‘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.