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

‘What? How did the person who stole my card know where a murder victim had been dumped?’ A hand flapped. ‘Sorry, that was crass of me. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.’

Beth didn’t say anything; she left the mayor to draw his own conclusions. A hand shot up to his mouth as if trying to catch the last of the colour as it drained from his face.

‘No. Please tell me that you’re not thinking that lady was killed just to frame me. Please?’

The mayor’s hands shook as he reached for the glass of water on his desk. His eyes never left Beth’s as they sent out a silent plea for absolution of blame.

‘That’s not what we’re thinking. We think that a rapist and murderer is trying to frame you.’ As much as she might have some doubts about the mayor, Beth felt sympathy for him. While the fact the killer had murdered and raped more than one victim may offer some reassurance to Forster that Felicia hadn’t died for the sole purpose of framing him, there would always be that nagging doubt at the back of his mind. ‘I know this probably won’t help you come to terms with what’s happened, but Mrs Evans was dying from cancer.’

Forster washed both hands over his face a few times. ‘To be quite honest, right now I don’t know if it helps or not. Who would do such a thing? Why would they do it to me?’

‘That’s what I’m hoping you can tell me. I need a list of who has previously had access to your computer. And I want to know about anyone who may harbour a grudge against you.’

‘I… I… I can’t think of anyone who’d do this to me. I’m the mayor for goodness’ sake. I’m respected for the good works I do and the charities I’ve supported.’

‘Take a minute and think about who would want to damage you and your reputation so badly they’d try and frame you for rape and murder.’

The way that Forster was blustering and the shocked expression he wore told Beth that her news had left his brain reeling.

She had to look at the facts: the mayor had been a successful businessman before dedicating his life to local politics. Neither field was one where you could succeed without picking up a few enemies along the way; a partner bought out before the business really took off, a rival put out of business because Forster had undercut him or sold a better product. Maybe it was a political opponent who’d tired of losing against the mayor and had taken to smearing Forster in this underhand way.

While any of these scenarios would present boundless options for grudges to get out of hand, a part of Beth was still wondering what the mayor had done to attract the hatred of someone who was a multiple murderer. The taking of a life, even one as close to death as Felicia had been, was a huge thing and to her mind it seemed unlikely that the killer was a political rival. While she didn’t trust politicians, she didn’t believe one was a serial rapist and murderer.

The way Forster had mentioned that he was the mayor and that he supported charities grated on Beth. It was as if those qualities overrode any other deeds he may or may not have done. Not for the first time since she’d entered his private office, Beth was being shown the size of the man’s ego.

She decided to press him a little while he was still off balance; it was a bit malicious of her, but just as in the interview room, witnesses sometimes needed to be prodded to provide their answers.

‘Have you any ideas as to who may bear a grudge against you?’

‘Nobody I can think of.’

‘Right, shall we start with who had access to the computer at your home?’

‘No one did. It’s passworded and nobody but me knows the password.’ Forster tilted his head to the side. ‘I was in IT, trust me, nobody could guess my password and I never wrote it down.’

‘Okay then, perhaps if I prompt you a little. Tell me about the business you used to have.’

‘It was a tech start-up I created when the Internet began to really take off. You know the booking engines like Booking.com and Ticketmaster?’

Beth nodded; she’d used both on several occasions. ‘You mean like hotels and so on? How does that work?’

‘Exactly.’ Forster’s natural confidence returned as he talked about himself. ‘Hotels, sports stadiums, and a multitude of other venues were suddenly finding that people wanted to book online. To use Booking.com as an example; when someone searches for a hotel in Carlisle, Booking.com will trawl its database and the person doing the search gets presented with the results.’

‘I’m with you so far. I’ve used Booking.com.’

‘Most people have these days. Anyway, when a hotel wants to sell its rooms on Booking.com, they have to upload their availability and what prices they’re charging for each room on each particular date. To do this manually for a large hotel would be a full-time job when you consider how many sites like Booking.com there are. As technology changed and more hotels began to get computerised diaries, or property-management systems to give them their correct name, there became a need for the OTAs like Booking.com to speak directly to the individual hotels’ PMSs.’

‘Excuse me, but what do you mean by OTAs?’

‘Sorry, acronyms were part of our daily lives. OTAs stands for online travel agents such as Booking.com, LateRooms and Expedia. Along with my team, I developed software that sat in the middle ground between the OTAs and the PMSs. Our software was called SimpleBooker and it would integrate over three hundred different OTAs with more than four hundred PMSs.’

‘Wow, I never knew there was a need for such a thing. It must have been terribly complicated working out all the kinks.’ Even as she said the words,