Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  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 'OO' 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, toweri
ng 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…'