There was also a picture of a group of men and boys watching a football game on TV. They were outside, in front of a big screen, the men sitting on plastic chairs and the boys filling the gaps between and in front of them. Somebody must have just scored a goal, because the men and boys were frozen in celebration, some with arms pumping the air, others with mouths open. Only one man wasn’t looking at the game but to the side, somewhere near the camera but not quite at it. He was sitting in a yellow plastic chair and his expression was really cold, even though his face was sweaty. He had no top lip, it looked like it was slashed open down the middle, and his teeth were growing through it at all crazy angles. He was scary.
Abdi looked at it with me.
“Come on, boys!” Mum said. “Time to go.”
I was ready. I felt weak. The photographs were stressful and my adrenaline and good feelings were ebbing away. Abdi didn’t seem to hear her. I tugged his arm.
“Come on.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the photo. I knew Horn of Africa means Somalia, and that’s where Abdi’s family is from, but I didn’t know what it was about this photo that was so interesting that it would put him in a trance.
“Abdi!”
He took out his phone and took a picture of the photograph.
“Okay,” he said once he’d checked it. He came with me, but he kept glancing at the photograph as he put his coat on, and he turned around to try to look at it one last time when we walked to the car.
“You’re very quiet, both of you,” Mum said as she drove us home.
“Tired,” I said, and that seemed to satisfy her. She put on the radio.
I didn’t know why Abdi was so quiet. It wasn’t like him. Maybe he was tired, too. I was happy to let him rest, because we had our plan for later.
I looked out of the window of the car as we drove home, and I wondered whether Dad had helped those people after he took photos of them.
Edward and Fiona Sadler’s house is very tall. On a Georgian square in Clifton Village where most of the buildings are divided into flats, they have a house to themselves. The exterior is exceptionally well-maintained. The Bath stone is clean and golden and the glass in the windows gleams. In the center of the square is a locked communal garden where lush greenery is contained by decorative black wrought-iron railings.
“Bloody hell,” Woodley mutters.
We make our way up the tiled path to the front door. In the beds along the path the daffodil plants that have already flowered have been neatly tied up and the shiny nubs of emerging tulips are pushing up through the soil. On either side of the front door, dark pink cyclamen bloom in large pots, and ivy spills from their edges.
I ring the bell. The chime is distant.
When Edward Sadler opens the door, he looks rough as hell. He’s a tall man, about my height and broad-shouldered.
The first thing he does after offering us a seat in a sitting room that’s plush and formal is break down, elbows on knees, head cupped in his hands, fingers slick with tears.
Woodley and I wait for him to get control of himself before I offer my condolences regarding Noah’s prognosis. It doesn’t sound any less stilted than when I said the same words to Fiona Sadler.
He nods an acknowledgment, but he’s got something else on his mind: “I tied one on last night. I keep thinking about how if I hadn’t, things might have been different.”
Dodging the self-pity—the “if only” lament of the victims or their loved ones on almost every case I’ve ever worked on; predictable, understandable, but not helpful—I ease him gently into the questioning.
“Can you tell us a little bit about Noah?”
“He’s very clever, like my wife.” His mouth twitches. It’s almost a smile. I suspect this is a joke he’s told before: self-deprecation as a tool to make other people relax around him. It dilutes his alpha-male presentation.
“We had Noah when we were very young. We hadn’t been together for very long at all. I was just starting out on my career and Fi was studying printmaking. She was—is—a very talented artist. We fell for each other hard, straightaway, and we started going out. I was beginning to do a fair bit of traveling, but she would come and join me when she could because she had all these long holidays. It was fun, really fun. Those were good times. We didn’t plan to get pregnant, but we were happy when it happened, once we got over the shock. We settled in Bristol so Fi could be near her parents, and we were lucky enough to have the money to buy a house, from her side of the family, so we settled down here happily enough. Fi set up a studio in the garden. Things were going well with my work, so I was starting to travel more and more, and she couldn’t come with me anymore, but she had help from her parents when I was away. We managed. We felt lucky. And Noah made it easy. He was a top baby. A really sunny little boy.”
I sense an until, and that their life together is defined by a before and an after. I don’t interrupt him. If a witness starts to talk, you let them, and you listen hard.
“We decided not to have more kids, because we’d started so young and we felt complete with Noah. By the time he was six or seven, and we were through those early years, life was great. We were happy, and frankly that felt like a triumph against the odds of having the unexpected pregnancy. We proved a lot of people wrong by sticking together! But then everything fell apart, right out of the blue. Fi’s parents died, within a few months of each other. She was totally destroyed for a long time, because she’d been so close to them. It took her ages to get back on her feet, and just when she had, the school contacted us to say that Noah had a nosebleed that they couldn’t get under control. That was the start of it. Numerous GP and hospital trips later, we had the official cancer diagnosis.”
“How old was Noah then?”
“He was eight.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He inclines his head, raises his hands and drops them again. I wonder how often he and his wife have had to acknowledge other people’s reactions over the years. It can’t be easy.
“Having cancer’s no life for a kid. By the time Noah was diagnosed, he was old enough to feel very deeply that it made him different from his friends. He was aware of all the things he was missing out on. He anticipated and dreaded his treatments. And now . . .”
His voice cracks again and his hands tighten into fists. He looks up at the ceiling, as if he wishes he could find answers there. Woodley and I wait in silence, giving him time.
“Now, just as we reached the place we’ve always dreaded—the end of it all, the thing we’ve tried to dodge for seven years—now this happens. But, you know, Noah’s tough. He’ll pull through. He has to. We have plans for the next couple of months.”
He crashes back into the sofa cushions and runs his hands through his hair. He looks from one of us to the other, and his eye contact is searching and desperate.
“Do you feel able to answer just a few more questions, Mr. Sadler? If not, we can speak at a later time.”
He exhales heavily and makes an effort to adjust his posture so he looks more attentive. From the hallway, a clock ticks dully.
“Let’s do it now. Anything that’ll help, though I’ve got to go back to the hospital soon. And please call me Ed. I can’t stand formality. It’s so pointless.”