Scared to Live (49 page)

Cooper hesitated, wondering whether he should voice what was on his mind. The picture he had in his head seemed so unlikely that he was sure he must have imagined it. It was surely a false memory, an impression mixed up with something he'd seen in Derwent Gardens. Something, or someone. 'It's a pity, though,' he said tentatively. 'There was something I wanted to ask Georgi.' 'Anything important?' 'It was something I remembered from the incident at Masson Mill. Just before I ended up in the water.' 'Before you decided to take a swim, Ben?' 'Yes. Well, it was a very brief impression I had, but I thought someone else was there by the river that night.' 'Obviously there was - the person who pushed you in.' 'No, that wasn't what I meant. There was someone else, further away. I had the impression - well, I wanted to ask Georgi Kotsev whether he'd seen a woman.' 'A woman?' Reluctantly, Cooper tried to describe his half-memory. It was no more than a shadow flickering in the darkness, perhaps the rustle of a long skirt on concrete. He might have been describing a dream. Or he might have confused it with the earlier glimpse of a woman who looked like a fortune teller, her blue scarf flashing briefly in the lights in Derwent Gardens. Fry shook her head. 'There was no woman by the river, Ben. Georgi would have mentioned it if he'd seen her.' 'Yes, I suppose so.' 'I'm sure he would.' Cooper looked at her closely. Her tone seemed to confirm what he'd been suspecting for a few days now. 'Did you like him, Diane?' he said. But Fry looked away. 'He was a professional. It was a pleasure to work with him.' 'A refreshing change, then?' 'You said it.'

'Is he married, by the way?' 'I never asked him,' said Fry. 'Why are you interested in Georgi, all of a sudden?' 'I was reading some of this stuff that the intelligence unit sent us on Bulgaria. They went over the top with the information, for once. There are even some reports from the European Roma Rights Centre. Take a look at this one.' Fry took the report he held out.

ROMA DIES IN POLICE SHOOTING A police officer in Pleven shot and killed a 24-year-old Romani man. The officer apparently tried to apprehend the man, who had broken into a shop in a Mechka neighbourhood and stolen confectioneries to the value of seven thousand leva. When the suspect managed to escape, the officer shot him. He was taken to Pleven Hospital, but died of his injuries. A complaint was made by the dead man's family about the conduct of the officer, identified as a sergeant of the First Regional Police Department. The case was dismissed by the Regional Military Prosecutor on the grounds that the incident involved the legitimate use of a firearm.

'So?' 'There are dozens of these, Diane. The Roma seem to have a lot of problems with the police in Bulgaria.' 'Georgi Kotsev is different. That's not his attitude.' 'If you say so.' Fry handed the report back. 'It's irrelevant anyway. We have incidents like that in this country, too.' 'Yes, I know. But they don't all involve gypsies.' 'Look, this is a report from the Roma Rights Centre. It's a single-issue campaign group. You're bound to get a distorted picture, because they're selective about the cases they publish. They're not interested in incidents that don't involve gypsies.'

'There are still quite a lot of them.' 'Ben, I must have missed your appointment as EU Commissioner for Human Rights.' 'What?' 'Well, that's what you're starting to sound like. Or are you still a Derbyshire police officer, by any chance? If so, just file those reports away. They're of no relevance to us. We're not here to solve the social problems of Eastern Europe.' But before he put them away, Cooper read one last extract again:

PROTEST AFTER BURNING OF ROMANI GIRL The Bulgarian newspaper Trud reported that Roma from the Nadezhda settlement protested against recent cuts in electricity. Supplies had been cut to Romani settlements throughout Bulgaria for several hours at a time, every four or five hours. The measure had been taken by the National Electrical Company because of payment arrears by Romani inhabitants. The protest was sparked by an incident involving a ten-year-old Romani girl, who was burned when her clothes caught fire from a wood stove being used in the absence of electricity. The girl's injuries were made worse by the fact that, because there had been no running water in the settlement for eight months, there was no available water to put out the fire.

Finally, Cooper found a website that gave currency exchange rates and looked up how much seven thousand leva were worth. He imagined it wouldn't be very much in sterling. But the conversion made it to be more than two thousand four hundred pounds. Surely that couldn't be right. No one could 'run off with over two and a half thousand pounds worth of sweets and chocolate bars. Then he saw a footnote to the conversion table. In 1999, the Bulgarian lev had been revalued at the rate of one thou sand old lev to one new lev. Well, that was a different story. That meant the Romani man had got himself killed for stolen confectionery worth two pounds forty-five pence. Oh, well. It was none of his business. Cooper looked across to see what Fry was doing, and peered curiously at some stapled sheets of paper on her desk. 'What's this?' 'An application form.' 'Oh, I see. For Europol.' 'That's right.' 'What happened to SOCA?' 'It's just another possibility to think about.' Cooper picked up the form and flicked through it, wondering why she'd left it where he was certain to see it. He stopped at the qualifications section. Fry was a graduate, so that was OK. And she had the relevant law enforcement experience. But there was a problem here, wasn't there? 'How many languages do you speak, Diane?' he asked. 'Languages? Are you kidding?' 'It says here candidates must be fluent in at least two languages of the European Union, including English.' 'Oh, damnation.' Cooper looked down, seeing that she was genuinely taken aback. 'Sergeant Kotsev will qualify when Bulgaria joins the EU. But I think you're going to have to do some studying if you want to get into Europol. Which language do you fancy, then?' 'I don't have time to learn languages.' 'Didn't you see that in the conditions of employment?' 'They didn't make it clear enough,' said Fry. Cooper decided to leave the subject alone. 'You know, Henry Lowther said that one of the reasons they trusted Rose Shepherd was because she was British, like them.' 'But she wasn't British at all. She was half Bulgarian, and

half Irish. According to the files from Sofia, her mother was a nurse from County Galway who met a Bulgarian soldier.' 'I know.' He couldn't quite interpret the look that Fry gave him. Maybe she just wanted to change the subject, or maybe she really was concerned for his welfare. 'Are you all right now, Ben? You're not still bothered by John Lowther's death?' Cooper was about to say no, he wasn't. But then he realized there were thoughts just below the surface that he hadn't had a chance to tell anybody about until now. 'He'd already stopped taking his medication, hadn't he?' he said. 'Yes, some weeks ago. Lindsay became completely absorbed with the baby. She forgot about her brother's needs, or maybe she thought he was well enough to cope on his own. But he wasn't - he began to slip.' 'I bet he knew there was something wrong. But once his thoughts became too disordered, he wouldn't know why, or what the problem was. Unless the voices gave him an explanation.' 'You're empathizing with a psychotic?' said Fry in amazement. 'Now I've heard everything.' Cooper took no notice. 'John Lowther's problem was that he saw too clearly, wasn't it?' 'What? What did he see?' 'The ghastly, naked spectre of insanity,' said Cooper, hardly knowing whether he was speaking out loud. 'Where on earth does that come from, Ben?' 'I can't remember. It's just a phrase that stuck in my mind from somewhere.' Fry sniffed. 'More likely he couldn't live with the knowledge that his father had involved him in a murder.' 'Yes, that as well. If he really understood what was happening.'

Cooper paused, considering his own comment. Because that wasn't what had been haunting John Lowther in those final moments, was it? His last words, as the air had snatched him from the tower on the Heights of Abraham, hadn't referred to Rose Shepherd, but to his sister and her children. I heard them scream. I'll always hear them scream. So those screams must have been inside John Lowther's head. Just one final illusion. And Cooper knew there was something else he shouldn't mention to Fry. He couldn't help feeling sorry for both the Mullens and the Lowthers. The Mullens' desperation for a girl had brought terrible consequences for them. In a way, Brian and Lindsay had sacrificed two children for one, as if they'd been playing some ghastly game of chess. A game that they'd lost, in the end. 'The Mullens did it all for the sake of that third child,' he said, because that was a safe way to say it. Fry nodded. 'And the child wasn't even theirs.' 'Not in a biological sense. But they'd gone to an awful lot of trouble to add her to the family, hadn't they? In a way, Luanne was the child they'd put the biggest investment into - time and effort, and expense, of course. But perhaps the biggest investment of love, too.' 'Do parents think like that?' asked Fry. 'I'd have thought their own children would be the most important to them. Their own flesh and blood.' But she sounded uncertain, as if it was a subject she wasn't qualified to speak on. Cooper remembered the few details she'd once told him about her childhood in the Black Country, when she'd been taken away from her parents and fostered. He wasn't sure what had happened to Diane's real parents, or whether she ever had any contact with them. She'd never mentioned them at all, and it wasn't something Cooper felt entitled to ask her. Maybe one day - if he ever felt he knew her well enough. 'No, Diane, I'm not sure it always works like that,' he said, though he didn't really feel any better qualified. It was just something she needed to hear.

'There's still no sign of Luanne Mullen. She's disappeared completely.' 'Somebody has her somewhere.' 'She could be dead, couldn't she?' 'I have no idea. If you ask me, Georgi's right and she's back with her father.' 'If that's the case, it would all have been for nothing. We'd all have failed - me, you, Georgi Kotsev. What a waste of time.' 'Let's hope we hear something from Georgi, then,' said Cooper. And, as he watched Fry's face, he thought that was one sentiment she probably agreed with. 'How is Henry Lowther doing?' 'We'll get the truth out of him. He's turned stubborn about talking, but at least he makes more sense than his son did.' 'You know, there was a question someone asked right at the beginning, when we were in Rose Shepherd's house after the shooting,' said Cooper. 'No one had any idea how to answer it then.' 'What question was that?' 'What Miss Shepherd's killer could possibly have said to her on the phone that would make her go to the window and walk into his sights.' 'There's no way we'll ever know that, unless Henry Lowther tells us.' 'Well . . .' said Cooper, 'if Miss Shepherd was in such desperate financial circumstances that she'd decided to blackmail Henry Lowther, there is one sentence that might have made her do exactly that.' 'What?' 'Rose, I've brought you your money.' But as soon as he said it, Cooper knew he would always feel sympathy for this person, too, though she might have been a blackmailer and a baby smuggler. And there was just one reason for that. No one had ever shed a tear for Rose Shepherd.

40

Three days later, Diane Fry received a letter in the morning mail at West Street. It carried a Bulgarian stamp depicting a yellow-winged butterfly, and the address on the envelope was written in tiny, precise black letters, with her name, rank and every word spelled out perfectly. Inside the envelope, she found a postcard and a colour photograph. Was that all? It seemed very disappointing. Holding the postcard carefully by the edges, she looked at the front. The picture was a detail from the Pleven Panorama, depicting some epic battle that had liberated Bulgaria from five hundred years of Turkish rule. But something about the picture unsettled her. Abandoned cannon and a landscape littered with bodies? It wasn't her idea of a tourist attraction, but perhaps it was considered art. Then she flipped the card over and read the message. From the moment she'd seen the stamp, she had no doubt who it was from.

Honoured Sergeant Fry, It was my privilege to work with you in this recent investigation. I will remember it always, because it will

be my last. My chief has been pleased to accept my resignation from the service. As you read this communication, I will no longer be in Bulgaria. So where will I go now? That is uncertain. Perhaps I will move to your Derbyshire? As I told you, your beautiful hills resemble those around my home in Miziya. I hope you know you are very lucky! Please give my regards to your colleagues. And my apologies to your Constable Cooper. Tell him, sometimes a man can see too much. Ah, but you asked me a question once. You asked me would a father really go so far to get his child back? Would he go to any lengths necessary? I did not answer you then. This was because I knew what should be done, but I felt certain you would say I was wrong. You are a good professional. You have my admiration. So now I will tell you the answer. Would a father go to any lengths necessary to get his child back? The answer is 'yes'. The answer is that I already did. May forgiveness be with God. RoeuDicdaue Dovijdane, Georgi Kotsev

Afraid to start figuring out what the message meant, Fry turned over the postcard again. This time she realized what she'd found disconcerting about the picture. The lower half of it was real, a photograph of an actual battlefield. Brown mud, abandoned weapons, a makeshift trench with a dropped water bottle, an empty ammunition box. But beyond the foreground, the scene was false. Those exhausted soldiers she could see weren't walking through a real landscape, but an imaginary one. The dead bodies were painted in, the drifting

smoke was the product of an artist's brush. Reality and illusion had been cleverly merged, and the line where they joined was almost imperceptible. Cooper put his head round the door, and Fry hastily slid the postcard under the papers on her desk. 'I'm sorry to tell you this, Diane,' he said, 'but I phoned the Interior Ministry in Pleven and asked for this colleague of Georgi Kotsev's. The name he gave you was Hristo Botev, right?' 'Yes. What did Botev say?' 'He wasn't there. He hasn't been there for quite a long time.' 'Oh.' Fry looked at him curiously. 'He's retired, perhaps?' 'You might say that. When I eventually got someone on the phone who spoke English, he made me repeat who I wanted several times, then burst out laughing. In fact, he seemed to be sharing the hilarity round the office.' 'Did Georgi play a joke on us?' 'A pretty pointless joke. When he could pull himself together, the officer explained that Hristo Botev was a Bulgarian revolutionary martyr, who died fighting the Turkish Empire in the nineteenth century. It seems Hristo was a cross between Robin Hood and Winston Churchill. They still commemorate his death every year on the second of June. There are several football stadiums named after him.' 'Football stadiums?' 'Well, Georgi did say he was very celebrated in Bulgaria. A great hero.' Fry could hardly bring herself to speak. 'Yes. Thanks, Ben.' 'Don't worry. He was just pulling your leg. It must be the Bulgarian sense of humour. Pity, though - I still want to ask Georgi whether he saw a woman by the river that night.' 'There was no woman,' she said automatically. When Cooper had gone, Fry put the postcard back and finally forced herself to look at the photograph. The card had hardly been necessary, because the photo told