Odd Child Out Read online

He shook the fence again, violently this time, but I kept going, finding footholds, until I was close enough to the ground to jump down into the scrapyard.

  Abdi started to climb. He was much faster than me. I ran across the yard and he caught up with me right at the edge of the canal.

  Close up, the surface of the water looked like silk. It reminded me of a dark, slippery scarf that my mum sometimes wears. The air was so cold that it made time seem frozen, and next to the massive, still pile of metal, the movement of the water made the canal look like a passage to somewhere else.

  Abdi and I stood facing each other beside the water, both of us out of breath. The pain in my abdomen had become very sharp. Abdi’s arms hung by his sides, but his fists were clenched.

  “That’s enough,” he says. “It’s enough. We need to go.”

  “Abdi,” I said, “please.” It was hard to get the words out, because I was so out of breath. I wanted him to feel elated, just like I did. “Please, just let me do this, just this one thing.”

  “Seriously, have you lost your mind? I am so sick of you and your fucking family. Everything revolves around you; you poke your noses into other people’s lives and you don’t care about the consequences so long as you get what you want. Your dad’s photos made me sick, do you understand, they’re sick!”

  “Don’t talk about my dad like that!”

  I loved and hated the taste of all of these cruel words on my tongue and in my ears, I must admit. It felt honest but frightening, too. It felt very real.

  “Look at the stars, Abdi, and the moon and the frost. It’s amazing here. Let’s have our drinks now. Please.”

  “No.” He was shaking. “I won’t.”

  When he said that, I was so angry everything seemed to get a kind of momentum that was exhilarating and sickening all at once. I shoved him in the chest, away from the water, hard enough to make him stumble backward.

  “My time’s nearly up. Gone. I’m going to be dead! Do you understand? I was only trying to do something nice together before I die, but you want to wreck it.”

  I gave him another shove, and again he stumbled backward.

  “How will you feel when I’m gone?” I said to him.

  He came very close to me. His eyes were black, shiny buttons in the darkness.

  “Well, my time’s up, too,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” That wasn’t what I expected to hear. “Stop playing games.”

  “I’m not playing games.”

  On the other side of the scrapyard gates I heard a car rolling to a stop. Headlights passed over us, then went off. A car door slammed shut, and this noise was followed by the sound of a metal door rolling open.

  Abdi didn’t react. He was looking at me in a funny way. Everything went quiet again.

  “Who would you have if it wasn’t for me?” The pain in my side goaded me on, made me crazy, and the urge to be cruel felt unstoppable as the pain pinched harder.

  “Who would I have?”

  “You’d have nobody.”

  “I’d rather have nobody than be somebody’s puppet. Come on! Let’s go. I’ll help you back over the fence.”

  It was time to punish him. For what he was saying and for the tests he had failed, including this one: the only one that truly mattered.

  “You’re pathetic,” I told him. “Nobody likes you, nobody else wanted to be your friend. You never fitted in at school without me. People feel sorry for you and for your family.”

  That did it. He shoved me, just as I’d shoved him, but harder.

  My feet disappeared from beneath me; there was no hope of staying upright on the frost-shiny ground. Instinctively, I struggled to keep my balance, and as I did, there was a confusion of noise: a man’s voice, and a dog barking.

  Then it happened. At first it felt triumphant as I fell through the darkness toward the water. It took me in with a slap, sucking me down in a way that I knew there was no coming back from. It pressed against every part of me, accepting me, keeping me.

  The weight of my backpack dragged me down deep very fast. It was on so tight.

  From my hospital bed, I remember very clearly that I struggled to get the backpack off. It was instinct that made me do it. Instinct, and the terrible fear of dying that arrived right at the last minute and felt bigger than anything else. Above me, the last thing I saw was Abdi’s shifting silhouette, and I wondered if he would try to help me, but of course he couldn’t swim.

  The feeling of panic had become very intense, and my lungs felt as if they were on fire, but the memory stops there. As I got the backpack off, my head hit something hard and sharp. Blackness exploded like spilled ink across a page.

  I want to tell Mum and Dad about all of this. I can hear their voices around me in the hospital, and I want to tell them I’m sorry and I made a very big mistake, because of course I know now that I should have spent my last moments with them.

  I want the rising heat to stop, but it feels as if it’s melting me.

  I want to see my parents one more time. I desperately want that. It’s all I want.

  The sounds of people moving around my hospital bed are becoming more and more distant, but they’re increasingly frantic. I sense that very clearly, and that’s how I know I’m going now, that it’s time. The atoms of my soul are fading, dissolving, disappearing.

  I hear my father’s moan, low and terrible, but it’s my mother’s voice that pierces through the others loudest, and clearest. “Noah!” she shrieks over and over again.

  My heart burns hotter than the rest of me because I know I got it wrong in the end.

  This isn’t how I wanted it to be for any of us.

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 13: Be in control when the end comes.

  Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Mum.

  I say it in my head.

  I hope they can hear me.

  It’s the best I can do.

  When I get home it’s late, and I find Becky tucked under a blanket, watching TV.

  “How are you?” I ask. She looks tired but comfortable. The color of the marks on her face has deepened and spread, showing the extent of the damage that was inflicted. There’s a packet of painkillers on the floor beside her.

  She pulls the blanket up to her chin. “I know I look much worse, but I feel better. How about you?”

  Her voice croaks as if she’s hardly spoken all day.

  “I’ve got a couple of calls to catch up on, then I’ll join you. Can I get you anything?”

  She shakes her head.

  A few messages have backed up on my phone during the ride back. The first is from Ed Sadler:

  “Hi, Detective Inspector, it’s Edward Sadler. Re the conversation with Abdi, I do recall chatting with him, but it was very late, and as you know, I’d had quite a few drinks. We might have talked about Hartisheik Camp but I can’t remember the detail, I’m afraid. I certainly wasn’t aware he was recording the conversation. But he’s a curious boy, so perhaps he was following up on things that he wanted to know after seeing the exhibition. I’m at the hospital now for a few hours, but you can try me on my mobile if you want to discuss it further.”

  I mull over that and park it on my to-do list for the following day. It’s very late to be disturbing him at the hospital, and I’d like to see him face-to-face anyhow, to follow up on what the therapist told us.

  I call Sofia Mahad just to double check what she said the recording contained. She insists it was on the iPad and describes it once again in detail.

  I click on to my second voice mail after that, and in timing that would be comic if it wasn’t so annoying, it’s from one of our tech team. He apologizes for not finding the audio recording this morning and tells me they’ve emailed it across.

  I listen to it immediately. It’s exactly as Sofia Mahad described it, and I think worth having a chat with Ed Sadler about. I’m also wondering whether the message was deleted on purpose or whether it could have been a mistake.

  The remaining message is fr
om Woodley. He’s made appointments for us to speak to Abdi and Noah’s friend Imran at the school tomorrow. Good news.

  I get changed out of my work clothes into some sweats and a T-shirt, and when I’m done, Becky shifts to make a space for me on the end of the sofa.

  “Did you eat?” I ask.

  Her hand appears from under the blanket, a chocolate bar wrapper clutched in her fingers.

  “I found it in the cupboard,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  It’s a cheeky question because she’s holding a Mars bar wrapper. It was my favorite chocolate bar when we were kids. I didn’t get to have one often, but when I did, I guarded it fiercely and ate it in little bits, rationing it to make it last as long as possible. She used to tease me about it.

  “You don’t change much, then,” she says.

  “Nor do you! You know I have powers of arrest for stealing, don’t you?”

  She laughs, though it makes her wince a little. Even so, it’s a sight that warms me. I haven’t thought about that stuff for so long, and it’s nice to know that we can have a laugh. The relationship I might have had with my sister was one of the more depressing casualties of our father’s bullying.

  “Do you want to eat some proper food?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Some takeout menus.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s on me.”

  I order generously, and when the food arrives, we eat it from plates balanced on our knees in front of the TV. It reminds me of how we used to watch the box on weekend afternoons when we were kids. I’ll admit it feels a long time since I’ve had company here in the evening, and I’ve missed it.

  Emma and I used to sit here drinking wine and talking. I remember massaging her stockinged feet when we lay together on the sofa after a long day at work. I remember where that led. I know what I told Fraser, but the truth is that I still miss Emma, every single day.

  Becky prods me with her foot. “Thousand-yard stare,” she says.

  “Sorry. Just thinking about work.” There are some things I’m not ready to share with her yet. “I’ve got a tricky case on the go.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  I give her some details.

  “Surely they were out drinking or doing drugs?” she says. “They must have been. It sounds like a night out gone wrong.”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did. I’ve got a feeling it might be more complicated than that.”

  “What will happen to the Somali boy if he keeps refusing to talk?”

  “We would have to decide whether there’s enough evidence to bring charges of some sort against him.”

  “What a nightmare.”

  On the TV a drone camera soars over a desert where antelope are migrating in hordes, a swarm of living creatures against a hostile backdrop. The scene is both beautiful and harsh.

  “I don’t want to pry,” I say carefully, “but would you like to tell me what happened?”

  Instantly, she looks guarded. I’m about to back down and apologize for asking because I can see that I shouldn’t have, that I’ve pushed her too soon, when she says, “What will you do if I tell you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last time I looked, you were a police officer.”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “Is that all?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  She chooses her next words carefully.

  “I’ve been in a relationship that hasn’t always been . . . healthy. But it’s over now.”

  The abuse is all there in the subtext and the understatement, in her expression, and in the way her fingers flutter near the bruising that I can’t see but know is on her neck. I’m not surprised, and I’m pleased she’s being honest with me, but it’s still shocking to hear it from her.

  “Are you sure? Sometimes abusive men find it hard to . . .”

  “Jim! I don’t need you to babysit me. I need a place to stay.”

  “Okay!”

  I know when to back off. Telling me what happened is progress. I clear away the debris from our meal and pour us both some whiskey.

  “Constitutional,” I say when I hand her a glass.

  Becky takes the drink and watches me with a level gaze, the blanket still pulled up under her chin, like a barricade between us. We sit in silence until she says, “This is a nice flat, little brother.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We made very different choices in life, didn’t we?”

  “Becky . . .”

  “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. You were too young to stop him.”

  I swallow some whiskey. The reference to our father turns it into a mouthful of tacks. She goes to bed soon afterward, the blanket wrapped around her as she walks out of the room, the end of it trailing in her wake.

  The long day I’ve had and the whiskey both help me get off to sleep unexpectedly quickly, in spite of the crappy springs on my sofa, but there’s no escaping the insomnia. I wake up long before dawn to find that the dark hours have been patiently waiting to wrap tendrils of anxiety around me.

  I throw open the sash window and clamber out onto the parapet outside. I know it’s not recommended to start your day with a cigarette, but I’m so short on vices that I excuse myself the odd smoke. A cigarette can be good company when the texture of your mind turns rough and dark, and when the paths through it feel labyrinthine.

  The stone parapet is cold against my back and the treetops look etched against the streetlights, motionless under the low clouds that capture the sickly tones of the city’s night glow and reflect them back down to street level. Opposite, Cabot Tower is illuminated, and the red light flashing on the spire is hypnotic.

  I relish the thump of the smoke in my lungs. As I exhale, the smoke hazes the view and dims the lights momentarily. From the street below I hear drunken shouting that passes by soon enough, on its way to rouse some other unfortunate from their dreams.

  I sit there for a long time, thinking.

  I think about the lowlife who photographed Noah Sadler in his hospital bed and the editor who thought it was a good idea to publish that photograph on the front page of the paper.

  I think about Emma, who wrote such an inflammatory article, stoking the embers of racial tension in our city and putting our case under scrutiny. And in the safety of the darkness and my solitude, I allow myself, fleetingly, to admit that there’s a stubborn part of me that still has feelings for her.

  I think about my sister, how my job is to help people like her, but I don’t know if she’s going to let me.

  I think about the witness who thought it was okay to spill all to a journalist and embellish the story she told us. I should have spent more time with her, seen her a second time to get her onside. I wonder whether I should have worked harder when I interviewed her, tried to get more out of her.

  I ask myself if I’ve lost something while I’ve been away. I wonder if I’ve hit this case stuck in second gear when I should have been in fifth. Did I lose my edge during all the time I spent in therapy?

  I don’t know.

  What I do know is that in spite of everything I still feel fiercely grateful to be back in the game. I’m going to continue this investigation as carefully as I can, and I will be on my game. The case needs to be put to bed swiftly, and on the QT, just like Fraser wanted.

  My phone rings as I stub out the last cigarette in my pack.

  It’s Fraser. It’s five A.M. My blood runs cold.

  “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  She sounds only partly with it herself, sleep still lurking in the deeper pockets of her voice.

  “What’s happened?” Something must have.

  “Noah Sadler died an hour ago. He developed an infection yesterday.”

  I experience vertigo for the first time in my life: a slow lurching of the cityscape around me, the nauseating certainty that I’m going to fall.

  �
��They said he was stable” is all I manage to say, though my mind is racing to process the news, thinking first of Noah’s parents, and then how this investigation has just gotten a whole lot more serious for everybody involved in it.

  “See you at the office ASAP,” she says.

  I hit the streets on my bike at a speed that’s probably not recommended. I don’t bother reminding myself to be careful when rain begins to slick the roads.

  DAY 3

  At seven in the morning, the buzzer in Abdi Mahad’s family’s flat rings long and hard before fading, just as it did the first time the police visited them.

  Nur is already out, driving around the streets of Easton and farther, to see if he can spot Abdi. He slows beside every darkened doorway. He leaves the car to walk the patches of wasteland beneath concrete pillars supporting raised sections of the motorway, and stares into the dampest, darkest corners underneath the railway arches. The night shifts, fear for Abdi, and his guilt about his carelessness with the newspaper all conspire to make him feel dizzy with exhaustion.

  The Mahads have decided to try to look for Abdi themselves before letting the police know he has vanished. They’re afraid that his disappearance will make it look as if he’s guilty of something.

  Sofia’s contacted everybody she can think of to ask if they’ve seen her brother, but nobody’s replied yet. It’s too early.

  Sofia answers the intercom, but not before she and her mother have exchanged fearful glances.

  “It’s Detective Inspector Jim Clemo and Detective Constable Woodley. May we come up and speak to you?”

  She buzzes them in.

  Clemo’s brought a translator with them this time: a Somali woman who introduces herself as Ifrah Adan Faruur and says she usually translates for the social work service. She looks as if she’s been dragged out of bed in a hurry, which she has.

  Sofia texts her father that he needs to come home, that the police are at the flat.

  Maryam offers no hospitality. She eyes Ifrah suspiciously even though the woman smiles at her. She remembers the neighbors who informed on her father when she was a child. She knows that other Somalis can be both friends and foes, even this far from their homeland.