Scared to Live

39

Fry had bought a new packet of Paracetamol, but was keeping it in her pocket for safety. After the interview with Henry Lowther, she fished it out and found a few tablets left. She had just taken two with a cup of water when her phone rang.

‘Alo. It’s Georgi Kotsev.’

‘Hi, Georgi. Will we see you today?’

‘Diane, I’m sorry to tell you that my chief has recalled me. I would have liked to stay a little longer, but my duty is in Pleven now.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘There’s a flight this morning, in three hours’ time. Lufthansa, but what can you do?’

‘Do you need a lift to the airport?’

‘I have permission to obtain a taxi. My ministry is paying, so who can refuse? It will be here very soon.’

‘I’m sorry we won’t get a chance to say goodbye properly. It’s been very interesting working with you.’

‘Not like one of those bloody civilians, eh?’

‘No, you’re not like one of those bloody civilians, Georgi.’

‘Blagodariya. Thank you.’

‘Did you hear that we’ve arrested Henry Lowther for the murder of Rose Shepherd?’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘We believe he killed Miss Shepherd because she was attempting to blackmail him over the child. Unfortunately, Mr Lowther no longer had enough money to pay her off. His export business was failing. I guess he hadn’t kept up with the times.’

‘A bad choice of blackmail victim,’ said Kotsev. ‘What a pity.’

‘Well, Lowther wasn’t going to throw away everything that he’d done for his daughter. There was no way he could let the child be taken away from her after all that. Not to mention all the money he’d invested in her happiness. When you’ve already been involved in one crime, it isn’t a big step to the next one, is it?’

‘No, that is true.’

‘And Mr Lowther felt confident he’d get away with it, because he knew Miss Shepherd was a recluse and never talked to anyone.’

‘It will be a tight case?’

‘Yes. We found the gun when we searched the Lowthers’ bungalow. And his son was driving the car. So we’ve cleared that up, Georgi. I’m sorry if it means you wasted your time here.’

‘No, it was not a waste of time,’ said Kotsev. ‘Your theory is interesting. But it is a lot of gluposti. Bullshit.’

Fry was stunned into silence for a moment. ‘You think we have it wrong?’ Then she laughed. ‘You have your own ideas. You want it to be connected to your Bulgarian Mafia. But, Georgi — ’

‘Where do you think the child is?’ asked Kotsev.

‘I don’t know. Do you?’

‘She was taken efficiently. She will be back home very soon.’

‘Back home?’

‘In Bulgaria. With her father.’

‘Georgi, I hope not.’

‘Could it not be for the best, Diane?’ he asked tentatively.

‘No, of course not. What do you mean?’

‘No matter. And the Zhivko bombing? Entirely unrelated?’

‘So far as we can tell.’

Fry wanted to ask Kotsev more. She wanted to ask him lots of things. But there was a hint of distance in his voice that made her hold back.

‘I will be pursuing my own enquiries in Pleven. Meanwhile, if I’m not available, you may speak to my colleague, Inspector Hristo Botev.’

‘Could you spell that for me?’

Kotsev spelled out the name. ‘Hristo Botev. You pronounce the “H” in the throat, almost as if it was a “C”.’

‘It sounds a bit Welsh.’

‘Yes, a bit Welsh. My friend Hristo is very celebrated in Bulgaria. A great hero.’

Fry smiled at his exaggeration. She didn’t imagine that police officers were any more celebrated in Bulgaria than they were in Derbyshire. For most people, they were a necessary evil, at best.

Cooper came into the office, and saw at once that something was disturbing Fry.

‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘That was Georgi Kotsev. He’s going back to Bulgaria this morning.’

‘Well, his interest in the case is over, I suppose.’

‘Not really. We still don’t know where Luanne Mullen is. Or should I say Zlatka?’

‘If she’s not dead, she’ll be back out of the country by now. Don’t you think so?’

‘Georgi does.’

‘Well, then. Sergeant Kotsev will be more use back in Bulgaria, if she’s ever going to be found. I think they did the right thing recalling him.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

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-oldRomani man. The officer apparently tried toapprehend the man, who had broken into a shopin a Mechka neighbourhood and stolen confectioneriesto the value of seven thousand leva. Whenthe suspect managed to escape, the officer shot him.He was taken to Pleven Hospital, but died of hisinjuries. A complaint was made by the dead man’sfamily about the conduct of the officer, identified asa sergeant of the First Regional Police Department.The case was dismissed by the Regional MilitaryProsecutor on the grounds that the incident involvedthe 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 protestedagainst recent cuts in electricity. Supplies had beencut to Romani settlements throughout Bulgaria forseveral hours at a time, every four or five hours.The measure had been taken by the NationalElectrical Company because of payment arrears byRomani inhabitants. The protest was sparked byan incident involving a ten-year-old Romani girl,who was burned when her clothes caught fire froma wood stove being used in the absence of electricity.The girl’s injuries were made worse by thefact that, because there had been no running waterin the settlement for eight months, there was noavailable 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 thousand 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’s 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.