‘Thankfully, the guests have been happy to share the photographs they’d taken on their phones and a couple of dozen have already been emailed over to Kendal HQ.’

James was about to end the meeting when two more officers entered the room to provide updates.

The first said that the search for the weapon used on Rachel was continuing and the coroner’s office vehicle had arrived to transport her body to the mortuary.

The second officer delivered some news that sent a rush of adrenaline through James’s body.

‘I’ve just spoken to a female guest who claims that she had to fend off the advances of a man when she went for a smoke in the garden,’ the officer said. ‘She says he was harassing her and when she pushed him away, he got nasty.’

‘What exactly did he do?’ James asked.

‘He called her an ugly slag. She called him a name back and he raised his hand and told her to fuck off if she didn’t want a slap.’

‘Why didn’t she report this earlier when everyone was gathered in here?’ This from a shocked DC Abbott.

‘Because she didn’t want to ruin her friend’s wedding,’ the officer said. ‘You see, the bloke in question is Mark Slade. He was the best man and also happens to be the groom’s closest mate.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

What best man Mark Slade said to the young female guest amounted to a threat, and quite possibly sexual harassment too. If it was true. But before James confronted him, he wanted to get a first-hand account from the alleged victim.

The officer who spoke to her told him that she would likely be awake as she was anxious to leave the hotel as soon as she was allowed to and since it was almost 6 a.m. she didn’t intend to go to bed.

Her name was Belinda Travers and she was a friend of the bride. She’d told the officer that she was a twenty-four-year-old nurse, single, and lived in Carlisle.

‘Let’s not get too excited about it,’ James said to DC Abbott, who was going with him to speak with Belinda.

‘But it’s hard not to, guv, given what we’ve just learned,’ she replied, referring to the result of a quick Police National Computer search that James had carried out, which had revealed that Mark Slade, aged thirty-two, had a criminal record. Three years ago, he was convicted of punching his then-girlfriend in the face during an argument and breaking her nose.

The attack had taken place in a flat the couple shared in Keswick. Slade pleaded guilty to the assault charge, claiming he was drunk and lost control, and the court gave him a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.

A year before that incident, he had been fined and ordered to attend an anger management programme for smashing the windscreen of a car with a golf club during a road rage incident with a female driver who ran into the back of his car at traffic lights.