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

clump of nettles that edged their way right down to the water. A second later she heard splashing and knew he’d found his way into the river.

She called him back, knowing he wouldn’t come at once.

Willow crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t do another of his disappearing acts. She didn’t have the time for him to play his games tonight.

The man in the woods put the binoculars to his eyes. The woman he was watching as she walked her dog was gorgeous. Not like those others. They hadn’t been to his taste at all.

He planned to keep Willow as long as possible. Use her until he was spent and tired of her. Only then would he crush her throat and dump her somewhere far away.

Forty-Nine 14 June

Dear Diary

Now that Derek has become mayor, things are even busier.

But today has been the best day since the election results came in.

Remember how I told you I would have to attend a function with the mayor as a kind of +1 / PA? I confess that when we got back to Carlisle, I kissed him.

He kissed me back. Tender at first and then with a ferocity that told me of his desire. Despite the many reasons why I shouldn’t, I damn near shagged him there and then. Why oh why do I fancy him so much? Is it because I know it can never happen?

I should know better, I do know better.

All the same, I want to, even knowing all the hurt it will cause.

What’s wrong with me, Dear Diary? Maybe since Harriet died (and they still haven’t caught her killer, you know), I just know how short life is. But maybe that’s just my excuse.

Until tomorrow.

Fifty

Beth couldn’t help but feel that the spreadsheet she’d constructed was mocking her. All of its rows and columns were silent, apart from her secret theory that still felt too horrific to contemplate. None of them spoke to her in a way that offered clarity. It was as if the document was a suspect who refused to comment on anything.

What had started out as a good day had taken several bad turns. The business with Gracie’s case being handed over to DI Yates’s team was a godsend in a lot of ways, but she still felt it was a job half done.

She still ached from where Gracie had manhandled her. His grip had been so strong he’d left bruises on her skin and had bent the underwires of her bra. She’d tried to straighten the wire back, but judging by the way it dug into her flesh, she’d not got it right and would have to throw away the bra.

The examination by the police doctor had been perfunctory, and while she’d been glad it had been a female doctor, she hadn’t liked the fact photographic evidence was taken. If the case progressed to court, which she knew was the likely scenario, both defence and prosecution lawyers would see those pictures. She’d done her best to cover her nipples with either the wooden ruler the doctor used to give the photographs scale, or her fingers, but she knew she hadn’t been successful every time.

The best that she could hope for was that Gracie would plead guilty to assaulting her, thereby saving his energies to fight the more serious case involving the images of minors. That way nobody would have to see the picture the doctor had taken of her injuries. Yes, the pictures were cold, hard evidence and as such would have no titillation value, but she still didn’t like the idea of lawyers from both sides looking at pictures of her breasts.

Even now, a few hours after the event, she could still feel the grip of Gracie’s hand and see the lust in his face as he’d groped her. Now that she’d seen the dirt in his cottage and had learned where his tastes lay, she was even more repulsed by the idea of him having touched her at all. As great as her desire for a long, hot shower might be, there was too much work to be done with the case for her to think about her own needs.

She eased herself out of her chair and went to the door of the FMIT office. It wasn’t that she wanted to be anywhere else, or had somewhere other than home to go to, more that she needed to remove her eyes from the spreadsheet. Twice she paced the length of the short corridor before she returned to her seat.

Time and time again, she looked at her spreadsheet without finding anything else that would back up her theory. With the spreadsheet refusing to give her the answers she needed, Beth turned to the reports on her desk. They too yielded nothing so she checked her emails. So far there had been no reports of anyone going missing, although she didn’t think enough time had passed for anyone to have gone missing since they requested for new misper reports to be monitored.

It was a long shot to hope that they could work from a missing-person report, and O’Dowd’s point about them not getting involved in every misper case made logical sense, but she still had enough doubts to compel her to take on the extra workload.

What made Beth’s frustration grow more than anything else, was the way that the Lakeland Ripper seemed to have covered his tracks so well. That fact coupled with the failure of senior officers to connect the first three murders meant their investigations were well and truly hampered.

As she wasn’t making any progress staring at the reports, she decided to go out and visit Harriet Quantrell’s deposition site. It was a forlorn hope to think that she’d spot something that nobody else had but she was at a loss as to what else she should do.

Fifty-One

Beth followed the country lanes until they got her as close as they could to the place where Harriet Quantrell’s body had been found.

At the