A Body in the Lakes

by Graham Smith

  ‘Hang on a minute. It’s not as cut and dried as you think. That business about the victims having their character blackened, that’ll only happen if the victims waive their right to anonymity. They’re afraid of that, but most people don’t know that’s an option which is why they never make the report. Plus, you forget that even with anonymity, the rapists who’re guilty often know their victims, which means that if an accusation is made and no charges are brought against the accused, the victims are at risk of violent retribution from the people they’ve named.’

  Despite herself, Beth found that she was being swept along by Forster’s words. The ideas he was pitching at her covered everything she wanted to achieve in terms of helping rape victims get through their ordeal, and of equal importance to her, he was going to help her expose the foul men who forced themselves onto women.

  ‘I tell you what, DC Young, how about you and I sit down to discuss this properly sometime?’

  ‘We could do that. When should we meet?’

  ‘How does tomorrow night sound? I’m free after seven. This place is closed up at that time of night and as it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to visit each other’s homes, why don’t we talk over dinner? You can choose the restaurant.’

  Beth suggested a place and time, but it was as she was walking down the stairs that she realised what had just happened. She’d visited the mayor for answers, not just to the case she was investigating, but to try and work out what he’d done to attract the killer’s ire, and here she was, effectively going on a date with him. Except she didn’t think of it as a date and there was no way that she was going to let him think it was anything other than a business meeting.

  In light of the fact someone was targeting him with a hate campaign that seemed to be trying to have him locked up, she didn’t think the mayor would be interested in trying to seduce her or anyone else. As it was, she was amazed that he was even thinking about establishing his charity with everything else that was going on.

  Things had worked out better than she’d hoped they might, yet there was a little doubt in her mind that Forster had an agenda of his own and that she’d have to guard against it.

  Twenty-Five

  The door to Dr Hewson’s office was open when Beth arrived at the mortuary and pathology lab beneath Cumberland Infirmary.

  She’d been here more times than she cared for, and each time she’d visited she’d been filled with sadness for the people whose last journey started here. It was a sterile environment filled with drab colours and the ever-present whiff of industrial-strength cleaning products.

  For Beth, visits here were a necessary evil but for the pathologists and lab workers who spent their days in these basement rooms it would be just another day at work.

  Beth stepped into Hewson’s office as she knocked on the door, but the room was unoccupied. A sandwich with one bite missing lay on top of the desk with a piece of cling film spread beneath it to act as a plate. Steam rose from a mug and there was a background sound of muted organ music adding an even greater sombreness to the air.

  As she looked at the sandwich Beth’s stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since the bowl of cereal she’d wolfed down after her shower, and even though she now felt the first pangs of hunger cramping her belly, she was more interested in the doctor’s whereabouts.

  The half-eaten sandwich and abandoned cuppa spoke of an emergency, but she couldn’t imagine what situation required the urgent response of a pathologist.

  She backed out of the office and looked up and down the corridor. An orderly was pushing a trolley laden with containers, but apart from him, there was nobody else to be seen.

  The door to the gents bathroom opened and Hewson came scurrying out, a pained look on his face. As always his shock of curly hair was unruly, but his usual smile was missing as he greeted Beth.

  ‘Ah, DC Protégé, I’m sorry to have kept you. Mrs H tried a new recipe last night and I’m pretty sure that, like your boss, it didn’t agree with me. How is Dowdy anyway? Still too uptight for her own good?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Beth gave a tight smile and did her best to ignore Hewson’s bout of oversharing. As much as she respected the doctor, she didn’t want to know about his bowel movements.

  As they took seats in Hewson’s office, the doctor cleared away his sandwich and took a sip of his tea.

  ‘You said you wanted to consult with me on a cold case. How about you tell me the details.’

  Beth spent a few minutes bringing Hewson up to speed on the murders of Christine Peterson, Joanne Armstrong and Harriet Quantrell. When she mentioned Harriet’s name she saw the doctor give a sharp nod. He’d performed the post-mortem and it was no surprise that he remembered Harriet’s name.

  ‘This is all very fascinating, but you haven’t explained how I’m supposed to help.’

  Beth passed three folders across the desk. ‘These are the post-mortem reports on all three ladies. I’d like you to take a look at them and give me your opinion. Tell me of the commonalities you find as well as the inconsistencies.’

  As Hewson picked his way through the reports, Beth thought about what she’d been able to glean from them herself. It wasn’t a lot if she was honest. Her understanding of medical terminology was her weak spot, and while the reports had been written in plain enough English, her lack of knowledge prevented her from getting any decent insights.

  ‘Jesus. Thank God the old fool has retired.’

  ‘What is it? What have you found?’

  ‘The first victim, Christine Peterson. The man who did this report was an imbecile. He’s left out what may be a key detail.’

  Beth was on the verge of telling Hewson to get to the point when he dropped the report on the desk and scowled. She knew the scowl wasn’t aimed at her, but she was burning with impatience.

  Hewson’s finger jabbed at the report. ‘Do you see here, where he’s noted down the vaginal and anal tearing?’

  ‘Yes, what of it?’

  ‘The damn fool has noted that the vaginal tearing showed signs of fresh bleeding. He makes no such comment of the anal tearing. When you read the transcript of the post-mortem commentary, there’s again no mention of the anal tears bleeding. He also mentions that the tears are minor and do not indicate vigorous penetration.’ Hewson looked up at her with expectation on his face, but Beth didn’t know what she was supposed to be surmising.

  Beth splayed her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I’m sorry but you’re going to have to spell it out to me.’

  ‘Whoever raped this woman was a pervert, that much is a given. However, what the report doesn’t spell out, and bloody well should, is that the damage to the victim’s vagina and anus is minimal and doesn’t go very deep.’

  ‘What, you’re saying he had a small?…’

  ‘I’d say his penis was smaller than average, yes.’

  This news cast a whole new light onto the rapist. Not only was he in possession of a twisted set of desires, he wasn’t well endowed.

  The possible implications of this on the rapist’s psyche were numerous. If he’d been mocked by women it could have made him bitter. Had he not been able to ever satisfy a lover, maybe he’d felt diminished as a man and that had bred resentment against women and fostered his desire for superiority. Both of these traits – failure to conduct normal relationships, and a desire for superiority – were often found in rapists, and more than anything else, they’d make the man more likely to continue forcibly sating his desires.

  Beth’s mind whirled and then locked onto something else the doctor had mentioned.

  ‘You said the tears to Christine’s vagina had bled but not the ones to her anus. Would I be right in saying that he raped her, killed her and then raped her anally?’

  ‘That’s what the evidence suggests to me. Why that idiot didn’t spell this out for the investigating team I’ll never know, but that’s what I think happened.’

  ‘I don’t understand why the rapist would do the final rape after she�
��d died.’

  Hewson’s face adopted the world-weary understanding of a kindly grandfather. ‘You’re young, both in name and years. As women age, and particularly after they have children, their pelvic floor muscles weaken. It’s where incontinence troubles stem from. With his undersized penis, a woman of the victim’s years may not have been a good, er… fit. The tearing is minimal and the report mentions traces of lubricant synonymous with condoms. If there wasn’t enough friction to bring him to orgasm, it was a failed attempt. He’d be angry and probably that’s why he strangled her.’

  Beth picked up the narrative. ‘Once she was dead, he was still aroused, so rather than try vaginal sex again, he tried anal in the hope that he’d be able to orgasm.’

  ‘Correct. That just makes him even more despicable, doesn’t it?’

  Beth nodded her agreement. That the killer had been compelled to add necrophilia to his crime went a long way past despicable. It was bad enough that he’d violated Christine in life before killing her. To continue with his debasing actions in death made him worse than filth. Beyond even an animal.

  To Beth the rapist was a monster, preying on the vulnerable and taking his sick pleasures from them. She imagined the rapist leaning over his victim, her clothes strewn around them. His hands fastening on her throat and squeezing her airways closed.

  For the victims it would have been all their nightmares come true at once. Their bodies invaded. Then the steady inexorable pressure on their throats.

  Had he looked into their eyes as he’d killed them?

  Had he drunk in their fear?

  Perhaps he’d spoken to them, insulted them or told them he was in love with them.

  However the women’s final moments had passed, they would have been filled with abject terror.

  ‘Interesting.’ Hewson looked up from the report he was reading. ‘Joanne Armstrong would appear to have had a quite different end.’

  Beth looked at Hewson and rolled a hand for him to continue.

  ‘I’m not an expert on the subject, but I would suggest that Miss Armstrong was raped on more than one occasion. I think that her attacker was the same small-appendaged beast who defiled Mrs Peterson. Not only are the internal wounds very similar, but so was the depth of wounding. However there was considerable tearing to both Miss Armstrong’s anus and vagina; therefore in my opinion the rapist had attacked her on more than one occasion.’

  Beth ran a hand over her face. ‘Shit. This just keeps on getting worse, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does. The final victim is someone I remember meeting on my table. I recall all the details as if the post-mortem was yesterday. Her injuries were more extreme than either of these earlier attacks. Now that all three women have been connected, it’s not hard to see how our rapist is warming to his theme.’

  ‘It’s all too clear.’

  Every word Beth spoke was pushed out through gritted teeth. Catching this rapist and murderer before he struck again was far more important than protecting the mayor from any potential future harassment. Even her own private plan to work out what Forster was hiding was insignificant when viewed in big-picture terms.

  ‘All three were strangled. Is there a way to determine if they were all strangled by the same person? And could it be the same person who attacked Felicia Evans?’

  ‘DC Protégé, you really do think up the most interesting, and hard to answer, questions.’

  Hewson leafed through the folders until he found the relevant pages and the accompanying photographs.

  ‘Right, pay attention. All three women had their hyoid bone broken, which is synonymous with 30 to 50 per cent of strangulations depending on which set of statistics you believe.’ Hewson pressed a hand against his stomach making Beth worry his wife’s cooking was about to affect him again, but he removed it after a few seconds. ‘So the statistics tell me that at least one of them shouldn’t have had their hyoid broken, but all three did. However, the bruising on their necks is technically higher than the optimum position which is why the strangulations all resulted in broken hyoid bones. To my mind, the person who killed them was probably kneeling on their chest or lying along their body. The victims will have craned their heads back as they tried to escape. It was the wrong thing to do as they exposed their throats to the man who killed them. From his position on their body, his hands would have slid up their throats and lodged under their chin, right where the hyoid bone is.’

  When Hewson pointed at his own neck to show where the hyoid bone was, Beth lifted a hand and traced her fingertips over the same part of her throat. She couldn’t feel anything she hadn’t felt before and after talking about strangulation, there was no way that she was going to squeeze her throat hard while trying to locate her hyoid bone.

  ‘What else can you see in the reports?’

  Hewson flicked through a few pages and then shook his head. ‘There’s nothing else that you won’t have picked up yourself. I take it that you’ve noticed the traces of adhesive on their wrists?’

  ‘Yeah I spotted that. Duct tape, the abductors favourite tool along with zip ties. Tell me, Doctor, I saw in Harriet’s report that there was slight tearing to the sides of her mouth and two of her front teeth were described as loose, what could have caused that?’

  ‘A gag of some kind would be my first guess, quite possibly a ball gag. It would stop her screaming as she was raped. If he was rough putting it in place there’s every chance her mouth would have torn and that some of her teeth were loosened.’

  ‘You never answered my question about whether it could be the same person who killed Felicia Evans.’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m a pathologist, you’re the detective, and I’ve told you everything I know.’

  As much as Hewson’s words were a brush-off, the spark in his eye told Beth that he was again challenging her to think for herself.

  ‘Okay. So Felicia Evans wasn’t penetrated by a human being and her hyoid bone wasn’t broken. She was, however, left naked after being murdered and sexually assaulted post-mortem.’ Beth fell silent for a moment as her thoughts took a firmer shape. ‘Perhaps the killer didn’t have penetrative sex with her himself because doing so with the other women hadn’t stimulated him in the way he wanted. Maybe he got himself off in some other way, hence the use of a sex toy.’

  ‘Interesting. Now, can you explain the intact hyoid?’

  ‘If he’d planned to use the sex toy in that way, he’d have no need to keep her alive. Therefore he could kill her in her bed while she was lying prone. This would mean she’d be easy to get out of the house and into his van or car. Would I be right in saying that if he’d been standing by her bed when strangling her that his hands would be in a different position?’

  ‘You would indeed. I wasn’t sure myself, but everything you’ve said makes sense.’

  As Beth stood to leave she could feel herself growing even more determined to catch the heinous killer.

  It was only when she was back out in the sun that she had an idea. It would need to be checked out against the information Unthank and Thompson were still gathering, but it may lead them towards the killer.

  Twenty-Six

  When Beth strode back into the FMIT office she could feel a charge in the atmosphere. The air seemed to pulse back and forth with an unseen energy.

  The problem was, there was nothing positive about it. Every wave was filled with negativity, as were the faces of her three colleagues. Thompson, in particular, looked abject and defeated.

  She didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out why. He’d spent the best part of his day finishing up his interviews with the other detectives about the cases they’d failed to solve. No detective likes to have another question their work, and for Thompson to bring to light the fact that two of the teams had missed a serial killer wouldn’t have gone down well. No matter how he had reported it, the news would have been seen as an accusation of incompetence. In a lot of respects his questioning them and their work would make him feel like one o
f Mannequin’s Professional Standards Department minions. That’s certainly how the detectives he spoke to would view it.

  All officers knew the necessity for professionalism, but the Professional Standards Department always seemed to be persecuting good officers for one careless comment or a mistake borne out of too big a caseload. Because of this, the PSD was roundly hated and the subject of many unkind nicknames. Rubber-heelers was Beth’s preferred term as it described the way they crept up on people.

  ‘What’s the score, Beth?’

  The eagerness in O’Dowd’s voice told Beth everything she needed to know about how the others had fared. If one of them had picked up a good lead then the information she had wouldn’t be deemed so important.

  ‘I have four maybe five potential suspects who have the skills to have put the images on the mayor’s computer, and a possible aggrieved husband. That’s not the best bit though.’

  ‘Spill it then. This isn’t a fucking reality show where you’re supposed to build tension.’ Thompson’s face had twisted into a gurn as he snapped at her.

  It was another indication of the bad day he’d had, and Beth didn’t mind letting it slide. His wife hadn’t recognised him or his daughters for months now due to her Alzheimer’s and as well as having a shell for a wife, Thompson was raising their girls by himself while carrying out a demanding job. If this wasn’t bad enough in itself, there was also the fact that his wife’s physical health was dwindling. She didn’t have a lot of time left.