“Will you go there?” Sofia says. She’s astute. She wants confirmation that they’re going to get some action in return for their information.
I will act, and I will do it immediately. I wasn’t going to. I was going to do it Fraser’s way. Right up until that moment, when Nur Mahad entrusted me with his son’s life and clasped his hands around mine. Man to man.
“Yes,” I say. “You have my word. Please, go home now.”
As I leave the building I think, I’ve done this before. I’ve followed my instinct and set out on my own, and I remember how that turned out. I pack the thought away. I’m going to do this, and I owe it to Fraser to call her and tell her. She doesn’t pick up, so I call Woodley instead and explain. I can tell he thinks it’s a bad idea from the sharp intake of breath, but he holds back. My funeral, I suppose.
“What’s happening there?” I ask him.
“We’re about to start getting into position to close in on front and back of the property. I’m with Fraser a street or two away watching the video, but she’s stepped out for a moment.”
He means the video cameras our teams have attached to their helmets.
“I’m going to St. Werburgh’s.” I give him the name of the street. “I need to check it out based on the intelligence from the Mahad family. If Fraser asks, tell her I’ll be on my way ASAP.”
Before I leave I ask one of the officers on duty to contact Ed Sadler and confirm what Sofia’s told me is true.
I take my bike and I’m in St. Werburgh’s in twenty minutes. The center of the city’s only half a mile away, but this is a sleepy residential neighborhood that’s retained a bit of a gentle rural feel, even though it’s been hemmed in incrementally by city sprawl for more than a hundred years.
The row of houses opposite the climbing center looks quiet. The center’s located inside a centuries-old church whose tall spire dominates the view down the street. The small Victorian cottages front almost right onto the road.
I knock on the door of a pub opposite and get a bit of luck. The landlady’s mopping floors and she lets me in. From the look she gives my badge I don’t think she’s a fan of the police, but she lets me peer out through her windows. I have a good view.
I ask if I can stay there for a short while and she responds with “I’m not serving you.”
“That’s not why I’m here, ma’am,” I tell her.
I sit and wait.
Abdi wakes up stiff and sore. His clothes are damp and muddy.
He experiences a moment of blankness before he remembers why he’s there and what he’s planning to do.
When his eyes fully open, he’s surprised to find that it’s already light. He creeps out of his bush to relieve himself behind a tree. He’s thirsty and cold, although the day promises to be a fine one, the blue sky losing its dawn yellow wash and darkening to cobalt.
He wonders what time the pub opens and if he might be able to sneak in and get a drink of water, dry off his clothes with the hand dryer.
He tells himself not to be stupid, though. He’s here to do something, and he knows it’s time. Why wait? What’s the point of looking nice or doing the right thing anymore?
He clambers down the slope, carefully this time.
His trainers squelch.
Once he’s on the street his nerve threatens to fail him. The house where he saw his real father is only about seventy-five yards away, but he knows that this man is dangerous. In the end, it’s only because the daylight reveals that the house is painted pink, a nonthreatening pale pink, that he gets the courage to approach it.
As he walks toward it, a dog trots past on the pavement, a small terrier, and Abdi moves aside to let it pass, keeping his head down as the owner follows, noting only the newspapers under her arm and her sparkly rubber boots.
Abdi allows himself a quick glance at the pub as he crosses the street. He sees the shape of a man in the window. It looks as if the man is watching him. He ducks his head again.
At the door to the house Abdi raps three times loudly. For a moment, he thinks he hears banging in the pub window behind him, but he ignores it. He’s concentrating on trying to breathe. The door opens.
“Mohammed Asad Muse?” the man Abdi suspects is his father says. He doesn’t enunciate the words very well, but Abdi understands that he is expecting somebody else. Abdi is thrown off his guard, but only for a moment. He decides to lie, because it will get him into the house.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s me.”
The door widens just enough to admit him.
If the pub landlady hadn’t made a comment to me at that moment I might have been looking out of the window and seen Abdi Mahad more quickly. I might have been able to stop him entering the house.
I only get a quick glimpse of his face, but I recognize him from the CCTV footage, and his height and build are correct. I’m sure it’s him.
I hammer on the pub window to try to get his attention, but he doesn’t hear me, and by the time I get out of the door and onto the street he’s gone in, and I didn’t see who opened the door.
I call Fraser. “I just had eyes on Abdi Mahad, and I think he might be with our target. I need manpower here.”
“Did you get eyes on the target?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not going to abort at this end. We’re too far in.”
“Can you send me anybody? We’re only a quarter of a mile away.” I could call for backup via HQ, but a trained and armed response team would be preferable, and quicker to arrive from Fraser’s location.
“I’ll see what I can do. Keep your eyes on the building. Take in the boy if he comes out. What’s your exact location?”
I give it to her.
I walk down to the end of the street to see if I can get an idea of what’s going on at the back of the houses, but it’s impossible to get a good view without losing sight of the front. I cross the road to the climbing center and wait in the old graveyard that surrounds it. The church spire looms above me. It’s tall and pierced by four large Gothic windows from the ground level all the way to the top. I try to get a map up on my phone, so I can get a sense of the overall layout of the neighborhood, but my signal’s too poor for it to download.
The climbing center is shut. I bang on the door and catch some luck when an early-bird worker lets me in.
“Can you stay here?” I ask him. “Watch the street, don’t take your eyes off it, and tell me immediately if anybody leaves that house.”
I explain what else I want, and he points me to a stairwell: a steep, narrow set of stone steps labeled STAFF ACCESS ONLY. They’re worn and slippery and they lead up into the spire.
I climb as high as I need to get a look out over Mina Road through a section of clear glass in one of the windows. It gives me a perfect bird’s-eye view of the location.