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

After a brief conversation she hung up. It had been a forlorn hope that Willow had returned during the night, but she’d had to check.

The early-morning traffic was light as Beth sped along the A66 towards Maryport. For the majority of the journey she had the road to herself and could keep her foot close enough to the floor to ensure that she was travelling at an illegal pace.

Her iPod was again playing a playlist of power ballads as she felt it was too early in the morning to listen to anything more upbeat, or angry. For her, Aerosmith’s ‘Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ was especially poignant as the song’s title was how she felt about her job.

When she’d filled in O’Dowd on the contents of her emails, the DI had sent her across to Maryport so she was on the scene. O’Dowd had also called Workington Station and requested that an officer with local knowledge join Beth in Maryport. Beth figured the DI must have struck lucky because she was called by the officer twenty minutes after she’d left Carleton Hall.

As soon as Beth had got the results for the whereabouts of Willow’s phone she’d overlaid them on a map and had seen how, on Friday night, Willow’s phone had moved around Maryport in a manner that would have been expected of someone enjoying a night out. It would be static for an hour then travel a hundred or so yards as its owner went to a different venue.

It was at the end of the evening that things became interesting. Rather than move in the direction of home, Willow had gone to a small park bordering the River Ellen. A check on Google Street View had shown the park as being ornamental rather than activity based.

The only reason that Beth could think of for Willow going to the park was that she’d wanted to go somewhere private and – at that time of night – that probably meant she had hooked up with someone. However, the union must never have happened, as a mere six minutes after entering the park, Willow’s phone indicated that she’d left.

The next time the triangulation signal kicked in, the phone’s location was further along, near the point where Ellenborough Road bridged the river. If Willow and the guy she’d hooked up with had been disturbed and gone somewhere else it would have been understandable. However, the phone had never moved from its new location by the bridge.

This was a huge red flag to Beth. In her mind, circumstances had changed in the park, and the fact that Willow’s phone was now residing in an area Street View had shown as an overgrown riverbank, jangled every one of Beth’s professional nerves.

Beth didn’t know what she might find if she could retrieve Willow’s phone, but she knew it was something she’d have to do. There was no telling what evidence the phone may hold, and there was also the possibility that they might get a fingerprint, provided the mobile hadn’t got soaked by the heavy dew that was in place when Beth had gone for her early-morning run.

Maryport was starting to wake up as Beth pulled off Ellenborough Road onto Selby Terrace and parked behind the liveried Astra. The officer who climbed out of the police car confounded all of Beth’s expectations. From the voice on the phone, she’d expected to find the officer was at least forty-five, but the one who greeted her would be lucky if he was twenty.

Maybe it was the drawled West Cumbrian accent that had fooled her, or maybe she’d been preoccupied with her thoughts on the case. Either way, she had what looked to be an inexperienced officer to help her.

The officer tossed a self-important greeting her way when she introduced herself. She watched as his eyes swarmed over her and locked onto the scar decorating her left cheek. His mouth dropped open and he kept his gaze on her face a full five seconds. When he realised what he was doing, he turned to the river, the reddening of the back of his neck a sign of his embarrassment.

Beth joined the officer at the metal railings which edged the road. A series of allotments thirty-feet long stretched between the wall and the bushes and trees which lined the riverbank.

Beth made a point of keeping her voice level. The young officer had reacted badly to her scar, but she’d faced worse and he’d at least had the decency to be embarrassed by his actions. ‘You never told me your name.’

‘PC Russell, ma’am.’

The way he looked at her made Beth suspect that he thought she wanted his name so she could lodge a complaint.

‘You don’t need to ma’am me. I’m a DC. So, PC Russell, since we’re probably going to be groping around here for a couple of hours looking for a mobile phone, why don’t you tell me your real name?’

‘It’s Kieran.’

‘Mine’s Beth. Right then, Kieran, let’s try and find that phone.’ Beth pulled out the screenshot she’d printed and compared it to the area in front of her.

Once she’d fixed in her mind where the phone was likely to be, she found a small gate with squeaky hinges and made her way along the flagstones laid by the allotment’s owner. To her left and right a variety of different vegetables were sending green shoots skywards in search of sunlight and rain.

A row of old doors lying on their sides marked the end of the allotment and there was a compost heap she had to skirt before she could step over the doors. If her reckoning was right, the mobile phone would be within ten feet of where she stood. The problem was, the area was overgrown with riverside shrubs, long grass, and there was no clear indication of where the ground ended and the river began. So