Scared to Live

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 thisrecent investigation. I will remember it always,because it will be my last. My chief has beenpleased to accept my resignation from theservice. As you read this communication, I will nolonger be in Bulgaria. So where will I go now?That is uncertain. Perhaps I will move to yourDerbyshire? As I told you, your beautiful hillsresemble those around my home in Miziya. Ihope you know you are very lucky! Please give my regards to your colleagues.And my apologies to your Constable Cooper. Tellhim, sometimes a man can see too much. Ah, but you asked me a question once. Youasked me would a father really go so far to gethis child back? Would he go to any lengthsnecessary? I did not answer you then. Thiswas because I knew what should be done,but I felt certain you would say I was wrong.You are a good professional. You have myadmiration. So now I will tell you the answer. Would afather go to any lengths necessary to get hischild back? The answer is ‘yes’. The answer isthat I already did. May forgiveness be with God.

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 her everything she needed to know. It showed two people standing in front of a wide, circular tower with a flight of steps and an entrance like a very tall letter ‘H’. She wouldn’t have recognized the building, but for the postcard. The Pleven Panorama.

Georgi Kotsev was in full uniform, with his silver badge pinned to his breast pocket. And very smart he looked, too. The blue tunic and epaulettes suited him even better than a black leather jacket. Below the high crown of his service cap, Kotsev was smiling. It was a smile that had become familiar to Fry in the few days that she’d known him. It made her heart turn over until she felt queasy.

But here, the reason for Georgi’s smile seemed to be the woman standing next to him. She was very striking, black-haired and dark-eyed, wearing a blue scarf and a red silk blouse, open at her throat. She was no taller than Georgi’s shoulder, and he had his arm around her waist. She was like a dark rose in his hand.

But that wasn’t all. Not by a long way.

There were actually three people in this photograph. And here was when reality and illusion seemed to merge again for Fry. Dr Sinclair had said that hallucinations could be just another way of constructing reality. Who was to say that anyone’s perception of reality was the right one, or ever had been? It was an impossible question.

But one thing she was sure of, Sergeant Kotsev was a professional, all right. The woman beside him had the distinctive look of a Roma. And the child in her arms was the most beautiful baby that Fry had ever seen.