“I’m going to walk slowly and you are going to let me. If you don’t, I will shoot the boy!” Maxamud Garaar shouts.
He moves sideways, crablike, his body and head pressed against Abdi’s as much as possible. He travels away from us and toward the closest side street, in plain sight, in spite of Fraser’s position just beyond it. I suspect he knows the neighborhood and has an exit plan in mind once he reaches it.
Fraser calls to Garaar. “Release the boy and we’ll give you safe passage.”
He ignores her.
At the end of the street, beyond Fraser, I see three people advancing.
I radio Woodley. “Pedestrians coming, please make sure they’re held back.”
“I have an officer doing that,” he says. “They must have got past him.”
From the spire I see Woodley, crouching low, approach the three incomers.
Garaar and Abdi are moving very slowly toward them also. My sniper still has his barrel trained on them.
“Do you have a shot?” I ask him.
“I’ll take it if I do.”
Woodley gestures to the three to crouch and gets close enough to talk to them. As I watch, my stomach turns when I work out that they’re Abdi’s parents and sister.
“I’m going to have to let him go,” the sniper says. “He’ll be out of range in seconds. Better to move position?”
“It’s not safe past the squad car,” I say. “Too many civilians. I think he’s going to break to the side.”
He radios his colleague, directing him to move from the back to take up a position in the side street.
Garaar is within fifty yards of Fraser’s car when he sees two squad cars arrive at the end of the street beyond her. It’s our backup. Their timing could not be worse. He stops, taking stock. As he does, one of the people with Woodley gets to their feet.
It’s Maryam Mahad.
“Shit!” I say. I can hear Fraser shouting at Woodley through my earpiece.
Maryam Mahad, apparently oblivious to everything else, walks boldly up the street toward her son and the man who raped her.
At first she takes fast strides and then, as Maxamud Garaar notices her, she breaks into a run and she screams at him. It’s in Somali, I don’t know what she’s saying, but it sounds like a lifetime of words.
It’s enough.
Maxamud Garaar’s concentration is broken just for a second, almost as if he simply can’t believe the coincidence of what he’s seeing and hearing around him, and in that second Abdi Mahad twists away and I hear the gun beside me go off. The recoil thumps into my colleague’s shoulder.
Garaar falls to the pavement. Abdi runs toward his mother.
“Get them off the street!” I shout into the radio. “Get them off!”
Garaar’s wounded in the shoulder, and his gun’s fallen a short distance from him. I see him reach for it.
“Get them off the street!”
Fraser steps out from behind her car and intercepts Abdi just as Garaar fires.
She and Abdi fall to the ground behind her car, out of my sight.
I think I hear the bullet ricochet, and Maryam falls, too, after a beat. Woodley breaks out of cover and runs to her.
Woodley’s bent over Maryam, applying pressure to a wound on her arm. Nur and Sofia have been contained with a group of rubberneckers at the end of the street, and Fraser has taken off after Garaar, who’s disappeared down the side street. I can’t see Abdi, but I hope to god he’s safely in the car.
The sniper next to me is talking urgently to his colleague, instructing him to intercept Garaar.
The sniper and I run up the stairs until we find a window with a better view down the side street. Garaar’s visible making his way along it.
“He’s out of my range,” the gunman tells me.
Garaar’s holding his left arm across his stomach and blood has bloomed across the fabric of his shirt on the back of his shoulder. In his right hand he holds the gun. He’s walking on the narrow pavement between the parked cars and the foliage that overhangs the low walls at the front of each property.
Just as he’s about to disappear from view once again, he stops, staring at the end of the street.
Via the radio, we hear the command shouted by the sniper on the street. He orders Garaar to drop his weapon.
There’s a moment when the tension falls from Garaar’s body, as if he doesn’t feel any pain, as if he’s realized that it’s over, but then he raises his gun arm.
There’s another shout from the sniper who has him in his sights, but it does nothing to prevent the movement. The sniper fires and Garaar’s knee explodes. We’re too high up to hear him, but he twists as he goes down and I can see that he’s roaring with pain and anger.
His gun lands yards from him, as before, but this time, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t reach it. He’s folded over his shattered knee, blood soaking his shirt and his trousers and pooling onto the street. We see the sniper appear from behind a car and remove the gun that’s skittered across the road. His colleague takes off down the stairs beside me to assist.
Before I follow him I turn to get a final bird’s-eye view of the scene. I want to get eyes on Abdi Mahad so I can extract him safely.
I see Woodley helping Maryam at the side of the street, and as he does, Abdi stands. There’s no sign of Fraser. I try her on the radio. No response.
Abdi stands in the road on shaky legs, like a young deer. He leans on the car door and gazes around him as if he’s there just as an observer, not a participant. He can’t see his mother and Woodley from where he stands. He doesn’t hear his sister even though I can see her mouth opening and shutting, forming his name at the far end of the street. It’s possible the gunshot is still ringing in his ears, or perhaps it’s the emotional cacophony of everything he’s been through.
I pound down the stairs and run up the street.
When I reach him, he gapes at me. I arrive at his side just as another officer does. He looks at us both as if all his worst nightmares have come to pass.
I catch him as his legs give way.
“Abdi, you’re all right,” I say as I stagger under his weight. “I’ve got you.”
The other officer helps us. Abdi’s unconscious: a dead weight.
I’m searching for signs of blood on him, but I don’t see any.
“This is Abdi Nur Mahad,” I say to the officer who is helping me. “He’s a missing child.”
I’m breathing so hard I might have just run a marathon.
THE DAY AFTER
In a private room in the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Maryam Mahad lies in a hospital bed. Sofia sits beside her, holding her hand.
Maryam was stabilized on arrival at the hospital yesterday, and was the first on the surgeon’s emergency list that evening. The wound she sustained was to the arm that already bears a scar.
“You’re going to have another scar, I’m afraid,” the surgeon said when he explained the procedure to the family, “but it should be quite a bit tidier.” Sofia translated. Then she added something that made Maryam smile in spite of the pain.
“It’s nice to see a smile,” said the nurse as she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from Maryam’s arm.
“I told her this new scar is a badge of courage,” Sofia said.
The surgery went well.
When Nur lets himself into the room, Maryam puts a finger to her lips.
“He’s still sleeping,” she says.
Abdi is lying on the relative’s bed underneath the window. He looks thin.
Last night it fell to Nur and Sofia to tell him that Noah had died. He took the news very hard.
Nur embraces his wife and daughter, and then approaches Abdi.
He shakes the boy’s shoulder gently and Abdi opens his eyes. He fell asleep in the midst of his grief and has woken up in its grip, too.
Nur sits down beside him and opens his arms. Abdi lets himself be held and returns the embrace. It takes long minutes for him to stop sha
king. When he does, Nur hands him a hot drink and something to eat, and passes food to the women as well.
The family know that they’ll have to face the world once again in a heartbeat’s time. They know that Abdi may have to face charges over whatever happened to Noah, and they also know that things have changed for them all.
But for now they eat together. The rest can wait.
Hours later, Sofia arrives at home to get some rest. Alone in the flat, she tidies up. She wants everything to be nice in advance of her mother’s and brother’s return. They don’t yet know when they’ll be able to be at home together again, but they hope in the next day or two.
She finds Abdi’s bag in her room, the one he took to the sleepover. She empties it out so that she can wash Abdi’s clothes. Among the clothing is the paperwork she took from Noah’s desk.
She sits on the kitchen floor beside the washing machine as its cycle gets under way. She’s bone tired and she can’t be bothered to get up. She sifts idly through the papers.
At the very bottom of the pile, there are two A5 envelopes that she didn’t notice when she first looked through this stuff on the bus.
On the first, Mum and Dad is printed in neat, slanting writing; on the second, by the same hand, Abdi.
Underneath each of the names, a sentence is carefully printed: To be opened when I’m gone.
The handwriting isn’t Abdi’s, and Sofia understands immediately that these have been written by Noah, and she must deliver them.
Abdi reads his letter at the hospital, surrounded by his family.
Dear Abdi,
It’s weird to be writing this, because if you’re reading it, I’m dead and gone. But you know that anyway, because if all went to plan you were with me when it happened.
I wanted you there so much, and I’m so glad you were.
I got the news from my doctor that I was terminal about a week ago, and the idea of dying slowly has been too much for me to bear. I’ve seen it happen in the hospital, seen what it does to the patient and to the parents. That wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to fade away under the sheets until I was just skin and bones.
Suicide is a big thing, but not so much if you’re on your way out anyway.
My only problem was that I couldn’t do it alone, but I also couldn’t inflict the spectacle of it on my parents.
I chose you, Abdi, to be there, because you’re my best friend.
I thought you’d appreciate the planning, the strategy, and the execution. To do it at the fog bridge added a sense of drama I thought you might appreciate, too. I wanted my last few minutes to be a party, with you. A proper teenage send-off.
Did you notice my backpack was laden with weights before I went in the water? I hope not.
All the elements in place like a finely played chess game, no?
Please don’t be sad about it, or guilty. I’m sorry to bring you into it for the sad things it’ll make you feel, but please try to get over that and think of it as a thing that bonds us, even after I’m gone. I would like that.
Thanks for everything.
Your best friend forever, Noah
When Abdi finishes reading, he thinks: You used me. You intended to die on Monday night.
That’s when his tears finally come. It’s a release of sorts.
A few hours later he asks to speak to Detective Inspector Clemo. He’s ready to tell the whole story, in his own words.
Fiona Sadler hears the metal slap of the letterbox.
She walks slowly through the hall where the family grandfather clock ticks steadily.
There’s an envelope on the mat in the porch, and on it a sticky note explaining that Sofia picked it up by mistake when she fetched Abdi’s things.
Fiona peels the note away and sees Noah’s handwriting.
She calls Ed.
Her fingers shake as she tears the envelope open, ever so carefully, and unfolds the letter. The sight of her son’s handwriting is as painful as if the words were lines that have been carved into her own skin.
Noah’s explanation is short: He decided to take his own life because he wanted to spare them the steep decline that he knew was imminent. He didn’t want to diminish in front of them. His words tear at Fiona. She and Ed knew that Noah didn’t have long to live, but she wanted every nanosecond of that time. She was accustomed to the pain of watching Noah’s struggle with his illness. She felt as if she had it in her to help him to the end, that she was as ready as anybody ever could be to face such a thing.
Noah’s letter ends with a thank-you to his parents for everything they’ve done, and some heartfelt words of love that will help sustain Fiona and Ed as they grieve their loss, though his choice to take his own life in this way is something they’ll struggle to get over.
A short time after reading the letter, Ed Sadler picks up the phone and calls DI Clemo.
“Noah went out on Monday night intending to take his own life,” he says. “Abdi Mahad was not responsible for his death.”
Fiona herself picks up the phone to call Emma Zhang. She forbids her to publish any of the material from their interview. She threatens legal action if Emma goes against her wishes. She knows that this appeal to Emma’s better nature is probably hopeless, but she gives it her best shot.
When Emma puts the phone down, she’s irritated but not surprised. There’s no dilemma for her here, though. She’s been working hard on the material and it’s nearly ready for publication. It’s a terrific story, and there’s no way she’s going to drop it.
Fiona Sadler’s call has piqued her interest, rather than dampened it. She wonders if there’s more to this. She can’t call Jim, but there’s somebody else who might be able to give her the inside story. If there’s a lot more to this story than she first thought, she could act on her idea to develop it into something that could be published in a few parts. A state-of-the-nation piece on the racial situation in Bristol perhaps, anchored by a gripping personal story. Surely the editor would bite her own arm off for that.
She leaves a message on the voice mail of an officer she used to work with, giving the name that they’ve agreed on. It’s not her own. She wonders how long it will take for him to call her back.
While she waits for him to return her call—it doesn’t usually take long—she returns to the document on her laptop. It’s a work in progress, a report of the botched police shooting from yesterday, specifically an in-depth commentary from an ex-insider on how something like this could happen. When that’s written, she’s going to continue her work on the main story, of the boys, but also follow up on any other angles she can think of: the witness, Janet Pritchard, for one.
She brings up a search engine and looks her up. Emma thought she’d seemed familiar when they met, but didn’t put the pieces together until she’d done an Internet search and found the woman’s Facebook page.
There, deep down in the photographs, was the link: Ian Shawcross. He’s associated by a previous marriage with a fairly well-known Bristol crime family that Emma encountered when she was working her first ever case, right after joining CID. She thinks she must have met or seen a photograph of Ian at some point in the course of that investigation, though she doesn’t remember exactly when.
On her notepad she writes down his name beside that of Janet Pritchard, and circles them both.
Days pass before Fiona and Ed Sadler are able to talk to each other properly.
When the news comes that Noah’s body has been released for burial by the coroner, Ed says very carefully, not wanting to push his luck, “We could invite Abdi and his family to the funeral.”
“Yes,” Fiona says. “And we could ask Abdi to do a reading, but only if he wants to.”
Her words sound strange to both of them. They’re so reasonable. She’s unsure whether she means them or not.
When I wake up on the morning after we find Abdi Mahad, my alarm clock tells me that I’ve slept for a six-hour stretch. It’s the first time for as long as I can remember.
Sunday morning in the office is deadly quiet. Only a couple of us are in. Otherwise it’s like the Mary Celeste.
Some new evidence has arrived: Noah Sadler’s backpack, pulled from the canal yesterday afternoon. It’s in the evidence room, not yet fully dried out. It contains two large bottles of beer, a sodden pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a full set of kitchen weights, the type you’d use on old-fashioned scales.
The DC on duty and I are coming to our own conclusions about what that means when we get a call from Ed Sadler telling us about a suicide note that Noah left and, a little bit later, one from the hospital saying that Abdi Mahad is ready to talk, and that he’s in possession of a letter from Noah, too.
On the way to the hospital I think through the case. I don’t like loose ends, but I’m aware we have one in Janet Pritchard. I’m in agreement with Woodley that there’s probably more going on there than meets the eye. Jason Wright, the security guard, came in as arranged yesterday morning and gave a statement that varied significantly from Janet Pritchard’s. Apparently he asked if helping us out might make us look more leniently on his benefit cheating habit.
Between him and Pritchard I don’t know who’s telling the truth, but I will unpick it. I make a note to speak to Fraser about it first thing on Monday morning. With her permission, I plan to dig a little more deeply.
When I arrive at the hospital, I find Abdi in a small room that the nurses have cleared for us. He’s with Nur Mahad, who sits close to him and lays a reassuring hand on Abdi’s arm as we talk.
The boy looks drawn and tearful.
I sit down on a chair that’s set at a right angle to his. I want this conversation to feel informal.
“I didn’t know he meant to kill himself,” Abdi says. “I thought going out was just another crazy Noah idea, because he was always trying to prove himself. The cancer made him feel like a freak. It gave him a massive inferiority complex. I didn’t even know he was dying.”
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