by Graham Smith
Since learning of Thompson’s wife’s condition, Beth had taken the time to do some research and while the name early-onset Alzheimer’s implied the early stages of the disease in general, it was actually used to describe the 5 per cent of Alzheimer’s sufferers who contracted the disease at a young age. It not only affected the sufferer’s mind, but would progress until the body could no longer fight a disease or an infection like pneumonia.
There were times Thompson’s frustrations boiled over, but it was understandable, and he was a decent enough man to apologise for his outbursts once he’d calmed down.
Beth filled them in on what she’d learned from Dr Hewson and sketched out what she’d learned from Forster as well. She could see her own disgust at the killer reflected on each of their faces. O’Dowd in particular looked repulsed.
Thompson stood and walked to the whiteboard they used to collate the pertinent details. He wiped off the press’s moniker of ‘the Lakeland Ripper’ from where suspects would be listed and wrote ‘Justin’. When he returned to his seat, most of his anger seemed to have been replaced with a schoolboy smirk.
O’Dowd pointed at the whiteboard. ‘Would you care to explain?’
‘What do you call a man with a one-inch cock?’ Thompson nodded at the whiteboard. ‘Justin.’
Unthank giggled like a child despite O’Dowd’s scowl. Beth knew the ‘what do you call a man’ jokes well. Her father had told them to her for years. This hadn’t been one he’d shared, but then, he’d never told anything which even approached being a dirty joke in her presence.
Unthank stood to address the room. ‘What do you call a man with a car on his head?’
‘Jack.’ The answer was out of Beth’s mouth before O’Dowd could launch her stapler at Unthank.
‘I give up.’ The stapler was put back down and a folder lifted which O’Dowd used to point at Thompson. ‘I’m off to see if I can persuade Mannequin to do his own dirty work instead of getting you to do it. Make sure that name isn’t on the whiteboard when I get back or I’ll personally dob you in, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, boss.’ Thompson’s reply was automatic, but there was no contrition in his voice.
It was typical in their line of work that black humour would be present. Not only did they work in a tight-knit group, they had to deal with subjects and sights which the general public couldn’t begin to imagine. The Justin moniker was tame compared to a lot of things that had been said, and had O’Dowd not been so frustrated at their lack of progress, she would have been the first to laugh at Thompson’s joke.
So far as Beth was concerned though, calling and thinking of the killer as Justin showed disrespect to his victims and belittled what they suffered before they were strangled. She couldn’t bring herself to say the name out loud, and to counter any tendency to go with the name Thompson had bestowed on the killer, she made a mental effort to only think of the killer as ‘the Lakeland Ripper’.
Beth listened as first Unthank then Thompson shared what little they’d learned.
Unthank had concentrated his attentions on each of the snatch sites. The Lakeland Ripper had chosen well: none of the areas was properly covered by a CCTV camera and all were secluded enough to afford him the opportunity to grab his victims.
By far the boldest of the abductions had been Harriet’s, but she’d been taken in the early hours of the morning when the streets would have been all but deserted.
Where the Lakeland Ripper’s first three victims differed from Felicia Evans was the fact they were all in good health and had all been snatched from a public place seemingly at random, whereas it seemed Felicia had been abducted from the sanctity of her own home. To Beth’s mind this showed that the Lakeland Ripper was refining his methods and getting bolder.
How he’d enticed each of the women to him was a mystery. None of their blood samples had shown traces of any drugs, although Beth knew that date rape drugs such as Rohypnol and GHB were absorbed by the body within a few hours.
Nor had the women shown any signs of head trauma synonymous with them being knocked out.
If they weren’t knocked out or drugged they must have been overpowered in some way.
Christine Peterson was a frail-looking woman, but while Joanne Armstrong was slim, she was a dedicated hillwalker, therefore she’d have muscles honed by hours of trekking up slopes. It was unlikely that she’d been snatched easily.
Harriet Quantrell was a different matter altogether; she was two stones past voluptuous. She wouldn’t have been easy to manhandle. Even if she’d been drugged or knocked out, she would have been an awkward and heavy load to move.
With these options ruled out, that left only two more: trickery or coercion. While it was possible that a drunk Harriet had been tricked somehow, she didn’t believe the other two women would have fallen for a ruse, so Beth’s money was on coercion.
Unthank had pored over the statements taken from those in the vicinity of the abductions, but he’d found nothing of note. Nobody had seen anything untoward or heard any screams.
Thompson’s conversations with the investigating officers had yielded the same lack of results. When he’d heard about the details not highlighted in Christine Peterson’s post-mortem his face had twisted into an anguished grimace. Those were often the type of details which could make all the difference during an investigation. As good as the investigating officers may have been, they couldn’t do their job with half the facts and due to the time that had passed, it was unrealistic to expect them to recall every detail of their case.
All of the people he’d spoken to had given him a fair response without ever providing a good answer, the truth lost by either backside covering, or the sands of time.
The idea Beth had had at the hospital now seemed like a waste of time, but she voiced it anyway.
‘Don’t laugh at me, but you know how women have boob jobs, what if the Lakeland Ripper has looked into having a penis extension?’
‘Don’t you mean Justin?’
‘I mean the Lakeland Ripper.’ Beth fixed Thompson with a stern look. ‘You can maybe make jokes about someone who kills and rapes women, but I can’t. You call him what you like, but until I learn his real name, he’ll be the Lakeland Ripper to me.’
Thompson raised a hand in her direction. Beth wasn’t sure whether he was shutting her up or apologising, until she saw the contrition in his eyes.
‘A penis extension, can they even do that?’
‘Shut up, Paul. Young Beth may well be onto something here.’
There had been a time when Thompson had re-ordered her name as a way to goad her, but Beth knew it was now meant as a term of endearment. That he supported her theory gave her hope that it wasn’t a daft idea.
The problem was in identifying those who’d had such an operation. When you factored in the shame and embarrassment the men would likely feel about the size of their penises, there was little chance they would broadcast the fact that they’d undergone enhancement surgery. They’d be more likely to do the opposite and keep their surgery a secret.
Perhaps a wife or lover would know, but Beth didn’t think that the Lakeland Ripper had anyone in that role. To her way of thinking, he was single, a loner, but not by choice. He would be friendless or perhaps have one close friend who was as weird as he was.
The Lakeland Ripper would be awkward around women, obsessed with sex, yet afraid to get intimate with a woman because they’d learn his shameful secret.
He may have tried visiting a prostitute, but that wouldn’t have given him what he wanted. His physical needs may have been dealt with, but his psychological ones would remain. He’d have wanted to feel that he had a level of sexual prowess, that he could please a woman in bed. He’d have known that the prostitute was only acting as if she was aroused, and that would have eaten at him, burned at his psyche with a series of self-mocking thoughts of worthlessness.
It wouldn’t surprise Beth if the Lakeland Ripper suffered from depression, that his bl
ack dog was walked on a very short lead.
Beth went online and looked for the names of the leading cosmetic surgeons in the country, and she had to wade through a few different sites before she established that the nearest place to Cumbria that offered what they called augmentation surgery was in the Sunderland area.
She didn’t know if the surgery would be funded by the NHS or whether the Lakeland Ripper would have had to pay for it from his own money. That was something else she needed to find out.
‘See, what you’re thinking about him getting one of the penis extension operations…’ Unthank looked at Thompson then Beth. ‘I think you’re going straight for the nuclear option. I don’t know much about such things, but I’ve been around enough to know there are lots of gadgets and pills that are touted as giving you a boost. If I was in the killer’s position, and believe me, I’m not, I’d try absolutely everything else before I let anyone near me with a scalpel.’
Beth had to smother the smile Unthank’s final sentence put to her lips. How typical of a man to insist that his penis wasn’t tiny. His point made sense though, and she agreed with his suggestion that the Lakeland Ripper would try all the other gadgets and drugs before going under the knife.
O’Dowd could make the decision regarding contacting the surgeons. Rather than waste time on a probable dead end, Beth went back to her spreadsheet and began to feed in the new information she had.
Twenty-Seven
Willow put down her bag and bent to greet Spike. As ever when she returned from work, he was scampering around her and jumping up so she could pet him. It was something he’d done since puppyhood and his claws had ruined many a pair of tights, but she didn’t mind.
Her day at the bank had been more of the same. Since coming back to Cumbria she’d landed a position as financial advisor to a number of small businesses and she was still getting to know her customers and their foibles.
Some had little idea of how to manage the money their business was making and these were the customers she liked dealing with. They were compliant and would listen to what she was suggesting and take her advice. She knew that she could make a little more commission by steering the customers towards certain aspects of the bank’s offerings, but she’d never been so greedy as to give what she felt was wrong advice just so she could line her own pockets.
The customers she liked the least were those who thought they were cleverer than they were. They’d want to gamble on certain stocks or would be asking her about some scheme they’d heard about and wanted to sign up to. They’d be insistent and wouldn’t listen when she explained that the bank didn’t offer that service or their money would be better used in a different way. These customers were the ones who’d lay blame at her door for investments that went wrong. Despite not heeding her advice, they’d point the finger at her, complain about the money they’d lost. Even when they did heed what she advised them, they’d complain their investment wasn’t growing as fast as they wanted it to.
Willow had dealt with two of these customers today and she was worn out from the mental acrobatics she’d had to perform just to keep them calm. Oliver Morrison was another prime example of this kind of customer, but thankfully she’d not had to see him or the less aggressively flirtatious Andrew Cooper today, and wouldn’t for at least another month. All she wanted to do tonight was soak in the bath and then curl up with a good book.
One benefit of moving back in with her parents was that her mother would always have dinner cooked. The drawback to this was that her parents were creatures of habit. They had a routine and they stuck to it with a religious fervour. Meals were prepared on a rota system that saw mince on a Monday and fish on a Friday. Their menu was traditional hearty food which gave no concession to the weather.
On a day as warm as today, a nice salad would have suited Willow, but she could smell the sausage casserole her mother always made on a Wednesday. So far as her parents were concerned spaghetti Bolognese was a walk on the wild side. Even on the rare occasions when they dined out they would have the same thing. Soup, steak and a cheeseboard for her father and steak pie followed by a slice of cheesecake for her mother.
She knew how the conversation at dinner would go tonight. Her mother would twitter about how her day had gone, and her father would keep his silence. He was still raw about the details of Willow’s break-up. He’d done the possessive father thing and had threatened to beat up her husband. A part of her had wanted him to do it, but she didn’t want her father to get into trouble. Her plan was to hurt her ex financially.
Her mother was already suggesting men she might want to date, but she had no interest in that side of things. For the time being, she was content to live a single life while her broken heart healed. Her mother would argue that she was a beautiful woman, and that she shouldn’t be shut away. The subject of prospective grandchildren had hung like a Damoclean sword since she’d first announced her engagement. Willow had wanted kids, but despite a battery of tests that had found nothing amiss with either her or her husband, they’d never managed to conceive.
After dining with her parents, Willow changed from her work clothes into sweats and picked up Spike’s lead. He’d stay on it tonight that was for sure. There was no way she wanted a repeat of the other night’s palaver.
Her pace was fast as she tried to invigorate her limbs with exercise and burn off the huge plateful of food her mother had put in front of her. Rather than walk along the river again, she took a route that took her down to the harbour.
Maryport had a long history as a fishing village, but the Senhouse family had turned it into a coal port during the eighteenth century. The town’s original cottages were laid out on a grid system and its main industries were coal mining and ship building. It now had a maritime museum and another museum which focussed on the Roman artefacts that had been uncovered in the area.
When she’d married and moved south, Willow had been delighted to escape Maryport and its small-town mentality. Like all places of its size, the locals had fierce rivalries with the other towns in the area and it was normal for the young men to end up battling with their counterparts from Aspatria, Cockermouth or Workington.
Back then she’d hated the familiarity, the way everyone knew your business. A night out would entail going to the same few pubs and talking to the same faces. Life here had been about routine rather than change, yet she now wanted that routine. She’d kept in touch with friends from the town and was looking forward to joining three of her old schoolmates for a drink on Friday.
She knew that a part of her was trying to regress, to go back to the days when everything was familiar and safe. Willow could handle that: she knew it would be a transitional phase.
As she pounded the streets, she thought about the dresses she’d bought at lunchtime. They were impulse purchases, made to bolster up a shattered confidence. Both were a little shorter than she would normally buy, but what her husband had done had made her feel unloved and unattractive. She’d told herself, and heard her mother say it, that she was a good-looking woman and that she could turn heads when she wanted to, but she hadn’t felt her usual confidence. Instead she’d felt worthless, rejected.
Friday night was about a lot more than a night out with the girls. It was about her feeling attractive and desired.
She strode back along the street that led to her parents’ home with a joyful Spike at her heel. He liked the fast walks almost as much as he enjoyed being let off the lead and left to his own devices.
Willow unlocked the door and called out a greeting to her parents.
The whole time she’d been out, she’d been oblivious to the man who’d been following her; waiting for the one chance he needed to snatch her.
With Willow back in her family home, he gave up and walked back to his pickup. As keen as he was to grab Willow, he knew he had to wait for the right opportunity.
Unlike the other women he’d spent time with, he knew Willow. Rather than abduct another woman at random, Willow
had been selected on purpose.
She was bright, beautiful and wonderfully sexy. It was a bigger risk taking a woman to order, but he was sure that Willow would satisfy his urges far better than any of the previous women.
He was looking forward to enjoying the release her company would bring, but he knew he’d have to be patient and wait for the right chance to take her.
Twenty-Eight
The spreadsheet in front of Beth was growing ever larger. She’d got all the relevant details into place and she was now studying the rows and columns looking for the commonalities.
The pen in her right hand was drumming a furious beat against a cup as her eyes flickered back and forth without finding what she was looking for.
She was alone in the office. Thompson had gone home to his daughters, and O’Dowd had taken Unthank away on an errand. It was just as well the others were out as she wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat or the interruptions which always happened in a busy office. O’Dowd had listened to her theory about penis enlargements, and while she’d agreed it may be something they could pursue, the DI had decided that it was a long shot and their time would be better spent following other leads.
Each one of the little boxes on her screen mocked her. They just sat there, every one an unmatched piece of the jigsaw. No one thing aligned with another in a way that could be classed as making sense.
The victims were old, young, tall, short, fat and thin. They were from different backgrounds, and while they were all working class.
The only thing they had in common was their fate.
That the Lakeland Ripper had escalated his methodology was a worry. He was learning what gave him pleasure and had discovered a way to take it. In Beth’s mind, raping the women would be his revenge for all the slights he’d endured, for all the times he’d felt inadequate and for the thrill he got from the experience.
