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.
They sit. Sofia keeps her eyes on Clemo, waiting for him to speak. She notices everything about him: the hazel eyes that are kind but also calculating, the dark smudges beneath them, the way his mouth seems sticky this morning. When he clears his throat, the sound of it gets under her skin.
“Is your father here?” Clemo asks her.
“He’s out.”
The translator repeats everything in Somali for Maryam’s benefit.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Soon.”
“Has Abdi spoken to you about what happened yet?”
Sofia shakes her head and tries to keep her breathing under control. She knows she should tell Clemo right away that Abdi’s gone, but she’s terrified he’ll be angry that they didn’t phone the police when they first discovered it.
Maryam hasn’t said a word.
Clemo leans forward. He’s much more tense than last time they came.
“I’m very sorry to tell you that Noah Sadler died a few hours ago in hospital.”
The translator repeats his words in Somali.
Sofia and Maryam both experience an intense moment of shock. Sofia retches and runs to the bathroom. She isn’t sick, but she feels dizzy and clammy. For a few minutes she stands with her back against the bathroom wall and tries to breathe normally.
When she returns to the room, she sits beside her mother and their fingers link as tightly as a dovetail joint. Sofia weeps softly, but Maryam remains in control. Her emotions burn as fiercely as Sofia’s, but she learned long ago to keep them packed away deep inside her.
The translator puts a hand out as if to comfort the women, but withdraws it when neither of them reacts.
“I appreciate that is going to be very difficult news for Abdi and for you, especially because it changes the nature of our investigation.”
Clemo glances from Sofia to Maryam as the translator speaks. Neither of them replies. He looks at the translator. She shrugs.
“I have another question for you, if I may?” He doesn’t wait for permission to ask it. “We have now found the audio recording on the iPad we collected from you, but it had been deleted, so it took a bit of tracking down. Do you know how that could have happened?”
“I didn’t delete it,” Sofia says. When the interpreter has translated, Maryam shakes her head, as if confused by this.
“Perhaps it got deleted by mistake,” Sofia suggests.
She glances at her mother, wondering if Maryam could have done that somehow.
Clemo makes a note and moves on.