The question boiled out of him. 'Jacob's been missing school, hasn't he?'
There was a hesitation. 'Who's told you that?'
'Never mind who's told me. It's true, isn't it?' Ben counted to three before the social worker answered.
'There has been some problem about attendance, but—'
'Some 'problem'? He isn't going, is he?'
'Mr Murray, I don't—'
'Is he?'
Again there was a pause. 'The situation is being monitored.'
'What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'
'It means exactly that. And I don't think there's any call for being abusive.'
Ben took a deep breath. 'I apologise.' He waited until the desire to scream at the man faded. 'How long's this been going on?'
'That's something I really can't discuss.'
'Look, if you don't tell me I'll ask the school myself!'
'I'm afraid I'm not—'
'Has he been at all since he's been living with Kale? He hasn't, has he?'
He could hear Carlisle's reluctance. 'Er…well, actually no, I don't believe he has.'
Ben didn't trust himself to speak.
'There's been some confusion over whether or not Jacob's been well enough to attend,' Carlisle said, defensive now. 'Mr and Mrs Kale—well, Mrs Kale, really—claims that he has a virus. We've warned them that we need to see a doctor's certificate, and that it's illegal to keep Jacob off school without one.'
And I bet that made a lot of difference. Ben stared across the road at the scrapyard. 'Kale's been taking him to work with him. That's why he isn't at school, not because he's got a 'virus'.'
'How do you know?' The officiousness had crept back into the social worker's voice. He sounded more annoyed than anything.
'Because I'm outside the yard now. They're still in there, if you want to check yourself.'
'You've actually seen them?'
'That's right.'
He could sense Carlisle trying to juggle this information into an acceptable package. 'Perhaps there's no one to look after him at home.'
Ben's patience ran out. 'Oh, for God's sake. If he's well enough to go to a scrapyard, he's well enough to go to school! There's nothing wrong with him! Kale just doesn't want him to go!'
'I'm sorry, Mr Murray, but I can't see how you can be such an expert on Mr Kale's motives. And even if he has taken Jacob to work today—'
'He has.'
'—even if he has, we can't jump to conclusions on the basis of an isolated occurrence.'
'Of course it isn't isolated! His wife's been feeding you this 'virus' crap to keep you off his back, and you're letting him get away with it!'
'We're not letting him get away with anything, Mr Murray—'
'Then why don't you do something?'
'If it's felt there's a need then we will, but a heavy-handed approach isn't going to help, and we don't feel it's currently called for. It's an extremely sensitive case, and we don't want to be seen to be—'
'Don't want to be seen? That's the bottom line, isn't it? You're frightened of getting bad press!'
Carlisle's voice had a quaver of suppressed anger. 'I don't need telling how to do my job, thank you, Mr Murray. And if you don't mind I'd like to get on with it now.'
'Are you going to do anything about Kale?'
'We'll look into it. Goodbye.'
'Hang on—!' Ben began, but Carlisle had already hung up. 'Bastard!'
There was a crack of plastic as Ben struck the phone against the dashboard. He subsided, then smashed it down twice more, each time harder, and flung it on to the passenger seat. He stared through the windscreen, incensed.
He visualised walking into Carlisle's office, kicking his desk over, banging the man's head against the wall until it was bloodied and crushed.
Then he thought about Kale, and considered walking into the scrapyard to face him. He imagined knocking him down, incapacitating him with a kick to his crippled knee, towering victoriously over his beaten figure, but even his anger wasn't enough to make that seem credible. With a cold breath of realism his temper was snuffed out and left him back in the car, impotent and bleak.
Brooding, he glared at the gates.
It was the rumble of his stomach that roused him. He stirred, stiff and uncomfortable. The rumble came again. It occurred to him that he was hungry, and with that realisation he suddenly remembered what he should be doing.
Oh Christ, he thought, the shoot!
He looked at his watch, swore, and reached for his mobile.
The sight of it lying smashed on the seat next to him was like a smug chastisement. He tried it anyway. Dead. He threw it down and scrambled to start the ignition. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck!'
There was an irate blare of horn as he shot out into the road. He ignored it and tore back the way he'd come, praying for a phone box. But there was nothing except fields and fences.
He reached the junction where he'd seen Kale's car, decided to go into Tunford to find a phone and changed his mind at the last moment, raking the corner in a squeal of rubber. The car vibrated as he hammered down the outside lane. He was making good time until he neared London, where the traffic thickened to the consistency of sludge.
When he reached the studio there were no parking spaces, and he had to meander further and further away before he found one.
He ran back to the building and pounded up the stairs.
He was breathless and sweating as he burst through the door, the apology ready on his lips. Zoe looked up from where she was sitting reading a magazine. There was no one else in the room.
He stood in the doorway, panting. 'Where are they?' Zoe went back to the magazine, idly flicking over the page. 'Gone.'
'Gone? Gone where?'
'They didn't say. Somewhere there's a photographer, I expect.'
'Fuck.' He sagged against the door. 'Couldn't you have told them to wait?'
She flung the magazine down and jumped up. 'What the fuck do you think I did? It's half past fucking two, Ben! Where the hell have you been?'
He closed the door. 'I got delayed.'
'Delayed? Well, that's just fucking great! You get delayed, so I have to make excuses, get yelled at over the phone by the fucking photo editor—who, by the way, says he's going to bill you for the models' time—and look like a fucking idiot because I don't have a clue where you are! You weren't at your flat, I couldn't get you on your mobile! I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to do?'
His throat ached. He wiped the sweat from his mouth. 'I know, I'm sorry.'
'Yeah, so am I, Ben.' She raised her hand, let it fall as though abandoning whatever else she had been going to say. 'I mean, what the fuck's the matter with you lately? It isn't just today. All I seem to be doing is apologising and making excuses for you. You're turning up late, you're forgetting things. You don't even concentrate when you're on a shoot! You just don't seem to give a shit any more!'
'Look I know I fucked up, I've apologised, let's forget about it.'
'No, let's not!' she flared. 'I've been ignoring it for weeks! I'm getting sick of it!'
'Well, fuck off, then—nobody's making you stay!'
Her face went white. She stared at him, then went to where her coat was hanging.
'I'm sorry,' Ben said.
She ignored him, picked up her bag from the sofa.
'I didn't mean it, all right?'
She went around him to the door.
'Zoe…' He put his hand on her arm. She shrugged it off, not looking at him. 'Look, come on…' He reached for her again.
'Don't touch me, you bastard!' Her mouth was set and trembling. He could see that her eyes were wet.
'I'm sorry,' he repeated. 'I shouldn't have said that.'
'No, you fucking shouldn't.'
'Can I move away from the door now, or are you still going to walk out?'
She moved back into the room. She dropped her bag on the sofa and stood in front of him, waiting sullenly.
Ben ran
his fingers through his hair, pushing it from where it was stuck to his forehead. It had taken it weeks to grow back after he'd had it cropped. 'I know I've been a bit unreliable lately…' Zoe gave a snort. '…and I know it's given you a hard time. It's just that I've had a lot on my mind, and there's a few personal things I need to sort out. But I promise I'll try and get my shit together in future, okay?'
She looked at him, unimpressed. 'I'm not stupid, you know.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Oh, come on! You suddenly start carrying a big bastard of a telephoto lens around with you, you're never at home, you're always turning up late and rushing off somewhere. It doesn't take a fucking genius to guess what you're doing.'
And you thought you were being so subtle.
To give himself time he took off his coat and hung it up. Underneath, his shirt was plastered to his back. He pulled it away from his skin.
'They don't deserve to have him.'
Zoe didn't bother to ask who he was talking about. 'It's a bit late to decide that, isn't it? I'm sorry, and everything, but they've got him. You're just going to have to live with it.'
Ben shook his head.
'So what good is spying on them with a telephoto lens going to do?'
He didn't answer.
'Fucking hell, Ben, can't you see you're getting obsessed? And while you're playing at peeping Tom your career's going down the fucking tubes!'
'It's not that bad,' he said, stung, but he wasn't sure which part he was denying. He could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks.
'Isn't it? And what's it going to achieve?'
'I want him back.'
It was the first time he had admitted it, even to himself.
He felt a superstitious unease at having finally voiced the hope, as though now the gods, providence and pure shitty luck would conspire against it.
Zoe seemed about to argue further, but then abruptly gave up. She flopped down on to the sofa. 'I just hope you know what you're fucking doing.'
So do I.
Ben went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of water. Zoe watched him, worriedly chewing a nail. 'Is there anything I can do?'
The offer touched him. 'Thanks, but you've put up with enough already.'
She nodded, but still seemed abstracted. 'Can I ask a favour, then?'
'Yeah, sure. What?'
'The shoot tomorrow. Do you mind if I don't stick around after I've helped you set it up?'
'Not if you don't want to,' he said, eager to appease. He refilled the glass. 'Have you got something else on?'
She studied her bitten fingernail. 'Not really. It's just that Daniel's one of the models, and I'd rather not see him.' She gave a shrug that was meant to be unconcerned. 'We had a big row last week.'
It took a few seconds for him to realise what she was talking about. The model who had given Zoe a lift home from the shoot on the beach had been called Daniel. Ben hadn't known he was involved in the next day's shoot—or if he had he'd forgotten. He'd even less idea that Zoe had continued seeing him.
I really have been losing touch, he thought.
'Oh,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'
'Yeah, well, that's how it goes.' She stood up and stretched, affecting indifference. 'Things don't always turn out how we'd like, do they?'
Ben drank the water and pretended he hadn't heard.
Kale propped the car door on top of the wrecked bonnet, manoeuvred it until it balanced, studied it, then shifted it slightly. He picked up another, unrecognisable car part and placed that with it, going through the same careful process before he was apparently satisfied. They were part of a selection of new parts he must have gathered over the previous week.
It had become too dark in the evening for him to do much when he arrived home at night, but each weekend he would still be out in the garden, arranging his recent additions with all the care of a stamp collector gumming in a Penny Black.
A few feet away, Jacob sat in his usual place on the car seat, a thick duffel coat buttoned up to his chin as he tilted and spun a puzzle block. His father's sole concession to the weather was that he now wore track-suit bottoms instead of shorts. The breath from the two of them misted in the cold air, exhaust from biological engines.
Ben cupped his hands and blew into them without taking his eye from the images in the viewfinder. It was, without a doubt, fucking freezing. The chill cut through the woollen hat that he wore pulled down over his ears and the fleece-lined Gore-Tex coat. His fingers were numb from handling the camera, but gloves would have been too cumbersome to work in. He rubbed the tip of his nose and considered having another coffee. He was eking out his flask, knowing that once it was gone there would be nothing to warm him until he was back in the car. The long-term view won. He thrust his hands into his coat pockets instead.
'Come on, do something,' he said to the magnified figure of Kale. But Kale typically showed no inclination of obliging. He continued his rearranging with the same painstaking deliberation as ever, moving the tortured pieces of metal around as if seeing how they would fit. Ben felt something almost work its way from his subconscious.
He grabbed for it, but it was gone. He sighed impatiently as Kale moved the battered car door from the position he'd seemed happy with five minutes before, and carried it to another part of the garden.
'It's just scrap,' he muttered. 'As if it matters.'
He shifted his attention to the house. Kale and Jacob had already been in the garden when he arrived, but there was no sign of Sandra.
Judging by the drawn bedroom curtains she still hadn't got up. Ben hoped the idle bitch was enjoying her lie-in. He'd spoken to her the night before, taping the conversation as a matter of course as he reminded her that it was his weekend for contact with Jacob again. She'd replied that Jacob's cold had flared up, but neither of them made any pretence that the lie was anything other than a formality. Their tone had been quite bantering. Flirtatious, almost. When Ben had put the phone down he'd had a hard-on.
He stared at the closed curtains, willing her to open them.
They remained drawn. Fuck it, he thought.
He sat back from the camera and reached for the Thermos flask. The hot steam from the coffee condensed on his cheeks as he cupped his hands around the plastic cup, huddling himself around it. The air was damp and smoky. A crow caw-cawed from somewhere nearby, but other than that the woods seemed to have shut down. In the last week the autumn colours had given way to the dripping blacks and browns of winter, a time of year and colour scheme that Ben found depressing at the best of times, let alone when he had to sit out in it. The small oaks that formed his den were stripped bare except for a few dead leaves that still clung to them like early Christmas ornaments.
He no longer felt invisible in them, although the branches themselves overlapped so densely that he doubted that anyone could see him from more than a few feet away. But it gave an added insecurity to the time he spent in the woods, and on those occasions when he heard other people in them he wouldn't dare move until he was sure they'd gone.
He took a king-sized Snickers bar from his pocket and tore it open. The chocolate was hard and brittle with cold. He took another drink of coffee to wash it down and found that it had already turned tepid.
'Piss,' he said. He drank it anyway and ate half the Snickers. The rest he put back in his pocket before looking through the viewfinder again. The curtains remained resolutely shut.
He tilted the camera so he could see Jacob and Kale in the garden again. Kale had started the balletic movements of his warm-up routine. Ben watched him stretch and twist without interest.
He had seen it all countless times, but still not caught him doing anything else that threatened Jacob. He no longer really believed that he would. The single incident he'd witnessed seemed like something even Kale wouldn't be reckless enough to try more than once.
He didn't let himself consider why, in that case, he continued watching them.
Since he'd discovere
d that Kale and Jacob spent their days together at the scrapyard, surrounded by the crushed and wrecked remains of cars, Ben's entire perspective had somehow altered. Some of it he could put down to jealousy and anger that Kale was selfishly spending so much time with his son. But the apparent obliviousness they displayed towards each other in the garden now seemed to him more like an acute familiarity, each so conscious of the other's presence that it was taken for granted. There were times when he could almost believe that Jacob's tireless absorption with his puzzles and Kale's behaviour were somehow linked, their apparently separate tasks both working towards the same obscure end.
Then he'd remind himself that Jacob was autistic and Kale had one foot in the funhouse, and wonder if his own sanity wasn't flapping in the wind.
He sat back and blew on his hands again, bored. A flutter of movement showed on the first floor of the house. He looked through the camera and felt animation return as the bedroom curtains were jerked back. Sandra Kale squinted against the daylight and quickly turned away. Ben expected her to leave the room, but she went to the bed and sat on its edge, rubbing her temples. He grinned. Heavy night, was it?
He quickly slipped the polarising filter on to the lens and refocused. The inside of the bedroom opened up to him. Sandra's hair was dishevelled, the dark roots forming a ragged dark line down the centre of her scalp. The grubby bathrobe was belted loosely around her waist. It fell open as she pushed her hands back through her hair, revealing a breast and nipple. When she lowered her arms the breast remained carelessly exposed. His finger pressed reflexively on the shutter release as she stood up wearily and the robe hung open, affording him a quick glimpse of her navel and the tuft of black hair at her crotch before she turned and went out.
The small frosted panel of the bathroom window became yellow as the light was switched on. Ben waited, only dimly aware of the touch of the camera's icy case on his fingers. The bedroom. Go back to the bedroom.