Beth rubbed her forehead and broke from the case to think about Ethan for a moment. She knew she should be focussed, but the look he’d given her earlier had stayed with her.
She knew a lot of people considered her to be attractive, and she’d even modelled in her teenage years until she was old enough to join the police. As such, Beth was used to admiring glances, yet it was only on rare occasions she felt herself being assessed with such scrutiny.
The scar on her left cheek slowed a lot of men, but Ethan had glossed over it and had let his desire for her show in his eyes.
She’d been an innocent bystander when a fight had broken out in a Carlisle pub. One of the fighters had thrust a broken bottle at his opponent and the bottle had been deflected away from its intended target. Her cheek had stopped the jagged base of the bottle and, despite a surgeon’s best efforts, her left cheek was a mess of scar tissue.
Beth pushed Ethan out of her mind. She might not even turn up tonight: the case was everything; it had to be. If that elderly lady had been killed, she deserved to have her murderer jailed.
The office was quiet as Beth went over what she knew. The two pieces of evidence linked to the mayor of Carlisle were incriminating, to say the least, but there was still work to be done. The invitation and credit card that had been found pointed a finger of blame at the mayor, but Beth knew a good lawyer would explain them away without even breaking a sweat. They’d both be taken away for analysis, including fingerprinting, and, with luck, they’d get a solid lead from them. The mayor would make a good suspect if it could be believed that a rich and charismatic man would be responsible for murdering an elderly and cancer-stricken lady.
If they could ascertain the woman’s identity, they’d be able to take a huge step forward. They’d be able to look for links between her and the mayor to back up what may be viewed as circumstantial evidence.
As a precaution against making an incorrect assumption, Beth accessed HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System and ran the details of the case to see if there were any similar cases in the area. This would be the surest way to find out the details of Harriet Q.
Murders always had happened and always would happen, but the age and health of the victim had Beth wondering if there was something else afoot. The victim didn’t fit into any of the high-risk categories, and if she’d been euthanised by a family member, it was unlikely they’d have dumped her naked body beside a lake.
She bent forward as her computer screen flashed up its results.
The lady who’d been found this morning wasn’t the first naked woman’s body to be found in the Lake District. Three other women had been found in the same way and none of their killers had been identified.
Christine Peterson had been holidaying in the Lakes five years ago when she’d disappeared, only for her naked body to turn up a day later. The same had happened with Joanne Armstrong eighteen months after. The final known victim was Harriet Quantrell who’d not returned home from a night out with friends in Carlisle and had been found near the Solway Firth four days later. This last murder was a month short of two years ago.
All three women had shown signs of vaginal and anal rape, and they had all died via strangulation.
That they’d all been killed by the same person was a logical conclusion, but what concerned Beth most of all was that each investigation had been more or less dropped due to a lack of evidence.
What amazed her, was that no one had connected the murders. Yes, they might be spaced over a period spanning almost five years, but to her mind it was obvious that there was a serial rapist and murderer at work.
As she examined each case in more detail, Beth found small reasons why the connection hadn’t been made, but collectively the reasons spoke of a failure rather than negligence.
Christine Peterson’s body had been found on a beach near Barrow, whereas Joanne Armstrong had turned up in a wood on the banks of Lake Buttermere. Harriet Quantrell’s body was dumped on Rockcliffe Marsh, which lies near the border of Scotland and between the points where the mouths of the rivers Eden and Esk join the Solway Firth.
In terms of geography, the three deposition sites were at the south, middle and north of Cumbria. Each location was isolated and serviced by a different police station. It was possible that the investigating officers never looked for other victims, but to Beth’s mind, the seriousness of the respective deaths should have compelled them to check HOLMES and other police databases for similar crimes as a matter of course.
The Barrow cops deserved a free pass as their victim was the first, or at least the first in Cumbria, but the teams from Workington and Carlisle should have picked up that there was a serial rapist and murderer operating in the area.
All three victims had shown signs of having been sluiced down before being abandoned. Where there was a distinction between them was in their ages.
Christine Peterson had been a sixty-two-year-old woman with grandchildren; Joanne Armstrong was a mid-thirties singleton, and Harriet Quantrell was in her early twenties and was engaged, with a daughter who was six weeks old at the time of her death.
The pictures attached to their files showed three vastly different women. Without being judgemental, Beth saw that Harriet was pretty, but obese, Joanne was stick thin and not blessed by the gods of beauty. Christine’s face was lined with age, but it was clear that she was a handsome woman.
Together they were thin, fat, old, young, pretty and ugly. Which meant the rapist either had
