A Body in the Lakes by Graham Smith (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

Another thing that was bothering Beth was O’Dowd’s deference to Forster. The mayor had a certain standing among the community as befit his station, but to her, he was just another person who’d come into their sights and been dismissed when the evidence had backed up protestations of innocence. Whatever political office Forster held, or might go on to hold in the future, had no place in their reckoning: he must be judged as all other suspects were, and that’s what she’d done.

Rather than give in to her frustrations and rant or rage, Beth turned back to the reports and the notes she had on the three cold cases.

As with any investigation, the starting point was the first thing to happen to the victim. While there may have been previous unknown events such as stalking or even surveillance, they could be backtracked to, once the first point of contact between victim and attacker had been established. In the cases of the three murdered women, that point was the one where they’d been abducted.

Christine Peterson had left her husband to look after the grandchildren they’d taken on holiday while she’d headed off to Sandscale Haws National Nature Reserve with her camera. Beth didn’t know the area well, and what she found online showed her an isolated beach, with a myriad of sand dunes festooned with the tough grass synonymous with much of Cumbria’s coastline.

Christine’s Mazda had been parked in the reserve’s car park and the CCTV footage from the lone camera fixed to the wall of the gift-shop-cum-tearoom had shown Christine leaving her car and wandering off into the dunes with her camera slung around her neck.

To Beth it looked as if Christine was serious about her photography, as when she’d googled the make and model of Christine’s camera, she’d learned that it was a larger professional one and that Christine had also carried the kind of equipment bag professional wedding photographers use.

That was the last time anyone had seen her alive. To be fair to the investigating officers, they’d tracked down everyone else who’d used the car park and spoken to them. All had been holidaying families, apart from a group of students from Lancaster University who’d been there to study the newts which could be found in the dunes.

Joanne Armstrong had been staying in Keswick. Her purpose in the Lakes was hillwalking, as it was for so many visitors to the area. Rather than following the normal protocol of walking in a group, Joanne had travelled to the Lakes by herself and she walked alone.

On the day she was taken, she’d been tackling the Coledale Horseshoe, which was one of the toughest walks the Lakes had to offer. She’d set off at eight thirty in the morning and hadn’t been seen again. Like Christine’s Mazda, her little VW sat in a car park until the police traced it.

Appeals had gone out for anyone who might have seen what happened to Joanne, but until her body turned up two days after her sister had reported her missing, it was presumed that she’d had an accident during her walk. The mountain rescue team had scoured the hillside looking for Joanne, as a matter of course, but naturally they’d found no sign of her. Beth knew it was too much to expect that they’d identified the place from where she was taken, but she wished that the investigating officers had at least asked the question.

Harriet Quantrell was a different proposition. She’d last been seen walking home from the bars and clubs of Botchergate in Carlisle.

Like Joanne she’d been alone. The last of her friends had said goodbye before Harriet had embarked on the last quarter of a mile.

Maybe the young women should have got a taxi, but the fact it had been a balmy summer’s night and they all lived within a mile of the city centre suggested that the girls had chosen to walk.

It was a decision which had more than likely cost Harriet her life.

All the files gave details of the victims’ families and notes on any behaviour which had struck a chord with the investigating officers. There was the usual outpouring of grief and anger from all families. What stood out was Harriet’s uncle, a Howard Stanton. According to the reports from the Family Liaison Officer who’d sat with the Quantrell family, he was a hothead whose rants about getting revenge on the person who’d killed his niece had suggested a serious intent rather than anger finding an outlet in empty words. The FLO had kept an eye on him, but as there had been no progress with apprehending Harriet’s murderer, his anger had turned on the police. In the end, Harriet’s mother had dealt with Stanton by unloading her own anger at him in a tear-filled rant.

Beth’s next thoughts were about how the victims had each been transported from where they’d been snatched to where they were dumped. As much as it might be a cliché for abductors to use a van, they were the perfect vehicle for the job. With no rear windows and plenty of space for the victim, vans ticked every box. Their presence on the roads is as unremarkable as the average car and as such they are ignored.

That two of the three women had been taken at a beauty spot made it even less likely that the abductions were observed. Faced with a panoramic view, very few people would pay attention to a van and its occupants.

The question Beth was struggling with was: How had the killer got the women into the van? A ruse about seeing some puppies wouldn’t work on grown women and if he cracked them over the head with something, he’d still have had to lug their bodies to the vehicle. While bystanders may have their attention on the scenery, they wouldn’t fail to notice a woman being bundled into the back of a van. Plus, none