Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

“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.

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.