Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

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.