A Body in the Lakes Graham Smith (free e novels txt) 📖

A teenage boy answered, his face a riot of acne, but he was pleasant and Beth could see that once he grew out of the spots, he’d be handsome.

Two minutes later she was in the back garden waiting to speak to the lad’s parents. A large barbecue was being tended to by the father while the mother was arranging half a dozen chairs around a wooden table on the lawn.

Beth put her questions to the mother first and then the father. Neither admitted to knowing much about Felicia. Their contact with the woman was limited to greetings or short conversations about the weather. They said they used to invite her to barbecues and the odd dinner party but she always declined their hospitality.

As she’d talked to the father, Beth’s stomach had growled at the smell of the burger he was cooking. He’d smiled and served her a burger in a sesame seed bun without even asking if she wanted it. By the time she’d finished the burger, more of Caldbeck’s residents had arrived. The father, being the good citizen he was, directed each of his guests Beth’s way so she could speak to them in turn.

Beth had been at the house for an hour or so when she realised that other than paying a jobbing builder to rebuild her garden wall, Felicia had kept contact with her fellow villagers to an absolute minimum.

A neighbour Beth had chatted to said that when Felicia was in her garden, she’d either be gardening or reading. The neighbour had tried chatting to her over the wall but it had become clear that the woman just wanted to be left alone.

The burger in her stomach felt good as Beth drove out of Caldbeck. She’d not had the chance to eat today and as she navigated the narrow road south to the point where it joined the A66, she was wishing that she’d been offered a second one.

While her body was mostly content, her brain wasn’t. She’d put a call in to O’Dowd and had related her lack of findings. The DI had been crotchety, but not too bad.

To Beth’s way of thinking, Felicia Evans’s lifestyle spoke of either self-flagellation for some reason known only to Felicia or a desire to hide away and delight in solitude. Beth knew that she would have to investigate the victim to catch her killer. What she had to find out was the reason Felicia had chosen to shut herself away from the world. She’d meant to run Felicia’s name through the PND and HOLMES to see if it came up with anything relevant, but after Mannequin’s arrival into the office, the idea had been forgotten.

It would be the first thing she did upon her return to the office.

Twenty-One

Beth’s desk was as tidy as her mind. Everything had its place and while she didn’t have any OCD tendencies, she liked to have everything in its rightful home so she knew where things were without even having to look for them. The pile of notes and folders she kept to the left of her keyboard looked haphazard to anyone else, but Beth knew what was in each folder and what each note was relevant to.

Sitting at her desk, reading the files on her screen, she found herself understanding the old lady’s need for isolation.

Felicia Evans had been gang-raped in the early 1970s. She’d reported it and her rapists had not only stood trial, but they’d been convicted.

That Felicia had been the victim of a sexual assault in death, as in life, somehow made it all the more horrific. Before death, she’d been a lonely woman, cloistered away and friendless. The way she’d hidden herself away spoke of a lasting trauma.

Reporting a rape and seeing it followed through right to conviction was an emotional and sapping ordeal in today’s world, even with measures such as video testimony to lessen the impact of giving evidence. Beth couldn’t begin to think how horrific it would have been over forty years ago, when attitudes were different.

The fact that Felicia had endured the challenges of reporting her rape, and the subsequent trial, spoke of a massive inner strength. Whether she’d been fuelled by a desire for revenge or retribution wasn’t important, what mattered was that justice had been served and that Felicia would have had a crumb of comfort to help her manage any nightmares she had.

On the off-chance that Felicia had been murdered by one of the four rapists who’d assaulted her, Beth ran their names to see where they were now. Three of the four had passed away as they’d been a minimum of ten years older than Felicia and the fourth was back in prison for another sexual assault he’d committed.

Regardless of the fact she had few clues to follow, Felicia’s plight made Beth even more determined to solve her murder.

Another thing that was playing on her mind was the rapist’s change of tack. Instead of penetrating Felicia himself he’d used a sex toy or some other object. It didn’t make sense to Beth, but she couldn’t think of a credible reason for the change.

Whatever else broke with the case, no matter how many hours she had to work, Beth made a silent promise to Felicia that she’d catch her killer, and another to young Kerrie Newham that she’d make sure the person who robbed her of her mother would pay.

Even as she began to pack up her things for the day, an idea of how to identify the rapist came to her. It was too late in the day to pursue it now, but she planned to put the suggestion to O’Dowd the next morning so she could pursue the idea.

Twenty-Two

Beth parked her car in The Lanes car park and sat where she was for a moment collecting her thoughts one final time. She’d put the idea she’d had about tracing Felicia’s killer to O’Dowd and, while the DI had agreed with her line