Page 28 of The Girls in the Lake
‘Wonderful, we don’t get out of Barrow very much. Rosie loves the Lake District and she’d adore your house. I’ve told her all about it.’
‘That’s settled then.’
He grinned at her and she grinned back. Beth couldn’t remember the last time she’d invited anyone over for drinks and dinner. It felt good, it felt normal. She caught a glimpse of her life as it used to be before she turned into a recluse for seven years and became scared of her own shadow. Thank God she’d come out of the other side of that. Josh had a lot to do with it. He’d been there for her through everything, and she couldn’t believe how lucky she was he felt the same way about her. Sometimes nightmares did have happy endings; despite her years of living in fear there was the chance to live a normal life and this time she was grasping it with both hands and never letting go. Now there was just the matter of the body in front of her to examine and then she would do some digging of her own.
* * *
Two hours later she snapped off the gloves, relieved it had been a straightforward post-mortem, because she couldn’t push thoughts of the two drowned girls out of her mind.
She needed to know if there was any news or results. Even though everything of forensic value had been fast-tracked it could still take days, more likely weeks to be processed and the results to come back. Checking her phone, there were no messages or voicemails. She then checked her emails in case Josh had decided to send the information about the paint on the boat over that way. Nothing. At least, not since this morning. It was no good, she was going to have to go to the marina on her way home. There was no way she’d be able to settle at home without knowing the simplest of answers. The police did their best with limited resources and complicated processes, but sometimes it stopped them from being able to act fast or follow their noses the way she could.
Wondering how many drownings had occurred over the years, she brought up Google and typed ‘Lake Windermere drowning’ into the search bar and waited for it to load. As numerous pages of news articles fed through, one thing which struck her was the large number of male drownings compared to female. All of them were tragic, but it struck her as odd that it had been such a long time since a woman had been pulled out of the water. Reading through the articles, she made scant notes on a couple, not sure what she was expecting or looking for. After an hour or so of trawling, frustrated, she rang Josh hoping he’d have something for her, some piece of information to help put her troubled mind at rest.
Thirty-Two
Josh was mid-shop in Asda when his phone began to ring. He saw Beth’s number and instantly felt a wave of guilt wash over him.
‘What’s up?’
‘I finished the PM on the girl a couple of hours ago. I left you a message; I found a couple of interesting things. Where are you?’
The noise of the tannoy filled the air to announce that there was a Mini Cooper in the car park with its lights still on. He slapped his palm to his head when he realised it was his.
‘Asda, just getting a few bits. Bugger, I’ve left my lights on; they’ve just announced it to the world. Do you need anything?’
‘I’m good, thanks. There’s plenty in, you didn’t need to bother.’
Tell her, Josh, the voice whispered in his ear, but he couldn’t. ‘So what did you find?’
‘I’d rather tell you in person, can you come down here?’
‘Not really.’ His voice came out much sharper than he intended. ‘I’ve got a lot on.’
‘Oh, okay. So, I managed to de-glove her left hand and take some fingerprints which I’ve sent to the identification bureau. Underneath two of them were traces of what look like paint chips.’
He stood still, staring at the ready meals and wondering if Jodie would eat them. ‘What kind of paint chips?’
‘Hard to say one hundred per cent until they’ve been analysed, but they weren’t too dissimilar to the one I retrieved from underneath Leah Burton’s nail. It could put them both in the same area when they went into the water, or mean they came off the same boat. We need a sample from the boat Leah was on before she went into the water to compare. Do you think the owner will give permission?’
Josh thought about his meeting with James Marshall that morning. ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to say no.’
‘But?’
‘He’s a bit of an ass.’
Beth chuckled down the phone, the rare and lovely sound making Josh feel even worse about not being upfront about Jodie.
‘Can’t you get a search warrant or something?’
‘On what grounds? As far as we’re concerned there’s nothing suspicious. Unless you found any injuries or the post-mortem showed neither of them died in the lake.’
‘Nothing outstanding; the scrapes and bruises on both bodies are consistent with where they were found. Both post-mortems showed that the victims died from drowning and the transient hypervolemia – the amount of water absorbed into the bloodstream – confirms this. They both drowned in fresh water. I completed a full post-mortem which showed no evidence of trauma. Toxicology won’t be back for some time but I have to say that the manner of death is classified as accidental.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t know, Josh, I get the feeling something isn’t right. I just don’t have any evidence to prove otherwise.’
He let out a sigh. ‘I hear you. I’m not that happy myself that two women have been pulled out of the lake. We think we have a possible ID for her, if it’s who we think she is. She’s a hotel worker who travelled from Poland to work here. That doesn’t sit very well with me, but like you have said there is no evidence to support foul play.’
