A Body in the Lakes

by Graham Smith

  He looked at the ceiling before answering her. ‘Around eleven I should imagine.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll pick you up then.’

  Seventy-Three

  Beth settled herself into a chair and smiled at the message from Ethan. It was a welcome spot of light relief as Forster had been more than a little difficult. He’d taken the news about Felicia Evans’s murder hard, and when she’d arrived back at Halston Hotel to pick him up he’d been on the verge of being drunk.

  She’d debated going home to pick up a change of clothes and her toothbrush, but had decided against it. Instead she’d nipped to Asda after grabbing a McDonald’s.

  Forster had argued about the need for her to stay at his house, but having seen how much he’d drunk, there was no way Beth was going to back down.

  He’d continued drinking when he’d got home and when he’d tottered off to bed, he was paralytic. When she’d heard the click of a lock being turned in the solid bedroom door, she’d retrieved a chair from a spare bedroom and had positioned herself where she could ambush anyone who came up the stairs.

  Beth had called Control and requested another officer to stand guard with her, but she’d ended up getting a mouthful from an Inspector who’d come on the line and told her that without a direct order from the silver commander – the senior officer who was on call for major incidents – there weren’t any officers to spare for an unspecified risk.

  It had crossed Beth’s mind to call O’Dowd so she could get her to put the request to the ACC, who was this week’s silver commander, until a shudder-inducing memory of the DI’s plans for the evening changed her mind.

  The more she thought about it, the more she doubted that anything would happen tonight, but that didn’t stop her from making sure her collapsible baton was fully extended and laid across her lap. Beside the chair she had placed a pair of ornate candlesticks. As makeshift weapons they were heavy and cumbersome, but their presence at her side reassured her.

  She adjusted herself in the chair and prepared a reply to Ethan’s message. Once that was sent, she bent her mind to the case and tried to work out who was framing the mayor.

  Beth woke with a start. At first she was unsure where she was, but she soon realised she was in the mayor’s house.

  She wasn’t sure what had woken her but there was a strange whooshing roar coming from downstairs.

  It was decision time. She could either wait where she was and prepare for whoever came up the stairs or she could go down and investigate.

  Beth chose to wait. She lifted one of the candlesticks and stood at a point of the landing where she could see who was coming up the stairs. If they were wearing a mask or carrying a weapon of any kind, the candlestick would be launched at their head.

  Nobody came, but the whooshing roar increased.

  Beth realised what the roar was and her blood turned to ice as the first wisps of smoke started to wind their way upwards.

  Even so, she had to have confirmation.

  Ten seconds later she had it when she saw the tendrils of smoke emanating from underneath the door of Forster’s study.

  ‘Shit. Derek.’

  As she dashed back upstairs to wake the mayor, Beth was certain the fire was no accident and was the work of the person framing the mayor. She used one hand to dial treble nine on her mobile as the other reached for the handle of Forster’s bedroom door.

  The ancient handle turned, but the door didn’t open.

  ‘Hello, fire brigade please.’

  As Beth gave the operator Forster’s address, she remembered the clicking sound as Forster had closed the door. It was locked and there was little that she could do to change that fact.

  Her eyes landed on the heavy candlestick that stood beside the chair she’d slept in.

  ‘I’ve got three appliances on their way to you now.’

  ‘Please, hurry. There’s someone in the house with me and he’s unconscious in a room that’s locked.’

  Beth lifted the candlestick with her free hand.

  ‘Do you have a key for the room?’

  ‘No. He locked it from the inside.’

  ‘We’ll have someone with you in less than five minutes. Can you get out?’

  Beth drove the candlestick into the door. She was aiming where the lock was, but all that happened was the candlestick vibrating in her hand from the impact.

  ‘Yes, but the mayor’s in there. I need to save him.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, but you need to get out. We’re four minutes away.’

  ‘We’re upstairs.’

  Beth cut the call and picked up the candlestick with both hands. She picked her target as she drew the candlestick back and launched it forward with every bit of strength she could muster.

  Once again the candlestick did nothing more than bounce off the door.

  A splintering whoosh sounded from below and smoke came billowing up the stairs.

  Beth stopped what she was doing and risked a look over the bannister. Through the peels of smoke she saw yellow flame tongues.

  Five, six, seven times she slammed the candlestick into the door.

  All she achieved was a series of dents in the wood.

  The smoke was now so thick that she was coughing and choking as she fell to her knees. For the first time since learning the fire was spreading, Beth realised she was trapped. She kept her nose to the carpet and crawled to the bathroom, where she soaked a bath towel and draped it over her shoulders.

  Beth trembled with fear as she crawled back to the landing. Her attempts to break into Forster’s bedroom and save him hadn’t just failed, they’d put her life at risk. It galled her that she had to abandon him, but she knew there was no way she was going to get through that door without a fire axe. She just had to put her trust in the fire brigade and hope they’d arrive in time to save him.

  Opposite the mayor’s room was another bedroom and that’s where Beth went. She closed the door behind her and, after a deep breath, stood and whipped the duvet off the bed then stuffed it against the bottom of the door to limit the amount of smoke coming into the room.

  Back on her knees she crawled to the window. Her fear that the sliding sash had been painted closed proved unfounded when she tested it and found it lifted with ease.

  She knew that opening the window was a bad idea as it would give the fire below more oxygen, but it was still a better idea than staying put and inhaling any more smoke. As it was she was coughing after every breath and her eyes were streaming.

  Beth heaved the window up and put her head outside so she could get some of the clear air that was instantly being drawn into the room.

  She looked down. There was a heavy window ledge she could use to hang down and drop the few feet to the ground.

  As plans went it was a good one apart from a single fact.

  Fire was pulsing out from a window directly below. If she dropped straight down, she’d pass through the flames. While they might not harm her, if she fell the wrong way, she’d land in the fire.

  The roaring whoosh of the fire on the landing was growing louder as Beth endured another coughing fit.

  She looked up. Two fire engines were barrelling across Eden Bridge towards the house. They were maybe a hundred yards away.

  Beth did a quick calculation. Twenty seconds to arrive and draw to a halt. Ten to spot her and at least thirty more before a ladder could be put to the window.

  A minute wasn’t a long time, but it was too long for her to stay in a smoke-filled room.

  She crawled out onto the window ledge and perched like a gargoyle.

  Beth straightened her legs as powerfully as she could and aimed for the patch of grass at the other side of a gravel path that skirted the house.

  As her feet neared the grass she let the tension go out of her legs and rolled as soon as she made contact.

  The impact knocked what little air was in her lungs, but when she gasped for air, the air she got was sweet and pure.

  As she p
ulled herself to her feet, Beth was urging the first of the firefighters to come her way to save the mayor.

  The next thing she knew a firefighter was pulling her back to a place of safety as hoses were run out and the house fell under siege to torrents of water.

  Seventy-Four

  There was nothing quite like the smell from a house fire. It held elements of woodsmoke from burnt timber, traces of charred fabrics and the unmistakable stench of electrical components that had been caught in the blaze.

  The house’s roof was intact, but all of the windows had blown out and the raging flames had left soot stains on the walls above each opening. Old houses like this one with their lath and plaster walls burned quickly due to the amount of tinder-dry timber within the construction.

  Firefighters moved through the wreckage of the house and there were several different agencies represented. The police were there, as was a fire investigator, and tragically, also one of the vans used to transport bodies to the mortuary.

  The fire investigator had a dog sitting patiently at his side. Beth surmised it would be an Accelerant Dog, trained to identify the use of substances such as petrol or kerosene in cases where arson was suspected.

  A TV news crew were present, as was a crowd of onlookers.

  Beth stood with O’Dowd and looked at the house as two firemen carried out a stretcher bearing a body bag. She knew it was more her imagination than anything else, but Beth would have sworn she could smell the roasted pork scent of charred human flesh.

  There would have to be a formal identification, but Beth knew it was Derek Forster’s body which was being loaded into the back of the plain white van. A firefighter had told Beth and O’Dowd the body had been found in the remains of a four-poster bed.

  That Forster had stayed in his bed suggested to Beth that he died from smoke inhalation rather than being burnt alive. It was a small mercy in the circumstances.

  The overriding feeling that Beth had was one of guilt. She’d failed to save Forster. Had fallen asleep when she was guarding him. She’d failed to awaken him or even get through the door and drag him out.

  There was also disappointment. She believed in, and wanted, Forster’s charity to be established, but she knew that with him dead, the charity would never be founded without its main driving force and principal benefactor. She could have a stab at it herself, but without Forster and his connections, she’d be fighting a battle she was never going to win.

  The fire investigator beckoned them over, his head shaking with an unvoiced fury.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’re looking at murder. There’s a brick in the middle of the floor in what I’m guessing was a study. There were also remnants of a broken bottle there and an intense burning that’s synonymous with an accelerant.’ He pulled a face as he ruffled the back of the Accelerant Dog’s neck. ‘Nige here barked his head off when I took him near the bottle. There’s no doubt in my mind this was arson.’

  Beth got the picture at once. Someone had lobbed a brick through Forster’s window and had followed it up with a petrol bomb.

  It was a simple way to start a fire, and what it lacked in subtlety, it made up for in effectiveness.

  Another wave of guilt hit Beth. If she’d not abandoned her job to attend the party, Forster may still be alive. The same applied to her date with Ethan. Had she been working on her theory about the mayor being targeted by someone other than the Lakeland Ripper, she may have been able to prevent a murder. There was also the feeling that she should have realised sooner that the mayor himself may come under threat and taken measures to protect him. With everything the framer had tried having failed, she should have anticipated his next move.

  Beth knew that it was a leap to assume it was the framer who’d torched the mayor’s house, but considering everything else the framer had done, it made logical sense to think he was behind the mayor’s murder.

  The weight of her guilt became suffocating as Beth revisited her idea that her life was currently on a good day, bad day cycle. She should have been aware that bad would follow the good and put her own agendas aside.

  As she walked back to where her car was parked, Beth found herself plagued with doubts about her ability to focus on the job at hand. She’d been swayed by thoughts of doing some good for society and had abandoned her post when there was still a murderer to catch. That couldn’t happen again, if she was to retain her place in FMIT; she had to put the case first, second and third.

  The theory she’d had about Felicia Evans’s killer seemed like their best lead, but she wasn’t sure about it.

  Beth took a deep breath. ‘Ma’am, I’ve had an idea about something, but I’m not sure I’m on the right track.’

  ‘I don’t care. You’re going home. You’ve been through enough.’

  ‘With all due respect, ma’am, I’m not going home. I’ve a killer to catch. He killed a man who intended to help a lot of victims of sexual assault. Without Derek, that charity will never happen, it’s not just Derek I’ve failed, it’s all the people who could and would have been helped by the charity. Please, ma’am, don’t send me home. Not now. I feel bad enough about not saving Derek as it is. I have to catch his killer.’

  Beth felt the look O’Dowd gave her was burrowing into her soul, but she stood her ground and made her face as determined as she could.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Felicia Evans only had a couple of weeks to live, right? Yet she was killed and sexually violated, but Dr Hewson suggested that she was assaulted with an object rather than raped.’

  ‘I do know all of this.’ O’Dowd scowled as she pulled her cigarettes from a pocket. ‘Get to your point.’

  Beth needed to track it all out so O’Dowd could follow her thinking. ‘Hear me out, please.’

  The DI gave a roll of her hand for Beth to continue.

  ‘We think Felicia Evans was killed to set up the mayor. The sexual assault was done post-mortem to make it appear as if she was killed by the same person as killed the other three women.’

  ‘Hang on, how did he link the three other murders when the investigating officers didn’t?’

  ‘He didn’t have to link them. One of them was from Carlisle. Harriet Quantrell’s murder would be on the news and in the papers. I know we have no proof, but if he’d heard about her murder, there’s no saying he didn’t take inspiration from it when trying to frame the mayor. That’s why the mayor’s credit card was left by her body; to incriminate him.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘Felicia was murdered a few weeks before cancer would have killed her. The odds of someone being murdered in Cumbria are very low, that’s a given. But, it happened to her. I told you earlier that I think she was deliberately chosen as a victim because she had terminal cancer, because she lived alone, because she wasn’t a social person. The person trying to get the mayor into trouble probably rationalised to him or herself that killing someone who was dying was less of a crime. They may even have told themselves they were doing Felicia a favour euthanising her the way a vet puts animals to sleep.’

  O’Dowd nodded and flicked ash from her cigarette.

  ‘Felicia Evans wasn’t a friendly woman; she’d didn’t engage in any of the gossip that’s a normal part of rural life. None of her neighbours knew anything about her. They didn’t know about her family, her interests or her likes. None of the people I spoke to knew of anyone who’d exchanged a more personal comment than “good morning” or “nice day” with her.’

  O’Dowd dropped her cigarette butt down a road drain. ‘What are you getting at, Beth?’

  ‘Not many people would know she was close to death. But if we work on the theory her killer selected her because they knew she was dying, we should be looking at the people who knew about her cancer.’ Beth pointed at Forster’s house. ‘Look at the progression, ma’am. First the chief constable received an anonymous letter, but when that wasn’t opened for almost a fortnight, then someone killed a
dying woman and tried to frame the mayor again, by somehow stealing his credit card and leaving it beside Felicia’s body.’

  ‘Then when we arrested Forster and found all that child abuse on his computer, it didn’t stack up because the guys at Digital Forensics worked out it had been planted, but someone had put it there for a reason. When that didn’t work, he tossed a brick and then a petrol bomb through the mayor’s window to kill him.’

  Beth was pleased O’Dowd had taken control of the conversation as it meant they were passengers on the same train.

  Beth had a thought and she wasn’t pleased with it. ‘You know what? I think that now the mayor is dead, whoever is behind it will go back to their normal life. They’ve achieved their aims. Maybe they wanted to ruin the mayor rather than kill him, but they were swept up by events and ended up killing him. Whichever it is, they’ve no reason to continue now that Forster’s dead. I think that if we trace everyone who knew about Felicia having cancer we’ll be able to find the person who killed her and the mayor.’

  ‘I’d like to think you’re right. However, we don’t know the killer’s motive. Forster may have just been the first person on his shit list. Find out everyone who might have known about her cancer and check them out.’

  Seventy-Five

  Beth was in the Oncology ward of Cumberland Infirmary waiting for Felicia’s doctor and the head of the Administration department. As it was only a mile or so away from the mayor’s house, it was the logical place to start.

  In the absence of friends and family who’d know about Felicia’s cancer, she’d come to the hospital. While patient files were confidential, there would always be some leakage of information and it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the killer was someone who worked at the hospital.

  Beth recognised the doctor when he came into the room. He was a genial enough fellow for someone who dealt with death on a regular basis. The same could not be said for the head of administration.