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

Felicia’s soul. Whatever had happened to the woman in her younger days, the impact had shaped her life. Whether she’d been shunned by a lover or victimised by someone wasn’t the real point. Felicia’s books were her escape route. She’d avoid her own dark thoughts and live the characters’ lives in her mind.

With the woman’s library made up of little but crime fiction, Beth wondered if Felicia was looking for a fictional resolution that she’d never been given in real life.

It was possible that Felicia just liked the puzzles, but if that was the case, wouldn’t it stand to reason she might also have a TV so she could watch crime dramas and quiz shows? While not a novel reader herself, Beth knew that when her mother read, she became immersed in the fictional world to the point where she’d lose track of time and wouldn’t hear her name being spoken.

Beth tried questioning the carer one last time, but she knew her questions were neither new nor insightful. From the way the carer kept looking at her watch, Beth guessed the woman had another charge she needed to visit, so she finished up and let the woman go.

Beth stood in the cottage and drank in everything she could. Every room had been pored over by a CSI team, yet she didn’t expect them to have found anything of note. If this was the rapist’s work, he’d not left a decent clue yet. If he was clever enough to hack into computers and leave fake evidence to frame the mayor, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to expect him to have taken precautions against giving them clues that would lead them to his door.

There was a smell in the cottage that filled every space and she didn’t know whether it was due to Felicia’s personal decay or the years of scents that had gathered in the furniture. Beth took a few minutes to peer into some of the cupboards and poke about in the writing desk. What she found gave her a profound sense of sadness.

The food in Felicia’s cupboards was all supermarket own-brands, while the fridge held tins of corned beef, tongue and spam, a few vegetables, a small block of cheese that was going mouldy and milk that was three days past its sell-by date.

To Beth it spoke of a frugal existence, but the bank statements in the writing desk showed that Felicia was spending only a fraction of her pension. With no known relatives to leave anything to, Felicia was either being overly cautious with her money or perhaps she was punishing herself for something.

For the killer, the taking of such a life would be easier to rationalise. With Felicia being friendless, unloved and near-death from a painful disease, her killer would be able to convince himself that by killing her, he was actually saving her pain.

The question that was now bugging Beth was, if this theory was right, how did Felicia’s killer know she was already close to death? Supposedly she was a person who drove others away, didn’t tell anyone what was going on in her life. Therefore her killer must have some connection to her, unless she was chosen entirely randomly.

The more Beth thought about it, the more she wondered what had gone on in Felicia’s past, as other than her books, everything in Felicia’s life was from another time.

With as much insight collected into Felicia’s life as she was likely to get from the house, Beth snipped the lock over and pulled the front door closed behind her. She needed to get to the local shop before it closed.

Twenty

The village shop was just a hundred yards up the road, so Beth set off walking. In villages the shop was the hub at the centre of the gossip wheel. If the shopkeeper didn’t have the answers to her questions, nobody would.

Caldbeck was one of those idyllic villages which had been around for ever. The stone houses aged, yet chocolate-box beautiful. Most had window boxes and hanging baskets providing a riot of colour, and the gardens she walked past were all manicured to within an inch of their lives.

As she walked to the shop, she tried to establish a timeline for the night before last in her mind.

Felicia’s carer had left the cottage at ten thirty and another had arrived at eight o’clock the next morning. At 6.45 a.m. the walker who’d spotted her body had called it in. Therefore Felicia had to have been taken between 10.30 p.m. and 6.00 a.m. at the latest.

The forty-five-minute window Beth had allowed for someone to kill, defile and then transport Felicia to the deposition site on the banks of Lake Ullswater was tight, but she knew that she had to work to the maximum parameters.

Beth rapped her knuckles on the shop’s window a second time but she knew it was a forlorn hope. The shop’s lights were off and the A4 piece of paper sellotaped to the window stating its opening hours told her it closed an hour ago. It was only noon, but in a village this size there probably wasn’t enough trade to warrant longer opening. The locals would all know the shop’s opening times and use it accordingly.

She knew what most of these little village shops were like. They sold newspapers, cigarettes and essentials like bread, milk and cheese. There would be a selection of tinned goods and a limited supply of soft drinks and chocolate bars. The prices would be higher than supermarkets, but the locals would pay them without complaint because the shop was handy for emergency supplies.

Frustrated that she’d missed the chance to speak to the shopkeeper, Beth trudged back towards her car.

When she was halfway back she saw tendrils of smoke rising from the back of a cottage and heard music. It wasn’t loud or offensive, just someone playing a radio in the back garden.

Beth went to the house and knocked on the door in the hope the occupants