Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

‘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.

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.’