Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

‘What’s wrong with Dounav?’

‘I looked it up,’ said Cooper. ‘Dounav is a state game preserve in northern Bulgaria. One of its hunting ranges is called the Bulgarian jungle because of its deep forests. Hunters go there to shoot deer, foxes and even the occasional wolf. But mostly wild boar.’

With the back of her hand, Fry wiped a bit of rain from her face and began to walk towards her car again. ‘OK. So …?’

‘Well, how do you go about hunting boar?’ said Cooper. ‘Those are big animals. I doubt if you’d use a bow and arrow.’

Fry stopped in her tracks. ‘You’d use a hunting rifle, right?’

‘I think so, don’t you?’

Her expression had changed. The rain was getting heavier, but she let a trickle run into her eyes and hardly noticed.

‘OK, I’m with you, Ben. Let’s see if we can check out Henry Lowther’s financial status. He seems to have parted with money pretty readily when they were getting Zlatka Shishkov out of Bulgaria. But does he really have such deep pockets? I’m no expert on property prices, but I’d guess that bungalow at Darley Dale is probably worth less than Bain House.’

‘If Rose Shepherd was making an attempt to blackmail Mr Lowther, she might have seriously misjudged his ability to pay.’

‘Yes. But we’ve got to be discreet — I don’t want him to know we’re checking him out.’

‘Right, Diane. And what then?’

‘I’ll talk to the DI. When we’ve got everything together, we’ll go and see the Lowthers again.’

‘They’ve lost both their children in the past week,’ said Cooper.

‘I know. No one said this was going to be easy.’

Rain spattered on the glass roof of the Lowthers’ conservatory and ran down the windows in long, slow streaks. The stone angel had turned a darker shade of grey, puddles were forming on the backs of the flattened tortoises. Inside, the atmosphere was humid, condensation forming on the leaves of the tree ferns. It almost made up for the icy stares from Henry and Moira Lowther, sitting together on their settee.

Fry gritted her teeth, steeling herself to resist the waves of resentment surging through the foliage. For a few moments on the doorstep, she’d wondered whether they were even going to be allowed into the bungalow. Now, that would have been awkward.

‘Luanne — she’s still alive somewhere, surely?’ said Mrs Lowther. ‘The fact that you haven’t found her yet … I mean, we will see her again, won’t we?’

‘I’m sorry, we can’t say, Mrs Lowther. We’re still looking.’

After that, the Lowthers just looked at her expectantly, offering nothing, asking no questions. And why should they? It wasn’t their job to make it easier for her.

‘I want to go back to what you told me about the adoption,’ said Fry eventually. ‘I understand the procedure for international adoptions can be rather complicated in Bulgaria.’

Henry Lowther grunted angrily. ‘Complicated? You don’t know the half of it. The whole business is like some nightmare from a Kafka novel.’

‘A lot of hurdles in the way.’

‘Absolutely. Right from the beginning, it was made as difficult as possible.’

She detected instant relief from the Lowthers at the direction of her questions. More obvious from Moira than her husband, perhaps. But Henry was prepared to talk now. Eager, in fact.

‘Prospective parents have to obtain the consent of the Bulgarian Justice Minister in advance, before they can even think of starting court proceedings,’ he said. ‘And the application has to refer to a particular child, so you’ve got to find the child before you do anything else.’

‘Hence the orphanage being the first port of call.’

‘Exactly. Then we had to go to the ministry and demonstrate adoption would be in the child’s best interests. Lindsay and Brian had to provide information about themselves: age, health, criminal records, that sort of thing. You need declarations of consent from the child’s natural parents — or the chief physician of the orphanage, in our case. It was only when the minister gave his say-so that we could apply to the regional court in Sofia.’

‘A lot of documents required, were there, sir?’

‘Documents? A whole bloody library of documents. I could reel them off for you now, they’re so imprinted on my brain. I used to go through the list every night before I went to sleep, I was so afraid we’d missed some detail that would bring the whole thing crashing down. Lindsay and Brian had to testify in writing to their motivations. They had to produce their birth certificates and marriage certificate. They had to give evidence about their home, their employment, their income, proof of their financial assets.’

Mrs Lowther was nodding in agreement. ‘And their religion, their ability to raise children … They had to provide references, as if they were applying for a job.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Henry. ‘And they had to produce doctors’ reports — not just a physical examination, but their psychiatric condition, too. There had to be background checks, even for motoring offences. They had to make a declaration of intent, stating that they wouldn’t use the child for medical experimentation. Medical experimentation! What sort of people do they think we are, for heaven’s sake?’

‘And all those documents had to be translated into Bulgarian, and certified by a notary public,’ said Mrs Lowther, trumping him with what must have seemed like the final straw.

Her husband took a breath. ‘Yes, the process was far too complicated. There were insurmountable obstacles put in our way at every stage, and we were defeated by the sheer bloody weight of bureaucracy. It was an emotional and financial drain on the whole family.’

‘Financial, sir?’

‘Oh yes, financial. Didn’t I mention that? With lawyer’s fees and notary’s fees, and the cost of travelling backwards and forwards to Sofia all the time, the expense was crippling. And the worst thing was, we couldn’t foresee any end to it. Not ever. Even Lindsay was so worn down by it all that she thought we’d have to give up.’

‘But you didn’t give up, did you?’ said Fry. ‘You found a way around the system, am I right?’

Lowther twisted in his chair to glance at his wife. They exchanged a look that carried too many meanings for Fry to interpret.

‘Yes,’ admitted Lowther finally. ‘It was then — at the darkest moment in the whole process, when we were all at our lowest ebb — it was then that a miracle happened, as far as we were concerned. That was when we were contacted by Rose Shepherd.’

‘So you weren’t put in touch by a business contact, as you said earlier?’

‘No, that wasn’t quite true.’

‘How did she first contact you?’

‘She phoned the hotel we were staying at. Don’t ask me how she knew where we were staying, or even how she knew about us. It was all a bit hush-hush — we had no way of getting in touch with her while we were there. We always had to wait for her to phone. But it was obvious from the start that Miss Shepherd had plenty of … well, contacts within the system. I’m certain she must have been working with some of the people at the orphanage, but it was never stated, and we didn’t ask.’

‘All right. What did she offer you?’

‘She offered us a shortcut through the bureaucracy. She said she could arrange the necessary paperwork and deliver Zlatka directly to us. For a fee, of course. But frankly, the amount she asked was a good deal less than the cost we’d calculated for continuing the adoption process through the regional court. She told us she’d done it before for other foreign couples, and she even offered us testimonials.’