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

excluded the women at all. No matter how she tried to imagine a woman debasing the corpse of another woman in such a way, she couldn’t conjure up the mental image.

Only a small percentage of the admin staff were male, which meant she was mostly looking at doctors, male nurses and a janitor as well as two carers. When she was almost done she got to the names of the two IT specialists employed by the hospital trust. As soon as she saw the names she realised she’d gone about the process the wrong way.

The IT specialists should have been her first suspects. The child abuse images planted onto Forster’s computer had shown that the person targeting the mayor had considerable IT skills.

She checked out the first name. The details that came back to her held nothing of note. They hadn’t been arrested for anything, and when she ran the national insurance number she saw the person was two years younger than she was.

While it was wrong to assume anything to do with a suspect that wasn’t backed up by hard evidence, Beth felt that the killer was an older person.

The second IT specialist she looked at was a different matter. He had two arrests for assault on his record and three for threatening behaviour. The fact he had a temper put him in the frame for being the killer, but when Beth thought about him, she realised she’d heard his name before.

She pulled up the spreadsheet she’d created for the Lakeland Ripper and searched it for ‘Howard Stanton’. She found it against the details of Harriet Quantrell’s family. He was the uncle who’d overreacted through grief. As Harriet was his niece, he’d have known all the details about what had happened to her. That explained how he’d known to violate his victim anally as well as vaginally. Maybe he believed the mayor was responsible and, in his own twisted way, was trying to bring him to justice.

The next thing Beth looked at was Stanton’s marital status and when she saw he was bereaved, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection between this fact and his anger. If there was, the question would be which had come first: his wife’s death, or his anger?

She checked the dates and saw that while Howard Stanton’s wife had died a year ago, his arrests had been spread over a number of years, which indicated that his temper was something he’d had before losing his niece and then his wife, although the two deaths may well have tipped him towards a murderous level of grief.

The counterpoint to this was that Stanton’s arrests had never been followed through. Not once had there been enough evidence to charge him.

Out of curiosity, Beth took a quick look at Stanton’s wife. A police report showed she had committed suicide.

Beth’s first thought was that Karen Stanton had escaped her abuser by slitting her wrists in the bath after downing a bottle of Prosecco. Her second thought was that Karen had been Howard Stanton’s first victim. Her murder made to look like suicide.

As she scanned the details of Karen’s death, Beth saw an entry that made her blood run cold and boil at the same time.

A rapid google search got her the telephone number she needed.

Two minutes after dialling the number, she was heading along the corridor to DCI Phinn’s office. She knew that’s where O’Dowd was and that Phinn would want to know her news as well.

She winced at the knock she’d given the oak door of Phinn’s office. Rather than a respectful rat-a-tat, she’d given the purposeful machine gun of a knock that she used when going to a suspect’s house to enforce an arrest.

‘Come in.’ Phinn’s instruction wasn’t a bellow, but neither was it a whisper. The volume and tone the DCI used suggested that the reason for his being interrupted had better be a good one.

Beth strode into the room, her excitement at identifying a solid suspect overriding her worry about any reprimand she might get for disturbing them.

‘I know who was trying to set up the mayor, and who probably killed him.’

‘Who?’ O’Dowd and Phinn asked the question at the same time.

‘Howard Stanton. He works as an IT specialist at Cumberland Infirmary, which means he would have been able to access Felicia Evans’s medical records. His wife used to work as a PA for the mayor, his niece was the Lakeland Killer’s third victim and he’s got form. He’s twice been arrested for assault, and three times for threatening behaviour. He’d even interviewed for a job with the mayor’s company, SimpleBooker, before the mayor sold it, which means Stanton missed out on a quarter million bonus when the company was sold.

Beth had got this last piece of information by calling the SimpleBooker office and asking Inga if Howard Stanton’s name was familiar to her.

Phinn reached for the phone on his desk. ‘Do you have an address for him?’

Beth gave him the Post-it note she’d used to jot Stanton’s address on.

‘Well done, lass.’ Phinn looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have a team lift Stanton and take him to Durranhill Station for you.’

‘Tell them not to go in until we get there.’ O’Dowd rose from her chair. ‘C’mon, Beth. This is one collar you’re not going to have to make alone.’

Seventy-Seven

Wetheral was one of Carlisle’s satellite villages. Where once it had housed a mixture of families, rising property prices meant Wetheral had become the home of many of Carlisle’s professionals. The large detached houses with spacious gardens were owned by doctors, teachers, lawyers and accountants. The house listed as Howard Stanton’s address was one of only a few semi-detached properties in the village.

Behind Beth and O’Dowd, a van emptied six PCs who’d been sent along to make the arrest. The largest PC carried an Enforcer.

Known unofficially as the Big Red Key, the Enforcer was a simple battering ram with two handles. In the right hands, the Big Red Key could apply more than