“Bloody hell, that was quick. How? Have you seen him before?”
“No, I haven’t, so I didn’t recognize him straightaway, nor did the central database throw anything up. I got a break when I looked at the IND database—that’s Immigration and Nationality Directorate. It’s complicated getting access, and I won’t bore you with specifics, but I was able to search names and faces of immigrants whose applications for asylum have failed and who have subsequently disappeared. That’s where I found him. I’m about to email you everything we know about this man, but briefly, he’s extremely dangerous. He had his first asylum application turned down because it was felt that he was exaggerating the threat to himself, so he appealed, and the appeal will be turned down because they’ve been tipped off that he was very likely a perpetrator of war crimes in Somalia himself. Not a victim, as he claimed. However, that’s a moot point at this stage, because since then he’s disappeared, and on top of that, he’s become a person of interest to police because of possible involvement in people trafficking here, using illegal immigrants as slave labor. That could explain why he was at the Welcome Center.”
“Recruiting?”
“Yes. Because our lovely government has a policy of destitution for refugees who are waiting for applications or appeals to be decided, there are a lot of extremely vulnerable people to be found in places like that. It could be very fertile ground for somebody like him.”
“I really appreciate this, Jamie.”
“One more thing: Maxamud Abshir Garaar has been associated with another man involved in people trafficking. He’s called Rob Summers. He’s already on our radar here in Bristol because of a fairly recent disturbance at a property in Montpelier. We think there’s a possibility that one or both men might be there. There’s more detail in the email I’m sending.”
Once the email’s landed in my inbox, I forward it to Fraser and then call her to request permission to set up surveillance on the house in Montpelier. If we can find Maxamud Garaar there, it’s possible we might find Abdi Mahad, and bag a wanted man as a bonus.
My adrenaline’s pumping. I’m so wired I don’t even want to sit down. The chances of my sleeping are zero. I’d try to wangle my way onto the surveillance team if I thought Fraser would let me, but I know she won’t.
My hand aches from the punch I threw. My anger levels this evening have been high, and my ability to control my actions definitely patchy. It’s exactly the moment when I should call Dr. Manelli. I start to dial her number, and a recording of her voice asks me to leave a message before I realize that I don’t want to speak to her, so I don’t have to. I hang up.
I find half a pack of cigarettes in the box that lives on my bookshelves, between a volume of Yeats poetry and a complete set of James Lee Burke novels. I throw open the window. A sharp wind gusts in, carrying bitterly cold rain that spatters my face and shirt. I stand there for a few moments before I shut the window again. I fetch an ashtray and turn out the lights before settling onto the sofa. I leave my bed free in case Becky comes home.
I turn on the TV and begin the long countdown to morning.
Nur spends a few minutes that evening sitting in his parked taxi in a favorite spot of his, a place he sometimes goes when he feels as if he needs to breathe.
He never spends long there—he’s too hardworking for that—but sometimes he can’t resist it because he loves seeing the city laid out beneath him: its hilly folds, its shifting perspectives, the mix of old and new buildings. Looking down on Bristol from a height reminds him of when he was a child and his uncle would take him for a drive in his Land Rover out of Hargeisa, through the scrubby plains around it, and up into the hills that ringed it. Together they would look down on the scatter of white buildings in the basin below.
On this night Nur’s been thinking about Abdi. He’s not immune to the fear that Abdi’s paternity might have created his fate before he was born, in spite of their best efforts. Over the years, it’s taken all of Nur’s strength to keep the faith that violence isn’t embedded in Abdi’s DNA. The last few days have been the biggest challenge to his faith in the boy and his decision to raise him as his own that he’s faced so far.
He watches the blinking lights of a plane as it crosses the city and heads out into the world. Nur isn’t immune to a fantasy that he could flee from his difficulties here and find a different path elsewhere. Many men in his position left their families. They returned to Somalia or went elsewhere to seek more money, and sometimes another wife.
He arrives home just minutes after Maryam, who’s shedding her wet clothes in the bathroom, shivering with cold.
When she emerges, Nur looks at his wife and daughter and feels a pang of loss for Abdi. They are three, and they should be four.
This was the way things were in Somalia, where family members disappeared or died in ways that were at first beyond the imagination of the ordinary man and then became normalized, with neighbors informing on neighbors, and nobody you could trust. It was never supposed to be like this here.
When Maryam says, “I went to the police,” he finds himself sitting down, as if bracing himself for another piece of crushing news. When she tells her story of not being understood and returning home frustrated, he aches for her.
Sofia says, “What did you want to tell them?” and her parents both hold their breath for an instant. “What?” she insists.
“Sit with us,” Maryam says, and Nur knows that Maryam’s made the decision to tell Sofia everything. He won’t fight it.
They talk through the night.
For Sofia, it’s as if the world she’s created here, the one that contains her family and all her bright successes, has developed a crack, which widens and gapes as her parents speak. Beyond the crack is darkness, and it’s seeping in, licking at the edges of their world.
She tries to process everything she’s learning about Abdi and her mother and to find a way to maintain her idea of their lives as a bright, pure thing, but it’s impossible. Eventually she asks the only question she can think of. The one that makes her feel like a child, not the independent young adult she’s become.
“What does it mean?”
It’s a question that Maryam and Nur have never been able to respond to fully. They’ve looked to religion for the answer, and looked into their hearts. They’ve found partial answers, but nothing that can entirely ease or explain the pain or predict the outcome of Abdi’s life. They hoped he would never have to know the whole truth.
“It means what we want it to mean,” Nur tells Sofia eventually. “For me, it means that I gained a son.”
“It means that Abdi is looking for this man because he wants to meet his father,” Maryam says.
“He wants to know who he is,” Nur adds.
“Do you know St. Werburgh’s climbing church?”