Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

He stopped dead. His eyes widened at the size of his blunder.

Kale turned to him. “What about my wife?”

Ben felt the sudden tension in the room. He was aware that Sandra was sitting very still, her head down.

Carlisle’s face was crimson. “Er, I was just about to say that, er....”

“What about my wife?”

Oh God, Ben thought.

Rogers tried to take charge again. “We’re getting away from the point here,” she said, but Kale’s attention was on Sandra.

“What have you told them?”

“You’re not helping yourself, Mr Kale,” Rogers snapped. “This isn’t achieving anything.”

Sandra didn’t lift her head from her chest.

“Look at me,” Kale told her.

“Mr Kale, I must insist—”

“Look at me!”

Sandra shut her eyes. Kale stared at her, incredulous.

He backhanded her.

The sound of it was shockingly loud in the quiet room.

Both she and the chair would have fallen if her knees hadn’t struck the underside of the table. It shook with the force of it As the chair banged down on all four legs Kale hit her again.

This time it knocked Sandra to the floor. The expressions of shock around the table were giving way to movement.

The policewoman was first out of her seat. “All right, that’s enough—” she began, reaching to restrain Kale as he stood up.

He jackknifed his elbow into her stomach and slammed the back of his fist into her face. She pitched into a set of steel filing cabinets and slid down it.

Kale’s solicitor said, “For God’s sake!” and put his hand on his client’s forearm.

Kale wrenched him out of his chair and slammed his head against the table top.

As the solicitor collapsed, Kale bent and lifted Sandra by the front of her sweater. He punched her twice, very quickly.

By then other people were moving.

Ben saw Carlisle clutch at his shoulder, saying, “Please, Mr Kale!” before Kale spun him into the wall and jerked his knee into his groin. The social worker doubled up and Kale turned back to where Sandra was trying to crawl away.

The policewoman was speaking urgently into her radio, blood streaming from her nose as Carlisle’s manager grabbed Kale from behind.

Kale stamped on his shin and threw him into the psychologist, who was half out of her seat. They both went sprawling. Rogers was yelling something into a telephone as the policewoman flung herself at Kale again. He batted her aside, then bent and pulled Sandra’s head around by the hair.

Without knowing he was doing it, Ben stood up. The scrape of his chair made Kale turn.

They looked at each other across the table.

Kale let his wife drop and wrenched the table away. It screeched across the floor and crashed on to its side. Ben picked up his chair and threw it at Kale’s legs. Kale staggered as it struck his crippled knee. He kicked it away and came on.

The door flew open. A security guard burst into the room, looked around and said, “Christ!”

Kale headbutted him as two more guards followed. Pivoting on his bad leg, Kale kicked one in the stomach and jammed the heel of his hand under the other’s chin. The one he’d headbutted clutched him round the knees. Kale punched him on the back of his neck.

The guard let go but the door swung open again and two policemen ran in. The room seemed full of uniforms as they swarmed over Kale. He struck out at them, grim and silent, but then his leg buckled and he went down. Even then he continued to fight, still without uttering a sound. Someone yelled for handcuffs, and it was only as they were wrestled on to him that he cried out.

“NO!” he bellowed. “NO! YOU’RE NOT TAKING HIM! HE’S MY BOY!”

He bucked and thrashed as his arms were pinned behind his back. A security guard grunted as he was caught by a flailing leg.

“Right, let’s get him out,” one of the policemen panted. Still struggling, Kale was half carried, half dragged towards the door.

“NO! NO!” His eyes locked on to Ben’s as they bundled him into the corridor. “He’s MY BOY! He’s MY BOY!”

The door swung shut behind them.

A quiet descended on the room. The psychologist was gently weeping as she nursed a broken wrist. People began picking themselves up, helping those who were still huddled with their injuries. One of the security guards lay on the floor in the recovery position, attended by Rogers.

The policewoman, her own face bloodied, was cradling Kale’s wife in her arms. Sandra was moving her head slowly from side to side, tears cutting tracks down her swollen cheeks. She looked at Ben from eyes that were almost puffed shut.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” she moaned.

He had no answer.

Ben finished arranging the flowers and stood up. The cheerful splash of colour looked out of place on the dead winter grass covering the grave. The old flowers were a limp and sodden mess. He bundled them in the paper the fresh ones had been wrapped in and put them on the ground to take away with him. His hands were icy from handling the wet stems. He put his gloves back on and hunched his shoulders. There was no wind but the cold penetrated his heavy coat and struck through the soles of his boots.

He’d felt a need to visit Sarah’s grave. No, that wasn’t quite right — he’d felt he ought to visit it. But now he had changed the flowers he was at a loss.

There was another bunch already there, not yet wilted, so he knew her parents had been recently. He wondered if they felt any closer to their daughter when they stood over the ground where she was buried. He wished he did. He wanted to be able to talk to her, to tell her what had happened, but the idea of a graveside monologue, even a silent one, seemed theatrical and false. So he stood there, stamping his feet, not knowing why he was staying but unable to bring himself to leave.

A sense of oppression had persisted for the three days since Kale had gone berserk. He couldn’t explain it. He knew he should have felt vindicated, that Kale couldn’t have chosen a more blatant way of proving him right if he’d tried. But a feeling that what had happened was his fault, that he was somehow responsible, obstinately refused to be shaken. It wasn’t helped by the suspicion that other people also held him to blame.

He’d spoken to the policewoman after Sandra Kale had been led away to an ambulance. She was holding damp paper towels to her bloody nose, waiting to be attended to herself, and as Ben stood there unharmed he felt compelled to say something.

“The back-up got here pretty quickly.”

She looked at him without comment over the top of the wet grey paper. Blood had turned it dark, soaking into it as if it were a litmus test for violence.

“The officers who were here,” he said, unsettled by her silence. “It didn’t take them long to respond.”

She took the paper towel away from her nose and examined it. “They were on stand-by. The local authority requests it if they think someone could become aggressive.”

Ben had been surprised. He’d thought that he’d been the only one who knew what Kale was capable of. “So you thought he might get violent?”

She had put the paper towel back to her nose. The look she gave him over the top of it was unreadable. “We were asked to provide it because of you.”

Kale had been charged and held in custody, and, with Sandra unfit and unwilling to look after his son, Jacob had been taken into care.

Ben had been told he’d been placed with a foster family, one living near enough for him to attend his own school, but that was as much as anyone would say.

His offer to take him had been brusquely refused. The social worker — not Carlisle, who was still recovering — pointed out that he hadn’t yet applied for a residence order. Besides which Jacob hadn’t been taken into care permanently. It was hoped that he would eventually be returned to his father.