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

She asked Unthank to arrange a meeting with Louise/Lorraine Jones and set off towards Buttermere. She wanted to go and visit the area where Joanne Armstrong had been found.

As she drove the narrow roads to Buttermere, she was held up by a car towing a caravan. This was a regular occurrence in the Lake District. Caravanners would navigate the smaller roads at a snail’s pace as they made their way to a campsite. Time after time the driver in front of her slowed to a crawl as they met an oncoming vehicle. As much as she wanted to blast her way past the caravan, the driver in front showed no consideration for the cars whose progress he was impeding. As soon as the oncoming vehicle had edged its way past they’d continue with their trundling journey.

Beth could imagine the scene in the car as the caravanners consulted their satnav and pointed at the beautiful scenery. For them, their holiday had begun when they’d hitched the caravan to their car and set off for Cumbria. As they were on holiday, they were relaxed, unpressured and keen to take a leisurely approach to their progress along the road.

As keen as Beth was to get to her destination, she could handle the delay without impatience today. The sun was high in the sky and sending a torrent of glints across the dappled surface of Crummock Water, the fells had that scorching effect created by prolonged good weather and, most important of all to Beth, she had a puzzle to solve.

Claire’s words had been pointed, if cryptic. As a programmer, she’d be used to writing in code. What Beth had to do was decipher Claire’s unspoken insinuation.

The caravan indicated right, slowed to a stop and crept its way into a campsite with a fair number of failed attempts at getting through the gate unscathed. The multiple times it reversed, and then tried again before achieving success, suggested that the driver was new to towing a caravan or that the site owner needed a wider gateway.

With the slow vehicle out of her way, Beth put her right foot nearer the floor and covered the last few miles to her destination at a far more respectable pace.

Buttermere looked as magical as ever and there were a number of small boats with fishermen in them and a couple of people windsurfing. Like a lot of the smaller lakes, Buttermere was one where motorised boats of any kind were prohibited and due to its size there weren’t any yachts, or even facilities to launch or moor one.

Beth parked in the car park of a café and bought herself a bottle of water and a packet of crisps. She munched on the crisps as she travelled along the bridleway which started between the café and a hotel that had tourists occupying every one of the tables outside.

She passed through three gates as she walked along the bridleway. Holidaymakers smiled and nodded at her as she strode along. To either side of her sheep grazed in the small fields.

As she made the five-minute walk, her mind was focussed on the question of how the Lakeland Ripper had transported Joanne Armstrong along the bridleway. The first answer she came up with was that he’d waited until nightfall and had simply walked her to the place where her body had been found; Joanne’s compliance provided by a healthy dose of GHB or Rohypnol. Except that wouldn’t work. There had been no evidence found at the site and no traces of drugs in Joanne’s blood. The access to the bridleway was between the café and a hotel, which meant the Lakeland Ripper couldn’t have carried or dragged Joanne without risking being seen.

Therefore she must have been alive when she was brought here. Like the carrying or dragging, she couldn’t have been led along the bridleway at knife or gunpoint in case someone staying at the hotel had looked out of their bedroom window and seen what was happening.

Beth dredged every detail in her mind about Joanne Armstrong’s deposition site. She thought about the crime-scene photos, the CSI reports and the statements of the original investigating officers.

It was only when she recalled the date Joanne was found that she had an epiphany. Joanne was one of those hardy fell-walkers who paid scant attention to the seasons. Her body had been found on the thirteenth of January. A time of year when the nights were long and the tourists few and far between. Places like the two hotels in Buttermere tended to shut down in January due to a lack of trade and to allow the staff and proprietors to take their own holidays. Therefore there was every chance the hotel beside the bridleway had been deserted. If the Lakeland Ripper had known this, he’d have been confident enough to lead Joanne down the bridleway at knife or gunpoint in the middle of the night.

All these things went through Beth’s mind as she followed the bridleway. After cutting right, and running parallel to the lake, the gravel track gave way to a pathway which followed the banks of the lake until it was swallowed up by the wooded slopes of High Stile. A small bridge was in place to allow people to cross the river which connected Buttermere to Crummock Water.

It was in this wood that the naked and defiled body of Joanne Armstrong had been found by people hiking towards High Stile. At over two and a half thousand feet High Stile was one of the higher peaks in the Lake District.

As she stood at the edge of the wood, Beth took in what she could see and thought about what she couldn’t.

A family was sitting under the shade of an oak tree having a picnic, while another family was paddling in the shallow waters at the edge of the lake. Further along the bank, a fisherman