A Body in the Lakes

by Graham Smith

  Beth’s greatest fear was that because the Lakeland Ripper was escalating the way he’d taken his desires, he would also escalate the other parts of his process, that he’d refine his methods. The women he’d attacked so far had been missed by loved ones and they seemed randomly selected. But there was a chance he could escalate by fixating on a single target and increasing his levels of violence after the abduction, or by targeting an increased number of victims such as those who were vulnerable. If he’d moved on to targets who were less likely to be reported missing, there was every chance that he may have killed again without the FMIT’s knowledge.

  And if he was sticking to his cycle, he was overdue to strike again, if he hadn’t already.

  As a matter of course, she’d checked HOLMES again to look for similar cases in Cumbria and its neighbouring counties. None had been listed, but that didn’t mean a lot. Christine Peterson’s case hadn’t been considered major by the inspector who’d led the investigation, and therefore it hadn’t been added. It was possible there were other cases out there which also hadn’t been added.

  That was one for Mannequin and his PSD team to pursue. Their focus was on finding police errors and they’d be all over this case as there had been clear failings of the system. While he may be viewed as an officious prig by many, nobody had ever denied Mannequin’s intelligence, therefore he’d make it a priority to look for anything else connected to the case that may have slipped under the radar.

  If the Lakeland Ripper was going down the route of selection in favour of opportunity, then he’d be far more dangerous as he’d be engineering the abduction to occur at an optimum time. The way he’d already taken four women without leaving a trace showed he was clever and resourceful.

  Beth guessed that he’d also be forensically aware. That wasn’t such a surprise any more considering the proliferation of police TV dramas. There was barely a week that went by without one show or other depicting a crew of white-clad Scenes of Crime Officers going about their job. The fictionalised versions got a lot of the details wrong, but they still made the public aware of how the police could find the tiniest piece of fabric, a hair or a flake of skin that would tie the criminal to the scene and solve the case. This meant that those of a criminal persuasion knew to take measures to prevent leaving trace evidence of any kind.

  That was the one thing which had shone through about each of the women. None of them had carried any evidence underneath their fingernails, no hairs or obvious skin particles found anywhere on their bodies. In the absence of definitive abduction sites, there were no specific locations to search for the tiny clues which may have identified the Lakeland Ripper. The deposition sites had all had a thorough forensic examination, but none of them had yielded a piece of evidence that had produced a solid lead.

  Regardless of this, Beth went over the crime-scene pictures again. Christine Peterson’s naked body lay on the sandy dunes of the Barrow beach in the south-west of the county. Sand was a notoriously tough medium to gather evidence from as it could drift in the wind or shift with footsteps.

  The tree-covered bank at the side of Lake Buttermere where Joanne Armstrong had been discovered was central to Cumbria and it was layered with pine needles and there were myriad rabbit holes in the surrounding area. Like the sand at Barrow beach, the pine needles weren’t the best medium for finding evidence and the fact there was so much wildlife in the area meant that a vital clue may have been carried off or trampled under the rabbits’ feet.

  Harriet Quantrell’s body had been found on the northern reaches of Cumbria. The tough grasses of Rockcliffe Marsh were good at catching evidence, but like Joanne’s and Christine’s deposition sites, the location where Harriet was found yielded no secrets.

  A thought struck Beth and she knew it had merit. That it should be checked out. The first step was to check the police database: that yielded six options, but the database would only cover the instances that were reported.

  Beth ran a couple of searches on Google and found the phone numbers she was looking for.

  Twenty-Nine

  Beth poured herself a glass of water and slumped down on her couch. She’d worked at her spreadsheet until eight. The rape charities and counsellors she’d spoken to had been guarded, but she’d managed to get what she needed from them.

  Her thinking had been that the Lakeland Ripper may not have killed every woman he’d raped. All of the people she’d spoken to had denied having anyone in their care who’d been raped by a stranger who’d abducted them. They’d promised that they’d contact her if they heard anything, but Beth had gleaned from their tone that they didn’t think it likely.

  As good as it was that no women had told of having been snatched for use as a rapist’s plaything, it was also terrible that the majority of the women who had reached out for help must have known their attacker. Beth had spent hours trying to decide which would be worse: being taken by some unknown person and used to sate their desires, or having someone she knew and liked break her trust and destroy her faith in them. She pushed the idea out of her head: both were utterly abhorrent.

  When she was speaking to the women from the charities, she had also tried to learn as much information as she could from them about how they worked. The more she knew the better she’d be able to contribute to Forster’s vision. If she was going to get involved in his charity, she wanted to have her say about how it was set up, and to do that, she had to understand how the existing ones could be improved upon.

  Of the sixteen rape victims she’d found on the police database who’d suffered their assault in the two years since Harriet’s death, there were thirteen cases where there was an accusation but not enough evidence, while two had been advanced to the point where the CPS had taken over and the court case was impending.

  That left one possible option. Beth had taken down the woman’s details and she planned to contact the investigating officer tomorrow morning, to see if her theory panned out.

  Beth supposed that if the Lakeland Ripper did stop killing it could only be a good thing. His not killing all of his victims would give them someone to interview. They’d be able to get an idea of what he was like.

  She didn’t expect that he’d be foolish enough to show his face to his victims, but they’d at least be able to describe his general build, if he spoke with an accent. Whether he was muscular, fat or thin.

  It was as she pondered on what the Lakeland Ripper was like, that she realised something about his victims. None of the women were any taller than five foot seven and Harriet Quantrell had only been five one.

  Joanne’s and Harriet’s diminutive heights would make them easier than a taller, stronger person for the Lakeland Ripper to manage. It’d be easy for him to slip an arm over their shoulder and around their throat. A knife pressed into their backs would make them compliant until he could bind them with his tape.

  Their height was a definite thread, but it could have been nothing more than a coincidence. Still, at this moment in time, it was one additional factor that linked the cases together.

  She cast her mind back to the spreadsheet as she twiddled a lock of hair round her finger.

  None of the women’s clothes had ever been found, but Beth figured they’d been disposed of in random bins, or burned to remove the possibility of trace evidence. Even their shoes, or hiking boots in Joanne’s case, had gone missing.

  The more she thought about it, the more she was struggling to make sense of anything. She knew her mind was overloaded with details and that she needed to move away from the subject otherwise she’d never be able to let her subconscious loose on the puzzle.

  Beth rose from the sofa and went up the stairs. She had a half hour to grab a shower, put on some clean clothes and get across town to meet Ethan.

  When her phone beeped her first thought was that it was Ethan cancelling on her.

  The message wasn’t from Ethan, though, it was a terse message from O’Dowd giving her a list of tasks for the next day. The DI ha
d a court appearance in the morning so she wouldn’t be on hand to deliver the briefing she normally gave.

  O’Dowd’s instructions weren’t the ones she was hoping for. Rather than work the murder cases direct, the DI had reiterated that Beth’s task was to identify whomever was persecuting the mayor.

  The timing of this plot against the mayor was also something she questioned. Forster was coming to the end of his tenure as mayor. The elections were being held in the next few weeks and while Forster might have greater political ambitions than mayor, he was yet to announce his candidacy for the forthcoming local elections.

  Forster had been arrested because of an allegation made by letter and because his card had been found beside Felicia’s body. Had Digital Forensics not been so diligent, it was entirely possible they would be looking at the mayor in a different light.

  Beth’s fingers were curling into a fist and then straightening as she worked things out in her head. It still felt most likely that one of Forster’s former employees was the Lakeland Ripper. Though, if the mysterious Lorraine had been married, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility her husband had learned of her infidelity and followed up on this, but that felt more tenuous. After all, all he’d need to do to humiliate the mayor would be to cite him in divorce proceedings. Plus, if Lorraine’s husband was the killer, he’d only be drawing attention to himself by targeting Forster.

  As Beth thought her idea through, she pictured Lorraine pleading with her husband for another chance. Maybe she even told him that the mayor had taken advantage of her when she was drunk.

  What she had to do was find a way to identify Lorraine and then work back from there. If she could at least eliminate the woman from the investigation, she could focus on Forster’s former colleagues.

  Even as she drove across town to meet Ethan, the details of the case were still kaleidoscoping around her brain, looking for the pattern that offered clarity of thought.

  Thirty

  Before she set off for Carlisle, Beth was at her desk running the names of Forster’s former employees through the Police National Database.

  One of the four had once been arrested for drink driving but they’d only been a fraction over the limit and, as the laws were more lenient in the eighties, had only lost their licence for six months.

  None of the others had so much as a parking ticket against their name, but that wasn’t unexpected. A high proportion of criminal offences were committed by a small portion of the community. Therefore, beyond the odd driving offence, the majority of people had no police record.

  Their names suggested that rather than pimply youths, Forster’s team had been made up of responsible adults. What surprised Beth as much as anything was that there were two women on the team of four, plus Donna Waddington who’d left to found EdenData.

  She knew it was wrong of her to assume that the programmers would all be male. There was no reason whatsoever why there shouldn’t be females working in that industry. It was just that any time she’d encountered anyone who knew a lot about computers, especially in the Cumbria police force, they’d been male.

  When Beth took a look at EdenData’s website she found a slick and professional-looking business which offered reservations systems, EPOS software, front-office management software and a whole host of other services that meant little to her.

  An online demo that she watched showed what she assumed to be their reservation system. It linked to the EPOS – electronic point of sale – software which ran bar and restaurant tills. Event management software could be added, as could a channel manager to integrate with online travel agents. The demo even showed a series of reports before concluding with a sales slogan.

  Beth’s next move was to check out EdenData through Companies House. The business was showing year-on-year growth of 40 per cent most recently, and it had been between 30 and 50 per cent for the last six years.

  To Beth this showed a steady hand on the business’s tiller. Donna Waddington’s company had grown at a more or less steady rate for years. That spoke of diligence and good management. People who had these qualities rarely laid traps for people out of spite. This felt like a woman who had enough brains to know which battles to choose and how to conduct them. She would go and speak to Donna Waddington at some point, but Beth knew before she made a note of the business address that it would almost certainly be a waste of time unless Donna Waddington was somehow in cahoots with the Lakeland Ripper.

  With as much information as she could gather on the people the mayor had employed at SimpleBooker, Beth turned her attention to the mysterious ‘Lorraine’. She began her investigation by calling Forster and asking if there was a guest list for the party where he and Lorraine had met and the details of the person who’d thrown the party.

  By the time the call had ended, she had the name of the photographer who’d been hired to take a few publicity shots and the mayor’s reassurance that he’d visit the photographer and get a reprint of any pictures which Lorraine featured in.

  It might take a bit of exhaustive legwork, but the challenge of something like tracking down Lorraine was one of the things Beth loved most about police work. As much as the desire to deliver justice drove her on, Beth loved nothing more than a good puzzle she could test her brain with. Not so much Sudoku or crosswords; she liked logic problems and riddles. The less sense a puzzle initially made to her, the more she was compelled to try and solve it.

  She had one more call to make before she left to visit the offices of Forster’s old company.

  It was clear the officer she spoke to remembered the case well, as Beth could hear her struggle to manage her emotions as she answered Beth’s questions.

  When Beth thanked the officer and put down the phone, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the desk until she was sure that no tears would escape.

  The rape victim had been walking her dog through a wood on the outskirts of Keswick when she was grabbed from behind. A hood had been placed over her head and she’d felt a knifepoint press against her ribs.

  She’d done as her abductor had instructed and had walked deeper into the woods. A hand had been placed at the side of her head and her head thrust into what she guessed was a tree.

  The woman had been dazed and had drifted between unconsciousness and agonised moments of semi-lucidity until she came fully to. She’d been left where the man had raped her. Her clothes ripped and cut off, blood leaking from her vagina. The final insult was her little terrier lying by her feet, the lead tethering it to a tree not quite long enough to allow the dog to give her comfort as she lay there.

  In a lot of ways, Beth wanted this to be the Lakeland Ripper’s work, but the examination carried out by the police doctor had found severe internal tearing that went far deeper than they believed the Lakeland Ripper was capable of.

  The Lakeland Ripper not being responsible for this rape was a bad thing for two reasons. Because it meant there was another rapist out there. And because there was still no evidence the Lakeland Ripper was letting any of his victims get away alive.

  With this idea now disproven, Beth grabbed her jacket and made for the door. The warm sun that was streaming down would mean the jacket would get cast aside soon, but its pockets held her keys, handcuffs and myriad other bits and pieces that she would normally keep in a handbag.

  It was important to her that she presented the right image when dealing with the public. She knew that many members of the public she met thought that she was too young to be a detective. When their eyes lit on the scarred cheek, she could almost see them wondering if she’d been given a pity posting due to her injury. So far as Beth was concerned, the best way to dispel negative opinions was to show herself in a good light. Being smartly turned out was part of her armoury against negative assumptions her youth may create; the other part being her brain. She’d often seen people revise their opinions of her when she started questioning them, or they heard her responses to their statements.

  The mayor’s
former employees would be the next group of people she’d have to encounter. As computer programmers, they’d all have above-average intelligence and she suspected that, to them, she’d be little more than a nuisance. A young, low-ranked officer who’d been sent to interrupt their day with silly questions.

  She’d have to prove each of them wrong.

  As she strode to her car, she felt her determination growing. One way or another, she had to catch a murderous rapist and find a way of identifying why they were targeting the mayor.

  Thirty-One

  The offices of the mayor’s former company were sited in a converted farm on the outskirts of Carlisle. The whitewash of the buildings had lost its initial lustre and was peeling off to reveal pink sandstone beneath.

  Around the courtyard there were several other small businesses operating out of the former farm buildings. A man was using a barrow to haul a washing machine into one of the units, the neighbouring unit was signed as a fruiterer that Beth had seen supplying hotels and pubs, and a third was a small accountancy firm.

  Outside the offices of SimpleBooker, four cars were parked in neat regimen. All of them were less than three years old, but none were unnecessarily ostentatious. There was a BMW, but it was a small hatchback rather than a fire-breathing racer or a grand tourer. Two of the other cars were everyday saloons and the fourth was a Volvo SUV.

  While these cars may have been nothing more than runabouts to the owners, Beth didn’t think they were. Rather she was thinking that instead of being flash and using their windfall from the sale of SimpleBooker to buy an expensive new car, the employees had merely got a decent but sensible one. Therefore they’d used their shares in a responsible way.

  This made her think that none of them would have frittered away the money. In addition to the windfall, it was likely they were all on a very good wage. The company they now worked for had valued SimpleBooker as being worth tens of millions; therefore it stood to reason that the people who wrote the software would be well compensated to ward off rival companies poaching them. If that was the case, then any possible motive to bring down Forster would lie in another area than financial.