In the spire, we’re in radio contact with Fraser and Woodley down below. A couple more officers have been mustered and are stationed at either end of the section of Mina Road that we’re on.
“I can’t get a clear sight line,” says the officer beside me. He’s still as a cat waiting to pounce, making only minute adjustments to the weapon he has braced against his shoulder.
“I’m going to walk slowly and you are going to let me. If you don’t, I will shoot the boy!” Maxamud Garaar shouts.
He moves sideways, crablike, his body and head pressed against Abdi’s as much as possible. He travels away from us and toward the closest side street, in plain sight, in spite of Fraser’s position just beyond it. I suspect he knows the neighborhood and has an exit plan in mind once he reaches it.
Fraser calls to Garaar. “Release the boy and we’ll give you safe passage.”
He ignores her.
At the end of the street, beyond Fraser, I see three people advancing.
I radio Woodley. “Pedestrians coming, please make sure they’re held back.”
“I have an officer doing that,” he says. “They must have got past him.”
From the spire I see Woodley, crouching low, approach the three incomers.
Garaar and Abdi are moving very slowly toward them also. My sniper still has his barrel trained on them.
“Do you have a shot?” I ask him.
“I’ll take it if I do.”
Woodley gestures to the three to crouch and gets close enough to talk to them. As I watch, my stomach turns when I work out that they’re Abdi’s parents and sister.
“I’m going to have to let him go,” the sniper says. “He’ll be out of range in seconds. Better to move position?”
“It’s not safe past the squad car,” I say. “Too many civilians. I think he’s going to break to the side.”
He radios his colleague, directing him to move from the back to take up a position in the side street.
Garaar is within fifty yards of Fraser’s car when he sees two squad cars arrive at the end of the street beyond her. It’s our backup. Their timing could not be worse. He stops, taking stock. As he does, one of the people with Woodley gets to their feet.
It’s Maryam Mahad.
“Shit!” I say. I can hear Fraser shouting at Woodley through my earpiece.
Maryam Mahad, apparently oblivious to everything else, walks boldly up the street toward her son and the man who raped her.
At first she takes fast strides and then, as Maxamud Garaar notices her, she breaks into a run and she screams at him. It’s in Somali, I don’t know what she’s saying, but it sounds like a lifetime of words.
It’s enough.
Maxamud Garaar’s concentration is broken just for a second, almost as if he simply can’t believe the coincidence of what he’s seeing and hearing around him, and in that second Abdi Mahad twists away and I hear the gun beside me go off. The recoil thumps into my colleague’s shoulder.
Garaar falls to the pavement. Abdi runs toward his mother.
“Get them off the street!” I shout into the radio. “Get them off!”
Garaar’s wounded in the shoulder, and his gun’s fallen a short distance from him. I see him reach for it.
“Get them off the street!”
Fraser steps out from behind her car and intercepts Abdi just as Garaar fires.
She and Abdi fall to the ground behind her car, out of my sight.
I think I hear the bullet ricochet, and Maryam falls, too, after a beat. Woodley breaks out of cover and runs to her.
Woodley’s bent over Maryam, applying pressure to a wound on her arm. Nur and Sofia have been contained with a group of rubberneckers at the end of the street, and Fraser has taken off after Garaar, who’s disappeared down the side street. I can’t see Abdi, but I hope to god he’s safely in the car.
The sniper next to me is talking urgently to his colleague, instructing him to intercept Garaar.
The sniper and I run up the stairs until we find a window with a better view down the side street. Garaar’s visible making his way along it.
“He’s out of my range,” the gunman tells me.
Garaar’s holding his left arm across his stomach and blood has bloomed across the fabric of his shirt on the back of his shoulder. In his right hand he holds the gun. He’s walking on the narrow pavement between the parked cars and the foliage that overhangs the low walls at the front of each property.
Just as he’s about to disappear from view once again, he stops, staring at the end of the street.
Via the radio, we hear the command shouted by the sniper on the street. He orders Garaar to drop his weapon.
There’s a moment when the tension falls from Garaar’s body, as if he doesn’t feel any pain, as if he’s realized that it’s over, but then he raises his gun arm.
There’s another shout from the sniper who has him in his sights, but it does nothing to prevent the movement. The sniper fires and Garaar’s knee explodes. We’re too high up to hear him, but he twists as he goes down and I can see that he’s roaring with pain and anger.
His gun lands yards from him, as before, but this time, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t reach it. He’s folded over his shattered knee, blood soaking his shirt and his trousers and pooling onto the street. We see the sniper appear from behind a car and remove the gun that’s skittered across the road. His colleague takes off down the stairs beside me to assist.
Before I follow him I turn to get a final bird’s-eye view of the scene. I want to get eyes on Abdi Mahad so I can extract him safely.
I see Woodley helping Maryam at the side of the street, and as he does, Abdi stands. There’s no sign of Fraser. I try her on the radio. No response.
Abdi stands in the road on shaky legs, like a young deer. He leans on the car door and gazes around him as if he’s there just as an observer, not a participant. He can’t see his mother and Woodley from where he stands. He doesn’t hear his sister even though I can see her mouth opening and shutting, forming his name at the far end of the street. It’s possible the gunshot is still ringing in his ears, or perhaps it’s the emotional cacophony of everything he’s been through.
I pound down the stairs and run up the street.
When I reach him, he gapes at me. I arrive at his side just as another officer does. He looks at us both as if all his worst nightmares have come to pass.
I catch him as his legs give way.
“Abdi, you’re all right,” I say as I stagger under his weight. “I’ve got you.”
The other officer helps us. Abdi’s unconscious: a dead weight.
I’m searching for signs of blood on him, but I don’t see any.
“This is Abdi Nur Mahad,” I say to the officer who is helping me. “He’s a missing child.”
I’m breathing so hard I might have just run a marathon.
THE DAY AFTER
In a private room in the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Maryam Mahad lies in a hospital bed. Sofia sits beside her, holding her hand.