I stand up. It’s time we left.
“Please phone me if you think of anything else that we should know about the boys or about Monday night. Feel free to contact me at any time. My mobile number’s on here.”
I lay my card down on the table, beside a messy stack of flyers advertising an exhibition by Ed Sadler.
He follows my gaze. “That’s where we were on Monday night. It was the opening. The boys came with us.”
I pick one up.
“I wish we’d never let Abdi come on Monday.” Fi Sadler’s not finished with the recriminations. Her voice rises in volume. “It should have been our family. Just us!”
“I’ll show you out, Detectives.” Ed Sadler walks to the door.
Outside the sharp air is welcome. I feel as if I can breathe.
On the doorstep, I take advantage of having Ed Sadler on his own.
“We spoke with Noah’s therapist at the hospital. He couldn’t tell us anything that Noah discussed with him, but he did say that he had been able to share details of some of the conversations he and Noah had with you. Is that right?”
“Not with me, with Fiona. You’ll have to ask her, but maybe not today.”
“The therapist mentioned one specific thing that Noah wanted to share with you, but not with your wife. Do you have any recollection of that?”
He hesitates. I feel bad about putting him through this now, but I don’t think the next few days are going to get any easier for this couple, so I want to take my chance.
“There was a thing he emailed me about, I can’t remember when, maybe last year. It was when I was abroad, I think. It seemed trivial to me, if I’m honest. I didn’t pay it too much attention. It was about an essay that Noah helped Abdi with.”
“In what way?”
The sound of Fiona Sadler calling him makes him glance over his shoulder.
“I’ll be there in a minute!” he shouts, and then to us, “Wait here.” He pounds up the stairs.
Woodley and I cool our heels on the doorstep for a few minutes before he reappears. He’s holding a couple of journals.
“These are Noah’s therapy notebooks. I think pretty much everything he discussed with the therapist is in here, but I warn you, they make pretty boring reading. And please don’t tell Fi I’ve given them to you. Noah didn’t want her to see them. I think he feared she would pore over them and wind herself up even more. She was bad enough when the therapist reported verbally. Noah and I would have built a bonfire and burnt them if we could, but the therapist insisted we keep them, so I’ve kept them hidden in my office at Noah’s request. He felt ashamed of them. Seems stupid now, to worry about small stuff like that.”
“We’ll be sure to return them.”
“I don’t care if I never see them again. It’s not what I want to remember about him.”
He glances over his shoulder in response to another call from Fiona. “Anyway, the thing Noah’s therapist told me, it’s in there somewhere. I wouldn’t put too much store in it, though. It’s just typical boy stuff. I got up to far worse at their age.”
“Thank you.”
As he closes the front door and returns to his wife, I wonder if their relationship will survive this or if they’ll tear each other apart.
Sofia knows there’s no way she can concentrate on her course today. She decides to visit the gallery. She wants to see Ed Sadler’s exhibition for herself, and look for the photograph that Abdi mentioned in the recording. She’s pretty sure neither Ed nor Fiona will be there, not under the circumstances, so she won’t have to face them.
She makes her way to Montpelier on the train. It’s only two stops. She could easily walk it, but she’s anxious about walking through unfamiliar areas in the city. Her hijab attracts more attention than she’d like. She feels safer on the train, especially in the aftermath of the rioting.
She gets a window seat and watches the familiar landscape slip past: council estates and a few lonely high-rises give way to rows and rows of Victorian terraces, some industrial sites, and community gardens that patchwork a steep hillside. Montpelier is home to rows of Georgian houses, many painted in pastel colors, others their original golden stone. Only about half of them are well cared for. On the others the stone looks weather-beaten and stained. Rogue weeds grow from gaps in slate rooftops and graffiti tags lurk in corners.
She walks to Cheltenham Road from Montpelier station and heads down the road toward Stokes Croft.
Sofia loves this area. It has an artsy vibe, cafés and street life, a mix of people.
The buildings beyond the railway arches on Cheltenham Road belong to the graffiti artists. Somebody sleeps on a cold stoop under a filthy sleeping bag, and a man with pinprick pupils paces the street, castigating everybody and nobody. Sofia crosses the road to avoid him, and keeps her head down to avoid a conversation with the sociable drunks gathered on a tiny triangular piece of grass that’s sandwiched between a road junction and the blind end of a redbrick building.
The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, proclaims a large painting on the wall. It’s not a no-go area, though. Hipster cafés and bars fill the gaps between strip clubs, charity shops, and restaurants serving food from every corner of the earth, and the shell of a multistory abandoned building looms behind the shop fronts, every single surface, seemingly impossibly, covered in graffiti. Behind it the Salvation Army is building a new headquarters. A crane looms, and cars are backed up behind temporary traffic lights.
A few hundred yards down the road, Sofia’s sense of unease intensifies when she catches sight of the gallery.
EDWARD SADLER: TRAVELS WITH REFUGEES has been smartly printed in white letters on the inside of the glass.
Sofia crosses the road. She barely checks for traffic.
She looks at a large photograph in the window. It’s of a boy who has a dead hammerhead shark slung over his shoulders.
When she enters the gallery, a girl stands up from behind a desk at the back of the room. She has long tresses of blond hair tied up in a way that looks designed to be untidy. She wears a leather skirt and a roll-neck top.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m just looking.”
“If you’re interested in buying, I have a price list and an explanation of the works written by the photographer. Not all of them are for sale. Enjoy! They’re very real.”
Sofia needs to take only a cursory glance around the room to experience an even tighter clutch of fear.
The images from the refugee camp speak to her instantly, evoking sensory memories: smells, sensations, noises, and voices from the camp all fight for her attention.