by Graham Smith
That he’d chosen Thailand as a holiday destination spoke volumes to Beth. While many travelled there for a beach holiday or to see the sites, it was also well known that cities such as Pattaya and Bangkok were hotbeds of sexual activity and that sad, desperate men like Gracie often flocked to them. For a couple of weeks maybe he’d felt like a prince as one Thai hooker after another tried to entice him to their beds.
It was distasteful to think that Gracie was likely a sex tourist, but regardless, the real sickener was that they were back to square one on the murder case. What O’Dowd would make of it was anyone’s guess.
‘Here.’ Unthank handed her a large evidence bag containing the laptop. ‘You head back with this; I’ll stay and oversee a proper search by a search team. You can get the ball rolling.’
As she put the evidence bag onto the passenger seat of her car, Beth couldn’t work out whether Unthank was doing her a favour by letting her escape the foul cottage or if he was making sure he wasn’t the one who had to deliver the bad news to O’Dowd.
Forty-Seven
When Beth returned to the office O’Dowd was sitting at her desk going through reports and Thompson was nowhere to be seen.
‘How’d you get on?’
Beth relayed what she and Unthank had found and waited for the inevitable explosion at the way their best, and only, suspect had been proven as being out of the country when one of the crimes they’d accused him of was committed.
The explosion didn’t come. O’Dowd’s only reaction was a hissed exhalation that lasted a full ten seconds.
‘Buggeration and other such words. It was a good idea and all that, but it didn’t pan out. What you found on his laptop will still put him away, and explains why he did a runner, so all in all, it’s a decent job, well done.’ O’Dowd looked at Beth. ‘Take the laptop to Digital Forensics, write up your report and pass the whole lot over to DI Yates; he and his team will take it from here.’
Beth nodded at O’Dowd. She wanted nothing more to do with Gracie after what he’d done to her, and as his victim, there was no way that she could work on his case. Interviewing him with O’Dowd had been a big enough risk without her presence further tainting the case against him.
‘It’s not just you that’s off the Gracie case: I’ll be getting the whole team off it. So far as we’re concerned, it’s solved. Yes all the legwork is still to do, but if what you’ve told me is true, and I have no reason to doubt you, you’ve got more than enough to secure a conviction.’ O’Dowd wiped a hand across her face. ‘All that’s left to do is collate the evidence, let Yates and his team deal with that. They can spend their days looking at the filth on his laptop. I want you where you should be, in FMIT. That brain of yours is too good to waste on a job that any idiot can do.
‘Plus, I don’t want you getting fucked up by having to deal with looking at rape or kiddie porn for days on end. I have a killer to catch, and don’t want to lose you to a different investigation. Doubly so if your involvement in that investigation may compromise the trial. I’m sorry, Beth, I know what you’re like and that you’ll want to follow it through, but right now, the murder case is our priority.’
‘Ma’am.’ As disappointed as she was with O’Dowd’s decision, Beth was also pleased that she’d not have to deal with Gracie again. ‘What do you want me to do now?’
‘Go over what’s known until you can come up with another idea. That’s all I can think of unless you have any suggestions.’
‘There has been one thing that’s been on my mind. The spacing of the kills is pretty much eighteen months, yet it was twenty-two months between Harriet and Felicia. Normally you’d expect the dates between incidents to get shorter instead of longer as the killer escalated, yet the Lakeland Ripper ended up overdue. His lusts and desires will have been at breaking point.’
O’Dowd laid her pen on the desk. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Maybe we should be watching the misper reports. When a woman is reported missing we should start looking into their disappearance as soon as it’s reported rather than waiting the usual twenty-four hours. He didn’t penetrate Felicia himself and there’s no way of knowing whether doing what he did to her satisfied his desires.’
‘Do it, but keep me in the loop; I don’t want you out looking for every Cinderella who doesn’t get home by midnight.’
As Beth reached for the phone to contact Control she avoided O’Dowd’s eyes. Her request for the misper reports to be monitored had another reason she wasn’t yet ready to share with the DI. She’d spied a couple of anomalies in her spreadsheet, and the thoughts they were prompting were too horrifying to voice until she could back up her suspicions with hard evidence.
Forty-Eight
The streets of Maryport were quiet as Willow made her way towards the river. Rather than have Spike miss his usual walk because of her having a night out, she’d elected to take him along the riverbank beforehand. Tonight’s walk wouldn’t be a long one, though, she intended to only go half the usual distance, and instead of her normal saunter, she was walking at pace to make sure the walk was completed in the least time possible.
The riverbank was alive with insects and Willow had to slap at a few as she went. It would be typical for her to get a bite on her face or arms tonight of all nights.
She was looking forward to meeting up with her old friends, but most of all she was looking forward to getting herself glammed up for a night out. It had been a long time since she’d felt the need to make the kind of effort that would get her noticed.
When she let Spike off his lead he immediately disappeared into a clump of nettles that edged their way right down to the water. A second later she heard splashing and knew he’d found his way into the river.
She called him back, knowing he wouldn’t come at once.
Willow crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t do another of his disappearing acts. She didn’t have the time for him to play his games tonight.
The man in the woods put the binoculars to his eyes. The woman he was watching as she walked her dog was gorgeous. Not like those others. They hadn’t been to his taste at all.
He planned to keep Willow as long as possible. Use her until he was spent and tired of her. Only then would he crush her throat and dump her somewhere far away.
Forty-Nine
14 June
Dear Diary
Now that Derek has become mayor, things are even busier.
But today has been the best day since the election results came in.
Remember how I told you I would have to attend a function with the mayor as a kind of +1 / PA? I confess that when we got back to Carlisle, I kissed him.
He kissed me back. Tender at first and then with a ferocity that told me of his desire. Despite the many reasons why I shouldn’t, I damn near shagged him there and then. Why oh why do I fancy him so much? Is it because I know it can never happen?
I should know better, I do know better.
All the same, I want to, even knowing all the hurt it will cause.
What’s wrong with me, Dear Diary? Maybe since Harriet died (and they still haven’t caught her killer, you know), I just know how short life is. But maybe that’s just my excuse.
Until tomorrow.
Fifty
Beth couldn’t help but feel that the spreadsheet she’d constructed was mocking her. All of its rows and columns were silent, apart from her secret theory that still felt too horrific to contemplate. None of them spoke to her in a way that offered clarity. It was as if the document was a suspect who refused to comment on anything.
What had started out as a good day had taken several bad turns. The business with Gracie’s case being handed over to DI Yates’s team was a godsend in a lot of ways, but she still felt it was a job half done.
She still ached from where Gracie had manhandled her. His grip had been so strong he’d left bruises on her skin and had bent the underwires of her bra. She’d tried to straighten the wire back, but judging by the w
ay it dug into her flesh, she’d not got it right and would have to throw away the bra.
The examination by the police doctor had been perfunctory, and while she’d been glad it had been a female doctor, she hadn’t liked the fact photographic evidence was taken. If the case progressed to court, which she knew was the likely scenario, both defence and prosecution lawyers would see those pictures. She’d done her best to cover her nipples with either the wooden ruler the doctor used to give the photographs scale, or her fingers, but she knew she hadn’t been successful every time.
The best that she could hope for was that Gracie would plead guilty to assaulting her, thereby saving his energies to fight the more serious case involving the images of minors. That way nobody would have to see the picture the doctor had taken of her injuries. Yes, the pictures were cold, hard evidence and as such would have no titillation value, but she still didn’t like the idea of lawyers from both sides looking at pictures of her breasts.
Even now, a few hours after the event, she could still feel the grip of Gracie’s hand and see the lust in his face as he’d groped her. Now that she’d seen the dirt in his cottage and had learned where his tastes lay, she was even more repulsed by the idea of him having touched her at all. As great as her desire for a long, hot shower might be, there was too much work to be done with the case for her to think about her own needs.
She eased herself out of her chair and went to the door of the FMIT office. It wasn’t that she wanted to be anywhere else, or had somewhere other than home to go to, more that she needed to remove her eyes from the spreadsheet. Twice she paced the length of the short corridor before she returned to her seat.
Time and time again, she looked at her spreadsheet without finding anything else that would back up her theory. With the spreadsheet refusing to give her the answers she needed, Beth turned to the reports on her desk. They too yielded nothing so she checked her emails. So far there had been no reports of anyone going missing, although she didn’t think enough time had passed for anyone to have gone missing since they requested for new misper reports to be monitored.
It was a long shot to hope that they could work from a missing-person report, and O’Dowd’s point about them not getting involved in every misper case made logical sense, but she still had enough doubts to compel her to take on the extra workload.
What made Beth’s frustration grow more than anything else, was the way that the Lakeland Ripper seemed to have covered his tracks so well. That fact coupled with the failure of senior officers to connect the first three murders meant their investigations were well and truly hampered.
As she wasn’t making any progress staring at the reports, she decided to go out and visit Harriet Quantrell’s deposition site. It was a forlorn hope to think that she’d spot something that nobody else had but she was at a loss as to what else she should do.
Fifty-One
Beth followed the country lanes until they got her as close as they could to the place where Harriet Quantrell’s body had been found.
At the end of a lane, a derelict cottage stood by a small yard with an open-sided farm shed. Two gates led from the compound into the neighbouring fields. Neither of the fields were too big and the boundary fence of one was pinned flat in places by huge logs which must have been deposited by a high tide. It was a desolate, isolated area that was filled with silence and the smell of grass scorched by a sun that had blazed for days.
In the near distance Beth could see the mudflats of the twin estuaries formed by the River Eden to her left and the Esk to her right as they converged to form the Solway Firth. Across the mudflats she could see the roofs of Gretna’s houses. When she cast her eyes along the Solway Firth, she could see the northern fells shimmering in the evening air. On the Scottish side, Criffel was wreathed in a heat haze that gave it an ethereal quality.
A bird chirruped as it passed over her, but she paid it no heed as she passed through a gate and set off towards the Rockcliffe Marshes. Beneath her feet the grass was tight and coarse; Solway turf was well known for its durability. Strong as it was, it still cushioned each footstep before springing back to its original shape.
Beth remembered the weather report which accompanied Harriet’s file, it had told of a four-week dry spell prior to her murder. The current good weather had lasted for three weeks, so it was fair to say that the conditions were much the same.
Beth tried to dig her heel into an area where the grass was short. Her foot didn’t mark the ground, which gave credence to the theory put forward by the investigating officers that the killer had driven a vehicle part of the way here when dumping Harriet’s body.
She passed over the stricken fence and walked for five minutes until she was at the point where someone had left a rudimentary cross. It had been buffeted from the vertical by the Solway’s ferocious high tides. Across its transom someone had carved Harriet’s name along with the date of her death. It was a simple memorial, made by loving hands, and as she looked at it, Beth could see mental images of both Harriet and her daughter.
Twice she made a slow rotation, taking in all she could see, both the near and the far. As isolated as this place may be, with its clumps of grassland interspersed by narrow rivulets that had been riven open by raging tides, it still retained an element of peacefulness. Here and there a small pond would stand, their waters low in the absence of high tides and rainfall.
Beth remembered childhood Sundays on the similar Burgh Marsh, her mother fussing with a picnic and her father watching over her as she tried to catch tadpoles with a colourful net on the end of a bamboo cane.
It had been idyllic then, but now she was standing here, Beth’s thoughts were on another little girl. If her father ever brought her here, would she want to explore the ditches and ponds the way Beth had? Or would she join her father in mourning the mother she never knew?
With nothing more learned than that the assumptions of the original investigators were likely to be right, Beth ran her fingers along the top of the cross and turned to go back to her car.
As she trudged across the tough grass, she was hoping that something on the case would break and give them a decent lead, or at least a suspect they could focus their attentions on.
Fifty-Two
The night on the town was turning out to be everything Willow had dared to hope it would be and more. The way she’d picked up with her old friends made her feel as if she stepped into a time warp and transported herself back ten years.
They’d started off by having dinner in the Lifeboat Inn, before progressing to the busier bars. There had been laughter, gossip and enough Prosecco to wash away all the years since she’d last done this.
Compared to the other girls – Willow knew they were too old to be classed as girls any more, but that’s how she thought of them – she was overdressed, but she didn’t care. Tonight was all about having fun. She wasn’t looking for any serious male attention, as the last thing she wanted in her life right now was another man, but she did want to feel noticed, desired.
Since the day she’d caught her husband in bed with another man, she’d felt unattractive. On an intellectual level she knew that his desires lay in a different direction, and the fact he’d chosen a man rather than a woman to cheat on her exonerated her from feeling any level of blame for his indiscretion. However, the fact he’d cheated at all had dented her confidence more than she’d realised. What had made the pill so bitter to swallow was that she’d made love to him the day before she caught him in bed with their neighbour.
For too long she’d felt worthless, undesirable; and now tonight, when she was out with the girls, she knew she was drawing admiring glances. The dress was shorter than any she’d worn in the last five years and it clung to her backside and body in a way that showed off her trim figure. So far she’d caught three men ogling her and had had one guy wander over to chance his arm.
In the normal course of events, she’d have felt seedy at being ogled, and would have sent the guy who’d tr
ied to chat her up back to his mates with a stinging put-down. Tonight was different though; tonight was about her having fun and rebirthing herself. Whether she liked it or not, she was single now, and while she planned to stay that way for some considerable time, she knew the first steps back on the road to happiness involved redeveloping her sense of worth. It didn’t matter how many men fancied her, or chanced their arm with her tonight, one already had and that was enough for Willow. If more guys showed their interest, so be it, she’d already had more attention than she’d expected to get, so any more that came her way would be a bonus.
Fifty-Three
Beth lay back on her sofa and stared at the ceiling. Her mind was awash with thoughts about her day. She’d looked at the evidence and her spreadsheet until all the details were burned into her brain. Nothing had come of it.
With all the evidence they had, there had to be a clue of some kind that had been overlooked, but no matter which way she examined the known facts, she couldn’t identify that one detail she knew would break the case wide open.
After such a good end to yesterday, she should have known that today wouldn’t go so well. The summons to Hilton’s office had been the first sign, but she’d thought it would be the only negative as she’d been swept up in the thought of Gracie being the Lakeland Ripper. Not only had their suspect almost escaped, she’d had his hands pawing at her to contend with.
In terms of being molested it could have been a lot worse: the way he’d gripped and twisted her chest spoke of anger rather than lust. It was his words that disgusted her more than anything. There had been malevolence in his tone as he’d snarled at her. She knew that the question, ‘you like that, don’t you, bitch?’ would stay in her mind long after the bruises on her chest faded.