodded, but without conviction, and Ben knew they wouldn't. Even if Colin wanted to, Maggie wouldn't permit it.

  'He just needs rest,' she said, after she'd ushered Ben into the hallway. 'He's been doing too much lately, that's the problem. I'm going to make sure he has an easier time in future. No more working weekends and nights, and having to stay out with silly little bands till all hours.' She opened the front door and turned to him. 'There's been too many things pulling at him lately, but that's over now. He needs to spend more time with his family. We're all he needs.'

  Her smile was as bright and determined as a beauty queen's, and seeing it Ben realised that Colin was wrong. She knew. Not all the details, perhaps, not names and places, but enough. And now she knew she'd won.