Woodley hasn’t been on the line since the gunfire. The last words he said were “I’ll have to call you back.” I wait in the entrance to the climbing center, and decide to give it five more minutes before taking action. I’m not willing to risk Abdi Mahad’s safety any longer than that.
A few pedestrians have appeared on the street: one or two climbers arriving for a session in the church building, and an elderly woman who inches along, pulling a lightweight shopping cart behind her. It’s making me anxious. I need to keep the area clear, but there are far too many access points for me to do that alone.
I stand aside to let the climbers in. I’m glad I’m in my Saturday civvies today. Otherwise I’d stand out a mile in this crowd.
Three minutes left to wait. Nothing else on the street.
I try to call Woodley, but he doesn’t answer. The elderly lady has made it only about fifty yards up the road.
Two minutes.
The door of the house opens. The man who arrived earlier steps out. I take a photograph of him with my phone.
One of his pockets is bulging in a way I don’t think it was before. He walks away up the street, overtaking the old lady and moving on and out of sight swiftly.
There’s still no movement detectable in the house.
I try Woodley again.
“It’s a fucking car crash,” he says. “Shots fired, but no sign of the target.”
“Tell them to get over here!” I tell him. “I need somebody, anybody. We need men on Mina Road at the climbing center, and on Lynmouth Road, St. Werburgh’s Road, and Seddon Road watching all exits. I need armed men before it’s too late!”
“I hear you, boss. I’ll pass it on.”
I call Fraser and get voice mail. I leave the same message. I call dispatch and repeat the message again, and tell them to get anybody here that they can. I try not to shout.
On the street a mother with a child in football gear exit a house a few doors up.
Woodley texts: “Armed response on their way to you.”
I have a quick word with one of the climbing center staff before I walk down the street and knock on the door of the property that occupies the corner plot at the far end of the block. I show my ID to the first householder and put my finger to my lips when he opens his mouth to respond.
“I need you to exit your property, make sure all doors and windows are locked, and go to the climbing center, without talking,” I tell him. “Wait there until you hear otherwise. Do not leave.” One by one, I call in at each house in the row leading up to the target property and repeat the message. It’s a slow process. I can’t risk them all leaving at once and attracting the attention of the occupants of the pink house.
I have to pass in front of the pink house to alert the householders on the other side, but I hope the foliage obscuring the window will mean I can do it without being noticed. I direct those residents to the shop at the opposite end of the road. I don’t want any of them to traipse past the front of the target house either.
By the time I’m done, I’m sweating the fact that I can’t do the same for the side streets without losing eyes on the front of the house.
I call Woodley again.
“We’re a street away, boss,” he says. “Me and Fraser, two armed officers.”
“Where are the fucking others?”
“Still at the scene. Medical attention needed.”
That doesn’t sound good, but we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.
Abdi stays in the room and listens as his father and the man who arrived have a conversation that he can’t hear properly, and then the front door closes again.
His neck feels bruised and he hasn’t moved from the spot he was told to stay in.
He’s very afraid.
He hears the door to the room being unlocked and his father comes back in.
He sits on the edge of a chair, as if they’re having a casual conversation, and says, “Now, Abdi, I need to know how you found me.”
Abdi blurts out his story.
“Does anybody else know you’re here?”
Abdi desperately tries to calculate the best answer. His first instinct is to say “my family,” but he knows that might endanger them.
“The police,” he says.
“The police. Are you a truthful boy, Abdi?”
Abdi nods. Think about the general rightness of that statement, he tells himself, not the fact that you’ve just told a specific lie, and he might believe you.
“You’ve been very stupid.”
He moves so quickly that Abdi’s taken by surprise once again. His father pulls Abdi up and locks his head under his arm, dragging him into a squalid kitchen at the back of the property. Abdi can see only the filthy floor tiles.
Abdi hears a drawer open and glimpses the glint of a blade as his father removes it.
“On your knees,” he says.
Abdi’s shaking, from both the physical weakness that a few days on the run has caused and the disbelief that he’s in this situation, that violence comes so easily to this man, as if it’s second nature for him, but he’s also overcome by a surge of anger.
When his father loosens his grip slightly to encourage Abdi to kneel, Abdi throws himself at the man’s legs, barreling into him and knocking him aside.
His father crashes into the kitchen units and regains his balance quickly. Abdi stands opposite him, panting. His father is between him and the door.
He smiles at Abdi, as if acknowledging that Abdi did quite well, but it won’t last. He takes a small gun from his pocket and points it at Abdi.
“I wanted to avoid a gunshot,” he says, “but needs must.”
As he raises the gun, Abdi stares into his eyes defiantly, wanting him to know that he hasn’t cowed Abdi, that he’s a monster whom Abdi isn’t afraid to challenge. Abdi does it for his mother and for Nur.
As they face each other and his father’s finger moves fractionally against the trigger of the gun, a shadow passes across the back window. Somebody’s out there.
His father makes a calculation.
“To the front,” he says. “Now.”
They walk the few paces to the front door. His father wraps his arm around Abdi’s neck from behind and puts the gun to the side of his temple.
“Open the door,” he says.
The rear of the property’s secured” is the information I get over the radio, only a few seconds before the front door of the house opens.
We’ve sent one of our armed officers to the back and the other’s setting up in the spire, where a small pane of glass has been removed to give him a clear sight line to the front of the property.
Seconds later, Abdi Mahad and the man called Maxamud Abshir Garaar both emerge. Garaar has a gun to Abdi’s head.
They pause in front of the property and Maxamud Garaar shouts, in a heavily accented and slurred voice, “I want safe passage out of here and I’ll let this boy go if you give it to me.”
Garaar looks around, trying to see us. He knows we’re watching him, but he doesn’t know where from. He spots Fraser’s unmarked car, which has been drawn up to partly block the road. Fraser and Woodley are stationed behind it. We don’t have enough vehicles here yet to obstruct every side street.
Abdi’s grimacing. The barrel of the gun is pressed hard into the skin on his temple.