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Odd Child Out: A Novel

Di Gilly Macmillan

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Valutazione: 4 stelle su 54/5 (11 recensioni)

Lunghezza: 445 pagine6 ore

Editore:: HarperCollins
Pubblicato:: Oct 3, 2017
ISBN:: 9780062476852
Formato:: Libro

Descrizione

How well do you know the people you love…?

Best friends Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad have always been inseparable. But when Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol's Feeder Canal, Abdi can't--or won't--tell anyone what happened.

Just back from a mandatory leave following his last case, Detective Jim Clemo is now assigned to look into this unfortunate accident. But tragedy strikes and what looked like the simple case of a prank gone wrong soon ignites into a public battle. Noah is British. Abdi is a Somali refugee. And social tensions have been rising rapidly in Bristol. Against this background of fear and fury two families fight for their sons and for the truth. Neither of them know how far they will have to go, what demons they will have to face, what pain they will have to suffer.

Because the truth hurts.

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Azioni libro

Inizia a leggere

Informazioni sul libro

Odd Child Out: A Novel

Di Gilly Macmillan

Valutazioni:

Valutazione: 4 stelle su 54/5 (11 recensioni)

Lunghezza: 445 pagine6 ore

Descrizione

How well do you know the people you love…?

Best friends Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad have always been inseparable. But when Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol's Feeder Canal, Abdi can't--or won't--tell anyone what happened.

Because the truth hurts.

Leggi altro

Editore:: HarperCollins
Pubblicato:: Oct 3, 2017
ISBN:: 9780062476852
Formato:: Libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Gilly Macmillan

Gilly Macmillan is the internationally bestselling author of What She Knew, The Perfect Girl, Odd Child Out, I Know You Know, and The Nanny. She resides in Bristol, England.

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Anteprima del libro

Odd Child Out - Gilly Macmillan

Dedication

To my dad. You are missed.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

The Night Before

After Midnight

Earlier That Evening

The Investigation: Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

The Day After

Acknowledgments

An Excerpt from THE NANNY

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

About the Author

About the Book

Read On

Also by Gilly Macmillan

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

THE NIGHT BEFORE

After Midnight

A black ribbon of water cuts through the city of Bristol, under a cold midnight sky. Reflections of street lighting float and warp on its surface.

On one side of the canal there’s a scrapyard, where heaps of crumpled metal glisten with frost. Opposite is an abandoned redbrick warehouse. Its windows are unglazed and pigeons nest on the ledges.

The silken surface of the canal water offers no clue that underneath it a current flows, more deeply than you might expect, faster and stronger.

In the scrapyard a security light comes on and a chain link fence rattles. A fifteen-year-old boy jumps from it and lands heavily beside the broken body of a car. He gets up and begins to run across the yard, head back, arms flailing, panting. He runs a jagged path and stumbles once or twice, but he keeps going.

Behind him the fence rattles a second time, and once again there’s the sound of a landing and pounding feet. It’s another boy and he’s moving faster, with strong, fluid strides, and he doesn’t stumble. The gap between them closes as the first boy reaches the unfenced bank of the canal, and understands in that moment that he has nowhere else to go.

At the edge of the water they stand, just yards from each other. Noah Sadler, his chest heaving, turns to face his pursuer.

Abdi, he says. He’s pleading.

Nobody who cares about them knows that they’re there.

Earlier That Evening

At the end of my last session with Dr. Manelli, the police psychotherapist, we kiss, awkwardly.

My mistake.

I think it’s on account of the euphoria I’m feeling because the sessions I’ve been forced to attend with Dr. Manelli are finally over. It’s not personal; it’s just that I don’t like discussing my life with strangers.

At goodbye time she offered me a professional handshake—long-fingered elegance and a single silver band around a black-cuffed, slender wrist—but I forgot myself and went in for a cheek peck and that’s when we found ourselves in a stiff half-clinch that was embarrassing.

Sorry, I say. Anyway. Thank you.

You’re welcome. She turns away and straightens some papers on her desk, two dots of color warming her cheekbones. Going forward, I’m always here if you need me, she says. My door is always open.

And your report?

Will recommend that you return immediately to the Criminal Investigations Department, as we discussed.

When do you think you’ll submit that? I don’t want to sound pushy, but I don’t want any unnecessary delay, either.

As soon as you leave my office, Detective Inspector Clemo.

She smiles, but can’t resist a final lecture: Please don’t forget that it can take a long time to recover from a period of depression. The feelings you’ve been having—the anger, the insomnia—don’t expect them to disappear completely. And you need to be alert to them returning. If you feel as if they might swamp you, that’s the moment I want to hear from you, not when it’s too late.

Before I embed my fist in a wall at work again, is what she means.

I nod and take a last look around her office. It’s muted and still, a room for private conversations and troubling confidences.

It’s been six months since my therapy began. The aim was to throw me a lifeline, to save me from drowning in the guilt and remorse I felt after the Ben Finch investigation, to teach me how to accept what happened and how to move on.

Ben Finch was eight years old when he disappeared in a high-profile, high-stakes case, the details of which were plastered all over the media for weeks. I agonized over him and felt personally responsible for his fate, but I shouldn’t have. You have to preserve some professional distance, or you’re no good to anybody.

I believe I have finally accepted what happened, sort of. I’ve convinced Dr. Manelli that I have, anyhow.

I call my boss in the Criminal Investigations Department as I jog down the stairs in Manelli’s building, my eyes fixed on the pane of glass above the front door. Slicked with daylight, it represents my freedom.

Fraser doesn’t answer, so I leave her a message letting her know that I’m ready to come back to work, and ask if I can start tomorrow. I’ll take on any case, I tell her. I mean it. Anything will do, if it gives me a chance to rejoin the game.

As I cycle away down the tree-lined street where Dr. Manelli’s office is located, I think about how much hard graft it’s going to take to play myself back in at work, after what happened. There are a lot of people I need to impress.

Riding a wave of optimism, as I am, that doesn’t feel impossible.

I’m upbeat enough that I even notice the early blossom, and feel a surge of affection for the handsome, mercurial city I live in.

The light from the gallery spills out onto the street, brightening the dirty pavement.

Tall white letters have been stenciled on the window, smartly announcing the title of the exhibition:

EDWARD SADLER TRAVELS WITH REFUGEES

In italics beneath, there’s a description of the work on show:

Displaced Lives & Broken Places: Images from the Edge of Existence

The photograph on display in the window is huge and spotlit.

It shows a boy. He walks toward the camera against a backdrop of an intense blue sky, an azure ocean speckled with whitecaps, and a panorama of bomb-ruined buildings. He looks to be thirteen or fourteen. He wears long shorts, flip-flops, and a football shirt with the sleeves cut off. His clothes are dirty. He gazes beyond the camera and his face and posture show strain, because looped across his shoulders is a hammerhead shark. Its bloodied mouth is exposed to the camera. That, and a red slash of blood on the shark’s muscular white undercarriage are shockingly vivid against the ruined architectural backdrop: marks of life, death, and violence.

On the Way to the Fishmarket. Mogadishu, 2012, reads the caption beneath it.

It’s not the image that made Ed Sadler’s reputation, that gave him his five minutes of fame and then some, but it was syndicated to a number of prestigious news outlets, nevertheless.

The gallery’s packed with people. Everybody has a glass in hand and they’re gathered around a man. He’s standing on a chair at the end of the room. He wears khaki trousers, scuffed brown oxford shoes, a weathered leather belt, and a pale blue shirt that’s creased in a just-bought way. He has sandy-colored hair that’s darker at the roots than the tips and thicker than you might expect for a man in his early forties. He’s good-looking—broad-shouldered and square-jawed—though his wife thinks his ears protrude just a little bit far to be perfectly handsome.

He wipes his suntanned forehead. He’s a little drunk, on the good beer, the amazing turnout, and the fact that this night represents the peak of his career but also a devastating personal low.

It’s only four days since Ed Sadler and his wife, Fiona, sat down with their son, Noah, and his oncologist, and received the worst possible news about Noah’s prognosis. Reeling with shock, they’ve so far kept it to themselves.

Somebody chinks a spoon against a glass and people fall silent.

Head and shoulders above the crowd, Ed Sadler gets a piece of paper out of his pocket and puts a pair of reading glasses on, before taking them off again.

I don’t think I need this, he says, crumpling the paper up. I know what I want to say.

He looks around the room, catching the eyes of friends and colleagues.

"Nights like this are very special because it’s not often that I get to gather together so many people who are important to me. I’m very proud to show you this body of work. It’s the work of a lifetime, and there are a few people that I need to acknowledge, because it wouldn’t exist without them. First, is my good friend Dan Winstanley, or as I should say now, Professor Winstanley. Where are you, Dan?"

A man in a button-down blue shirt, and in need of a haircut, raises his hand with a sheepish smile.

Firstly, I want to thank you for letting me copy your maths homework every week when we were at school. I think it’s a long-enough time ago that I can safely say this now! This gets a laugh.

But, much more importantly, I want to thank you for getting me access to many different places in Somalia, and in particular to Hartisheik, the refugee camp where I took the photographs that my career’s built on. It was this man Dan who took me there for the very first time when he was building SomaliaLink. For those of you who don’t know about SomaliaLink, you should. Through Dan’s sheer bloody-mindedness and talent, it’s grown into an award-winning organization that does incredible work educating and rebuilding in projects throughout Somalia, but it was founded almost twenty years ago with the more humble objective of fostering links between our city and the Somali refugee community, many of whom came to Bristol via Hartisheik and its neighboring camps. I’m very proud to be associated with it. Dan, you’ve been my fixer for as many years as I can remember, but you’ve also been my inspiration. I never could contribute much in the way of brains, but I hope these images can do some good in helping to spread the word about what you do. Taking these photographs is often dangerous and sometimes frightening, but I believe it’s necessary.

There’s a burst of clapping and a heckle from one of his rugby friends that makes Ed smile.

I do this for another reason, too, and that, most of all, is what I want to say tonight . . . He chokes up, recovers. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is how proud I am of my family and how I couldn’t have done this without them. To Fi, and to Noah, it hasn’t always been easy—understatement—but thank you, I’m nothing without you. I do all this for you, and I love you.

Beside him, Fiona’s face crumples a little, even as she works hard to hold it together.

Ed scans the room, looking for his son. He’s easy to find because his friend Abdi is beside him, one of only four black faces in the room, apart from the ones in the photographs.

Ed raises his bottle of beer to his son, salutes him with it, and enjoys seeing the flush of pleasure on the boy’s cheeks. Noah raises his glass of Coke in return.

About half the people in the room say, Awww, before somebody calls out, Fiona and Noah! and everybody raises a glass. The applause that follows is loud and becomes raucous, punctuated with a couple of wolf whistles.

Ed cues the band to start playing.

He steps down from the chair and kisses his wife. Both are tearful now.

Around them, the noise of the party swells.

While Abdi Mahad is at the exhibition opening with his friend Noah, the rest of his family are spending the evening at home.

His mother, Maryam, is watching a Somali talent show on Universal TV. She thinks the performances are noisy and silly, but they’re also captivating enough to hold her attention, mostly because they’re so awful.

The show is her guilty pleasure. She laughs at a woman who sings painfully badly and frowns at two men who perform a hair-raising acrobatic routine.

Abdi’s father, Nur, is asleep on the sofa, head back and mouth open, beside his wife. Maryam glances at him now and then. She notices that he’s recently gone a little grayer around the temples, and admires his profile. He doesn’t have his usual air of dignity about him, though, because he’s snoring loud enough to compete in volume with the shrill presenters on the TV. A nine-hour shift in his taxi followed by a meeting of a local community group, and a heavy meal afterward with friends, has knocked him out as effectively as a cudgel.

As the TV presenters eulogize a rap performance that Maryam judges to be mediocre at best, Nur snorts so loudly that he wakes himself up. Maryam laughs.

Bedtime, old man?

How long have I been asleep?

Not too long.

Did Abdi text?

No.

They’ve been worried about Abdi going to the photography exhibition. They know the subject of the show is refugee journeys, and they know that some of the images that made Edward Sadler famous were taken in the refugee camp that they used to live in. These things make them uneasy.

Abdi never lived in the camp. Nur and Maryam risked their lives to travel to the UK to ensure that he never had to experience a life that looked the way theirs did once everything they’d ever known had unspooled catastrophically and violently in Somalia’s civil war. Both of them were torn from comfortable, educated homes, where James Brown played on the turntable some evenings, and Ernest Hemingway novels sat on the bookshelf among Italian books, where daughters were not cut, and children weren’t raised to perpetrate the divisive clan politics that would soon become lethal.

Nur and Maryam tried hard to dissuade Abdi from going to the exhibition, but he wasn’t having any of it.

Don’t wrap me in cotton wool, he said, and it was difficult to argue with that. He’s fifteen, confident, clever, and articulate. They know he can’t be sheltered forever.

They reasoned eventually that if the extent of his curiosity about their journey as refugees was to visit an exhibition, then perhaps they would be getting off lightly, so they let him go and told him to have a good time.

Maryam turns the TV off, and the screen flicks to black, revealing a few smudgy fingerprints that make her tut. She’ll remove them in the morning.

Are you worried? she asks Nur.

No. I wasn’t expecting him to text anyway. Let’s sleep.

As her parents go through the familiar motions of converting their sofa into their bed, Sofia Mahad, Abdi’s sister, is sitting at her desk in her bedroom next door.

She’s just received an email from her former headmistress, asking her if she would be willing to revisit the school and give a speech to sixth formers on career day.

Sofia’s twenty years old, and in her second year of studying for a midwifery degree. She’s never done public speaking before. She’s shy, so she’s avoided it like the plague. She’s flattered by the invitation, though, and especially by the sentence that describes her as one of our star pupils.

Guess what? she calls out to her parents. I’ve been asked to give a speech!

She takes out one of her earbuds so she can catch their response, but there isn’t one. They obviously haven’t heard her. She’ll tell them face-to-face later, she thinks, when she can enjoy seeing the proud smiles on their faces.

She rereads the email. One thing that might really interest our Year 13s, the headmistress writes, is hearing about what inspired you to become a midwife.

Sofia does what she usually does when she’s considering something. She gets up and looks out the window. Outside, she can see a small park that’s empty and quiet, and a large block of flats on the other side of it. The uncurtained windows reveal other people’s lives to her, lit up in all shades from warm to queasy neon, some with a TV flicker.

She knows exactly what inspired her: it was Abdi’s birth. The problem she has is that she’s not sure if she can write a speech about it, because nobody in her family has ever talked openly about what happened that night. Her mother tells a very short version of the story of Abdi’s birth: Abdi was born under the stars.

Sofia also knows that’s not the whole story, because she remembers the night in vivid detail. Like all of her memories of Africa, it’s intense. She sometimes thinks of that part of her life, the part before England, as a kind of hyperreality.

Abdi was born in the desert, and Sofia can picture those stars. They roamed the sky in great cloudy masses. They looked like cells multiplying under a microscope. They cast their milky brightness down once the truck had stopped and the headlights were extinguished.

The men didn’t let Maryam out of the truck until her time was very close. She had been laboring for hours, crammed into the flatbed with the others, and she continued to labor in the Saharan emptiness. There were no other women to help, so it was Sofia who knelt and cradled her mother’s head, her fingers feeling the sweat on Maryam’s cheeks and the clench of her jaw. Nur knelt beside them and delivered the boy with shaking hands.

Sofia remembers the feel of the stones digging into her shins, her knees, and the top of her feet. She remembers how the light from the stars and the crescent moon made the shifting surfaces of the sand dunes shimmer. She thought that their brightness drew Maryam’s cries up to the heavens and coaxed the baby from her body.

The smugglers spoke harshly to Maryam, telling her to be quiet and quick. Each of them had a third leg to their silhouette, made from a long stick or a gun. They leaned on them impatiently, propped up by violence and hungering for speed and maximum profit from their human cargo.

Sofia remembers how the blade of the knife glinted in the torchlight when the men severed Abdi’s cord. Hurry! Get back in the truck! the men said, and their eyes cast threats of abandoning Maryam there if she didn’t obey. Minutes later she delivered the afterbirth obediently, wet and bloody onto the parched ground, and the wind speckled it with sand.

Back in the truck, the faces of the other passengers were swaddled against the sand and wind. Maryam passed out: heavy body sweat-soaked, and clutching blood-dark material between her legs. Nur held her and his breathing shuddered as the engine revved. Sofia cradled her new brother. She kept him warm. She put her face up close to the baby’s and gazed at him. In the starlight she examined his sealed-up eyes, his damply soft flesh and hair, and she knew that she loved him.

As the truck swayed and skidded on the track through the desert, that thought brought her a feeling of warmth, even though she was very afraid.

Sofia breathes in suddenly—almost a gasp—and it snaps her out of her reverie. She types an email to her headmistress thanking her for the invitation and telling her she would like to give it some thought.

When that’s done, she lapses once again into thinking about Abdi, and how strange it could be to be born between places, as he was, under the gaze of smugglers and thugs. Where would you belong, really? How would it affect you, deep in your bones? Would you know that threats had torn you from your mother’s sweaty, terrified body?

She doesn’t dwell on it too hard, though, because her attention is soon diverted by the buzz of her social media notifications and all the distractions of the present.

Sofia doesn’t think about Abdi again that night. Nor do her parents, apart from a brief discussion once they’re tucked under the duvet, when they sleepily debate whether Abdi should give up chess club to make more time to study exams he’s due to take this summer. They have so much hope that he will get the results he needs to apply to a top-rank university.

All is quiet in the household overnight. It’s in the frigid early hours of the morning that the buzzer to their flat begins to ring repeatedly, long and loud, before dying away like a deathbed rattle as the battery fails. Nur climbs out of bed to answer it. He’s hardly awake enough to be on his feet.

Hello? he says. He can see his breath.

In response, he hears a word that he learned to dread at an early age: Police.

THE INVESTIGATION

DAY 1

It’s a good moment putting my ID badge back on after so many months off. Detective Inspector is a title I worked hard for.

The air is crisp and cold and the traffic seems lighter than usual on my morning journey to Kenneth Steele House, the headquarters of Bristol’s Criminal Investigations Department. I make good time on the new road bike I bought when I had time on my hands, between therapy sessions and tedious teaching duties. The ride feels very sweet.

Here and there, I see evidence of fallout from a march that took place in the city center a week ago: a huddle of yellow traffic cones like part-felled skittles wait for collection near the waterfront; a few boarded-up windows punctuate the reflective panes.

The march started as a small-scale problem, a nasty little anti-immigration demonstration by a neo-Nazi group, the only redeeming feature of which was that it was anticipated to be very sparsely attended. It might have petered out after a couple of hours if it had been well managed—it should have done—but things got out of hand. Medium-scale rioting and looting led to some large-scale embarrassment for the police. The whole debacle left a nasty taste in the mouths of many city residents.

I don’t dwell on it as I coast down the road to work, though. I’m focused on holding my head as high as I can when I walk back through those doors into the office.

Detective Chief Inspector Corinne Fraser doesn’t look any different from when I last saw her, months ago: gray eyes, frizzy slate-colored hair only partially tamed by a severe bob cut, and a gaze as penetrating as a brain scan. She gets up from her desk and gives me a warm, two-handed handshake, but wishes me luck in a tone that makes it clear that I’ve got work to do to regain her trust. It’s a welcome back, but an unnerving one. It’s vintage Fraser.

My other colleagues greet me nicely enough. Mostly it’s in a hail-fellow-well-met sort of way that feels pretty genuine, though one or two of them don’t hold eye contact for as long as they might. There’s no shame, Dr. Manelli once said, in what happened to me, in the fact that I flipped my lid publicly, but I reckon some of my colleagues might be feeling it on my behalf. I try not to take it personally. That’s their problem, I tell myself. My job is to prove how good a detective I am.

It’s during Morning Prayers, her daily briefing meeting, that Fraser hands me the Feeder Canal case. I get the feeling she’s glad to have some poor soul to allocate it to. Its priority level is made clear by the fact that it’s the last item on the agenda before a housekeeping request that we make an effort to reuse the plastic cups at the water cooler.

Fraser asks a familiar face to précis the details of the case for me.

Detective Constable Justin Woodley throws a half-smile my way and clears his throat before reading from his notepad. I haven’t had much to do with him since he witnessed me throwing up into the front garden of a major witness on the Ben Finch case. It was a humiliating reaction to a bit of bad news.

Water under the bridge, I tell myself. Hold your nerve. I nod back.

A fifteen-year-old boy fell into the canal last night, just down the road from here by the scrapyard. He was fished out by emergency services and they took him to the Children’s Hospital. He’s in very bad shape currently, in intensive care and in critical condition. He was with another lad who was found canal-side. Not injured, but in shock, and he’s being checked over at the Royal Infirmary.

And they want someone from CID because . . . ?

There’s a witness. She says she thought there was some funny business going on between the lads before the fall into the canal. She’s the one who called it in. She’s still at the scene.

What does the lad who wasn’t injured say?

He’s not spoken to anybody yet.

Why not?

He’s just not speaking, apparently. Whether it’s can’t speak or won’t speak, we don’t know.

Woodley flips his pad closed.

I believe the victim’s a white boy, and the other kid is from the Somali community, so sensitivity is paramount, Fraser chips in.

Of course, I say.

Fraser continues: I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that budget is tight to nonexistent, so I’m not going to press the investigation button on this one unless there’s very good reason to. If we can put it to bed easily, then let’s do that and let uniform handle it. Jim, you and Woodley will be working together on this.

Fleeting eye contact tells me that I’m not the only one feeling nervous about that.

Woodley and I take a walk down to the scene. It’s less than half a mile up Feeder Road from Kenneth Steele House, and it’s not Bristol’s most scenic destination.

We pass beneath a stained and graffiti-tagged concrete overpass that moves four lanes of traffic from one corner of the city to another. It’s oppressive. Even on a nice day the underside is gloomy and the shadow it casts is deep.

Beyond the overpass, the properties that border the canal-side road are mostly warehouses, lockups, and the odd automotive place, and most of them have high-visibility security in the form of spiked or barbed perimeter fences.

Does this case sound like a hospital pass to you? Woodley asks.

I don’t know. Depends what the witness saw. It could be something or nothing.

Did he jump, or was he pushed? He makes it sound like a teaser. I forgot that Woodley had a sharp sense of humor. I find myself smiling.

Something like that.

Woodley clears his throat. Full disclosure: I cocked up really badly on a case. I lost some evidence.

I take a moment to absorb that. I guess I’m not the only one who’s walking wounded, then.

What was the case? It matters.

Child abuse.

Did it cost you a result?

Yes. The dad was allowed back to his family. He was guilty as sin. My fault.

It’s the very worst kind of case to make a mistake on.

Happens to the best of us, I say, though I’m sure that doesn’t reassure him at all. I’m not sure what else to say. I’m in no position to judge him, but now I understand why Fraser has us working together. We’re the last kids to get picked for the team. We’ll sink or swim together on this case.

For what it’s worth, he says after we’ve walked on a bit, following the canal’s path, on the Ben Finch case I thought your work was solid. Lots of people did. You went after what you believed.

I look at him. Nose like a ski jump, a small patch of thinning hair appearing on his scalp, and those clever eyes, searching mine for a reaction. He still wants to be a player, I think. That’s good for us both.

Thanks. I . . . but I don’t know what else to say; it feels too soon to be having this discussion with a colleague. I’m not ready. Woodley doesn’t push it.

Farther up, we pause at the edge of the canal to take in the scene. The water looks soupy and uninviting. Sludgy pale brown mud banks up the sides and the foliage along the water’s edge looks as if the long winter has depressed it terminally. A fisherman is huddled in wet weather gear a few hundred yards to the east.

Beside us, there’s an abandoned warehouse and a modest Victorian pedestrian bridge that spans the canal. The path across it is weed-covered and trash-strewn. Underneath a layer of black paint that’s peeling like a bad case of psoriasis, the structure looks rusty enough that it’s unlikely to last another hundred years.

Across the water, we can see the scrapyard where the incident took place.

I can’t imagine what business two teenage lads would have around here. It feels like a wasteland. They must have been mucking about. Daring each other to trespass, or looking for somewhere to sneak a drink or smoke a joint.

I think this case is a minnow, I say. I look into the murky water. There’s nothing to see except the legs of a shopping trolley that’s gone belly-up on the bank. Small fry. But it’s better than traffic duty.

In retrospect, I misinformed Woodley, because neither of us recognized this case for what it was really: menacing, strong, and smooth, perhaps not making waves at first, but able to turn on a dime and surprise you with a razor-toothed bite. This case was actually a shark.

Of course I didn’t recognize it. Nobody else had, so why should we?

Fraser would never have let us have it if she’d known better.

Darkness is dissolving over the city, lingering only in pockets, as the Mahad family arrives at the accident and emergency department at Bristol Royal Infirmary.

They have very little information, no more than a scant outline of what’s happened to Abdi.

The officers accompanying the Mahads greet two colleagues outside the rear entrance to A&E. They’re speaking to a man who has his back against the wall and blood matted in his hair. He’s sucking hard on a cigarette. He’s talking about salvation. Half of his face is in darkness, but a caged light fixture throws out just enough of a glow to show Sofia that his pupils are pinpricks. When he catches sight of Maryam, his agitation increases.

That’s what I’m talking about, he says. They wear them dresses so they can hide bombs under them. He lurches toward the Mahads. You can go back to your fucking country! You’re ISIS, you fucking terrorists!

The officers react instantly, containing him, but not before a gob of his spit has landed near Sofia’s feet.

Nur stands between his family and the man and ushers the women into the hospital. His face is perfectly composed, though his chest heaves. He knows that these are the words of an ignorant and almost certainly crazy man, but they still wound.

Inside, the waiting area is filled with rows of chairs arranged in an airport configuration so the injured and unwell can pass the time by eyeballing each other. The police officers make sure the family bypasses the queue at the reception desk. A nurse takes them down a narrow corridor where there are bays containing beds, each with

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This is the second novel featuring DI Jim Clemo but the first I've read.It is set in the author's home city of Bristol.The action of the novel takes place over the period of a week and the story is told from several points of view with often only the content or tone to indicate who the narrator is.Abdi and Noah are 15 year olds who have been inseparable since they began secondary school. Noah has health issues and has spent a lot of time in hospital. His father is a photographer who spends a lot of time away. Abdi is Somali, his father is a taxi driver, his mother does not speak English, and his sister is at tertiary college. Noah's mother is not convinced his friendship with Abdi is the best he can do, but Noah is very dependent on him.On the night when the story starts Noah's father has a photographic exhibition which both boys attend. Some of the photographs are of Somalian refugee camps and Abdi finds them upsetting. After they get back to Noah's place the boys go out, at Noah's instigation, unknown to his parents, and this sets off a train of events with dreadful consequences.This novel has a number of thought provoking themes: relationships in the work place, journalists who use events to enhance their own careers, the effects of ill health on families and those who are afflicted, the search by teenagers for identity and rites of passage.

Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad are best friends who have become inseparable. One night Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol's Feeder Canal with Abdi sitting, unable to speak, on the embankment. Detective Jim Clemo who just returned from a mandatory leave following his last case is assigned to look in to what happened the night at the Canal. At first it looks like a simple quarrel between friends that went wrong, but when the details unravel two families become pitted against one another.Abdi is the son of Somali refugees attending a private school on scholarship. Noah is a member of a well-off British family. Racial tensions are high in Bristol at the time of the accident and soon assumptions are made that the incident was a result of these tensions. Before long it also comes to the forefront that Noah has a terminal illness and just received notification that he has months to live. What really brought these two friends to brink of breaking?ODD CHILD OUT takes the reader into the lives of the Sadler and Mahad families and the secrets each holds dearly. No family is perfect and these two families prove this fact as the details of their personal live are revealed. Macmillian alternates chapters between Noah, DI Clemo, and a main narrator who gives the reader looks into the Sadler and Mahad families. At first I was a bit confused by the alternating narratives because unlike other novels that follow this format, the chapters where not labeled by narrator. In addition to alternating narratives, the book is broken down into the days following the incident. I greatly enjoyed knowing the timeline of events as I read through the book. I think sometimes in crime fiction the timeline can become blurred between the various actions characters are taking, but by breaking the book into parts based on days it's very easy to distinguish how fast or slowly events are happening.This was my first book by Macmillian and when I requested this copy I did not realize it was the second book in a series. There are some references to DI Clemo's previous case from book one, but not knowing the details of the first book did not detract from understanding this book. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone looking for a great detective story with family values at the core.Thank you to William Morrow, Gilly Macmillian, and LibraryThings for providing me an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

I went into this book with low expectations and was greatly surprised. Without giving away too much of the plot it's the story of two friends and two cultures. Noah is an English teen dying of cancer and his best friend is, Abdi a Somalian refugee. It's also a tale of love and death, friendship and cultural differences. It was an eye opening read. Highly recommend.

The second book in Gilly Macmillan's excellent DI Jim Clemo series finds Jim back in similar circumstances from the first--working against time to save a child. Jim has returned from leave after the Ben Finch case, and he's ready to redeem himself in the eyes DCI Fraser and his peers. He's assigned what looks to be a terrible accident: best pals Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad are out late one evening when teenage Noah falls into a local canal, rendering him unconscious. Abdi refuses to speak about what happened, leaving the families (and police) to ponder what really occurred that evening. Complicating matters is the fact that Noah is already ill from cancer; plus Noah is British, while Abdi and his family are Somalian refugees, so Jim fears how this case will be presented in the press. By most accounts, Noah and Abdi are best friends, so what truly went down night?This is another gorgeous gem of a novel by Macmillan, who offers yet one more beautifully-written mystery combined with lovely, perfectly drawn characters. This book touched me in so many ways, and I just cannot keep raving enough about how well this author writes, or how she so excellently embodies her characters. Again, this is no straightforward mystery, or simple fiction, but a wonderful combination of the two.For me, this book really hit from home the beginning, as Jim mentions how an anti-immigration march by a neo-Nazi group has rocked Bristol, wrecking havoc on the police force, as well as emotions in the area. It's clear that racial tensions are high. As someone who was born in Charlottesville, VA, and lived in the suburbs of the area for the last nearly ten years, I felt this in my heart all too well. The backdrop of race stretches across the fabric of Macmillan's entire novel, and it's quite well done, in my opinion.On one end, we have the Sadler family--well-off and British: Noah attends a posh private school, Fiona manages Noah and Noah's illness, and Ed is a photographer--often of refugees. In fact, we learn that he's even photographed the very camp where Abdi's parents and sister lived. The Sadler's life, however, is clouded by the tragedy of Noah's cancer, which has basically formed each family member into who they are today.As for the Mahads, we see how their past experiences has created them, as well. One of the strengths of this book is that we get small portions of narration from all of characters: the Sadlers, the Mahads, and Jim. The bits and pieces you learn of the Mahad's origins--my goodness: it will break your heart. Macmillan captures the fear of the family because they are different due to the color of their skin and the country of their origin, yet you see their strength and pride shine across as well.The main storyline of ODD CHILD OUT revolves around figuring out exactly what happened between the boys and how Noah ended up in the water. As mentioned, you get snippets from each character, as we slowly work up to that point of no return. We also get flashbacks to various pieces of earlier parts of their lives, and we start to realize that something has spooked the Mahad family--something is not as it seems. It's not your conventional mystery, per se, but it's compelling and certainly intriguing.At its core, this is a heartbreaking book whose strength lies in its characters. It's a wonderful exploration on race and immigration and how difficult it is to be deemed "different" by our society. What I loved about this book, though, is that you could also wonder: is either family truly all that different at its core? Every parent will go to any length to protect their child, after all. I highly recommend picking this one up. It can be read as a stand-alone, but if you want more insight into Jim and his mindset, you should definitely read the first book, What She Knew, which is also excellent (my review here). I can't wait to see what Macmillan comes up with next! 4+ stars.In a perfect swirl of ARC goodness, I received a copy of this novel from both Librarything and Edelweiss. A huge thanks to them and the publisher for a copy in return for an unbiased review. The book is available for purchase everywhere.

Interesting plot line, although the "twist" could be seen from a mile away. This book just moved way to slow for me. Too many characters and not enough depth to any of them for me to buy in or care what happened to them. It was just blah and felt like a chore to finish, which if it hadn't been a book I'd won through the Early Reviewers program, I'm not sure I would have.

Odd Child Out is the latest novel from Gilly MacMillan.Detective Jim Clemo is coming back from a compulsory leave following his last case. His superior hands him what looks to be a simple 'welcome back' case - a seeming accident. Two young men at the canal in the night - one falls in and is rescued, but..... A witness heard arguing and the second boy won't speak or answer questions. The first boy's mother insists that there is more to this than an accident. And she throws out the 'race' card. Noah is white and Abdi is black - a refugee from Somalia. And yes, there's much more to the case than a simple accident.Macmillan combines a mystery with some great character studies and takes a page from current events headlines.I initially thought the detective in the book was female. When 'he' was finally used and I realized it was a male, I went back to the opening chapter to confirm that I'd not missed something. I hadn't. I had not read MacMillan's first book, What She Knew, so I didn't realized this was the second book to feature Jim Clemo. Having not read that book, I didn't fully appreciate the references to a past case and the fallout from it. Still, you don't need to have read What She Knew to enjoy Odd Child Out. But,I found I didn't really bond with Clemo. His past angst, regrets and mistakes didn't overly engage me. The characters that did were Abdi's family. Their desire for a better life, their difficulty assimilating, the prejudice they face, the violence and hate that is visited on them and what they've left behind - both good and bad. I thought MacMillan did a wonderful job depicting this through the Mahad family. Just as well depicted is Noah's family - they too have heartache in their lives. Their anger, fear, hope, grief and frustration are just as well written.We slowly learn what happened that night on the canal through a then and now timeline. I enjoy this technique, but it does always have me reading 'just one more chapter past my bedtime. I thought I had sussed out what the final 'whodunit' might reveal. I was right but it certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book. Lots of action in the last chapters had me wanting to take a sneak peek at how things resolved, but I didn't. I expect there will be a third book featuring Clemo as there were some unresolved threads.The title is effective - both boys can be described as the odd child out in many ways.

Noah, a British teenage with cancer and Abdi, a Somalian refugee are the best of friends. One night while sneaking off, Noah falls into a canal and is rushed to the hospital unconscious. Did he fall or was he pushed? Abdi may have the answers but is too traumatized to speak and then runs off for some unknown reason. During the police investigation, we learn more about the two boys and their families. The detective, Jim Clemo wants to find Abdi before there is an all-out riot. The story is very dramatic and I enjoyed how it all developed but was left unsatisfied by the ending.

Odd Child Out is a story with a lot of depth, taking on some difficult and controversial topics. Be aware that this is not a straight up suspense story. Instead we have a character-driven literary experience with a mix of police procedural and suspense. The focus here is the cast of characters, as we get to know them and learn that perhaps all is not as it appears.The story is told from multiple viewpoints. In fact, every relevant character has a narrating part. Detective Clemo and Noah's parts are in first person, and the rest are in third person. The transitions are smooth, though I do wish the chapters had been titled with the character's name because sometimes it took me a paragraph to figure out whose viewpoint I was reading.The twist wasn't a surprise for me, and probably won't be for many readers. The pacing is slow and, as the story unfolds, it's a fairly obvious route to the outcome. For the most part, it feels like how we get there is more important than where we're going. Issues such as racism, white elitism, and childhood cancer take center stage, shading choices and decisions for all the characters. Maybe the two families, one wealthy white and the other lower middle class Somali, conform a little too much to stereotypes. Yet, while these characters do often conform to our expectations, that might be precisely the point. We see our preconceived expectations reflected back at us and maybe we're surprised by an unexpected turn of events. There is no mention in the description or on the book's cover about this being part of a series, though I am assuming it is because of certain things with Detective Clemo's character. I checked the author's other two books, and I didn't see anything in the descriptions as to whether either/both of those feature Detective Clemo, so I don't know which, if either, comes before this one. Clemo's character has a past that is not fully explained in this book, but greatly influences his job and personal situation. For the most part, this works fine as a stand-alone, though we never do learn the specifics of what happened to him earlier. I think there needs to be clarity as to whether these books are a series.*I was provided with an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.*

Best friends sometimes do unexpected things. Abdi and Noah were best friends and did something that no one would expect.The unexpected incident obviously brought the police in along with the two silent friends. Noah was put into a coma because of his injuries, and Abdi wasn't talking.ODD CHILD OUT was definitely a study of personalities and human emotions. Each character seemed to not fit with each other, and I thought it was odd that they were family members as well as friends. I did like the "bucket list" that Noah and his father compiled, but one part of the bucket list is what caused a problem the night of the incident.ODD CHILD OUT has us following along with the police in their investigation after Noah is found in the canal and an eye witness says she saw the best friends arguing. When Noah who is terminally ill with cancer is found floating in the canal and Abdi, his best friend, had been with him, no one knows what to think. It is difficult to imagine these boys doing anything out of the ordinary because they were star pupils.We also follow the story being told by Abdi and Noah about what really happened as the friends silently re-live it in their minds.The descriptions and the character development are very good and help you visualize the scenes and totally experience the emotions of each character which were mostly fear, loss, and questioning. You also feel the weight of lies and silence, truths untold, and prejudices.ODD CHILD OUT is an emotional, tense book that will make you think and question. Another excellent read by Gilly MacMillan. 4/5This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

3.5 Compelling, but don't go into this book expecting a suspenseful read, I found this book to be much more and less than that. Two young teen boys, friends because of their difference, one white, Noah, struggling with cancer and the long effects of hospitalizations, the other Somali, Abdi, here with his family after his family spent years in a camp. They bond because they are basically two outcasts. Become best friends, do everything together until one day one boy almost drowned and the other cannot or will not say what happened. DI Chemo, first day back after being released from mandatory leave, is given the case. Seems simple on the surface, turns to something much bigger.The press, and what lengths they will go to in order to get a story, embellish, prey on those suffering from intense grief. Racial bias, and how people will believe anything they read if it reinforces their own opinions. A family suffering the most intense grief and how this grief leads them to behave. Secrets from a camp, where terrifying people prey on those they can. A young boy in search of answers and a sister who will do anything to help. Many issues here, but done well, a slow unraveling of the many layers within. What really happened at that canal? That is the heart of the story for many, but a bigger issue faces Abdi. I enjoy this authors books, not straight out mysteries but her books seem to have more depth than many. Her characters are multifaceted, taking on real issues and revealing emotional contours without sappy writing. Families are families, regardless of skin color or nationality, and most want the same things for their children. To protect them and see them happy. ARC from Edelweiss.

This book was excellent reading for a mystery lover. Odd Child Out is the story of Noah and Abdi--teenage boys from very different backgrounds, but they become best friends. Their families are very involved in this story also. Thank you LibraryThing for allowing me to read this book. I recommend it to all who love a great page-turning mystery.

Until I added this book on GoodReads I did not realize it was the 2nd novel in a series. I read this title as a stand-alone. The storyline does reference Detective Jim Clemo's previous case but it is not repetitive to the extent that it deters from the current plot.

This novel shares a story that includes subjects including a child dying of cancer, refugee family integration in a new country, teenage friendship, and a detective's mental health to name just a few. With each page, I felt more emotionally invested in the lives of all the characters.

Gilly Macmillan writes a thought-provoking novel without preaching and I would not hesitate to read another novel by this author.

This is the second book in the Jim Clemo detective series but I did not read the first. It proved to be only a minor impediment. Jim is Detective Inspector in the Bristol, England Criminal Investigations Department. In the first book, he was apparently involved in a botched case in which a missing child died, and as this installment begins, he has just completed six months of therapy to help him deal with the loss.His boss wants to give him an easy assignment to ease back into the job, and puts him in charge of a case which seems like a “small fry” or "minnow" case. In fact, as they soon found, it turned out to be “a shark.” Two fifteen year olds were involved in an accident at the canal. Noah, a white upper-class boy with terminal cancer, is now in a coma. Abdi, his BFF and a Somali refugee, is prostate and won’t speak. Something happened there, and the stakes are huge because of all the anti-immigrant tension in the town. The press takes the low road, highlighting Noah’s cancer and Noah’s mom's prejudice against Abdi. Clemo and his partner Woodley are under a lot of pressure to figure out what happened before events get beyond them.Evaluation: The writing isn’t as smooth as it could be, but the pace and suspense are good. On the other hand, the characters conform a bit much to stereotypes, and for the most part lack depth. Nevertheless, I was engaged by the mystery, and wanted to find out what happened to the boys.

Odd Child Out by Gilly McMillian is a 2017 William Morrow publication. Deeply absorbing literary suspense.Inspector Jim Clemo is back at work, after having completed his requisite counseling. His first assignment, on the surface, is a low priority case, a probable accident. However, the circumstances are murky and the incident did leave a terminally ill boy in a coma and another boy so traumatized he can’t – or won’t- speak. The question Clemo and his partner much determine is if foul play was involved, or if it was a horrible accident. But, the situation is much more complicated than anyone would have imagined. Noah, a teenager dying of terminal cancer, lies in a hospital bed, comatose, but the reader is privy to his thoughts, as he narrates the events of that fateful night.Meanwhile, Noah’s best friend, Abdi, a Somalian refugee, hasn’t uttered a word since that night, but there may be more troubling him than his friend’s condition. Still, suspicion hangs over him, which complicates matters even more, especially when Jim’s former lover, a woman who has taken a job as a journalist decides to fan the flames of social tension surrounding Somalian refugees.This author has a unique writing style, employing both first and third person narratives. Noah and Jim speak to us directly, while the other characters converse in third person. Switching narratives may be met with skepticism, but in my opinion, it complimented the flow of the story and truly made sense, in this case. This story is a traditional police procedural, but it is also augmented with the deeply absorbing and heartbreaking backstory of both sets of parents. As such, the book could also easily pass as a work of contemporary fiction. The story does not unfold in the same way many other mysteries do, with a slow pace, and much more emphasis on character and deliberately shakes out strong emotions. Abdi’s family endured extreme cruelty in their lives, and carry deeply embeded scars, while Noah’s family has dealt with his cancer diagnosis for nearly half of his life and now must face his eminent death. The author also delves into Jim’s personal life, adding yet another thought provoking element to the story, and once again touching upon key social issues.While the suspense builds at an unorthodox pace, once it reached its pinnacle, I was utterly still, holding my breath, completely riveted as unexpected events began to unfold. The characters are unique, conflicted, flawed, and completely human, some of them more likeable than others, but all very well drawn. The story is very well crafted, written in such splendid prose, with incredibly profound elements that made me think about all the many layers of humanity and the very strong bonds of family and friendship. The ending is very stirring and I admit I may have swallowed down a lump in my throat, which is not something that happens much when I'm reading a dark and moody procedural. This story goes much deeper than the usual mystery novel, dealing with very grim topics, but has so much added depth and emotion, that I could easily recommend it to anyone who enjoys good fiction. 4.5 stars

This story revolves around best friends Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad, both aged 15. Noah missed a lot of school because of medical treatments for his cancer. Upon his return to school he is shunned by the other kids, except for Abdi. Their backgrounds are drastically different – Noah being from an upper middle class white family and Abdi from a black Muslim Somali refugee family. But this does not matter to them.One night after attending Noah’s father’s photography exhibition the boys wander out along the canal on an adventure. The evening ends in tragedy when an unconscious Noah is pulled from the cold dark waters of the canal. Surveillance cameras show that the boys argued, Noah walked away, and Abdi followed. But this is not the whole story. They both had secrets they guarded tightly. With Noah in a coma, the police question Abdi as to what happened but he refuses to talk. And we all know that silence is usually seen as guilt.Noah’s parents are beyond grief. Unknown to others, they know that Noah had only a couple of months to live. And now they may not have even that. Anger does not even begin to describe how they feel – devastated is more like it.Abdi’s family is terrified when Abdi goes missing. Secrets from the Somali refugee camp 15 years ago have shockingly followed them to their home in Bristol.The story is told from the perspectives of Noah (who as he lies in his coma reflects back on his life and the realization of all the things he will never get to do), Abdi’s 20-year-old sister Sofia (who has stronger maternal feelings for Abdi than does his mother), and Jim, one of the detective’s assigned to the case. I found it interesting that these perspectives were used, especially Sofia instead of Abdi. But this worked well in revealing some of the backstory of Abdi’s family fleeing Somalia. But Abdi has recently learned something that Sofia was never aware of.I got the impression from some of Jim’s story that this book is part of a series. After looking up her other books I found that Jim is the detective from the book “What She Knew”. But rest assured that you do not need to read that book first to understand this one. In “Odd Child Out” Jim is having to attend sessions with a psychologist over a case he had recently completed – the case in “What She Knew”. This was an excellent study in teen friendships and how families respond to tragedy. Abdi’s family’s fear and instinctive need to protect their son. Noah’s family is angry because Noah won’t tell them what happened. There is an unreliable witness whose story must be investigated. Detective Chief Inspector Corrine Fraser, Jim’s supervisor, knows that due to some recent racial tension in the city they may be sitting on a powder keg if Abdi is accused of attacking Noah. The author puts us in the heads of Noah, Sofia, and Jim and allows the story to unfold a bit at a time. The pacing of the story was excellent. No quick wrap-up at the end as so often happens. I thought the story came to a very satisfying closure.Thank you to GoodReads and William Morrow books for this excellent book.

A special thank you to Edelweiss and William Morrow for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.MacMillan's second instalment in the Jim Clemo series is about inseparable best friends. Despite their vastly different cultures—Noah Sandler is British and Abdi Mahad a Somali refugee—their loyalty sees no boundaries. After what appears to be a prank gone wrong, Noah is found floating unconscious in a canal in Bristol, and Abdi has been shocked into silence. Detective Jim Clemo is just back from a mandatory leave as a result of his last case. Because the investigation seems cut and dried, it is assigned to him. After tragedy strikes, it is apparent that the case it is more than just an accident. Social tensions begin to rise as the families fight for their sons and seek the truth. Told from alternating perspectives, MacMillan's story is a slow, tense burn with a deep plot. She effectively and deftly captures how relentless the press are. This is especially relevant and relatable in today's climate—whether they print facts, fiction, or a little of both, people will believe it is spun the right way. However, there are times where the narrative was clunky which accounts for some of its unnecessary bulk. While the premise is interesting, the characters were at times a bit too stereotypical and because of this, there are times where the story becomes a bit contrived. All-in-all, a good read and I will definitely be checking in with Detective Clemo again.

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Odd Child Out: A Novel

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Odd Child Out - Gilly Macmillan

After Midnight

Earlier That Evening

THE INVESTIGATION

DAY 1

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