Odd Child Out Page 13

  “I’ll say it again: There’s always trouble in paradise.”

  “Let’s contact the teacher. I want to know if this was a one-off incident or a habit for Abdi.”

  “You’d have thought somebody would have mentioned it when we were there.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’m not surprised, though. Nobody’s perfect, are they?” Woodley says.

  “You mean Abdi, or the school?”

  “I meant Abdi, but it could apply to both. Anyway, I was coming to tell you I’ve just got off the phone with Noah’s therapist. He can see us in half an hour if we can make it.”

  “We can make it.”

  We might be on a fool’s errand on this occasion, but I still get a kick out of grabbing my jacket off the back of my chair and heading out for an interview at short notice. It’s the adrenaline, and the hope that if you keep plugging away and talking to people, you will uncover that crucial bit of information that can break a case open.

  I never want to become that detective who’s haunted by a case that he couldn’t solve. I’ve met one or two older officers who’ve found it impossible to let go of a sense of failure when that happens. Some of them stay obsessed even after they retire.

  We find the therapist in a ground-floor room in which the lower part of the window is frosted for privacy, but the view through the top is of the entrance to a busy ambulance bay. The decor is small-child-friendly, which is to say it’s hard on the eyes unless you love primary colors. It’s a far cry from Dr. Manelli’s muted nest. I wonder how Noah felt about being in that space once he became a teenager.

  We sit on low-slung chairs, all knees and ankles.

  The therapist is a middle-aged man with a hipster beard and shaggy hair. He wears an open-neck shirt and black chinos. His identity badge is tucked into his shirt pocket. He swings his foot continually in a way that I find irritating.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” he says. “You’re aware of the confidentiality code that I have to work within?”

  “I’m aware of it, but Noah Sadler is fighting for his life and we need information.”

  “I was very sorry to hear that.”

  “What I’m hoping you can do to help me is to provide some insight into Noah’s friendship with a boy called Abdi Mahad. They were together when the accident took place.”

  “You know I can’t share Noah’s confidences, not unless I have reason to believe that I need to in order to protect him from serious harm.”

  “How much more harm do you want him to be in?”

  “That’s a misinterpretation of the clause, and you know it.”

  He’s steely, but I’m not surprised because I’m well aware of the confidentiality rules. I pored over them when Dr. Manelli first shared them with me, at the start of my own course of therapy.

  “I’m wondering why you thought it was appropriate to invite us to meet you in the middle of an urgent investigation, where a boy’s life is at stake, when you’re not willing to share information with us?”

  I’m not being fair, but I want to see if it’s possible to rattle him. Woodley plays good cop.

  “Cases like these are extremely sensitive, we’re very aware of that. All we’re trying to do is to minimize the distress that Noah and his family have to go through. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “I can understand that and sympathize with it, but I can’t break the confidentiality code.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, hugging himself. It’s Body Language 101. He’s not going to spill the goods.

  There’s a loophole I’m aware of, though, when the client being treated is a minor. It’s amazing how much you can research when you’re up most of the night.

  “Do you share information with Noah’s parents?”

  “I share a limited amount of information, things we pre-agreed with Noah when he first began his therapy.”

  “What sort of things do you share?”

  “Detective, how many ways do you want me to say it? I can’t discuss the details of my client’s treatment.”

  “But we could ask his parents, because they’re not bound by confidentiality.”

  “You could.”

  “Do you usually share with both parents, or just one of them?”

  I think I know the answer to this already, and I’m right.

  “It tends to be his mother.”

  “Thank you.” I’m not surprised to hear that, but neither am I encouraged, because I suspect she’s more protective of Noah than her husband.

  “Except that there was one matter that Noah allowed me to share with his father and asked me not to mention to his mother.”

  He uncrosses his arms and turns a copper bracelet around his wrist.

  “Which was?”

  “Nice try, Detective. That’s all you’re getting.”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  As we drive back to HQ, the daylight is beginning to leach away. Headlights snap on around us and the dash in our pool car glows the kind of neon green that makes your eyeballs ache. Woodley says, “Nicely played, boss.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But if you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t we just approach his parents and question them about it directly?”

  “In the state they’re in? No. This is better. Now we know who and what to ask.”

  I walked as fast as I could through Queen Square and then kept going a bit randomly, because I wasn’t sure where I was. I passed shops from which mannequins looked blankly at me, and big office buildings. I was trying to find another place on the water, but I must have taken a wrong turn.

  Abdi followed. He stayed a little distance behind me. I wished he would catch up and walk with me properly, but he didn’t. I tried not to check over my shoulder too many times. I used reflections from shop windows to see where he was.

  I was thinking hard as I walked, trying to work out what to do next. My breath was getting short.

  We finally reached the waterside again, and there was another bridge, but the road went across it, so it was far too busy. A police cruiser passed and slowed down beside us, but didn’t stop. I noticed Abdi melted into the shadows when it did that.

  I got lost again, once I’d crossed the bridge, and I was starting to seriously flag by the time we reached Temple Meads station, but at least I recognized it. Beside it, I saw the entrance to a dark street that disappeared between some old railway buildings. No cars were turning down there.

  I cut down it. Abdi followed. I slowed my pace because it was a bit scary, and he couldn’t help but catch up with me a bit.

  I heard something splashing before I saw the canal. There was movement on the water surface, but I couldn’t see what it was. As I walked along the canal path, the noise of the city center faded.

  Abdi caught up with me when I reached a big overpass. We stood underneath it and stared at the water. Occasionally a car shot past overhead, but otherwise there was a feeling of stillness. Finally.

  I sat down on the grass. Damp soaked through my trousers straightaway, but I was too tired to care.

  Abdi stood beside me, his arms wrapped around his body.

  “Noah,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Shall we have our drink here?” I started to shrug the backpack off.

  “It’s freezing. Are you crazy?”

  I’m going to have to tell him about my prognosis, I thought. The urge to share was strong. It’s not what I wanted, because the night wouldn’t end up how I wanted it, but I figured it might salvage things a bit, and it would be better than arguing. I didn’t have the guts to just say it outright, though. Instead I said, “Do you ever think about death?”

  He exhaled crossly. “Why?”

  “Just, do you?”

  He sat down beside me, finally. “You’re mad.”

  He rubbed his eyes. He looked pretty rough himself.

  “Are you tired?” I asked him.

  “Yes, but probably not as tired as yo
u. You don’t look or sound good.”

  I was shivering. We both were.

  “We should walk back to the station and get help,” he said.

  I ignored that and asked my question again. “Do you ever think about death?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think about a thing we talked about in philosophy class. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was looking at the stars and the moon. Big things that are going to carry on anyway, even if we’re not here.”

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 11: Experience something that puts your life into perspective.

  Abdi was quiet for a few moments after I said that. He often reflects on things before he speaks. I looked at the pinprick stars so high above us, and noticed that a shred of cloud was covering up part of the moon.

  When he finally replied, Abdi said something I wasn’t expecting at all: “Did you ever find out something that made you think you’d be better off if you were dead?”

  “What do you mean?” For a second I panicked and thought he’d guessed about my prognosis before I’d had a chance to tell him.

  He bit his lip. His eyes were locked onto the water in front of us.

  “It’s the thing I was thinking about.”

  “Do you think about what it would be like to actually die?” I hardly dared to ask.

  “In philosophy lessons, while you were in the hospital last week,” he said, “we learned about a Greek philosopher called Epicurus. He said that fear of dying is the biggest fear we have in life, and that’s why we can’t be happy.”

  “Huh.” I didn’t really know what to say about that.

  “Yeah. His solution to that is to say that death is the end of physical feelings, so it’s impossible for it to be physically painful, and death is also the end of consciousness, so it also can’t be emotionally painful.”

  “So we shouldn’t be frightened of it.”

  “Exactly.”

  He tore up little bits of grass and threw them down the bank. They landed invisibly.

  I had a question: “But how does he know that death is the end of those things?”

  “Because he believed that our souls are made of atoms that are spread through our body, and they dissolve when we die.”

  “Dissolve?”

  “Yeah. It’s a cool idea.”

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 12: Be cremated. I can’t stand the thought of being buried. I want to be turned into smoke and air so I can be everywhere all at once.

  I was feeling quite a lot of discomfort in my abdomen, in the area where my spleen is. Dr. Sasha warned me about that. I stood up, to try to ease it, and Abdi helped me. I had to lean on him quite heavily.

  “Let’s go home,” he said. “Please.”

  I was very tempted, but as I straightened up, I saw, a little way up the canal, on the other side of the water, a very cool sight: heaps of twisted metal stacked up in piles that looked like pyramids, and the bodies of loads of trashed cars. They all glittered with frost. I pointed it out to Abdi.

  “Can we do one last thing? Go over there and sit together and drink our drinks.”

  It looked like the perfect place to end the night.

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I knew this was the right thing to do. I adjusted the backpack, feeling the straps bite hard into my shoulders, and set off along the towpath.

  Abdi called after me. “Noah!” he said. “Enough! We can drink the bloody drinks on the way home.”

  I ignored him. I kept going along the path and around the side of a large warehouse.

  “Don’t you walk away!” Abdi shouted. His voice sounded distant and echoey. “Don’t keep doing this!”

  Ahead of me, there was a bridge. It had high metal edges that were peeling and rusty.

  “Noah! Come on!”

  My lungs were tight and the pain in my abdomen was getting more intense. As I started to cross the bridge, I kicked a can by mistake and its loud rattle startled a bird somewhere above me on a warehouse ledge. It flew so low past me that I put up my arms to protect myself.

  I paused to catch my breath. I thought I heard Abdi’s footsteps behind me, but I wasn’t certain. He would follow me, though, I knew he would in the end. He never let me down. You can’t do that when you’re healthy and your friend isn’t. It’s not fair.

  The water running underneath the bridge looked like black treacle.

  Voices bring me back to my hospital room. Dad’s talking to somebody.

  “He hasn’t always been unwell.”

  “When did he get ill?”

  “He was seven when we first noticed symptoms, eight at diagnosis.”

  “I’m so sorry. That’s tragic. And he’s been in treatment since then?”

  “More or less. I never remember the precise sequence of events. I have to travel for work a lot, so I’m not always here. My wife has been by his side constantly.”

  “Will she be here later?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure she’ll be comfortable with this conversation.”

  “If it’s easier, I could meet you somewhere later?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t normally dream of invading your privacy like this, but it’s a fact that sometimes you need press attention to get the police to take a case seriously.”

  “I’m not unaware of that.”

  “I believe Noah has been the victim of a crime.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “I’m sorry. This is very painful for you. I’ll go. Here’s my card. That’s me, Emma Zhang. Please call me if you want to talk. Anytime.”

  A chair squeaks. She’s standing. But then a sob. It’s Dad.

  Silence. I can sense her indecision. Comfort the big man or tiptoe away?

  “Mr. Sadler?”

  “Please, go.”

  She does.

  Later, though I don’t know whether it’s a minute or an hour or a day later, I hear the click-crunch of a phone camera shutter. Twice.

  I don’t know who’s in the room with me.

  I appreciate the orderly moments in my life; it’s why I like my work. I can follow the processes of investigation in order to succeed. It’s the emotional extremes that bother me. If I can, I avoid those like a cat skirting a sprinkler. The problem is that that’s not always possible.

  I head into Fraser’s office to update her.

  “How’s it going, Jim?”

  She seems more tense than usual, but it’s hard to read why.

  “We’re making progress.”

  “How’s Woodley doing?”

  “It would have been nice if you’d told me that we were both walking wounded.”

  I shouldn’t snap at a senior officer, especially when I’m only two days back on the job, but I’m pissed off that I’m on the D team. She doesn’t flinch.

  “I haven’t elucidated DC Woodley on the finer points of your leave of absence, and I don’t think you need to know every detail about him, either. A sort of quid pro quo, if you like, for the ‘walking wounded.’” She stares me down. “Is that okay with you, DI Clemo?”

  “Sorry, boss.” I strolled right into that bollocking.

  “You’ve been in and out like a yo-yo, so please tell me there’s some good news.”

  “To be honest, so far it’s messy. Every time we get a hint that things might have played out in one way, we learn something different from somebody else, but I’ve got a few lines of investigation going. We’re getting there.”

  “Uh-huh. Did it occur to you to put some more serious pressure on this lad who won’t talk?”

  “I thought you wanted kid gloves.”

  “I want you to work carefully, but unless I’m mistaken, you have a firm witness who alleges that there was some funny business going on in the scrapyard.”

  “I don’t think her account is very firm.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t witness the mo
ment the lad fell into the water. That’s a problem for me.”

  “That’s not what she’s been telling the papers.”

  “What?”

  She has a copy of the Bristol Echo facedown on her desk. She flips it over and pushes it toward me.

  The front page is almost fully occupied with a single photograph. It shows a boy in a hospital bed. I know instantly that it’s Noah Sadler. It looks like a candid shot, taken by somebody standing a few feet away. It’s impossible to see his face, but it’s unmistakably the scene I witnessed when we were at his bedside.

  The headline screams below it:

  TERROR IN OUR CITY!

  Noah Sadler isn’t named, but the caption underneath the photograph states: A fifteen-year-old boy fights for his life at Bristol Children’s Hospital after a suspected racially motivated attack in the city center.

  The brief bit of text tells a breathy, highly speculative story about Noah’s fall into the canal. There’s a statement from our witness: “I was terrified. I saw the perpetrator hunt down the boy and push him in the canal and I thought he was going to turn on me next.”

  The rest is just as damaging:

  Sources indicate that police have identified the suspect but haven’t questioned or arrested him. This journalist wonders if they’re afraid to do so just days after the White Nation march. Could the police be putting residents of this city at risk in order to avoid upsetting an ethnic community? Are we victims of reverse prejudice?

  Now I understand why Fraser’s behaving like a pit bull.

  She knows every expletive it’s possible to know if you grew up on a Glasgow council estate in the seventies, and I don’t think she spares me a single one as she delivers a tirade about the morals of both the witness and the press.

  “And do you see who wrote it?” she asks. The article’s creasing where she’s stabbing it with her finger. I don’t even need to look at it to know that the author is almost certainly Emma Zhang, once again.

  Fraser doesn’t wait for me to reply before launching into another tirade. “How could she do this? If I had a poor opinion of that woman before, it’s just reached depths so unbelievably low that even Dante would struggle to imagine them. How dare she?”

  I take the paper from her as she’s venting, and read the article. Emma’s known exactly which buttons to press. Of course she has.