Scared to Live

25

Cooper took his brother’s call at home in the middle of the evening, just as he was settling down to watch a good film with a bottle of beer in his hand and the cat on his knee.

‘Ben, it says here that older fathers are more liable to have kids with schizophrenia. If you’re between forty-five and forty-nine, you’re twice as likely to have a child with the illness as a man of twenty-five.’

‘Matt, you’re only thirty-five now. You were still in your twenties when you had the girls.’

‘Yes, well. I’ve written down all the facts to talk to the doctor about. Did you know schizophrenia can start at any age, but most people are affected in their late teens or early twenties? In their teens, Ben.’

‘Considering the average teenager, I wonder how they can tell.’

Matt had taken a breath to continue, but came to an abrupt halt as if his brother had made a rude noise down the phone.

‘It’s not funny, Ben.’

Ben found himself standing in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. The framed photograph on the wall was one of the few things he’d brought with him when he moved out of Bridge End Farm. It was both reassuring and somehow disturbing to have his father’s eyes watching him as he listened to his brother.

‘You know something?’ he said. ‘Mum would have found it funny.’

Matt sighed. ‘For heaven’s sake, Ben.’

And the strange thing was that Matt was so similar to their father in many ways. Even this conversation sounded like one of those occasions when Joe Cooper would sit his sons down and give them advice. A few words of caution … It had been one of his favourite phrases.

‘Matt, have you thought of joining one of the support groups? There’s one called Rethink. It used to be the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘So you could talk to people with similar experiences and get some reassurance. That’s what those organizations are for.’

‘You’re not being very helpful, are you?’

‘Actually, I think that’s exactly what I’m being.’

Ben was glaring at his phone now. But he couldn’t keep it up. He had to smile when he pictured his brother doing the same at the other end. This was the way their arguments always started.

‘I can tell you’re not in the right frame of mind at the moment,’ said Matt. ‘You must have had a bad day, or something.’

‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t such a bad day — until now.’

Of course, he didn’t really mean that, but there was almost a set script between them when they got to this stage. Matt knew it as well as he did.

‘Oh, right. Sorry to have bothered you, I’m sure. I suppose that means you won’t want me to share any information I manage to find out from Dr Joyce tomorrow?’

‘You’ll suit yourself, Matt. It doesn’t matter what I say.’

There was a muttered swear word, a crash of something falling over, and silence. His brother had gone.

Ben found his eyes focusing straight ahead. And there was Sergeant Joe Cooper, gazing out from his place in the second row, among all those other solemn-faced police officers lined up in their best uniforms to have their photograph taken.

It was odd, really. He’d spent so much time thinking that his life had been dictated and overshadowed by the legacy of Joe Cooper. Everyone who’d known his father said how alike they were. Here he was doing a similar job, in the same place, and often dealing with the same individuals that Joe Cooper had encountered.

Sometimes it had made Ben feel as if he was a clone, a walking carrier of his father’s gene pattern. He hadn’t seriously considered what he might have inherited from his mother’s side, or which of her chromosomes he’d been allocated during conception. Her hair colouring, yes. The eyes, maybe. But what else was lurking in his DNA that he’d never been aware of? What genetic predispositions might he be carrying, that he risked passing on to future generations? Both of his parents were part of his nature. And he didn’t regret it. But the feelings stirred up by that thought had become equivocal.

He switched his attention away from the photograph to the Richard Martin print of Win Hill on the adjacent wall. The landscape normally brought him back to earth when he got too preoccupied. Literally back to earth.

Then Ben laughed to himself. All of this anxiety presumed he would ever get married or find a permanent partner. He didn’t have any such intentions at the moment, and maybe that was for the best. He’d really hate to be in Matt’s position, discovering the awful possibilities when it was already too late.

‘This is pretty, but I still prefer cities,’ said Kotsev as they walked by the river after dinner. ‘At ten o’clock at night in Sofia, the streets would be full, even though it’s a Thursday. People would be selling sunflower seeds or salted sweetcorn. They would be buying books from fold-up tables. There would be loud music from stalls dealing in pirated CDs. A few counterfeit Rolex watches or Levi jeans, perhaps. Beggars and street artists, and pickpockets and prostitutes. It would be like a party. Here, there is nothing.’

Fry studied him, wondering whether he was joking. It was difficult to tell sometimes. She could only get a clue by watching his eyes. Then, when he saw her staring, Kotsev laughed.

‘You like living in Sofia?’ she said.

‘In some ways.’

‘It isn’t all one big party, then?’

‘Let me tell you something, Diane. In a suburb of Sofia where I used to live as a young police officer, we were in an old apartment block from the Soviet era. Very grey, very ugly. We had a two-bedroom apartment for the family. But we were lucky. Some of our neighbours had many more children — they had to put mattresses in the kitchen, in the sitting room, on the balcony. Every shop in the neighbourhood had brightly coloured stickers on the door, to show which Mafia protection agency they were insured with. This was normal. It was the way everyone lived, and we understood it.’

‘I don’t think I would understand it, Georgi. A situation like that wouldn’t be tolerated here, even in our worst neighbourhoods.’

‘Some people say the power of the Mafia is a necessary phase in the progress towards a capitalist economy,’ said Kotsev, with a questioning tilt of his head.

‘I think that’s rubbish.’

He stopped, teetering on the stone ledge bordering the river. It occurred to Fry that she might be considered foolhardy to be alone at night in a quiet spot with a man she’d met only a few hours ago. But she didn’t feel uneasy at all. Big as he was, she could probably disable Kotsev easily. She hadn’t lost her skills completely.

‘You ought to know how the KGB operated in the old days,’ he said, peering into the dark water. ‘They used the secret service organizations of East European countries as their tools. In Bulgaria, the Darzavna Sigurnost specialized in “wet” operations — contract killings. Do you remember the Markov case? It took place some years ago, at the height of the Cold War. Before your time, perhaps.’ ‘Thank you, Georgi. But I’ve heard of the case. A Bulgarian defector, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. And after he defected, he was assassinated. In daylight, in a London street. They say he was injected with the poison ricin from the tip of an umbrella. They also say it was the Bulgarian secret service who carried out the assassination. No one in Bulgaria would contradict that report.’

‘Yes, but even so — ’

‘Another dissident was shot in the back with a poisoned bullet near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Ricin was used in that incident, too.’

‘But — ’

Kotsev held up a hand. ‘Wait. There was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. You remember? It was alleged that Darzavna Sigurnost recruited the hit men who carried out the shooting — two Turks. When one of them was captured by the Italians, he made allegations against our secret service. But he retracted them after a spell in the Rebibbia jail in Rome, where he was allegedly threatened by Bulgarian agents. Afterwards, he blamed the plot on the Vatican itself.’

‘Even so, Georgi — ’

Kotsev laughed. ‘Yes, you’re right. Even so. Like you, Sergeant, I do not believe our beloved secret service was involved in the killing of Dimitar Iliev.’

‘Who was it, then? Simcho Nikolov?’

‘Well, these killings were probably carried out by a local person, a paid assassin. Someone like Simcho Nikolov, perhaps. But it’s possible they were ordered by a major Bulgarian crime boss, one of the remaining Mafia. A very powerful man, particularly now that some of his leading rivals have been … eliminated. A man with friends in high places.’

Fry fought a brief internal battle between her own ambition and what she knew to be the proper protocol. Finally, she sighed. ‘This is really a matter for Special Branch or MI5 — they’re our lead bodies for organized crime. You’re scheduled to meet with them tomorrow in Chesterfield for a briefing on the Zhivko brothers.’

‘The Zhivkos are not a loss,’ said Kotsev, with a faint air of disappointment.

They had arrived at the point where water poured over a weir and the river formed little wooded islands populated by sleeping birds. Even at this time of the evening there were people by the river, enjoying an oasis of peace under the shadow of St Mark’s Church. Kotsev paused again.

‘We have our tourist attractions in Pleven, also,’ he said, admiring the reflection of the illuminated church spire in the water.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. If you ever visit our city, you must see our famous Pleven Panorama — the largest structure of its kind in the world. Larger, even, than the Borodino Panorama in Moscow.’

‘Wonderful.’

Fry wasn’t sure she knew what a panorama was. She’d always thought it was one of those views of the countryside from the top of a hill that Ben Cooper loved so much. But that didn’t sound like what Georgi was talking about.

‘The Pleven Panorama tells a great story. The tragic destiny of our people, their dramatic fight, the compassion in the hearts of our Russian brothers. Within the Panorama, the spectator sees a charge of the Turkish cavalry, smoking shells, burning fires in the city, the Russian General Skobelev attacking a Turkish fortification. This attraction causes a great deal of interest in our city.’

‘As you said yourself, we don’t know much about Bulgarian history here.’

‘No, of course.’ Kotsev smiled. ‘But its construction might be of interest to you.’

He looked at her, as if expecting a reaction. But she still didn’t know quite what he was telling her.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘Ah, well.’

He began to walk on again, but Fry stopped him.

‘Georgi, who should we be looking for? If the Zhivkos and Simcho Nikolov came, then who else is here?’

‘Here?’ He laughed. ‘Here in the United Kingdom? You could start with seven thousand Bulgarian entrepreneurs. Including, perhaps, a one-legged roofer.’

The breeze was turning cool down by the river. Fry shivered a little, wishing she’d brought something warmer to put on. Apart from when she was at the office, she always seemed to make the wrong decisions about what to wear.

‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘It was all making sense, right up until the bit about the one-legged roofer.’

Kotsev easily kept pace with her as she headed along the river towards the bridge. A few minutes’ brisk walking, and she could be back in her car with the heater turned up.

‘You don’t recall?’ he said. ‘A few years ago, your government introduced a so-called visa fast-track system. The purpose was to encourage entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe to come to the UK and set up business. Sadly, this system went badly wrong. Applications were not checked efficiently — many were not checked at all. Seven thousand unskilled Bulgarians and Romanians were allowed into your country on visas meant for entrepreneurs.’

‘Yes, I remember now. But the one-legged roofer?’

‘Ah, I bent the truth a little. He was actually a Romanian. But, you see, at that time there was an organized fraud in operation. One person submitted seventy identical business plans to support visa applications from Bulgarian individuals. They made a mockery of your entry control procedures, Diane.’

‘So you’re saying that pretty much anybody could have come into this country?’

Kotsev shrugged. ‘If they could afford it. Yes, it was easy to beat British immigration controls. But this was expensive for a Bulgarian worker. Fraudulent papers might cost up to three thousand pounds. It’s funny, you know — that was about the same amount of money that many British people were spending at that time on buying up cheap homes in my country, to spend a summer month by the Black Sea. Would you consider that irony, Diane?’

‘Yes, that’s irony, Georgi.’

Their feet echoed on the bridge. Fry had been thinking that she’d welcome the lights and the sight of people in the street. But instead she felt suddenly reluctant to leave the darkness and the quietness of the river. She stopped halfway across the bridge and leaned on the parapet. Kotsev came to stand next to her, sharing that mysterious attraction to water.

‘You understand, the process for applying for a visa as a self-employed person became a very nice loophole,’ he said. ‘But there always had to be an invitation of some kind. There were plenty of people who wanted to bend the rules, but they needed a partner in Britain. An individual in your country could set up a company, offer a Bulgarian worker a job, and then look the other way when he slipped off — in exchange for cash, of course. You see, the corruption and greed is not all in Bulgaria.’

‘There must have been risks, though.’

‘Any risks were worth taking. You try to get a hundred individuals into the country and succeed only with forty? You’ve still made a hundred thousand pounds. That’s a great many stotinki for a Bulgarian.’

‘This all blew up into a scandal a couple of years ago, didn’t it? I remember the immigration minister having to resign, and visa applications from Bulgaria were suspended. But it was too late by then, I suppose?’

‘Indeed. Too late.’

‘The words “horse”, “stable door” and “bolted” come to mind.’

‘Now you’re making as much sense as my one-legged roofer.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Kotsev smiled at her, his eyes crinkling again. ‘You appreciate, there is a lot of information I do not have myself. But I’m sharing with you what I know — because I think we understand each other.’

Any answer would have felt awkward, so a moment of silence developed. For a few seconds, it was just the two of them, surrounded by darkness and silence, gazing into the water. Fry looked down at their hands, hers and Georgi’s. They were so close on the rail that they were almost touching. She felt as if she was an inch away from something unexpected, a contact she could so easily reach out for, and hold on to.

Then a young couple appeared on the opposite bank and began to walk slowly across the bridge. Kotsev moved back from the parapet when he heard the footsteps. He brushed against her as he turned, and Fry caught a whiff of his scent when he touched her. She inhaled instinctively, trying to read some elusive meaning in a smell.

‘Kalina Tet-a-tet,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s Russian.’

Fry met his gaze for a moment, wondering how he’d known what she was thinking.

Cooper retrieved his beer and switched on the TV. But the film had already started, and it didn’t look quite so interesting after all. In fact, he thought he’d probably seen it before, and just forgotten the title. So he disentangled himself from the cat and picked up his phone again. He dialled a number from his phone book.

‘Hi, it’s me. What are you doing?’

And immediately it was as if he’d been sucked into some kind of time slip. Time went by without him being aware of it, because he was in a world when time didn’t really exist. When he next looked at his watch, the call seemed to have lasted for nearly an hour. He’d finished his beer, walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and come back with another bottle, all without breaking concentration. It was a miracle the way the mind could focus on the important things.

‘Better go. Are you on duty tomorrow …? I’ll see you, then.’

Finishing the call, he decided to go to bed early. But he lay awake for a while with the cat lying on his duvet, purring like a mobile generator. He always thought a feline in the bedroom was appropriate, in a way. A cat was the Celtic equivalent to the dog Cerberus — the guardian at the entrance to the Underworld. Randy could watch over him as he slipped across the vulnerable threshold between waking and sleep.

Tonight, his brain was already wandering out of his control, following its own path. He was remembering random incidents from his past when reality might have been different from what he’d perceived. There had been moments, of course. There’d been times when he thought he saw things that didn’t exist, when he’d woken to a voice in the night and realized it was only a dream. There had been entire periods of his life when everything had been dark and twisted, and out of proportion. As a teenager, his whole world had seemed out of kilter. But you could only recognize that later, couldn’t you? Reality was a matter of perspective.

Finally, he drifted to sleep recalling how many times his mother had spoken to him when he knew she wasn’t there. He could hear her voice plainly, even now. It was a reality he couldn’t deny, a truth that defied logic. It was a sound snatched from the past, and trapped inside his head.

Four hours later, Cooper woke in a panic. He felt as though he couldn’t move. A great weight was pressing on his chest, pinning him to the bed. He knew he was in that indefinable place between sleeping and waking, and he wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t make his lungs work. Somewhere nearby a voice was speaking to him, but it was mumbling too indistinctly for him to hear the message.

And then suddenly he broke through a barrier, and shot upright in bed with a wordless shout. Randy flew off his chest, a resentful yowl filling the bedroom.

Cooper found he was sweating, and his heart was thumping. There was a burning pain in his arm, too. Was this what it was like when you had a heart attack? Should he phone for an ambulance, or wait and see what happened? He was only thirty, too young to die of heart failure.

It took him a few minutes to calm down. When he was breathing more slowly, he put on the light and checked his arm. He discovered it was covered with little claw marks, where the cat had been mauling him during the night. If the skin was broken, the scratches would get infected. A cat’s claws were never entirely clean.

The mumbling he’d heard might have been the cat, too. Or it might have been the rain he could hear hitting the roof of the conservatory. It must have started while he was asleep.

Half an hour later, the rain eased off, and finally stopped. By then, Cooper was sitting in his kitchen with a cup of coffee on the table, waiting for the light to seep through the windows.

It was barely dark when he got the call. ‘You knowwhat you have to do, Johnny. It’s time.’

He didn’t need to ask any questions. He recognizedthe voice straightaway, and he knew the instruction wassomething he had to act on. And he had to do it now.‘Yes, it’s time. It’s time.’

There had been a train of thought in his mind thathe couldn’t quite grasp. Too many distractions and distortions,that was the trouble. At moments, he almost gota clear view of some mental will-o’-the-wisp that oughtto be followed and interpreted. His thoughts wereconnected, but the connections were slippery, so theyescaped his groping fingers. At other times, he knew theillusion of meaningfulness was just that — an illusion.It was like a blurred or shifting picture puzzle. Thecontent seemed to change the more you tried to defineit, or get it into focus.

Someone had explained it to him once. They said thatincoherence resulted from a loosening of associations, adysfunction at the neuro-cognitive level. He had no ideawhy he should remember that, when he couldn’t recallthings that had happened the day before. Especiallywhen he didn’t understand some of the words that wereused.

Or perhaps that was the reason — he rememberedbecause he didn’t understand. Yes, that could be it. Therewas no solid meaning in the words to escape him. Nosoft, slippery undertones, no blurry significance. Onlyletters and sounds, and nothing else. Like bare earth,with no life in it. No humanity or feeling behind thewords to confuse him. No voices at all, only noise.

But it was a voice that had distracted him again. Hehad no idea what he’d been thinking about before itcame. That was the way his thoughts were — alwaysshifting. Forever flitting this way and that. The flightof ideas. He liked the sound of that phrase. The flightof ideas. It sounded exciting and creative. It made himsound like some kind of genius whose mind soared aboveeveryone else’s, light and fragile, a crystal bird. Reflectingthe light like a prism, riding the currents of the wind,dipping and soaring. Never following the same directionfor more than five minutes at a time.

He waited as long as he could, resisting the urgentwhisper until it became intolerable. Then he left theapartment at about two a. m., rolled his car quietly onto the street and started the engine. All the people intheir houses were asleep by now, except for those sleepingalone, afraid what might be out there in the dark, theburglars and rapists, and the crazed axemen.

‘You know what you have to do, Johnny.’