Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

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.”