Scared to Live (34 page)

'Yes.' 'And this was Saturday night, extending into the early hours of Sunday morning?' 'Yes. So if some old nosy parker saw me or my car, that's what I was doing. OK?' 'Name?' said Hitchens, with his pen poised. 'What?' 'Your girlfriend's name, please.' 'I can't tell you.' 'We need to substantiate your story, Darren. What time did you leave Foxlow?' 'About three a.m.' 'And your friend would be able to confirm that?' 'Of course she would.' 'So what's the problem?' Turnbull didn't answer. He looked at the table between them, torn by some difficulty that he was unable to resolve into words. Hitchens looked at the file again. 'You're married, Darren.' 'Yes, I am.' 'I met your wife. Fiona, is that right? Happy together are you?' 'Yes, of course we are.' 'That's good. We don't like to see marriages break up.' 'Now you're taking the piss.' Hitchens laid the file down. 'Let's get this straight, Darren. You're having an affair with a woman who lives in Foxlow, and you don't want your wife to know about it. Is that about right?' 'Yes,' said Turnbull grudgingly. 'OK, I understand that. But look at it this way, Darren. You're a potential witness in our enquiry. All we want is to ask you a few questions about anything you might have seen or heard that night. And we'll want to speak to your girlfriend to corroborate your story, as I said. And that will be it. Provided

it all checks out, we'll thank you for helping us with our enquiries, and there won't be any need for us to speak to Fiona.' Turnbull nodded cautiously. 'On the other hand, if you continue to refuse to account fully for your movements that night, we'll be obliged to ask questions about your background and circumstances, find out who your associates are . . . Your wife would be the obvious place to start.' 'I hear what you're saying.' Turnbull hung his head. 'Would I have to go to court to give evidence?' 'That depends. But I think it'll be unlikely. All we want to do at the moment is eliminate you from our enquiries, Darren. And it would be nice if you could help us to establish any fresh leads. We'd feel quite appreciative.' 'All right.' 'I presume you must have told your wife some story about where you were, by the way?' 'I told her I was putting in an extra shift at the factory. I work for Rolls Royce in Derby, and she doesn't really have any idea what we do there, so I can just say we have a rush job on.' 'Fine.' Hitchens opened the file again and picked up his pen. 'Do you want to give me the name of your girlfriend now?' 'Stella Searle. She lives at Magpie Cottage, right next to the churchyard in Foxlow.' 'Now we're getting somewhere.' 'Stella's divorced. She lives in that cottage on her own.' 'I'm sure that makes it better.' 'You know what I mean.' 'So what time did the night shift start?' asked Hitchens. 'Sorry?' 'I mean, what time did you arrive in Foxlow to visit your divorcee?' 'Oh, about half past eleven. I don't go there until it's dark

- people who live in villages are so nosy they want to know everything about you. I park the car on a lane behind the churchyard. There are no lights there, but there's a back gate into Stell's garden.' 'Very handy. This Magpie Cottage - it would be right on the corner of Foxlow High Street and Pinfold Lane, am I right?' That's it.' 'So what time did you leave on Sunday morning? Be as accurate as you can, please.' 'It was close to three o'clock. I always leave at that time. That's when the late shift ends, so I get home about the right time.' 'OK, now we get to the bit where you might be able to help us, Darren. Did you see or hear anything as you were leaving the cottage? At three o'clock in the morning, it ought to have been very quiet. I'm hoping you were alert enough to notice any activity, even after your visit.' Turnbull lowered his voice. 'Yes, I did see something.' 'What did you see?' 'A black car. Big four-by-four, it was. Japanese. Tinted windows. Smart motor.' 'Japanese? Did you recognize the make?' 'Mmm, I'm not sure. Some of them are a bit similar, aren't they? Toyota, Mitsubishi?' Hitchens sighed. 'Did you happen to see any part of the registration number?' 'No, sorry.' 'But you're sure of the colour? Even though it was dark?' 'I saw it pass under a street lamp - the one by the phone box. It's the nearest one to Stella's house.' 'How many occupants?' 'One in the front, at least. I couldn't tell if there was anyone in the back because of the tinted windows. Sorry.' 'And this vehicle was heading in the direction of Bain House?'

'If that's the big house with the gates at the top of Pinfold Lane, it definitely went that way, then came back towards the High Street.' 'All right, Darren. If you wait here, we'll get someone to show you some photos, and we'll see if you can identify the make and model of the car you saw.' 'What? Can't I go yet?' 'Not yet.' 'I had no connection with that woman at all, you know,' said Turnbull. 'Except that I was in the village when she died.' Having given this information, Turnbull suddenly regained confidence and turned belligerent. 'I could put in a complaint about the foreign bloke,' he said. 'He hurt my arm in Matlock. And I've got a scratch on my face. He's not supposed to do that, is he? I wasn't even under arrest - you said so.' 'We could soon change that, Darren.' 'It's not right.' 'If you want to make a formal complaint about the conduct of any police officers, speak to the custody sergeant and he'll give you a form to fill in.' When they were alone in the corridor, Hitchens looked at Fry quizzically. 'Foreign bloke? Sergeant Kotsev?' 'He isn't quite used to our procedures yet,' said Fry. 'Kotsev is only here as an observer, Diane. You're responsible for him. If Turnbull does put in a complaint ' 'I don't think he will,' said Fry. 'Do you? Too much chance of publicity.' 'No, you're right. But be careful.'

When she was alone, Fry spent some time browsing the Europol website again, checking the location of the organization's headquarters and how to get there. It was just idle curiosity, of course. No more than that. But now she had formed a picture in her mind. She could

see herself catching the number 9 tram in the direction of Scheveningen, getting off at Riouwstraat and crossing the footbridge over the canal to reach the Europol building. If she worked there, she would find a little apartment somewhere fashionable, but central for the city. Overlooking another canal, probably. Or maybe the same canal. Actually, she wasn't sure how many canals there were in The Hague. She might be getting it mixed up with Amsterdam in her mind. That was easy to do, when she'd never visited either city. She didn't even know the country. Put that way, it sounded a mad thing to do, to contemplate working in a totally foreign country. But then, why would anyone want to live in a place that they knew every little bit of? Finally, Hitchens appeared and gestured to her, and she followed him into the DCI's office. 'We got Darren Turnbull to look at the motors file for us,' said Hitchens. 'He's not a happy man, but looking at pictures of cars seemed to calm him down a bit.' 'And?' 'He thinks it was probably a Mitsubishi Shogun that he saw in Foxlow that night.' 'Excellent,' said Kessen. 'We've checked the incident logs, and nothing is missing locally. But South Yorkshire have a hit. On Saturday evening, a black Shogun was stolen from the car park of the Church of Free Worship in Totley. That's on the outskirts of Sheffield.' 'Even better.' 'Wait, there's more. Traffic already have a report of a Shogun abandoned under a disused railway bridge near Wirksworth. Burnt out, of course. And it's been there since Monday at least.' 'Our suspects made a switch, then.' 'It looks like it, sir.' 'What's happened to the Shogun?' 'It's still there at the moment. DC Cooper's on his way to take a look.'

Kessen was looking a bit happier. 'I don't suppose we have any idea what kind of vehicle they might have transferred to?' 'No. But we haven't even started making enquiries in that area yet. We'll give the car the works in situ, then fetch it in for the vehicle examiners.' 'Good work, Paul. But make sure any more stolen vehicles that are found get the once-over before they're returned to their owners. They could have made a second switch at some point. Let's pass that request to South Yorkshire, too. Chances are they doubled back towards Sheffield from Wirksworth. These weren't our local joy riders.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Not that we'll get anything useful, even if we find another vehicle. We're looking at a professional job.' 'You know, if they're professionals, we won't get DNA profiles from any of these scenes. Pros make sure they keep up to date. Even joy riders don't go out at night until they've watched CSV 'We might get lucky.' Hitchens shrugged. They all knew that the risk of leaving DNA was becoming familiar to career criminals. With the national database throwing up a thousand matches a week, how could it be otherwise? 'So much for the famous village surveillance experts,' said Fry. 'They spotted Darren Turnbull's Astra twice, but they never saw the Shogun.' Hitchens looked at her. 'What have you done with Sergeant Kotsev, by the way?' 'I've given him to Ben Cooper to look after for a while.'

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Georgi Kotsev didn't seem at all disturbed to have left civilization behind. He waited patiently for Cooper to re-fold the map, gazing around the landscape as if he expected a few peasants to appear and direct them to the right place. 'We're nearly there,' said Cooper. 'Dobre. OK.' It seemed to Cooper that traces of pagan legacy were still there to be seen at every turn in this area, though few people noticed. They didn't see them because their attention was focused on shop windows and traffic, the obsessions of modern society that overlaid history and pushed ancestral beliefs into the background. Now it was as if these ancient objects existed in an extra dimension, where they were only visible if you knew they were there and you looked straight at them. There was a representation of Sheela-na-Gig incorporated into the stonework of St Helen's Church at Darley Dale. The goddess of creation and destruction. Few people noticed it, surely, or understood its meaning. If they did, they'd be campaigning for its removal. A couple of miles down the road, a display cabinet in Matlock church still contained a set of crantsies. Time-darkened maiden's garlands, each one commemorating the death of an unmarried

woman. Their wickerwork frames were decorated with symbols of purity - ribbons, roses, flowers of folded white paper set around a centrepiece of a collar, a pair of gloves or a handkerchief, something that had belonged to the woman. 'Is folklore important in Bulgaria, Georgi? I imagine it is.' 'Yes, certainly. When I was very young, my grandmother gave me a book of Bulgarian fairy tales. The stories had many supernatural characters - werewolves, vampires, wood nymphs. Lots of pictures. They stay in your mind when you're a child.' 'Yes, that's right.' 'I remember one fairy tale in particular. It told about a man who finds himself on another earth, in a different world. The only way he can get back to his own world is by riding on the backs of two eagles. But he has to feed the eagles with his own flesh so that they will carry him.' Fairy tales weren't really Cooper's thing. But he knew some of them were supposed to have profound symbolic meanings, if you could manage to figure them out. 'And what did that story teach you, Georgi?' 'That sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice everything, in order to get to where you have to be. Even to sacrifice your own flesh and blood.' 'I see.' Then Kotsev smiled, his dark eyes glittering. 'Also, that you should never trust eagles. Even when they say they're doing you a favour.' The Shogun had been abandoned under a bridge that was left over from a disused mineral line. It wasn't even a bridge any more, because the central section had been removed. But it had only crossed a farm track anyway. By the looks of the deep tread on the wheel tracks in the mud, the farmer had probably passed the Shogun several times this week without bothering to report it. A Traffic car stood guard on the road side of the bridge.

But someone had done a good job of torching the Shogun. It was difficult to tell what colour the scorched paintwork had been, but for a few streaks left on the boot and around the front wings. The interior, though, looked relatively undamaged. Cooper looked around the area. The last glance at the map had given him an idea. 'There's not much we can get from the car until the SOCOs arrive,' he said. 'I'd like to take a look up this way, Georgi.' 'Very well. Your sergeant says you know everything about this area.' 'She does?' 'Yes, indeed. Sergeant Fry must regard you very highly.' Cooper laughed. 'I don't think you've known her long enough. It probably wasn't a compliment.' Though Kotsev's stride was longer, he obviously wasn't used to walking over rough terrain, and definitely not uphill. He was panting in minutes. That was a sign of too much city living, in Cooper's view. No matter how big their muscles were, a forty-five-degree slope always sorted the men from the boys. 'Where are we going?' gasped Kotsev, stopping to rest and watching Cooper moving steadily away from him. 'Just to the top of this rise.' 'Chaga, chaga. Wait.' 'What's the matter, Georgi?' 'I think the air is a little thin here.' 'We're not even a thousand feet above sea level.' Kotsev began to move again, but awkwardly, planting his feet with great deliberation on the rough grass. His knees were probably hurting by now, if he never used the right muscles. A moment later, Cooper was standing at the top of the slope, letting the breeze cool his forehead. To the north east, he could see a drystone wall running along the skyline,

marking the road between Wirksworth and Middleton. He followed the wall a little further north - and there was the distinctive outline of a red phone box. He smiled. When public phone boxes were first designed, they were painted bright red to stand out from a distance. For decades, it had been important to know where the nearest phone was, and these old kiosks would have been a welcome sight. They weren't used a lot nowadays. But they were such an integral part of the landscape that they were kept in the countryside as a conservation measure, as much as for emergency use. Finally, Kotsev struggled the last few yards and arrived alongside him, breathing heavily and wiping sweat from his forehead. 'Georgi, how many people in Bulgaria have mobile phones?' asked Cooper. Kotsev stared at him. 'Everybody, except for those who are too poor. And the very old, who don't understand them.' 'Yes, it's the same here. And even if you don't own a mobile, you have a phone in your house. Not many people are too poor or too old for that.' 'What are you saying?' 'Well, it's different, of course,' said Cooper, 'if you happen to live in a caravan.' If he could have seen over the next hill, he might have been able to make out the red blob of a similar phone box in Bonsall Dale. That was the one Rose Shepherd had made two calls to. According to the map, it must be the nearest one to Lea Farm, where Simcho Nikolov had lived. Calls to the phone box by prior arrangement. Miss Shepherd had been in contact with Nikolov in the past three weeks. Their connection supported speculation in the Bulgarian intelligence reports, a theory that Nikolov and Savova had been friends, or even lovers. Here was a link that had been more difficult to break than a mere business relationship. Well, it was handy that rural phone boxes were marked