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

Nineteen

As she drove from Penrith’s Carleton Hall to Caldbeck, Beth had to fight her instinctive anger at Mannequin’s little speech. Had she given in to her baser instincts, she’d have mashed her foot on the throttle and pushed her little car to its limits. To calm herself, she repeatedly went over the details she knew about Felicia Evans. She’d thought it would have been too much to hope for that the woman had already been reported as missing, but sure enough, a report had been made.

Felicia Evans was eighty-three and six weeks ago she had been given two months to live. She’d opted to die at her home in Caldbeck, so the hospital had arranged for carers to visit her four times a day.

The file showed her as having no next of kin. Whether Felicia was estranged from her family, or just the last of her line was something she could find out later; for now, all she could think of was an old woman dying alone. Maybe she’d got some comfort from the carers and maybe they’d been strangers who she only tolerated because she had no one else.

Beth closed her eyes and thought about what it must be like to make that decision. To go home and be alone, or to stay in hospital as she waited for the inevitable. It wasn’t one she ever wanted to have to face, and the idea of not having a loved one to grieve her passing terrified Beth.

While the information she had on Felicia – after seeing the woman’s corpse, Beth already felt she knew her well enough to think of her in Christian-name terms only – fitted with her theory about the woman being selected as a victim for the sole purpose of framing the mayor, she knew she had to be careful not to fit the facts to her theory and keep an open mind.

A carer had made a visit to the home of Felicia Evans and had found her missing. The broken timber around the back-door’s lock and the fact that Felicia had terminal lung cancer was enough to have the carer dialling treble nine.

If it was the case that Felicia Evans had been chosen because of some unknown vendetta against the mayor – and it looked very much like she had been – she was the perfect victim. An old woman who lived alone and was in the final days of her life would be missed by fewer people.

What stood out more than anything else in Beth’s mind was that if Felicia hadn’t been killed by the same person as the other three women, the FMIT had two killers to apprehend.

The carer who opened Felicia’s door to Beth was a middle-aged woman with a kindly face and a body that was a perfect cylinder. Her eyes held a mixture of sorrow and wisdom.

As she followed the carer into the low cottage, Beth felt like she was stepping back in time. Nothing in the cottage looked as if was built, decorated or made after 1980. The wallpaper looked old enough to have come back into fashion at least twice since it had been hung.

‘Bare. Dated. Spotless.’

While dated, the house was clean. Cleaner than it should be for someone suffering with end-stage cancer. The areas behind ornaments were clean, which indicated the surface had been wiped by someone who was house-proud, rather than a carer giving surfaces a quick once-over to help out their charge.

Instead of a 40-inch TV, the small lounge was dominated by a wall of bookshelves. When Beth took a look at one or two of them, she saw they were crime novels. The books were in varying conditions, with some worn from multiple reads, whereas others looked pristine. The covers showed an eclectic mix of old and new titles. One or two, like Shutter Island, she recognised as having been made into movies.

The carer took a seat. ‘I don’t know how much I can help you. I spoke to a constable yesterday, nice young man he was, and told him everything.’

‘I know.’ Beth gave a tight grin. ‘I just have a few follow-up questions. You said that Mrs Evans never had any visitors. Did she talk about her family or mention friends to you at all?’

‘Never. She talked about her books and criticised the other carers.’

‘Other carers?’

‘Yeah. When people are terminal and want to pass at home, we come and look after them. We pop in four times a day. There’s three of us been visiting Felicia. I’ll be honest, when I heard the complaints she made about my colleagues, I ignored them. The other girls are professionals. We all are. People in Felicia’s position often feel angry and scared. We come in, disturb them when they’re poorly and they often take out their anger on us.’ A shrug. ‘It’s crap, but it’s a part of the job, so we deal with it.’

Beth couldn’t help but feel for the carer. The woman dealt with death on a daily basis. If not actual death, imminent death. Now she’d met her, Beth had seen that she was a carer in a lot more ways than just her job description. She could even picture her sitting by a bedside, holding a withered hand long after her shift had finished.

As a detective Beth had grown used to deaths, but she’d really only ever dealt with the aftermath of when people had died. While she might learn about their lives in this way, she’d never achieve the closeness the carer and her colleagues did.

She put a few more questions to the woman without learning much at all. Felicia Evans was a solitary person who was happiest sitting in her chair with a good book. Her one self-pitying comment to the carer had been that she’d never get the chance to read all the books she’d collected.

To Beth the books were the key to