19

Thursday, 27 October

Early next morning, an officer from the incident room entered DCI Kessen’s office at West Street, and placed several slim files on the desk. Watched by Hitchens, Kessen thumbed through the files.

‘Well, it looks as though we’ve got the first hits from our Nichols trawl,’ he said.

‘Any Simons?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Oh, yes. Three. One of them lives in Ashbourne, and he’s ten years old.’

‘Damn it.’

‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t eliminate him out of hand. Kids are given mobile phones at a very young age these days.’

‘And high-powered semi-automatics?’

‘Let’s hope not. Get Ashbourne section to talk to the parents anyway, check there isn’t some remote connection with Rose Shepherd. It seems pretty unlikely, but we’d best rule it out.’

‘And the others?’

‘The second Simon Nichols is eighty-five years old. Actually, his full name is Edward Simon Nichols, so strictly speaking he’s ESN. He’s in a residential care home in Alfreton, but he could have some connection with Rose Shepherd.’

‘We need to spread the net wider, don’t we?’

‘Nichols isn’t an uncommon name,’ said Kessen. ‘There could be hundreds of Simons around the country. But unfortunately, these seem to be the only leads we have at the moment. Do you want to allocate them, Paul?’

Hitchens took the files into the CID room and passed on the news to the officers on the early shift.

‘Is there one for me?’ asked Cooper.

‘Yes, I saved this one for you specially, Ben. This Nichols lives on a farm, so it’ll suit you down to the ground. The address we have for him is Lea Farm, near Uppertown – wherever the heck that is.’

‘I know Uppertown. It’s near Bonsall.’

‘Bonsall?’ said Hitchens. ‘Just a minute –’

‘Yes, Rose Shepherd made calls to a phone box in that area, didn’t she?’

Hitchens smiled as he handed Cooper the file.

‘Off you go, then. There’s no time to waste.’

When Fry arrived at West Street, it seemed unnaturally quiet. She made her way to the DCI’s office, where she found Kessen and Hitchens frowning over a document written in a language she didn’t recognize. She leaned over the desk and looked closer. No – it was the alphabet she didn’t recognize. Some kind of Cyrillic script?

‘Morning, Diane. Take a look,’ said Hitchens. ‘This could be a whole new angle on the Shepherd enquiry.’

Fry picked out a photograph from the file. It showed the rear view of a red Ford Escort with a foreign registration number and a shattered back window. The car was parked in a garage, with wooden double doors left half open and a padlock hanging from the hasp. The only other thing she noticed was the international plate – BG. Before she could work out what country the initials referred to, she’d unfolded a label attached to the back of the photo and found it was headed in English. The Bulgarian Interior Ministry.

She raised an eyebrow at Kessen, and he took the photo from her. ‘OK. A year ago, there was a double murder in a city in northern Bulgaria – a place called Pleven. This car was found by the roadside outside the city. The bodies of two people were in it.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Their names were Dimitar Iliev, aged forty-three, and Piya Yotova, forty. Iliev had been shot in the head, and Yotova had bullet wounds in the back and arms.’

‘Was it some kind of execution?’

Kessen shrugged. ‘The Pleven police examined the scene for evidence, but they found nothing to help them identify the assailants.’

‘What has this got to do with Rose Shepherd?’ said Fry.

‘We’re not sure yet. But it could have something to do with Simon Nichols. We got a hit on the name from Europol. They’re building up a lot of intelligence on cross-border organized crime these days. According to their database, Simon Nichols is an alias for a Bulgarian criminal called Simcho Nikolov. They’re sending the complete file on him ASAP.’

Fry tapped the photograph. ‘He’s a suspect for this shooting in Pleven?’

‘He was a known associate of Yotova’s, and he disappeared about the time of the shooting. The Bulgarian police have been looking for him ever since.’

‘So he could be a professional hit man,’ said Hitchens.

‘It looks that way,’ said Kessen. ‘Europol intelligence has come up with two more associates of Nikolov’s: the Zhivko brothers – Anton and Lazar. It appears they were members of a criminal gang that got involved in some kind of turf war. The older brother, Anton, was badly injured. He got a bullet lodged in his spine and was left paralysed from the waist down. The Zhivkos had enough money stashed away from their criminal activities that they were able to do a runner and get clear of the country.’

‘Don’t tell me they’re here?’

‘Yes, right here in Derbyshire. Two years ago, the Zhivko brothers opened an electrical shop in Chesterfield. It’s possible Nikolov came here to join them. So far, they’ve behaved themselves, but Europol have passed on a tip-off that the Zhivkos are expecting a visitor from their own country – a visitor they might not welcome. An organized crime surveillance unit has been set up in Chesterfield to keep an eye on things.’

‘An East European feud happening on our territory?’ Hitchens ran a hand through his hair. He was starting to look less elegant than he had when the week started. ‘We’d better find out if we have any more Bulgarians in the area. I’ll run a check on the dispersal facilities, for a start.’

Kessen studied Fry. ‘There’s a job for you, Diane. Europol have arranged for an English-speaking officer to liaise with us from Pleven. He’ll be calling this morning. And I want you to deal with him.’

Fry was aghast. ‘With respect, sir, I’ve got far more important things to do than become involved in international liaison – especially on the basis of such a tenuous connection.’

‘Not quite so tenuous,’ said Kessen calmly. ‘DC Cooper is following up a potential lead to Simon Nichols in the exact area where Rose Shepherd made calls to a public phone box. And don’t forget that the victim had the international dialling code for Bulgaria in her address book – the magic 359.’

Still fuming, Fry went back to her own desk. Bulgaria. The Balkans, right? A former Soviet bloc country, a bastion of Communism during the Cold War era. But what else did she know about it? Nothing.

Fry was still trying to picture what a Bulgarian might actually look like, when her phone rang.

‘Hello, DS Fry.’

‘Alo. My name is Sergeant Georgi Kotsev. I’m calling from Pleven Police Department, on behalf of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior.’

Fry tried to mask her sigh. ‘Oh, Sergeant Kotsev. Hello. Thank you for sparing the time to talk to us.’

‘It’s a pleasure to co-operate with our colleagues in the United Kingdom.’

His voice was deep and only slightly accented, not what Fry had expected at all. It didn’t fit the Slavic stereotype that had been lurking at the back of her mind – some hatchet-faced villain out of a James Bond film. Kotsev sounded like the man they saved for PR work, smooth and articulate, with excellent English.

‘I have your fax about the two shooting victims in Pleven,’ said Fry. ‘I wonder if you have any further information?’

‘We know that they were both shot with an assault rifle, probably a Kalashnikov AK47.’

‘Are AK47s commonly available in Bulgaria?’

‘If you know the right people, of course.’

Fry grunted, unsurprised. Kalashnikovs were everywhere. They’d become legendary around the world’s trouble spots.

‘We manufacture a great many Kalashnikovs in Bulgaria,’ said Kotsev, perhaps misinterpreting her silence. ‘Yes, even now.’

‘And they’re used by criminal gangs, Sergeant?’

Kotsev laughed. ‘Da, razbira se. Of course. But, you know, the United States government bought many thousands of Kalashnikovs for use in Iraq. Those guns were also made in Bulgaria. They operate better than the American M-16 in dusty conditions, so our manufacturers produce a weapon to NATO standards. Kalashnikovs travel well, like our wine.’