Body found after search for woman

MARY BRAID

Police searching for an 18-year-old woman who disappeared after a fitness session at an RAF base five days ago have discovered a body in undergrowth near the base's perimeter fence.

Rachel Lean, who had just passed her A-levels and was to start university next week, went missing between RAF Coltishall, Norfolk, and the home of her father, an RAF chief technician, in Buxton one and a half miles away. The alarm was raised when she failed to turn up for a dinner appointment with her mother. "Her family said she was a very methodical girl who kept appointments," said Sgt John Smith of Norfolk police yesterday. "The behaviour was out of character."

Last night a pathologist was called in to examine the body, which has not yet been identified, as detectives were setting up at incident room at North Walsham station. Mr Smith said the death was being treated as suspicious but a murder inquiry had not been launched.

Rachel's mother, Vanessa, 40, and her father Peter, 43, were being comforted at home. Mr Lean was flown home from Italy on Wednesday where he was serving with the UN's Bosnia peace-keeping force. The couple are divorced. Rachel went to live with her father and a brother, Steven, 17.

Rachel's mother had said her daughter was a "fitness fanatic" who visited the gym almost every day. She added: "She seemed happy and was looking forward to going to university."

Police said that Rachel had visited the base earlier on Tuesday by bicycle and then cycled home again after working out. She later returned and was last seen in the base's shop, just over an hour before she was due to meet her mother. It is not known how she had returned to Coltishall but her bicycle was found at home. A girl who saw Rachel just before she left the base has told police she said intended to walk home.

More than 20 officers spent the weekend searching the countryside around the base.