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

wriggle out from under him; but as soon as she was free, she snapped her cuffs onto his wrists. She’d read him his rights when he came to.

The woman on the bed had taken to sobbing and when Beth looked at Kieran, she found him on his knees, shaking his head from side to side as he tried to deal with his brief concussion.

Beth whipped off her jacket and laid it over the woman’s naked body. Her next move was to start untying the woman’s wrists.

‘Kieran. You okay?’

‘Yeah.’ He sounded groggy to Beth, but he could be checked out when an ambulance got here.

‘Good. Go find me a sheet to wrap this lady in. A clean one if you can find such a thing in here.’

Beth released the first of the woman’s wrists. ‘My name is Beth. Are you Willow?’

The head turned her way and nodded.

As she looked into Willow’s face and saw the emptiness in her eyes, Beth felt her anger start to grow.

She could see first-hand the damage that Cooper’s actions had wrought. Gone was the woman she’d seen on Facebook who’d been joyfully partying with friends and eating cheesy chips. In her place was a woman who would remember this horror for the rest of her days. When Beth moved to untie Willow’s ankles, she had to resist aiming a kick at Cooper’s genitals. The idea of burying her foot a few times was appealing but she didn’t want to do anything that may contaminate evidence or give him a legal loophole to exploit.

He was on his side and his shirt had ridden up onto his stomach.

As much as she didn’t want to look at his crotch, she knew it could hold vital evidence.

She took a quick look.

A condom hung off a penis that was no longer than the first knuckle of her thumb.

The urge to assault Cooper vanished as she realised she had confirmation that Andrew Cooper was definitely the killer and rapist they called the Lakeland Ripper.

‘Here.’ Kieran handed her an orange sheet. Its colours were washed out, but it looked clean and didn’t carry any nasty smells.

‘Cheers.’ Beth draped the sheet over Willow and bent to untie the final knots securing her to the bed. ‘Go outside and call in for an ambulance and a CSI team. Tell them we’ll need someone to do a rape examination when Willow gets to hospital.’

Willow’s head slewed from side to side. ‘No. No rape.’ A shudder that shook Willow’s whole body was followed by a stream of tears. ‘Not yet. He was about to. He’d told me what he was going to do. How he was going to rape me.’

Kieran hovered, unwilling to leave, but not sure what to do.

Beth nodded at the door. ‘Go on, out with you. It’s ladies only in here from now on.’

With the sheet covering Willow, Beth tried to find the right words to soothe her. She kept her voice soft as she repeatedly told Willow that she was safe now, that Cooper would go to jail for a long time and that he’d never bother her again.

Even as she was speaking, she knew her words were trite, meaningless. She wasn’t trained to deal with this kind of thing. Instinct made her want to rub Willow’s back while giving her a great big reassuring hug, but something else inside her was telling her not to make any physical contact until Willow reached for her.

Beth knew that if Forster could get his charity set up in the right way it would be invaluable to people in Willow’s position.

Sixty-Eight

Beth fidgeted in her seat as she waited for O’Dowd to instigate the interview. The struggle with Cooper had torn three buttons from her blouse. She’d managed to borrow a T-shirt from a female PC when they’d got back to Workington police station, but the PC was a size smaller than her, which left her feeling suffocated by the tight top.

O’Dowd switched on the recording equipment and read out the charges after naming all those present.

‘So, Mr Cooper. It would appear that you have, quite literally, been caught with your pants down. As we speak, an officer trained to deal with rape victims is taking a statement from the woman you abducted and attempted to rape. She’s also been examined by a doctor who specialises in sexual trauma. Whether or not your victim testifies against you doesn’t matter. You were caught in the act. End of. You’re going to jail for what you did; the only real questions I have are: For how long? And for how many crimes?’ O’Dowd fixed him with a stare.

‘No comment.’

‘I don’t blame you for saying that. Let’s face it, your lawyer has probably told you to say nothing until they’ve had a chance to study all the evidence against you. Trust me, that’ll take a while because there’s lots of it. Tell me, do you honestly think you’re going to get away with what you’ve done?’

‘No comment.’

The lawyer laid his pen on the table with a deliberate precision. ‘I think you’re on the point of crossing a line, DI O’Dowd. What Mr Cooper has said is that he was making love to his… girlfriend when two of your officers broke into his home, assaulted him and then arrested him. He tells me he is innocent of the charges laid against him.’

Beth noticed the lawyer’s particular turn of phrase, and also the way he’d physically positioned himself to put as much space between him and his client as possible. It was everyone’s right to be defended and duty lawyers didn’t get a choice on who they were representing, but they didn’t have to like it.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Irving, but I don’t believe that’s the case at all. And, I’m sad to say, I don’t think even you believe that version of events.’ Beth shot a look at the lawyer. ‘I was there, I saw what your client was doing. I spent an hour comforting her. That wasn’t going to be