Odd Child Out

by Gilly MacMillan

  Woodley phones me just as I’m toweling dry and asks me to join a video call with Jamie Silva, the so-called super-recognizer.

  I sign on to my laptop, put my game face on, and find a young bald guy with a cheerful grin on the other end of the call. He’s in an office.

  “I’ve got your man,” he says. “Name of Maxamud Abshir Garaar.”

  “Bloody hell, that was quick. How? Have you seen him before?”

  “No, I haven’t, so I didn’t recognize him straightaway, nor did the central database throw anything up. I got a break when I looked at the IND database—that’s Immigration and Nationality Directorate. It’s complicated getting access, and I won’t bore you with specifics, but I was able to search names and faces of immigrants whose applications for asylum have failed and who have subsequently disappeared. That’s where I found him. I’m about to email you everything we know about this man, but briefly, he’s extremely dangerous. He had his first asylum application turned down because it was felt that he was exaggerating the threat to himself, so he appealed, and the appeal will be turned down because they’ve been tipped off that he was very likely a perpetrator of war crimes in Somalia himself. Not a victim, as he claimed. However, that’s a moot point at this stage, because since then he’s disappeared, and on top of that, he’s become a person of interest to police because of possible involvement in people trafficking here, using illegal immigrants as slave labor. That could explain why he was at the Welcome Center.”

  “Recruiting?”

  “Yes. Because our lovely government has a policy of destitution for refugees who are waiting for applications or appeals to be decided, there are a lot of extremely vulnerable people to be found in places like that. It could be very fertile ground for somebody like him.”

  “I really appreciate this, Jamie.”

  “One more thing: Maxamud Abshir Garaar has been associated with another man involved in people trafficking. He’s called Rob Summers. He’s already on our radar here in Bristol because of a fairly recent disturbance at a property in Montpelier. We think there’s a possibility that one or both men might be there. There’s more detail in the email I’m sending.”

  Once the email’s landed in my inbox, I forward it to Fraser and then call her to request permission to set up surveillance on the house in Montpelier. If we can find Maxamud Garaar there, it’s possible we might find Abdi Mahad, and bag a wanted man as a bonus.

  My adrenaline’s pumping. I’m so wired I don’t even want to sit down. The chances of my sleeping are zero. I’d try to wangle my way onto the surveillance team if I thought Fraser would let me, but I know she won’t.

  My hand aches from the punch I threw. My anger levels this evening have been high, and my ability to control my actions definitely patchy. It’s exactly the moment when I should call Dr. Manelli. I start to dial her number, and a recording of her voice asks me to leave a message before I realize that I don’t want to speak to her, so I don’t have to. I hang up.

  I find half a pack of cigarettes in the box that lives on my bookshelves, between a volume of Yeats poetry and a complete set of James Lee Burke novels. I throw open the window. A sharp wind gusts in, carrying bitterly cold rain that spatters my face and shirt. I stand there for a few moments before I shut the window again. I fetch an ashtray and turn out the lights before settling onto the sofa. I leave my bed free in case Becky comes home.

  I turn on the TV and begin the long countdown to morning.

  Nur spends a few minutes that evening sitting in his parked taxi in a favorite spot of his, a place he sometimes goes when he feels as if he needs to breathe.

  He never spends long there—he’s too hardworking for that—but sometimes he can’t resist it because he loves seeing the city laid out beneath him: its hilly folds, its shifting perspectives, the mix of old and new buildings. Looking down on Bristol from a height reminds him of when he was a child and his uncle would take him for a drive in his Land Rover out of Hargeisa, through the scrubby plains around it, and up into the hills that ringed it. Together they would look down on the scatter of white buildings in the basin below.

  On this night Nur’s been thinking about Abdi. He’s not immune to the fear that Abdi’s paternity might have created his fate before he was born, in spite of their best efforts. Over the years, it’s taken all of Nur’s strength to keep the faith that violence isn’t embedded in Abdi’s DNA. The last few days have been the biggest challenge to his faith in the boy and his decision to raise him as his own that he’s faced so far.

  He watches the blinking lights of a plane as it crosses the city and heads out into the world. Nur isn’t immune to a fantasy that he could flee from his difficulties here and find a different path elsewhere. Many men in his position left their families. They returned to Somalia or went elsewhere to seek more money, and sometimes another wife.

  He arrives home just minutes after Maryam, who’s shedding her wet clothes in the bathroom, shivering with cold.

  When she emerges, Nur looks at his wife and daughter and feels a pang of loss for Abdi. They are three, and they should be four.

  This was the way things were in Somalia, where family members disappeared or died in ways that were at first beyond the imagination of the ordinary man and then became normalized, with neighbors informing on neighbors, and nobody you could trust. It was never supposed to be like this here.

  When Maryam says, “I went to the police,” he finds himself sitting down, as if bracing himself for another piece of crushing news. When she tells her story of not being understood and returning home frustrated, he aches for her.

  Sofia says, “What did you want to tell them?” and her parents both hold their breath for an instant. “What?” she insists.

  “Sit with us,” Maryam says, and Nur knows that Maryam’s made the decision to tell Sofia everything. He won’t fight it.

  They talk through the night.

  For Sofia, it’s as if the world she’s created here, the one that contains her family and all her bright successes, has developed a crack, which widens and gapes as her parents speak. Beyond the crack is darkness, and it’s seeping in, licking at the edges of their world.

  She tries to process everything she’s learning about Abdi and her mother and to find a way to maintain her idea of their lives as a bright, pure thing, but it’s impossible. Eventually she asks the only question she can think of. The one that makes her feel like a child, not the independent young adult she’s become.

  “What does it mean?”

  It’s a question that Maryam and Nur have never been able to respond to fully. They’ve looked to religion for the answer, and looked into their hearts. They’ve found partial answers, but nothing that can entirely ease or explain the pain or predict the outcome of Abdi’s life. They hoped he would never have to know the whole truth.

  “It means what we want it to mean,” Nur tells Sofia eventually. “For me, it means that I gained a son.”

  “It means that Abdi is looking for this man because he wants to meet his father,” Maryam says.

  “He wants to know who he is,” Nur adds.

  “Do you know St. Werburgh’s climbing church?”

  “Of course.”

  Sofia tells her parents what Ed Sadler told her, and told Abdi, about seeing the man who is Abdi’s father in St. Werburgh’s.

  They arrive at the church fifteen minutes later. Nur drives and the women peer out through the car’s rain-spattered windows, but it’s two A.M. and the street’s completely quiet. After a few minutes they see a light extinguish in one of the houses; otherwise there are no signs of life. The spire of the church that houses the climbing center looms high above the street, a dark obelisk.

  They drive past the church and see that there’s a tunnel and some parkland, but nothing else.

  “We need to come back in the morning,” Maryam says, “as soon as it’s light. If we start knocking on doors now, somebody will call the police.”

  Later she’ll wish she
hadn’t said this. She’ll wish she’d got out of the car and shouted for her son. Found him and brought him home. Before any of the rest happened.

  Abdi isn’t aware that his family is close by.

  DAY 5

  No surprise that I lay awake for most of the night. Once my insomnia had unsheathed its claws, it refused to let me drift away from consciousness for more than a few minutes at a time. Sleep came in snippets, and even then it gave me no respite from the thoughts that circulated and tightened around me, noose-like, during the small hours.

  When I did manage to sleep, those thoughts simply transformed into darker, looser things that made me feel even more disoriented when I woke afterward. All I remember from those dream shards are faces swimming in and out of focus, and that I couldn’t recognize a single one of them.

  By five A.M. I’m sweaty and exhausted and the city’s unnaturally quiet, as if it doesn’t want to keep me company.

  It’s a relief to get up. We will find Abdi Mahad today; I’m determined that we will.

  I head to the office at six A.M., even though Fraser hasn’t asked us to be there until seven thirty. I review the evidence until it’s time to gather in a meeting room.

  Fraser’s in bullish mode.

  “The officers watching the property in Montpelier overnight have sighted two Somali men and a British man coming and going. We’re confident that one of them is Maxamud Abshir Garaar, and one is Robert Summers, his accomplice. Armed backup has been authorized because Summers is known to have a history of possessing a firearm. We believe from the limited inquiries we’ve been able to make that the suspect Maxamud Garaar may be a resident at the property at least part of the time, with Summers. We’re concerned, however, that another flat in the building is occupied by a family, and there may be young children living there. We don’t have more intelligence than that at the present because we’ve not been able to conduct many inquiries overnight, which means we haven’t been able to establish if Abdi Mahad has visited the premises, but I don’t want to waste time. I want to get in there now.”

  I’ve got the security guard coming in this morning after his night shift, so we can nail down what happened to the boys, but that interview will have to be managed by someone else. This is too important. I put in a call to a sergeant I trust asking him to stand in for me.

  I’m standing in the car park with the rest of the team Fraser’s gathered, getting organized for departure, when I see a taxi pull into a parking area and Abdi Mahad’s family climbs out.

  I curse under my breath. I can’t ignore them. “Go on without me,” I tell Woodley. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  I show the family into an interview room and try to not display my impatience to get away. Sofia Mahad acts as spokeswoman.

  “We have something to tell you,” she says. “It’s a very difficult thing.”

  Her voice is so soft that I can hardly hear her.

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  “My brother, Abdi, we think he’s gone to look for a very dangerous man because he discovered that man is his father.”

  Sofia Mahad and her father watch me carefully. Maryam Mahad’s eyes remain cast down.

  “My mother was raped,” Sofia says. “In the refugee camp, fifteen years ago.” She’s having to make a big effort to keep her voice steady.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “By a very bad man. It’s the man in the photograph, with the cleft palate. We think Abdi found out that this man is his father, and he knows where this man is. We think he’s gone to try to meet him.”

  “Do you know how Abdi might have found out where this man is?”

  “Noah’s dad, Mr. Sadler, told Abdi that he saw this man coming out of a house opposite the climbing center in St. Werburgh’s. He recognized the man because he took his photograph before and he noticed the scar on his lip.”

  “How do you know this, Sofia?”

  “Noah’s dad told me. I talked to him last night. He was at the airport.”

  “Okay.”

  My mind’s racing: Sofia and her family have come to the same conclusion as us—that Abdi’s gone to look for Maxamud Garaar—but they have a different location for him. And theirs is backed up by an eyewitness who’s also given the information to Abdi.

  “This man raped my mother violently. Please, Detective, you need to go and find him before Abdi does. He will hurt Abdi.”

  Three pairs of eyes watch me intently.

  “Wait here,” I tell them.

  I step outside the room and call Fraser.

  “I have a possible alternative location for the suspect,” I tell her. “The Mahad family turned up at the office as we were leaving. The intelligence is strong.”

  “This operation’s already under way. I’m not calling it off now. Get yourself over here.”

  “Boss, the Mahad family . . .”

  “Tell me when you get here, Jim, and get here now. That’s an order.”

  “Can I at least get some officers sent over to the other location?”

  I’m speaking into the ether, because she’s hung up. I can feel my cheeks burning when I put down the phone, with frustration, and not a small amount of anger, too. I’m tired of having my wings clipped.

  Through a small window in the door I can see the Mahad family in the interview room. I can hardly imagine what it must have taken for them to come here today and tell me their story.

  I step back into the room and take the time to sit down with them, even though I’m dying to be out the door.

  “Your information’s extremely helpful, and you have my word that we’ll follow up on it this morning.”

  “Do you have a son, Detective?” Nur Mahad asks.

  “No.”

  “Abdi’s my son. I’m asking you to find him and protect him.”

  “I understand.”

  He clasps my hand between his briefly, as if sealing a pact. It’s a gesture that’s human and desperate and dignified. I know what I’m going to do.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  I get to my feet. I’m struggling to maintain a professional demeanor, but I just about pull it off.

  “I think it would be best if you go home. I promise to be in touch the minute we have any news.”

  “Will you go there?” Sofia says. She’s astute. She wants confirmation that they’re going to get some action in return for their information.

  I will act, and I will do it immediately. I wasn’t going to. I was going to do it Fraser’s way. Right up until that moment, when Nur Mahad entrusted me with his son’s life and clasped his hands around mine. Man to man.

  “Yes,” I say. “You have my word. Please, go home now.”

  As I leave the building I think, I’ve done this before. I’ve followed my instinct and set out on my own, and I remember how that turned out. I pack the thought away. I’m going to do this, and I owe it to Fraser to call her and tell her. She doesn’t pick up, so I call Woodley instead and explain. I can tell he thinks it’s a bad idea from the sharp intake of breath, but he holds back. My funeral, I suppose.

  “What’s happening there?” I ask him.

  “We’re about to start getting into position to close in on front and back of the property. I’m with Fraser a street or two away watching the video, but she’s stepped out for a moment.”

  He means the video cameras our teams have attached to their helmets.

  “I’m going to St. Werburgh’s.” I give him the name of the street. “I need to check it out based on the intelligence from the Mahad family. If Fraser asks, tell her I’ll be on my way ASAP.”

  Before I leave I ask one of the officers on duty to contact Ed Sadler and confirm what Sofia’s told me is true.

  I take my bike and I’m in St. Werburgh’s in twenty minutes. The center of the city’s only half a mile away, but this is a sleepy residential neighborhood that’s retained a bit of a gentle rural feel, even though it’s been hemmed in incrementally by city sprawl for more t
han a hundred years.

  The row of houses opposite the climbing center looks quiet. The center’s located inside a centuries-old church whose tall spire dominates the view down the street. The small Victorian cottages front almost right onto the road.

  I knock on the door of a pub opposite and get a bit of luck. The landlady’s mopping floors and she lets me in. From the look she gives my badge I don’t think she’s a fan of the police, but she lets me peer out through her windows. I have a good view.

  I ask if I can stay there for a short while and she responds with “I’m not serving you.”

  “That’s not why I’m here, ma’am,” I tell her.

  I sit and wait.

  Abdi wakes up stiff and sore. His clothes are damp and muddy.

  He experiences a moment of blankness before he remembers why he’s there and what he’s planning to do.

  When his eyes fully open, he’s surprised to find that it’s already light. He creeps out of his bush to relieve himself behind a tree. He’s thirsty and cold, although the day promises to be a fine one, the blue sky losing its dawn yellow wash and darkening to cobalt.

  He wonders what time the pub opens and if he might be able to sneak in and get a drink of water, dry off his clothes with the hand dryer.

  He tells himself not to be stupid, though. He’s here to do something, and he knows it’s time. Why wait? What’s the point of looking nice or doing the right thing anymore?

  He clambers down the slope, carefully this time.

  His trainers squelch.

  Once he’s on the street his nerve threatens to fail him. The house where he saw his real father is only about seventy-five yards away, but he knows that this man is dangerous. In the end, it’s only because the daylight reveals that the house is painted pink, a nonthreatening pale pink, that he gets the courage to approach it.

  As he walks toward it, a dog trots past on the pavement, a small terrier, and Abdi moves aside to let it pass, keeping his head down as the owner follows, noting only the newspapers under her arm and her sparkly rubber boots.