Odd Child Out

by Gilly MacMillan

  Abdi knew the place. He’d once been on a school trip to the converted church with the climbing wall inside it. He remembered the row of houses opposite it, and remembered that at one end of them there was a dark tunnel where the railway passed overhead, and beside it was a steeply sloped park area he might be able to hide in.

  He’s observed lots of people on the street: climbers arriving at the center, and drinkers coming and going from a pub on the street. As he passes it now, he can’t help feeling a tug of desire for the warmth and camaraderie he sees through the windows. He keeps his head down as he passes a group of youths. They don’t give him a second glance, though.

  Last night he found a blanket left out on a dumpster and brought it to his den. He’s pleased to find it still there when he gets back. In the middle of the bush he’s snapped some twigs and small branches off to make a space he can just sit in. He crawls in and curls up with the blanket around him. He wishes he’d thought to bring a bottle of water with him. He knows he should keep an eye on the houses, but it’s dark and he’s bone weary, so he shuts his eyes.

  He wakes suddenly out of a deep sleep some time later, sensing danger, though he’s unsure why. Even the sound of his own breathing alarms him before he realizes what it is and calms himself. The smell of earth is strong, and he understands as he dares to move for the first time that it’s rain that has woken him. It’s trickling down through the leaves of the shrub in small cascades that are wetting him and his blanket. He’s shaking from the cold.

  He clambers out from under the shrub and finds that it’s even wetter without its protective shelter. He shudders. On the railway line a train shuttles past, just three carriages, windows lit, people visible in them. Abdi considers getting a ticket and riding for as long as they’ll let him. He wonders what it would be like to throw yourself under a train, but knows he would never do that to a driver.

  He relieves himself against a tree and decides he’s going to climb down the slope and find some shelter under the railway arch. It frightens him to be there, but he’s so cold he can’t stand to stay in the rain.

  The slope’s covered in long grass and Abdi loses his footing, sliding down, bumping hard at the bottom. He wants to cry out in discomfort and frustration, from hatred of himself that he’s reduced so quickly to this. He thinks of his school uniform and his schoolbooks, and how much pride he felt in them. He thinks of the first clean page of a fresh new exercise book, and all the hope he used to feel, all the excitement at the possibility it contained.

  He wonders if he should go home, and he starts to stand, trying not to slip again in the muddy slick he’s landed in, when he notices activity in one of the houses opposite.

  A door has opened, revealing two men standing in the doorway. There’s no light on in the house, but the windows of the pub opposite cast enough of a glow that Abdi is pretty sure he knows who he’s looking at.

  The sound of violins comes from the pub, the fast rise and fall of live reel music, and in the doorway opposite, as if they occupy a different world, the men exchange just a few words through slowly moving lips, before one leaves and the man who Abdi thinks he recognizes as his father steps back into the house and shuts the door behind him.

  It focuses Abdi. He clambers back up the slope and withdraws into the shelter of the shrub. The blanket is soaking by now, but he draws it around his shoulders and he sits, hunched, in such a way that he can see the house.

  He watches all night. A light stays on in the house until the early hours, when it snaps off and then stays dark. Still Abdi doesn’t move, even though his body feels stiff and numb.

  He begins to understand what it is he wants to do, and he’s surprised to find that he no longer feels afraid.

  Fiona Sadler listens to the sounds of her house after Ed has gone. What she hears most loudly is the absence of Noah. Even when he was at school she used to have a sense of him in the home. It could be the anticipation of his return, the trail of belongings he left in his wake, the turning around in her mind of all the conversations they had had and would have. Now there is nothing except the roaring emptiness of her loss.

  Words from Noah’s oncologist have been cycling around her head for a week now, and they return.

  “I’m so sorry. There are signs that the disease has returned.”

  These were the words Fiona had been dreading for seven years, and the worst thing about them, the very worst thing, was Noah’s reaction. There was shock at first, of course, but in the aftermath, she thought he behaved as if he was relieved. Only a tiny bit, and only for an instant, but relieved nonetheless. It hurt her terribly. She wasn’t ready to let him go; she knew she never would be.

  “It’s not impossible to understand that he’d feel relief,” Ed said when he arrived at the hospital, hours later. He was unshaven and unkempt. They were in the hospital café buying Noah a chocolate croissant, snatching a moment to talk privately. Upstairs in the ward Ed’s travel bag and cameras were occupying a large amount of the floor space in Noah’s room. Ed had arrived with a bag full of kitsch airport gifts as well as duty-free bottles for the nurses and chocolates for everybody on the ward, and she’d envied his ability to sit with Noah and laugh as they examined the stuff together. Noah declared a puffin soft toy to be his new favorite possession.

  “I can’t bear it,” Fiona told him.

  “It’s okay,” he said. They held up the queue behind them as he took her in his arms. Nobody complained.

  Now that Ed’s gone again, Fiona has nothing to stabilize her, nobody in her immediate orbit to rage against and cry upon.

  Her impotence creates a sort of fury in her.

  She rages against the unfairness of the situation. How is it, she thinks, that Noah is dead and she and Ed are facing intrusive questions and visits from the police, while Abdi Mahad, who by the sound of it could have been responsible, is the subject of an appeal on television that emphasizes his vulnerability? Fiona has watched the appeal over and over again, rewinding it, allowing herself to get more distressed by it on every viewing.

  How is it that nobody’s talking about what Noah must have gone through, about the fact that his life has been snatched from him, after everything he and they have been through? How is it that she has to hear from a journalist that there was a witness, and the police don’t seem to be paying this fact any attention?

  And she has nobody to tell. Nobody who will listen and say to her, “Yes, it’s unfair.” Nobody who will say, “I’m sorry,” and “I understand,” and “I love you.” Nobody to persuade her to be reasonable, or that it would be better to ride her grief, and not lash out with it.

  Fiona’s face hurts, she’s cried so much, but her tears have dried out for now. She reaches for her phone and calls the one person who’s listened to her in the last few days without judging her, and who might be able to give a voice to Noah’s side of the story.

  When Emma Zhang replies, Fiona says, “I’ve changed my mind. Is it too late?”

  “No,” Emma replies. “Not at all. I’m leaving for the studio shortly. I can pick you up on the way.”

  After they’ve spoken, Fiona goes to her wardrobe and scans the outfits. She chooses to wear a black dress and a black jacket. She takes a shower, dries her hair, and applies some makeup, paying particular attention to the dark marks beneath her eyes. Around her neck she fastens a necklace that Noah gave her. It’s a silver chain with a small silver circle hanging from it. She looks in the mirrors, fingers the pendant.

  “I love you,” she says to her reflection, but really she’s addressing the boy she’s lost.

  Fifteen minutes later her doorbell rings.

  The driver holds open the back door of a sleek car and she climbs in. In the backseat Emma Zhang’s waiting, and she takes Fiona’s hand.

  “Okay?” she asks.

  Fiona nods.

  Woodley seems to be the only person smiling when I get to the office.

  “What’s that on your face?” I ask him.
/>   “It’s a bit of good news, boss.”

  “Let’s hear it, then.”

  “You remember what we heard on the 999 recording—someone saying what we thought was Roger Platts? I think I’ve worked out what it means.”

  He beckons me to come and look at his monitor, where he’s got a website up on the screen with a big German shepherd dog as its main picture.

  “This is a specialist website for schutzhund training. The type of training I’m pretty sure Jason Wright’s dogs have undergone. If you look here,” he clicks around the site, “they have a set of specific specialized commands they respond to. In German.”

  A list of words comes up with translations in English beside them and a button to press if you want to hear the correct pronunciation.

  Woodley clicks on the word for Down and the computer says, “Platz.” He clicks again, and once more.

  “I got it,” I say.

  “The dog wasn’t just there. It was being commanded to get down by Jason Wright—it’s got to be him on the recording—which suggests that the dog was doing something it shouldn’t be doing.”

  “Like scaring the hell out of the boys.”

  “Exactly. I think Wright was telling the truth about not having access to the scrapyard, but those dogs could have terrified the boys and made them feel trapped if they were throwing themselves against the fence and making a racket like they did with us.”

  “And caused Noah to fall into the water?”

  “It’s not an impossible scenario,” Woodley says. “The only thing I was wondering was why Janet Pritchard phoned if it was going to land her and Wright in trouble?”

  “She was probably genuinely worried. You’d have to be hard as nails not to, if you saw a kid go into the water and not come out.”

  “I’m just surprised she didn’t phone anonymously.”

  “From where? I didn’t see any pay phones at the location, so she was stuck with her mobile. No way to be anonymous if your number’s flashing up on the operator’s screen.”

  “So she’s a Good Samaritan, then,” he says. “Shall I update Fraser about the dog?”

  Fraser’s conspicuous by her absence, which works for me because I want to be on more solid ground with this before I talk to her.

  “Let’s speak to the witnesses again first.”

  “One bit of less good news,” Woodley says. “The Underwater Unit can’t get back out to the canal until tomorrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re fishing for a body in the river in Bath.”

  I can’t argue with that, though I’d like to. Tomorrow’s better than next week, at least.

  We find Janet Pritchard in her shop.

  She locks the door behind us when she understands that we’re not there to congratulate her on being a good citizen, and leads us to a private office in the back.

  The office is a cramped windowless space so small that Woodley has to stand in the doorway. The deep-pile carpet is dark pink. Thick white glossy paint has been slapped on every available surface. It feels airless. That might work in our favor, though. Witnesses don’t always fare too well when they’re boxed up with you. It gets very intense. I adjust my chair, easing it just a little closer to her.

  “Would you like to tell us why you lied?” I ask her.

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “Would you like to tell us why you lied?”

  She purses her brightly painted lips.

  “I’m curious as to why you’re repeating yourself, Detective?”

  “You weren’t alone on Monday night at the canal, were you?”

  She blinks.

  “We’ve been informed that there was somebody else at the scene, another witness.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “I think you do, and if you don’t start telling us the truth, you might find yourself in trouble. Perverting the course of justice is a very serious charge.”

  “Carries jail time,” Woodley adds.

  “All right,” she says, “I wasn’t alone. Jason was there, he does the security patrol, but he didn’t arrive until I was phoning.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “Because I forgot.”

  “Funny you should feel so threatened by the boys when he was there with you.”

  Her eyes cut from me to Woodley and back again. “I wasn’t frightened when he got there, but I’d already phoned.”

  “Neither of you tried to help the boy?”

  “We couldn’t get into the yard. Jason didn’t have keys.”

  “Even though he does security?”

  She shrugs.

  “When did Jason leave the scene?”

  “When the emergency services arrived. He had to get on with his job.”

  “He didn’t think it would be helpful for him to give a statement?”

  “You’d have to ask him that.”

  “I expect you understand why we’re surprised that you didn’t mention this earlier.”

  A part of me admires the way she keeps her mouth shut and still looks defiant, but I also wonder where she gets her guts.

  “I think we’re going to need you to come down to the station and make a new statement.”

  “And I suppose I don’t have a choice about that, do I?”

  Neither Woodley nor I answer.

  “Can I at least call someone to man the shop?”

  “I’m not sure there’s time for that.”

  Back at HQ we put her in an interview room.

  “I want you to go and chase up the background checks on Ian Shawcross,” I tell Woodley. “Everything dotted and crossed as it should be. And then get her statement. It won’t do her any harm to sit there for a few minutes.”

  I hand the witness’s typed-up statement to Fraser when I see her early evening. Her frown deepens as she reads it.

  “Okay. Get the security guard in here for a formal statement, too, and let’s see if the stories match up.”

  “I plan to do that first thing tomorrow. Are you all right, boss?”

  “I will be when this case is put to bed. I’ve got so many eyes on me from above that I feel like I’m splayed out on a bloody dissection table with a class of spotty teenagers hovering over me. Why do you ask? Do I look as bloody overworked and underfunded as I feel?”

  I know better than to answer that.

  When I get home, I find Becky’s got herself dressed up. She’s covered the bruises on her face with foundation so they look purplish and beige all at once, and licks of black liner taper to suggestive points at the corner of each eye. She’s sitting on my sofa painting her fingernails dark blue. She’s wrapped her dreads up in a colorful scarf. Her lips are painted, too.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “I’m meeting someone for a drink.”

  Her expression warns me not to ask who, so I don’t. If I don’t want to risk losing her company, I’m going to need a “softly, softly” approach.

  “You made it home just in time, then,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “They’re interviewing somebody on TV about your case. In a minute.”

  My gut takes a swan dive. This can’t be good. If it was official, I’d know about it already. I sit down beside my sister to watch with a mounting sense of dread. When the screen cuts from the newsreader on our local channel to a studio in which three women are sitting, I understand that it probably couldn’t get any worse.

  Emma Zhang and Fiona Sadler are side by side on a velvet-covered sofa. It’s immediately obvious that when we met at the bar, Emma wasn’t dressed up or partaking of some Dutch courage to help her get through our meeting. She already knew exactly where she was going afterward. I could not have misjudged that more completely. It was an own goal.

  I feel my jaw clenching, a dull throb in the gums around my back teeth. Both are familiar companions to my rising anger.

  Opposite Emma and Fiona Sadler, in a matching chair, is a loc
al newsreader who specializes in making even the blandest everyday report sound emotionally turbulent. Between them there’s a low table with a box of tissues on it. The newsreader looks deep into the camera and begins to speak.

  “We have a very special interview for you this evening, with crime reporter Emma Zhang and Fiona Sadler, the mother of Noah, a fifteen-year-old boy who tragically died earlier this week as a result of an incident in our city. Thank you both so much for being with us tonight.”

  Fiona Sadler looks like a deer in the headlights, but a determined one. Her voice is croaky at first, but she pauses to take a sip of water and then the words flow from her. She describes Noah’s personality as flawless, and talks about her husband, milking his credentials as a war photographer. Then she embarks on the tale of Noah’s illness. The newsreader’s head bobs encouragement.

  All of that is just a prologue for the main event, though. Prompted by the newsreader, Fiona Sadler begins to describe the genesis of what the scroll along the bottom of my TV screen calls “a doomed friendship.” Emma remains very still throughout, her hands folded on her lap, focused on Fiona Sadler, and nodding whenever sympathy is required, which means that her head, as well as the newsreader’s, is bouncing up and down for most of the interview.

  It’s a coup for her. I can see that. A coup and a scoop. I’m furious.

  Emma’s flagrant bending of the rules has got her here, to this: a moment of pure professional triumph. I believe what she’s done is wrong, to its core, but I can’t deny that it’s also making me question the approach I’ve taken to this case. Should I have bent the rules a bit, put more pressure on Abdi, questioned whether being methodical would be the best way to get a result? Has the Ben Finch case scared me so completely I’ve become nothing more than a detective by numbers? A dull plodder?

  My phone starts buzzing. It’s Fraser. I ignore it. I don’t want to miss a word of this interview, nor am I ready to get a bollocking for somehow allowing it to happen.

  “We’ve heard how they met, but how would you describe the essence of the boys’ relationship?” the interviewer asks Fiona Sadler.