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

who’d abducted them. They’d promised that they’d contact her if they heard anything, but Beth had gleaned from their tone that they didn’t think it likely.

As good as it was that no women had told of having been snatched for use as a rapist’s plaything, it was also terrible that the majority of the women who had reached out for help must have known their attacker. Beth had spent hours trying to decide which would be worse: being taken by some unknown person and used to sate their desires, or having someone she knew and liked break her trust and destroy her faith in them. She pushed the idea out of her head: both were utterly abhorrent.

When she was speaking to the women from the charities, she had also tried to learn as much information as she could from them about how they worked. The more she knew the better she’d be able to contribute to Forster’s vision. If she was going to get involved in his charity, she wanted to have her say about how it was set up, and to do that, she had to understand how the existing ones could be improved upon.

Of the sixteen rape victims she’d found on the police database who’d suffered their assault in the two years since Harriet’s death, there were thirteen cases where there was an accusation but not enough evidence, while two had been advanced to the point where the CPS had taken over and the court case was impending.

That left one possible option. Beth had taken down the woman’s details and she planned to contact the investigating officer tomorrow morning, to see if her theory panned out.

Beth supposed that if the Lakeland Ripper did stop killing it could only be a good thing. His not killing all of his victims would give them someone to interview. They’d be able to get an idea of what he was like.

She didn’t expect that he’d be foolish enough to show his face to his victims, but they’d at least be able to describe his general build, if he spoke with an accent. Whether he was muscular, fat or thin.

It was as she pondered on what the Lakeland Ripper was like, that she realised something about his victims. None of the women were any taller than five foot seven and Harriet Quantrell had only been five one.

Joanne’s and Harriet’s diminutive heights would make them easier than a taller, stronger person for the Lakeland Ripper to manage. It’d be easy for him to slip an arm over their shoulder and around their throat. A knife pressed into their backs would make them compliant until he could bind them with his tape.

Their height was a definite thread, but it could have been nothing more than a coincidence. Still, at this moment in time, it was one additional factor that linked the cases together.

She cast her mind back to the spreadsheet as she twiddled a lock of hair round her finger.

None of the women’s clothes had ever been found, but Beth figured they’d been disposed of in random bins, or burned to remove the possibility of trace evidence. Even their shoes, or hiking boots in Joanne’s case, had gone missing.

The more she thought about it, the more she was struggling to make sense of anything. She knew her mind was overloaded with details and that she needed to move away from the subject otherwise she’d never be able to let her subconscious loose on the puzzle.

Beth rose from the sofa and went up the stairs. She had a half hour to grab a shower, put on some clean clothes and get across town to meet Ethan.

When her phone beeped her first thought was that it was Ethan cancelling on her.

The message wasn’t from Ethan, though, it was a terse message from O’Dowd giving her a list of tasks for the next day. The DI had a court appearance in the morning so she wouldn’t be on hand to deliver the briefing she normally gave.

O’Dowd’s instructions weren’t the ones she was hoping for. Rather than work the murder cases direct, the DI had reiterated that Beth’s task was to identify whomever was persecuting the mayor.

The timing of this plot against the mayor was also something she questioned. Forster was coming to the end of his tenure as mayor. The elections were being held in the next few weeks and while Forster might have greater political ambitions than mayor, he was yet to announce his candidacy for the forthcoming local elections.

Forster had been arrested because of an allegation made by letter and because his card had been found beside Felicia’s body. Had Digital Forensics not been so diligent, it was entirely possible they would be looking at the mayor in a different light.

Beth’s fingers were curling into a fist and then straightening as she worked things out in her head. It still felt most likely that one of Forster’s former employees was the Lakeland Ripper. Though, if the mysterious Lorraine had been married, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility her husband had learned of her infidelity and followed up on this, but that felt more tenuous. After all, all he’d need to do to humiliate the mayor would be to cite him in divorce proceedings. Plus, if Lorraine’s husband was the killer, he’d only be drawing attention to himself by targeting Forster.

As Beth thought her idea through, she pictured Lorraine pleading with her husband for another chance. Maybe she even told him that the mayor had taken advantage of her when she was drunk.

What she had to do was find a way to identify Lorraine and then work back from there. If she could at least eliminate the woman from the investigation, she could focus on Forster’s former colleagues.

Even as she drove across town to meet Ethan, the details of the case were still kaleidoscoping around her brain, looking for the pattern that offered clarity of thought.

Thirty

Before she set off for Carlisle, Beth was at her