Текст книги "Scared to Live"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

Соавторы: Stephen Booth
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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

38

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.’

‘And you believed her, Mr Lowther?’

‘Certainly – especially after I met her for the first time. Rose Shepherd was very plausible, you know. She gave the impression of being completely nice and harmless, but a bit secretive, like a sort of maiden aunt. And it helped a lot that she seemed so… well, British. We were reassured by the fact that she was very like us – but she was Bulgarian, too. She was familiar with the ways of the country, so she knew how to deal with officials. She could play the system, if you like. Well, the upshot was that Miss Shepherd promised us an end to our frustration. She offered to provide exactly what we weren’t achieving through the official channels.’

‘And did she happen to mention that what she was offering was illegal?’

‘No, certainly not. It was never hinted at. She led us to believe that it was entirely above board. She described herself as an international adoption agent.’

‘Oh well, a bit of fancy language makes all the difference, doesn’t it?’ said Fry.

Lowther pulled a face and looked at her accusingly, as if disappointed rather than offended by her sarcasm.

‘She seemed like a godsend at the time, you know. Particularly for Lindsay. Bear in mind that she’d already met Zlatka several times and they’d bonded like mother and daughter. Lindsay had already made a place in her heart for that child. The official process had demanded it, almost. It’s very cruel to make a woman go through that experience and then tear the child away from her again. Don’t you think so?’

‘It’s not my place to pass judgement on another country’s legal system,’ said Fry.

Mrs Lowther smiled sadly. ‘You don’t have any children yourself, I imagine.’

Fry stiffened. ‘Are you really telling me that neither of you, nor any member of your family, ever suspected that what Miss Shepherd was proposing would be against the law?’

Lowther sighed. ‘I think the only person who had any doubts was Brian. But he only wanted whatever would make Lindsay happy, you know. So he went along with it, despite his reservations.’

‘And who paid the fees?’

‘I did. And I was happy to do it. Miss Shepherd knew Bulgarian, and she was able to arrange things that we couldn’t do for ourselves. She knew the system.’

‘Was it difficult getting Zlatka out of Bulgaria?’

‘Not so far as I know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was Miss Shepherd who brought the child out of the country. The arrangement was that we would travel to Promahonas, just over the border in Greece, and she would deliver Zlatka to us there. So that’s what we did. We stayed at the Hotel Olympic in Sidirokastro, about fifteen kilometres from the border.’

Lowther fiddled with the leaves of one of the pot plants, releasing a few drops of water that scattered on the oak floor. Fry waited for him to continue, recognizing it was best not to interrupt.

‘From the balcony of the hotel, we could see a hill with a white church on top,’ he said. ‘Or it might have been a mosque, I’m not sure. But I remember it very well. The night we arrived, we spent some time on the balcony looking at it, because we didn’t know what else to do with ourselves. I could see Lindsay didn’t want to talk about the meeting – she was too anxious about it.’

‘Was she worried that Miss Shepherd wouldn’t keep her part of the arrangement?’

He shook his head. ‘I think we both trusted her. Partly because she was British, like us. But also she seemed a very genuine person when we met her. No, it wasn’t Rose Shepherd we had any doubts about. But we didn’t know what problems might crop up, what could go wrong along the way. I’m sure Lindsay was imagining the worst – imagining that she would never see the child again.’

‘So you were due to meet up the next day …’ prompted Fry.

‘Yes. In the afternoon, to give Miss Shepherd time to drive down from Pleven. That meant we had some time to kill. So the morning was even more difficult. But Miss Shepherd was as good as her word. She came down the E79 from Sofia to Promahonas, and the exchange took place in the back of our hire car. She handed over Zlatka, and the documents we needed. Everything seemed in order. Perfect, in fact. We were delighted.’

‘And the money?’

‘I paid for everything. I always wanted to help Lindsay as much as I could, financially. For example, I helped buy some of the things for their house.’

‘A Smeg dual-fuel cooker, for example?’

‘Yes, that was something Lindsay particularly wanted. Brian would never have been able to afford it himself. But for some reason, he seemed to resent accepting my help. It was very shortsighted of him. I only ever wanted to do the best for my little girl.’

‘So how did the arrangement with Rose Shepherd work?’

‘I paid half of her fee up front, and the remainder when she delivered the child. That was the agreement. It seemed very businesslike, and it was one more reason to trust her. I paid in pounds sterling, which was what Miss Shepherd had specified. I suppose they must have done it before.’

‘In fact, they had quite a business going.’

Lowther looked dejected. ‘They told us it would be all right. They said that no one really bothered about what happened to children like Zlatka. You know the sort of children I’m talking about –’

‘Roma children,’ said Fry.

‘That’s it. They said Bulgarian couples didn’t want them. Well, it didn’t matter to us that she was Roma. She’s a beautiful baby. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, sir. Can you tell me who the person was you spoke to at the orphanage?’

‘Her name was Piya. Piya Yotova. I hope she doesn’t get into trouble over this. She was only trying to help.’

‘Piya Yotova is dead.’

The Lowthers gaped at her in amazement.

‘We didn’t know that.’

‘She was shot, along with a colleague, Dimitar Iliev.’

Fry took advantage of the shock clear on the Lowthers’ faces at the news.

‘Mr Lowther, now that we’ve got the truth about the so-called adoption, would you like to tell me again how you came to meet up with Rose Shepherd last Saturday.’

‘I told you, Lindsay wanted to say thank you. She wanted Miss Shepherd to know Luanne was happy and doing well, that it had all been worthwhile. There was nothing wrong with that, was there? No matter how Miss Shepherd might have bent the rules in Bulgaria, she was a caring person. You could see that she genuinely wanted the best for the child.’

‘And you got in touch with her by using the email address she’d given you in Bulgaria?’

‘Yes, that’s what I said,’ agreed Lowther cautiously.

‘Yet you’ve told me you had no way of getting in touch with her while you were there – that you always had to wait for her to phone you at the hotel.’

He hesitated, and Fry knew she was on the right track. There was more to be squeezed out of him yet.

‘Actually, that’s right,’ he said. ‘She gave me that email address when we saw her in Matlock Bath.’

‘I see. And did she happen to give you her phone number at the same time?’

‘Well, yes. So we could keep in touch in the future, you know.’

Fry could tell by the frozen expression in his eyes that Henry Lowther had no idea now whether he was saying the safe thing or not. If he denied having Rose Shepherd’s phone number, would the police be able to prove he was lying? Poor Mr Lowther. He hadn’t been as clever as he thought. He hadn’t planned his story in enough detail.

‘So the question remains, sir, how did you manage to get in contact with her before that meeting?’

‘It was the other way round,’ said Lowther. ‘It was Miss Shepherd who got in touch with us. Perhaps you’ve worked that out.’

‘Why on earth would she do that?’

Lowther had to think about that for a while. His dazed expression was starting to remind Fry of Wayne Abbott’s lamping theory. This was the way she imagined the quarry would look, caught suddenly in a beam of light, not knowing which way it should run to escape.

‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I think Rose Shepherd was lonely.’

‘Lonely, sir?’

‘Yes. She knew no one in this country. I think she needed some kind of contact.’

‘She risked a lot for a bit of conversation over a cup of tea, didn’t she?’ said Fry incredulously.

Lowther shook his head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, there wasn’t much in it for Miss Shepherd, was there? She’d gone to a lot of trouble to give herself a new identity and made herself a recluse, all out of concern for her own safety. Why would she decide to risk all that for an hour with you in a tea room in Matlock Bath?’

‘I really don’t know. I just know that she asked us, and we agreed.’

Fry watched him, inviting him to say more, but he remained silent. She looked at his wife instead, and saw that a worried expression had come over her face, a grey wash of despair.

‘It was our fault, wasn’t it?’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lowther? Would you repeat that?’

‘It was because of us that Rose died. We got her killed, didn’t we?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly.’

Mrs Lowther shook her head, dismissing her denial.

‘The people she mixed with in Bulgaria, they must have come looking for her, to kill her. The same people who shot the couple in Bulgaria. And it was because of us that they found her.’

‘Really? You think so?’

Lowther nodded at what his wife was saying, and sighed deeply. He thought he’d seen a way out, after all.

‘It all makes sense now,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? It just goes to show what awful consequences the most innocent of intentions can have. I’m only glad that Lindsay never knew anything about all this.’

Fry felt a physical surge of revulsion at his sanctimonious expression. She could see him relaxing now, smug in the belief that everything would be smoothed over and he’d get away with what he’d done. He thought he might escape the light, after all.

‘Actually, Mr Lowther,’ she said, ‘that’s not the way we see it at all. And it isn’t what your former employee, Tony Donnelly, says either.’

Lowther just stared at her, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

Fry leaned forward and spoke to him quietly, fixing her gaze on his. Rain surged against the glass all around them, but she knew that he heard her perfectly well.

‘Nor was it the reason your son killed himself. Was it, Mr Lowther?’

And that was the bullet he was waiting for. Right between the eyes.

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-old Romani man. The officer apparently tried to apprehend the man, who had broken into a shop in a Mechka neighbourhood and stolen confectioneries to the value of seven thousand leva. When the suspect managed to escape, the officer shot him. He was taken to Pleven Hospital, but died of his injuries. A complaint was made by the dead man’s family about the conduct of the officer, identified as a sergeant of the First Regional Police Department. The case was dismissed by the Regional Military Prosecutor on the grounds that the incident involved the 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 been cut to Romani settlements throughout Bulgaria for several hours at a time, every four or five hours. The measure had been taken by the National Electrical Company because of payment arrears by Romani inhabitants. The protest was sparked by an incident involving a ten-year-old Romani girl, who was burned when her clothes caught fire from a wood stove being used in the absence of electricity. The girl’s injuries were made worse by the fact that, because there had been no running water in the settlement for eight months, there was no available 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.