Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  '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 sile
ntly 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.