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 LakesAVAILABLE 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
