A Body in the Lakes Read online

  A Body in the Lakes

  A gripping crime thriller with a heart-stopping twist

  Graham Smith

  Books by Graham Smith

  Death in the Lakes

  A Body in the Lakes

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  Death in the Lakes (UK listeners | US listeners)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Hear More From Graham Smith

  Books by Graham Smith

  Death in the Lakes

  A Letter from Graham

  Acknowledgements

  For Daniel. A young man who is a constant source of pride.

  One

  DC Beth Young’s drive to Lake Ullswater would have been enjoyable had she not been travelling to a grisly task at the location where a body had been dumped.

  Copper beeches stood out from other trees, their leaves turned a deep burgundy by the morning sun, and there were hydrangeas, lilacs and azaleas in bloom in the gardens she passed, which provided a colourful alternative to the uniform green of the grasses and trees lining the road. Even the roadside hedgerows had patches of colour as the hawthorn hedges sprouted a myriad of small white flowers.

  The drive was uneventful with only a minor delay behind a tractor that turned off the road after a mile. It was only as she neared the crime scene that Beth started to get what her mother would describe as a ‘fey feeling’.

  A scatter of emergency service vehicles lined the lake side of the A592. At each end of the procession a uniformed constable was directing traffic along the narrow road. Worst of all was the line of press vehicles that had formed. Beth counted three different news crews as she drove past them, before parking behind the last emergency vehicle.

  A series of forensic stepping plates led to a low wall that was missing sections where neglect and bad driving had taken effect. Beth’s boss, DI Zoe O’Dowd, was standing with a uniformed sergeant; when she saw Beth approach, she pointed at the stepping plates.

  ‘Go see what Hewson’s got.’

  Once she was clad in a paper forensic suit Beth stepped over the remnants of the wall and onto a new stepping plate. Instead of tarmac, there was long grass here. The lakeside trees and bushes sent branches out meaning she had to press through them on her way to the screens that had been erected to prevent the press telephoto lenses getting shots of the body.

  Beth skirted one of the screens and announced her arrival to the pathologist.

  ‘I’ll be done in five minutes, DC Protégé, I’d appreciate it if you stood there and waited for me to finish before you try and get the information Dowdy O’Dowd wants. While you’re waiting, you may examine that which you can see.’

  Despite the sombreness of the situation, Beth could feel a smile forming on her lips. Dr Hewson and O’Dowd had a long-running battle that masked the fact their working relationship was based on mutual respect.

  She was glad of the chance to take in the scene as she always liked to draw her own conclusions rather than read the reports of other officers.

  The naked body Hewson was crouched over belonged to an elderly lady. The legs were riddled with varicose veins that were a deep blue and what she could see of the woman’s bald head was covered with liver spots. In repose her face had smoothed out a lot of the finer wrinkles, but the crow’s feet radiating out from her eyes spoke of a long life.

  Hewson moved to one side, allowing Beth to get a clearer look at the woman’s puckered mouth and yellow-brown teeth.

  Beth guessed the woman had been a heavy smoker and that she’d had a hard life. The signs of hardship were etched into her face. Even in death she looked forlorn, as if the daily struggle was too much to bear.

  The woman’s limbs were thin to the point that Beth wondered if she’d been malnourished. The skin on her arms seemed to hang off bones rather than sheath muscle, and when Beth looked at the skin a little closer it appeared to have the same translucence as tracing paper.

  Hewson rose to his feet and stood on a footpad beside the body.

  Now she could see all of the woman, Beth took in more of the same: a flaccid chest and stomach topped a pubic mound devoid of so much as a whisper of hair. As Beth’s eyes traversed the body, she was looking for signs of injury: a knife wound, or bruising. There was no sign of any blood, although Beth could see a darkening of flesh on the parts of the woman’s body where it was in contact with the ground. That was normal; a body’s blood sank to the lowest point in death, and this lividity told Beth the woman had lain as she was since being dumped here.

  There was always a possibility the woman had wandered out from her home and ended up here, but even as frail as she looked, the night had been warm and Beth didn’t believe she’d died from exposure.

  The clincher to this theory was the light bruising around the woman’s throat. In one so frail, it might be expected there would be significant bruising, but if, as Beth suspected, the marks on the woman’s throat were from her killer strangling her, the skin would stop bruising as soon as her heart stopped beating.

  Beth lifted her eyes and took in the surrounding area. Tranquil was the best word she could think of to describe it. The morning sun glittered across the dappled surface of Lake Ullswater, and on the fells at the opposite side of the lake a flock of sheep was grazing, completely unaware of the terrible scene unfolding around Beth.

  Hewson touched her elbow. ‘Your thoughts?’

  ‘It doesn’t look good. From what I can judge, it looks to be murder. Would I be right in saying that cause of death is strangulation?’

  ‘It would appear so, but until I get her
onto my table, I can’t be sure.’

  Beth grimaced in distaste at what her next question must be. Whenever a woman’s body was found naked, one of the first things to cross an investigator’s mind was the possibility the woman had been raped before being murdered.

  ‘I’m guessing you’ll say the same if I ask you if she’s been raped.’

  ‘My first conclusions are that she hasn’t been raped, as there are no signs of blood around her vagina; however that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As she was naked when she was found…’ Hewson trailed off and gave his head a sideways tilt.

  He didn’t need to say anything more. Beth knew where his sentence was going.

  ‘Speaking of post-mortems, please tell me that you’ll be on with hers this morning, or at least this afternoon.’

  ‘As luck would have it, I have nothing scheduled in for today, so as soon as the photographer is finished his job and the CSI boys have done their bit, we can get her back to Carlisle and I can take a proper look at her.’ Hewson took a draw on his e-cigarette and blew out a thick cloud of vapour that smelled of melon. ‘You’re a smart lass, but you’ve overlooked something. Take another look at our victim and tell me what you see that’s wrong. Describe what you see if it helps.’

  Beth didn’t know what she’d missed so she gave the elderly lady another slow scan.

  ‘She’s thin, frail to the point of being malnourished. The way the skin is hanging off her bones, I’d guess that she’s been ill recently and the fact she’s got no hair makes me wonder if she had cancer and had received chemotherapy.’

  ‘Now you’re getting there.’ Hewson let the twinkle in his eye creep into his voice. ‘Judging by the extent of her rigor mortis, I’d say she’s only been dead a few hours. However, when I tucked a thermometer into her armpit, her core temperature was higher than it should be. I know last night was a warm night, but even so, her temperature should have been several degrees lower.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  Beth knew from her training the usual method of taking a body’s temperature was rectal thermometer, but Hewson had foregone that to use the victim’s armpit. Knowing how meticulous the pathologist was, she worked out that he wasn’t taking any chances that he might contaminate any evidence. Does he really think she’d been raped?

  ‘I’d say she was running a fever when she was strangled, and not just a cold or flu, but something more serious. The way her skin has thinned to become almost translucent backs up your suggestion of cancer. There are bruises on her arms that are synonymous with intravenous drips that also support this theory. Whether the chemo was successful or not, I cannot say, but my guess would be that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Wow. The poor woman.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Hewson nodded towards the road. ‘You might want to speak to the CSI team. When I got here, they were doing their bit, and I have to say, they seemed to have an awful lot of evidence bags.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip. Please let us know when you’re doing the post-mortem; I want to be there.’

  Beth turned and made her way back to the road, the forensic oversuit rustling with every step she took. She could see O’Dowd was talking with a group of officers and from the expression on the DI’s face, she could tell she wasn’t in one of her sunnier moods. Rather than risk bearing the brunt of the DI’s ire, she went to speak with the lead CSI technician.

  Two

  The CSI boss was a taciturn man who never spoke unless spoken to first. Even then he was monosyllabic with most of his answers. In lighter moments, Beth had joked with the rest of the team that the guy’s heroes were probably Clint Eastwood and Charlie Chaplin.

  Beth knew that being businesslike never worked with him as he just told them he’d email the results from the lab. The man, however, did think he was something of a stud and he was vain enough to fall for a little flattery and charm.

  She walked over to him with a wide smile on her face. ‘Dr Hewson tells me you found a lot of things you thought worthy of collecting. I know you’ll probably have to discard half of it, but is there anything I should be getting excited about?’

  ‘One or two bits.’

  This was a good start. He was receptive to her and although non-committal so far, he’d given her a way she could prise some information from him.

  ‘Excellent. Would you care to tell me about them?’ Beth hated herself for doing it, but she wound a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail around one of her fingers. She’d never liked playing on her looks, as doing so was false, but she’d caught the glances the guy had given her and knew he was a receptive audience. ‘My DI is on the warpath and I could use any help you can give me.’

  ‘We got a few bits and pieces. Two of which should give you a suspect.’

  ‘Really? What are they?’

  ‘An invitation to a party and a credit card.’ The CSI man reached into the evidence box at the back of the van and pulled out two bags, which he held out to Beth. ‘Here, have a look for yourself.’

  Beth took the two bags and examined them with great care. The first held the invitation. It wasn’t named but it invited the bearer to attend the mayor of Carlisle’s annual Christmas ball. The date of the ball was the 17th December, but there was no year.

  When Beth turned her attention to the credit card she heard herself gasp. This wasn’t an ordinary credit card, it was a platinum American Express card. A signifier of extreme wealth. The name on the card was ‘Derek Forster’. Beth knew from news reports that the charismatic mayor of Carlisle was a former businessman called Derek Forster.

  ‘This is fantastic; what else did you get?’

  ‘We got a swab of something from her vagina. Might be semen.’

  ‘You’re wonderful.’ Until the CSI man smiled at her Beth thought she’d overdone the flattery. ‘How soon until you can get the DNA results back to us?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours minimum. Maybe more, you know how it is.’

  Beth got what he meant at once. Any DNA samples found in Cumbria were sent to a privately owned lab in Lancashire. As the lab dealt with all the DNA samples from the whole of the north of England, there was every possibility that their samples wouldn’t get tested for a few days.

  As always, with this kind of thing, queues could be jumped if there was sufficient coercion from the brass, or a financial incentive to prioritise their sample ahead of others. It all boiled down to how busy they were and how much pressure could be exerted on them. Beth was sure O’Dowd would get whoever was available from the senior brass to speak to the lab, but it galled her that they wouldn’t get the results as quickly as she wanted them.

  She left the CSI man and went to see O’Dowd as the DI was pocketing her phone.

  ‘Well, what did you get then?’

  Beth recounted what she’d learned from Hewson and the CSI. To plant a seed in O’Dowd’s mind, she mentioned her hopes that one of the senior officers would speak to the lab.

  ‘I’m not a bloody imbecile, Beth. I’ll remember to speak to the chief super without your half-arsed amateur psychology.’

  ‘Ma’am.’ Beth waited until she could see O’Dowd had calmed a little. ‘Dr Hewson says he’ll be doing the post-mortem as soon as the body is returned to Cumberland Infirmary. I think I should be there, to see what he finds.’

  ‘I agree. While you’re at it, get that lateral brain of yours to do its stuff. We need to catch this guy before he kills again.’

  Beth nodded at O’Dowd and wandered off to collect her thoughts. The DI’s comment about her lateral brain was testament to Beth’s love of puzzles. She liked nothing better than a riddle or conundrum to solve and found that her position in Cumbria’s police force, working in the Force Major Investigation Team – or FMIT – gave her plenty of fodder.

  A paramedic was loitering at the side of a stationary ambulance. With the victim deceased there was nothing for him or his partner to do, but they couldn’t be released until O’Dowd gave the order.

  S
he’d met him a few times before. He was good at his job and had a calm manner that radiated to all around him.

  ‘Hey, Beth.’ He waved her over.

  ‘What is it?’ Beth let her eyes dart to his name badge. ‘Ethan’ was his name. ‘I’m not being rude, but I’m kind of busy here.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s just that I may be able to help you out.’

  ‘How?’

  Ethan didn’t speak. He just looked at her with a disarming smile. When his eyes settled on the scar decorating her left cheek they held a hint of pity tinged with anger.

  ‘Come on, Ethan. Spill it.’

  ‘Couple of years ago I was called out to a similar thing. A young lass was dumped on Rockcliffe Marsh. She’d been murdered and was left naked. I’m not sure, but I don’t think her killer was ever found. I certainly never heard about anyone getting done for it.’