Текст книги "Scared to Live"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

Соавторы: Stephen Booth
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‘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.

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.

About the Author

STEPHEN BOOTH

Stephen Booth was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley, and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire and his interests include folklore, the internet and walking in the hills of the Peak District. Scared to Live is the seventh in the series featuring Derbyshire detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. The second, Dancing with the Virgins, was nominated for the coveted Gold Dagger Award.

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By the same author

The Dead Place

One Last Breath

Blind to the Bones

Blood on the Tongue

Dancing with the Virgins

Black Dog

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

  the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JBwww.harpercollins.co.ukThis paperback edition 2007

1First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2006Copyright © Stephen Booth 2006Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this workA catalogue record for this book is

available from the British LibrarySet in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Limited

Grangemouth, StirlingshireAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks.EPub Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007279692

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty–One

Chapter Twenty–Two

Chapter Twenty–Three

Chapter Twenty–Four

Chapter Twenty–Five

Chapter Twenty–Six

Chapter Twenty–Seven

Chapter Twenty–Eight

Chapter Twenty–Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty–One

Chapter Thirty–Two

Chapter Thirty–Three

Chapter Thirty–Four

Chapter Thirty–Five

Chapter Thirty–Six

Chapter Thirty–Seven

Chapter Thirty–Eight

Chapter Thirty–Nine

Chapter Forty

About the Author

By the same author

Copyright

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