Ben could hear the dog nosing around by the oaks. He tried to summon the reckless anger that had possessed him in the pub, but it wouldn’t come. “I’m going for a walk, okay?”
“Not round here it fucking isn’t.”
The small man’s fists were clenched. They were as undersized as he was, like knotted lumps of bone. He took an eager step forward, but the other’s voice checked him.
“All right, Mick.”
The small man turned, angrily. “Is it fuck all right! What’s he doing in our fucking woods?”
“He isn’t doing anything. He’s going.” Without taking his eyes from Ben, he jerked his head in the direction of the road. “Go on. Fuck off.”
Ben hesitated. The dog yapped from within the oaks, then the branches thrashed and it reappeared, shedding drops of water as it sprang through the tall grass. “Okay, I’m going.”
Rotting acorns crunched like marbles under his boots as he began to walk away, planning to wait nearby and come back for his gear later. He’d only gone a few paces when the small man stepped in front of him.
“You’re not fucking going anywhere.”
“Mick,” the older man warned.
“He’s taking the fucking piss coming round here!”
“It’s not your problem, Mick. It’s John’s business, not ours.”
“So let’s take the cunt down and let John sort him!”
Ben’s mouth had gone dry. “Look, I’ll just go, okay? I’m not going to come back.”
The small man’s grin was almost a snarl. “Dead fucking right you’re not.”
An impulse to run crossed Ben’s mind, but that seemed too abject even for him. The older man considered, then gave a short nod. The one called Mick reached out to give Ben a shove.
Ben knocked his hand away. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself.”
The man’s grin disappeared, but before he could respond the older one moved between them. “All right, come on.”
Ben thought about the film waiting in the bag. Without a word he turned and set off down the hill, leading them away from the vulnerable roll of celluloid.
The hillside was slippery with mud, dotted with scrubby patches of briar and bramble. They had to skirt around them, cutting diagonally across the slope, and when they reached the track at the bottom Kale’s house was out of sight. Ben walked ahead of his escort. His mind seemed to have slipped out of gear, so that he coasted along in neutral without taking in what was happening. Once he looked back up towards the woods. They seemed a long way away, and completely unfamiliar. He couldn’t pick out the spot where he’d spent so many days watching.
He was at the other end of the lens now.
Ahead, he could make out the tall wire fence at the bottom of Kale’s garden. From this angle the scrap metal formed a screen that blocked out any view of what lay on the other side.
As he drew closer he could hear Kale’s voice.
Ben wondered at what point he’d come out of the shed.
“...in everything. Everything locks in,” Kale was saying, invisible beyond the wall of wreckage.
Ben pictured him squatting next to Jacob, looking earnestly at him. He slowed, listening.
“We can’t see it, but it’s only a matter of looking, looking in the right place, looking hard enough. And once you’ve seen it, seen the pattern—”
“John!” The small man slapped his hand against the wire fence, rattling it. “John! Got somebody to see you!”
Kale’s voice broke off. They waited by the gate, still unable to see much of the garden.
Ben felt the slipping gears inside him spin loosely, felt an almost out-of-body detachment.
There was a noise and then the bull terrier bounded over the lowest point of the scrap pile. The fence shook as the dog hit it. It stood on its hind legs against the mesh, growling. Then Kale appeared, and Ben suddenly spiralled back into the here and now of himself.
They looked at each other over the metal wreckage.
“Found him sneaking about in the woods, John,” the small man said, barely containing his excitement. “Thought you’d want to see him.”
Kale didn’t say anything. His bad knee made him ungainly as he stepped through a gap in the scrap pile, taking a bunch of keys from the pocket of his track-suit bottoms. He was red-faced, the fleecy cotton of his sweat shirt dark with perspiration. He unlocked the gate and swung it open.
The bull terrier shot through. Ben tensed but it was more interested in the Jack Russell. The smaller dog had its ears flattened and its tail curled between its legs as the other sniffed at it. As if at some signal they bolted off together into the long grass.
“Bess!” the older man shouted after them.
“She’ll be all right,” Kale said, looking at Ben.
But Ben had moved to see through the gap to where Jacob was sitting in the car seat. A mangled car radiator and hubcap lay on the floor in front of him like a sacrifice.
“Jacob!” The boy looked up, blankly, and something inside Ben’s chest felt like it was being crushed. Oh, God, he doesn’t even remember me.
Then Jacob’s face split into a smile.
He pushed himself off the car seat and began running down the garden. Ben made to go through the gate but the breath was suddenly jolted from him as Kale hit his breastbone with the heel of his hand. He staggered back. Jacob stopped dead, his smile vanishing.
“I told you not to come here again,” Kale said.
Ben tried not to show how winded he was. “I’ve got a right to see him.”
“You’ve got no rights.”
“What about him? Doesn’t he have any?”
“I’ll decide what’s right for him.”
“Like keeping him away from school, you mean?”
Kale stared back without blinking. “He’s my boy. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do with him.”
Before Ben could say anything else there was another sound from the garden. He turned and saw Sandra Kale picking her way across the scrap. She was wearing the clothes he’d seen her put on earlier. It seemed like weeks ago. She stopped at the gate.
“All right, Sandra?” the small man said, leering.
She ignored him, looked briefly at Ben, then fixed her attention on her husband.
“What’s going on?”
“Take Steven inside,” Kale told her.
“Why?”
“Take him inside.”
“For Christ’s sake, John—”
“Now.”
Her cheeks flushed, then she turned and roughly grabbed hold of Jacob’s hand. Jacob grunted and pulled against her.
“Nonononono!”
She took no notice, dragging him squealing towards the house. She lifted him up the steps by his wrist before slamming the door.
Ben faced Kale. He shook, but from anger now rather than fear. “You don’t give a shit about what’s best for him, do you? You’re only bothered about yourself!”
Kale started towards him.
“Look, John, don’t do anything stupid,” the older man said, half-heartedly, but Kale took no notice.
Ben automatically stepped back and hated himself for it.
Fuck this, he thought, and swung at Kale’s head.
Kale deflected the punch effortlessly. He clamped a hand just above Ben’s elbow, thrust his other under his outstretched arm, and Ben felt himself swung weightlessly against the fence. The wire gouged his face as he smashed into it, then his arm was jerked between his shoulders and pain exploded in his lower back as something rammed into his kidneys.
It pistoned into him twice more, and if he hadn’t emptied his bladder in the woods it would have emptied itself then. It hurt so much his cry strangled in his throat, but there was no respite before he was yanked round. He had a glimpse of Kale, impassive even now, and then a fist drove into him just below his ribcage.
It felt as if his heart had stopped. He doubled up, saw Kale’s knee fill his vision, and there was a burst of light and pain.