“Please don’t be. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Can I ask, do you know if there’s been any friction between the boys lately?”
“Not that I’m aware of, though Noah talks to me less these days. He doesn’t share everything like he used to. He’s fifteen, so I suppose it’s inevitable, no matter what we’ve been through together.”
She gestures at the space around us, and I think I get what she means: the four walls, the tacky, dated, wipe-clean hospital decor, the drugs, the equipment, the swift footfalls and professionally friendly chatter of the doctors and nurses. It’s the hospital as a machine, and one that she and her family have been cogs in for a very long time.
“Can I ask how the boys were during the evening? How they seemed to get on together?”
“Great, from what I saw, though I didn’t have my eye on them all night, because it was a party. I suppose that makes everything I’ve said up until now sound stupid, doesn’t it, but I can’t deny they seemed to have a good time. Noah’s coped far better than Ed or me since we heard his prognosis. What I will say, though, is that if they hatched a plan to sneak out together in advance, I can guarantee you that Abdi was responsible for that. Noah wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Do you have a relationship with Abdi’s family?”
“Ed tried, but really we only ever see the sister and she’s very shy or reserved or something. She always looks as if she can’t get away quickly enough. Abdi’s father drives a taxi, so he works all hours, and the mother doesn’t even speak English.”
“Would you be happy for us to take a look at Noah’s computer and any other devices he might have? It could help us to see what his communications have been recently.”
“Do you really need to?”
“It might help.”
“Then okay, I suppose. It feels like an invasion of his privacy, though, I will say that.”
“At this point it’s something we would only do if you’re happy about it.”
“It’s fine. Ed will be at the house for a couple of hours. You’ve only just missed him, he’s popped home to get changed and get some rest. You can collect the computer while he’s there if you want.”
I’ll certainly be heading over there to interview him. The computer will have to be collected separately, to preserve the chain of evidence. I want everything done by the book.
“I’d like to know if Noah’s ever spoken about Feeder Canal or visited the area he was found in.”
“I don’t think he knows it exists. His world is home, hospital, and school. That’s why I think them going there has to be Abdi’s doing.”
One of the nurses puts her head around the doors that lead into the ward. “Mrs. Sadler,” she says. Fiona Sadler’s head snaps around to face her. “The doctor’s ready to speak to you.”
“Please, go,” I say. “Thank you for your time.”
Her takeout cup rolls across the floor in her wake, small dribbles of coffee trailing it.
Woodley and I find the elevators and wait beside a wall of grubby plate glass that gives us a view of the city center. The sky is thick with rain-heavy clouds and the streets are busy. Seagulls hover against the dark gray horizon. The contrast with the artificial brightness and quiet of the intensive care unit is a relief.
“Some mixed messages, back there,” Woodley says. I can see his face partially reflected in the glass.
“She’s out of her mind with grief.”
“You would be, wouldn’t you?”
I nod. I watch as the people on the street below begin to put up umbrellas and rain splatters against the window like hail.
On the way down in the elevator, we’re joined by a man in scrubs with a thousand-yard stare, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter in his hand.
Sometimes it’s hard not to let other people’s misery seep into your own bones.
One thing I do know is that Noah Sadler’s situation will complicate the case. He’s not just any kid who’s gone out for larks or a bit of petty crime that’s gone terribly wrong. He’s a teenager who’s terminally ill. If nothing else, the cynic in me recognizes that this fact makes the case very newsworthy. The cancer automatically labels Noah Sadler a victim, and I want to make sure that doesn’t condemn his best friend without a fair examination of the evidence.
“We need Abdi Mahad to speak,” I say.
Discreetly, in the corner of the bus where she’s tucked herself to minimize contact with the other passengers, Sofia thinks about the papers relating to Hartisheik camp that she saw in Ed Sadler’s office, and wonders why they were out. It’s a coincidence that’s hard to ignore. Abdi’s interest in their family’s life before he was born has been growing recently, so she wonders if he was questioning Mr. Sadler, asking things that he might not want to ask at home for fear of upsetting her or their parents.
To distract herself, she gets the iPad out of Abdi’s bag and clicks the home button.
It asks for a password. Sofia takes a gamble. She knows the password for the school laptop that Abdi has borrowed in the past is Medes followed by the academic year, so she tries that. It opens, but the battery is so dead that it won’t do anything else. She rummages in Abdi’s bag and finds a cable. She’ll charge it when she gets home.
She pulls out the papers that she scooped up and flicks through them. It’s hard to look at them properly on the bus, though, because they slip around on her knees.
She admires her brother’s perfect cursive handwriting, but from what she can see, the papers tell her nothing interesting. It’s just school stuff, a chemistry project so far as she can tell. She stuffs them back into the bag.
She looks out the window of the bus and thinks about the life she has in Bristol. She doesn’t usually dwell on her circumstances, preferring to get on with her studies and her life, but the last twenty-four hours has thrown things into focus.
Sofia’s generally a happy person. She knows that her family have none of the material advantages that a family like the Sadlers have, but she doesn’t mind, because she feels loved, and she remembers what true hardship felt like.
She understands why some of her peers feel conflicted about their immigrant identity—neither fully British nor fully Somali, but somewhere in between—but Sofia’s hard work at school and university has rewarded her richly, and she draws huge amounts of focus and strength from that. On a good day, she creates her identity from these positives. On a bad day, she lets her fear of being a target of hatred mute her actions and tear at the edges of her confidence, and this is a bad day. She wonders if she’s been complacent. Perhaps she should have listened to her fears more, instead of letting others reassure her. Perhaps it’s not possible to just get your head down and start a new life here in the way she and her family thought it was. Perhaps even if you do everything right, it can all go horribly wrong.