The toxicology reports on the three victims showed them clear of illegal substances, but Harriet’s blood had had sufficient alcohol content for her to have been three times the drink-drive limit. To Beth’s mind, that tallied with Harriet having been taken after a night out. She may have been drunk enough to make a bad judgement call which would have made it easier for her killer to abduct her. Both Christine’s and Joanne’s blood had tested negative for alcohol, but that didn’t mean a lot. A gun or knife could have been used, and if the victims had been fed a date-rape drug such as Rohypnol or GHB, there was a chance the small amount they’d been given to make them compliant had dissipated from the body before they’d died.
Beth realised that she was thinking of the women by their Christian names and knew that was because she was getting drawn into their lives and was caring for them.
The more she thought about it, the more she grew angry about the system failure which had allowed the rapes and murders to go unconnected until she’d stumbled across them thanks to Ethan’s tip. It was bad enough that two different teams had failed to connect their cases to a previous one, but at a regional level, the chief superintendent, deputy chief constable or even the chief constable himself should have picked up on the connection between the three unsolved rapes and murders.
As ridiculous as the idea seemed to Beth, she couldn’t help but wonder if there was an element of collusion going on. If the mayor was involved, he was a wealthy and powerful man who travelled in the same social circles as the top brass. They might well be members of the same golf club or masonic lodge.
Beth scrubbed the train of thought from her mind. Senior cops didn’t cover up murders for anyone, regardless of their status in life. If they were guilty of anything, it was a negligence of duty or incompetence rather than subterfuge.
The point still remained that they’d missed it though.
Whichever way she looked at it, the case was likely to explode in the face of everyone involved in it.
Beth was rising from her seat to go and share her discovery when O’Dowd burst into the room trailed by DS Thompson. Their demeanour was enough to inform Beth that something else in the case had broken.
‘Ma’am, you’re not going to believe what I’ve found.’
‘Wait your turn.’ O’Dowd flapped a piece of paper towards Beth. ‘Here, read this and tell me what you think. It arrived this morning.’
Beth took the paper from O’Dowd and looked at it. It was a photocopy of an anonymous letter. Like ransom notes from old films about kidnappings, the letter was made up of newspaper clippings. It had one simple line of text:
Mayor Forster has killed and raped before and will do so again.
‘Well, what do you think?’ It was Thompson who spoke. His tone gruff and insistent as was his way. His wife had early-onset Alzheimer’s and was extremely frail. He might think he was coping with her illness and the conclusion it would bring, but he wasn’t. He was snappier than usual and there were times he’d adopt a vacant look as his thoughts drifted to his wife. ‘Come on, Young Beth, what do you think?’
‘Coincidence. Foreknowledge. Scared.’
‘Do you want to elaborate?’ O’Dowd lifted an eyebrow.
Beth flushed as she was again betrayed by her habit of blurting out random words while her thoughts kaleidoscoped.
‘This letter arrived today, which means it must have been posted on Friday or Saturday. Therefore it’s a huge coincidence that a letter implicating the mayor arrives here on the same day a body is found and there are two pieces of evidence beside it pointing at the mayor. That also speaks of foreknowledge to me. Did the person who sent the letter know about the murder before it happened? If the mayor is a killer, the person who sent the letter must be scared of him. He’s a rich and powerful man. It’ll be tough to pin a charge on him without hard evidence. They’ll be terrified that if they are identified as his accuser they’ll be killed.’ Beth gave O’Dowd a look. ‘I have a few questions, ma’am.’
‘I thought you might. Ask away.’
‘The envelope the letter came in, did it have a postmark, and if so what was the date it was sent and where was it sent from? Also, has the letter been sent to the lab for fingerprinting? Can they get a DNA sample of saliva from the stamp? Who was the letter addressed to?’
‘It has a Carlisle postmark and it was actually posted a fortnight ago. The original letter and the envelope are on their way to the lab now.’ O’Dowd pulled a face. ‘The envelope had a printed label with the chief constable’s name on and it was marked “private and confidential”.’
That the letter was addressed to the chief constable explained why it had lain unopened for almost a fortnight. He’d been on annual leave, and had only returned to duty today. Had the letter been opened the day it arrived, they might have started looking into the mayor and the allegations against him. If the mayor was a killer, he might have been identified as one and charged, or at the very least, he would have been aware of the police interest in him, and would not have dared risk killing another woman. Either way, the lady found at the side of Lake Ullswater may have still been alive.
Once Professional Standards learned of how the letter had lain unopened on the chief constable’s desk for at least ten days, there would be an investigation into the reasons and blame would be allocated.
Thompson rubbed at his chin with more force than was necessary to scratch an itch. ‘You wanted to tell us something when we
