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

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