Odd Child Out

by Gilly MacMillan

  Abdi allows himself a quick glance at the pub as he crosses the street. He sees the shape of a man in the window. It looks as if the man is watching him. He ducks his head again.

  At the door to the house Abdi raps three times loudly. For a moment, he thinks he hears banging in the pub window behind him, but he ignores it. He’s concentrating on trying to breathe. The door opens.

  “Mohammed Asad Muse?” the man Abdi suspects is his father says. He doesn’t enunciate the words very well, but Abdi understands that he is expecting somebody else. Abdi is thrown off his guard, but only for a moment. He decides to lie, because it will get him into the house.

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s me.”

  The door widens just enough to admit him.

  If the pub landlady hadn’t made a comment to me at that moment I might have been looking out of the window and seen Abdi Mahad more quickly. I might have been able to stop him entering the house.

  I only get a quick glimpse of his face, but I recognize him from the CCTV footage, and his height and build are correct. I’m sure it’s him.

  I hammer on the pub window to try to get his attention, but he doesn’t hear me, and by the time I get out of the door and onto the street he’s gone in, and I didn’t see who opened the door.

  I call Fraser. “I just had eyes on Abdi Mahad, and I think he might be with our target. I need manpower here.”

  “Did you get eyes on the target?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not going to abort at this end. We’re too far in.”

  “Can you send me anybody? We’re only a quarter of a mile away.” I could call for backup via HQ, but a trained and armed response team would be preferable, and quicker to arrive from Fraser’s location.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Keep your eyes on the building. Take in the boy if he comes out. What’s your exact location?”

  I give it to her.

  I walk down to the end of the street to see if I can get an idea of what’s going on at the back of the houses, but it’s impossible to get a good view without losing sight of the front. I cross the road to the climbing center and wait in the old graveyard that surrounds it. The church spire looms above me. It’s tall and pierced by four large Gothic windows from the ground level all the way to the top. I try to get a map up on my phone, so I can get a sense of the overall layout of the neighborhood, but my signal’s too poor for it to download.

  The climbing center is shut. I bang on the door and catch some luck when an early-bird worker lets me in.

  “Can you stay here?” I ask him. “Watch the street, don’t take your eyes off it, and tell me immediately if anybody leaves that house.”

  I explain what else I want, and he points me to a stairwell: a steep, narrow set of stone steps labeled STAFF ACCESS ONLY. They’re worn and slippery and they lead up into the spire.

  I climb as high as I need to get a look out over Mina Road through a section of clear glass in one of the windows. It gives me a perfect bird’s-eye view of the location.

  Abdi Mahad has entered a terraced cottage that’s painted pink. The tiny gap between the bay window and the boundary wall has been planted with bamboo that’s tall enough to obscure most of the window. PVC doors and windows have been installed at some point. They’re grubby but intact, unlike the roof, where tiles have come away in an area around the chimney stack.

  The property is on one side of a block of similar terraced cottages, most of them redbrick. The back gardens all meet in an enclosed area behind. I can identify only one or two easy exit points, though it would be possible to escape through any of the houses if you could gain access.

  I call Woodley.

  “What’s happening?”

  “They’re in position,” he says, “about to go in. Fraser’s asked for backup to go to you, but they’re not going to be quick.”

  I look out the window. Everything seems quiet at the property, except that there’s a man walking down the street toward it. He looks Somali.

  “They’re entering the building,” Woodley reports from his end.

  Abdi enters the house and closes the front door behind him. Inside, the tiny front room’s furnished with two stained armchairs and a futon mattress that has a sleeping bag on it.

  The man who he thinks is his father looks him over, as if Abdi’s not what he was expecting. He offers Abdi a hand and they shake perfunctorily before he gestures for him to sit in one of the chairs. Abdi finds the skin contact electric. He stares at the man, sees the line of his scar. What makes Abdi feel very afraid is the quality of menace the man exudes. It’s in the way he carries himself and in the way he looks at Abdi: part contempt, part challenge.

  He speaks Somali when he asks Abdi, “So did you bring it?”

  Abdi finds he can’t reply at first. Everything he rehearsed in his head in advance of this moment has dissolved into a feeling that he’s made a terrible mistake.

  Part of him had hoped that this man would know him for who he is, that they could experience some kind of mutual recognition, but now he sees how stupid he was. Abdi knew that this man was violent, but he hadn’t thought that it would be an almost palpable quality, or that he would feel such a powerful sense of danger in his presence.

  Abdi makes a break for the hallway, but the man’s quick on his feet and slams the door shut before Abdi makes it out of the room. He pushes Abdi back into his chair with just the palm of his hand on Abdi’s chest.

  “Sit,” he says.

  Abdi has no choice.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” Abdi tells him in Somali. He blurts it out, as if he’s been challenged by a teacher. He doesn’t know what else to say. He just wants to leave.

  “Then who are you?” Every word he says sounds thickened. Abdi can only just understand him.

  “Abdi Nur Mahad.”

  “How old are you, Abdi Nur Mahad?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “I came to the wrong house.”

  Abdi’s sweating. He knows it’s obvious that he’s lying.

  “Try again.”

  Abdi swallows. “I have some business with you.”

  The man laughs. “I’m a busy man today, Abdi, but I’m curious. What’s your business?”

  “You’re my father.”

  Whatever Abdi hoped might happen at this moment of revelation, it wasn’t what followed. He’d imagined all different kinds of emotions, but not an absence of them entirely.

  The man sighs, as if he’s contemplating doing something that he doesn’t want to do. “Then I should have you beaten,” he says eventually. “Because you do not know your place.”

  He stands, and Abdi recoils back into his chair.

  The man grabs him, pulls him up, and shoves him against a wall.

  Abdi cries out and feels the man’s hand clamp over his mouth, pushing his head back painfully. With his other hand he pats Abdi’s pockets. The expression on his face is one of distaste.

  “If I’m your father, then it must have been a sorry whore who mothered you.”

  His face is so close to Abdi’s that Abdi can see the open pores on his nose and the bloodshot veins in his eyes.

  “I’ll go,” he tries to say, his lips smearing against the palm of the man’s hand.

  Somebody knocks on the door.

  The man puts his other hand on Abdi’s neck and applies pressure.

  “Not a sound,” he says. “Don’t move.”

  He lets go and Abdi’s back slides down the wall until he’s kneeling. He gasps for air.

  The man leaves the room and a key turns in the lock.

  Abdi hears the front door opening.

  “Who is it?” he says.

  “Mohammed Asad Muse.”

  “Come in.”

  Woodley stays on the line as I clatter back down the steps to the bottom of the church spire.

  “Ground floor clear,” he says. “It’s very dark in there.”

  “
Abdi Mahad’s still in the house,” I say. “I think I need to go in.”

  “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t be hasty.”

  “I think Abdi’s in danger. Another man’s just entered the property.”

  “Be patient. Support will be with you soon.”

  “It’s not soon enough!”

  “They’re going upstairs,” Woodley reports from the raid footage. “It’s grim. Rubbish and drug debris everywhere. Staircase treads broken.”

  “I’m going in,” I say.

  “Don’t, boss. Remember.”

  He doesn’t have to say more. I know what he means. I remember a foggy dawn when he and I drove deep into the countryside to interview a suspect and I ended up puking in their front garden, facing the fact that the choice I’d made had the potential to be very destructive and to cost a child his life.

  “First floor clear,” Woodley adds. “One more floor. Oh, fuck!”

  “What’s happening?” I ask, though I recognize immediately that what I can hear on the other end of the line is the sound of gunfire.

  Sofia, Maryam, and Nur are left at Kenneth Steele House feeling uncertain.

  Detective Inspector Clemo reassured them and told them to go home, then departed in a hurry, but he didn’t explain precisely what his actions would be.

  Nur and Maryam are worried he’s fobbed them off.

  As they leave the building, a man arrives with his wife and both report at reception. The man stares openly at the Mahad family, but they barely give him a glance. He wears sweatpants and trainers, but his wife’s in kitten heels that clack as she walks. He has a hand on his lower back, as if he’s in pain.

  As Nur parks outside their flat, Maryam says, “I want to go back to St. Werburgh’s.”

  Sofia says, “I think we have to trust the police. We told them where we think Abdi is.”

  Maryam and Nur exchange a glance. They know they should trust the police here, but what if Clemo hasn’t taken their information about Abdi seriously?

  “Abdi could do something stupid,” Maryam says. “We don’t know what he thinks he’s going to do if he finds . . .” She can’t bear to describe the man. “He won’t understand the danger.”

  “We’ll drive there and have a look, and if we can see the police, we’ll leave,” Nur says.

  They don’t talk much on the way there. All three feel strung out with fear.

  Woodley hasn’t been on the line since the gunfire. The last words he said were “I’ll have to call you back.” I wait in the entrance to the climbing center, and decide to give it five more minutes before taking action. I’m not willing to risk Abdi Mahad’s safety any longer than that.

  A few pedestrians have appeared on the street: one or two climbers arriving for a session in the church building, and an elderly woman who inches along, pulling a lightweight shopping cart behind her. It’s making me anxious. I need to keep the area clear, but there are far too many access points for me to do that alone.

  I stand aside to let the climbers in. I’m glad I’m in my Saturday civvies today. Otherwise I’d stand out a mile in this crowd.

  Three minutes left to wait. Nothing else on the street.

  I try to call Woodley, but he doesn’t answer. The elderly lady has made it only about fifty yards up the road.

  Two minutes.

  The door of the house opens. The man who arrived earlier steps out. I take a photograph of him with my phone.

  One of his pockets is bulging in a way I don’t think it was before. He walks away up the street, overtaking the old lady and moving on and out of sight swiftly.

  There’s still no movement detectable in the house.

  I try Woodley again.

  “It’s a fucking car crash,” he says. “Shots fired, but no sign of the target.”

  “Tell them to get over here!” I tell him. “I need somebody, anybody. We need men on Mina Road at the climbing center, and on Lynmouth Road, St. Werburgh’s Road, and Seddon Road watching all exits. I need armed men before it’s too late!”

  “I hear you, boss. I’ll pass it on.”

  I call Fraser and get voice mail. I leave the same message. I call dispatch and repeat the message again, and tell them to get anybody here that they can. I try not to shout.

  On the street a mother with a child in football gear exit a house a few doors up.

  Woodley texts: “Armed response on their way to you.”

  I have a quick word with one of the climbing center staff before I walk down the street and knock on the door of the property that occupies the corner plot at the far end of the block. I show my ID to the first householder and put my finger to my lips when he opens his mouth to respond.

  “I need you to exit your property, make sure all doors and windows are locked, and go to the climbing center, without talking,” I tell him. “Wait there until you hear otherwise. Do not leave.” One by one, I call in at each house in the row leading up to the target property and repeat the message. It’s a slow process. I can’t risk them all leaving at once and attracting the attention of the occupants of the pink house.

  I have to pass in front of the pink house to alert the householders on the other side, but I hope the foliage obscuring the window will mean I can do it without being noticed. I direct those residents to the shop at the opposite end of the road. I don’t want any of them to traipse past the front of the target house either.

  By the time I’m done, I’m sweating the fact that I can’t do the same for the side streets without losing eyes on the front of the house.

  I call Woodley again.

  “We’re a street away, boss,” he says. “Me and Fraser, two armed officers.”

  “Where are the fucking others?”

  “Still at the scene. Medical attention needed.”

  That doesn’t sound good, but we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.

  Abdi stays in the room and listens as his father and the man who arrived have a conversation that he can’t hear properly, and then the front door closes again.

  His neck feels bruised and he hasn’t moved from the spot he was told to stay in.

  He’s very afraid.

  He hears the door to the room being unlocked and his father comes back in.

  He sits on the edge of a chair, as if they’re having a casual conversation, and says, “Now, Abdi, I need to know how you found me.”

  Abdi blurts out his story.

  “Does anybody else know you’re here?”

  Abdi desperately tries to calculate the best answer. His first instinct is to say “my family,” but he knows that might endanger them.

  “The police,” he says.

  “The police. Are you a truthful boy, Abdi?”

  Abdi nods. Think about the general rightness of that statement, he tells himself, not the fact that you’ve just told a specific lie, and he might believe you.

  “You’ve been very stupid.”

  He moves so quickly that Abdi’s taken by surprise once again. His father pulls Abdi up and locks his head under his arm, dragging him into a squalid kitchen at the back of the property. Abdi can see only the filthy floor tiles.

  Abdi hears a drawer open and glimpses the glint of a blade as his father removes it.

  “On your knees,” he says.

  Abdi’s shaking, from both the physical weakness that a few days on the run has caused and the disbelief that he’s in this situation, that violence comes so easily to this man, as if it’s second nature for him, but he’s also overcome by a surge of anger.

  When his father loosens his grip slightly to encourage Abdi to kneel, Abdi throws himself at the man’s legs, barreling into him and knocking him aside.

  His father crashes into the kitchen units and regains his balance quickly. Abdi stands opposite him, panting. His father is between him and the door.

  He smiles at Abdi, as if acknowledging that Abdi did quite well, but it won’t last. He takes a small gun from his pocket and points it at Abdi.

 
“I wanted to avoid a gunshot,” he says, “but needs must.”

  As he raises the gun, Abdi stares into his eyes defiantly, wanting him to know that he hasn’t cowed Abdi, that he’s a monster whom Abdi isn’t afraid to challenge. Abdi does it for his mother and for Nur.

  As they face each other and his father’s finger moves fractionally against the trigger of the gun, a shadow passes across the back window. Somebody’s out there.

  His father makes a calculation.

  “To the front,” he says. “Now.”

  They walk the few paces to the front door. His father wraps his arm around Abdi’s neck from behind and puts the gun to the side of his temple.

  “Open the door,” he says.

  The rear of the property’s secured” is the information I get over the radio, only a few seconds before the front door of the house opens.

  We’ve sent one of our armed officers to the back and the other’s setting up in the spire, where a small pane of glass has been removed to give him a clear sight line to the front of the property.

  Seconds later, Abdi Mahad and the man called Maxamud Abshir Garaar both emerge. Garaar has a gun to Abdi’s head.

  They pause in front of the property and Maxamud Garaar shouts, in a heavily accented and slurred voice, “I want safe passage out of here and I’ll let this boy go if you give it to me.”

  Garaar looks around, trying to see us. He knows we’re watching him, but he doesn’t know where from. He spots Fraser’s unmarked car, which has been drawn up to partly block the road. Fraser and Woodley are stationed behind it. We don’t have enough vehicles here yet to obstruct every side street.

  Abdi’s grimacing. The barrel of the gun is pressed hard into the skin on his temple.

  In the spire, we’re in radio contact with Fraser and Woodley down below. A couple more officers have been mustered and are stationed at either end of the section of Mina Road that we’re on.

  “I can’t get a clear sight line,” says the officer beside me. He’s still as a cat waiting to pounce, making only minute adjustments to the weapon he has braced against his shoulder.