The Red Dahlia

Chapter Two

Anna watched from the Incident Room window as Langton arrived. It was just after ten. He parked erratically and then slammed the car door shut. He was still driving his beat-up Rover, but was looking far smarter than poor old Gov Morgan had ever managed, in a navy-blue striped suit, a pale blue shirt with a white collar, and a maroon tie.

Langton was joined in the car park by D.S. John Barolli and D.I. Mike Lewis, the other two officers Anna had worked alongside on the Daniels case. They carried a mound of files between them. They chatted together for a few moments before heading into the station.

Anna was sitting at her desk making herself look busy when Langton strode into the room, flanked by Lewis and Barolli. He went straight to the Incident board and looked over it before facing the team. He introduced his sidekicks and, giving a curt nod to Anna, expressed his regret that their Gov had been taken into hospital. Then he moved on to the case.

'I will need to assimilate all the data you have, but meanwhile, you can't waste any time. It seems you have little or nothing to go on, bar the fact you have your victim identified. I want forensics over to the girls' flat as it has not as yet been eliminated as the scene of the murder. I want you to start listing all Louise Pennel's friends and associates and start taking statements fast. She was missing for three days; where was she? Who was the last person to see her alive? Give me until tomorrow morning for my briefing; until then, let's get moving!'

A murmur erupted as he gathered up a row of files and looked around for Morgan's office. A young female DC led him through the Incident Room past Anna's desk. Langton paused for a second and looked at her.

'Hello, Anna. Nice to be working with you again.' Then he was gone.

Anna flushed, turning back to her computer screen. Barolli and Lewis came over to stand by her desk. Barolli made a joke about it becoming a habit. Anna looked confused.

'Well, you were brought onto Langton's team for the Alan Daniels case when Detective Hudson got sick. Now we're together again, but this time it was your Guv'nor who got ill. Putting something into the coffee, are you?'

Anna smiled, but was not amused.

'I suppose that case must have helped to get you a promotion. Congratulations,' Lewis said.

She couldn't help noticing an undercurrent of sarcasm in his tone; it had obviously not helped him. The duo then followed Langton into his office.

The young DC came out from Langton's office which faced the Incident Room and so had blinds for privacy. Anna watched as the DC filled three mugs with black coffee and a plate with doughnuts.

'Good-looking, isn't he? Nice suit,' she said.

Anna smiled. 'He hates his coffee cold. If that's stewed, I'd get the canteen to make a fresh pot.'

'So you've worked with the DCI before?'

'Yes, a while back.'

'Is he married?'

Anna turned away. 'Not as far as I know. That coffee will be cold if it wasn't before.'

As the young DC moved off, Anna looked over to the officer working at the next desk. 'What's her name? I keep forgetting?'

He didn't even look up. 'Bridget; like the diaries.'

Anna smiled. The young DC was slightly overweight but very pretty, with silky blonde hair, unlike Anna's own spiky red. Anna had tried to grow hers longer but it didn't look right, so she had gone back to her usual cropped cut which held in check the curls that liked to spring up.

There was a strange atmosphere in the Incident Room. Langton's remark about their lack of results had hit home and the team were feeling out of sorts. Nevertheless, Anna worked at gathering names and addresses of Louise's known associates and, along with the rest of the team, began arranging interviews. Her first priority was to go to Louise's flat to reinterview Sharon herself.

Louise had lived in the top-floor flat of a narrow four-storey house off Balcombe Street, close to Baker Street tube station. Anna paused to catch her breath; the stairs were steep. The staircase narrowed as she approached flat nine. She knocked and waited.

'Come in,' Sharon called out. Anna pushed the unlocked door open. The small hallway was as narrow as the stairs and was crammed with photographs of Sharon, some of her modelling teenage clothes and others in which she was rather more scantily dressed. There were none of Louise.

'I'm in here,' Sharon called from the kitchen, interrupting Anna's scrutiny. 'I've put the kettle on; do you want tea or coffee?'

'Coffee, please. Black, no sugar,' Anna said as she entered.

'It's only instant,' Sharon said, busily wiping down a sink that was stacked with dirty crockery.

'That's fine.'

Anna sat at the small folding plastic table; the rest of the space in the tiny kitchen was taken up with cheap cabinets, a fridge and a washing machine.

'I don't think there is anything I can tell you that I haven't said already,' Sharon said as she poured boiling water into two mugs.

'I just want to go over a few things to find out what type of person Louise was.' Anna took her notebook and a tape recorder from her briefcase. 'Do you mind if I tape us? It's in case I don't write something down I'll need to check out.'

Sharon hesitated and then nodded, drawing out the other chair.

Anna checked her tape was running. 'You gave us a list of Louise's friends and we'll be talking to them, but can you think of anyone else?'

'I went through my address book again last night and there's no one that I can think of.'

'Did Louise have a diary?'

'I don't know.'

'Maybe we could have a look around later? If you would like to see the Section Eight warrant?'

Sharon shrugged as she munched a chocolate chip biscuit, not even glancing at the document that Anna showed her.

'You mentioned to DCI Morgan that Louise was seeing someone.'

'I don't know his name and I never met him. I only saw him the once, when he rang downstairs for her. He didn't come in. I was just going out, so I saw him go to his car and wait for her; well, I presume that's what he was doing.'

'What type of car?'

'I was asked that. I don't know. It was black and shiny, but I don't know what make.'

'Can you describe this man?'

'I already have.'

'Yes I know, but just for me.'

Sharon finished her biscuit and wiped the corners of her mouth with one finger. 'Tall, maybe six foot. He was wearing a long dark coat, very smart, and he had short dark hair. I only really saw the back of him. Oh yeah, slight hooknose, I remember that.'

'What age, do you think?'

'Hard to tell; thirty-five to forty-five? He wasn't young and he wasn't her usual type.'

'How long had Louise been seeing this man?'

Sharon shrugged. 'I dunno; I think she knew him before she moved in here. She didn't see him that regular, but she was very keen on him.'

'What makes you say that?'

'Well, when she did have a date with him, she spent hours getting dressed, changing her clothes; she even borrowed some of mine. She said she wanted to look smart for him, sophisticated, and she bought some new shoes: very high, spike-heeled ones.'

'Are they missing?'

'I don't know. I haven't looked.'

'We can do that later. I'll also need you to look through her wardrobe and see if any of her clothes are missing.'

'I can do, but I don't know if I'll be able to tell; you see, we shared the flat but, I mean, we weren't close friends.'

'Really?'

'She answered an ad I put in Time Out when my last flatmate left. It's rented and I couldn't afford to live here by myself, so I needed someone fast.'

'When was this?'

'About seven months ago. I dunno where she lived before; she didn't have that much luggage. She didn't have a lot of money either; well, her job paid peanuts.'

'You said she worked for a dentist?'

'Yeah, but they paid her a minimum wage, 'cos she was having some of her teeth fixed. She needed some caps and fillings done, so I guess when that had been finished she would leave. She didn't talk about her work much; just that it was really boring and she had this thing about hearing the dentist's drill.'

'And you work as a model?'

'Yes, mostly catalogue work. I also do part time at a cafe up the road.'

Anna ploughed on, keeping the questions simple, not wanting to unnerve Sharon before trying to ease her onto more personal topics.

Langton, Barolli and Lewis spent the entire morning sifting through the case history. By two o'clock, having worked through lunch, they closed the files.

'They've got nothing,' Langton said, quietly.

'Yeah, well at least they've identified her.'

'We'll have a briefing at the end of the day; in the meantime, I'll go over to interview this Sharon, her flatmate.'

'Travis is there,' Barolli said.

'I know.' Langton walked out.

Barolli looked at Lewis quizzically. 'He said anything to you about her?'

'What? Travis?'

'Yeah, he did a double-take when he saw her name listed on the team, but then pretended not to have noticed. They got on, didn't they?'

'I was told a bit more than got on! In fact, you remember Jean — that stony-faced DC? — she said they were having a scene.'

'No way! She's not the Gov's type for one, and for two, he wouldn't be so crass as to screw someone on his team. He gets his leg over enough women without shitting on his own doorstep.'

'Well, it's what I was told,' Lewis said, slightly embarrassed.

Barolli flicked open the postmortem file and stared at it. 'You read through all this? What had been done to her?'

Lewis shook his head. They had been under pressure from Langton to get through the files as fast as possible, so had taken half each.

'Bottom of the page.' Barolli used a pen to indicate where Lewis should read. It took longer than just a glance. He turned over to the next page of the report and continued reading, then slowly closed the file.

'Jesus Christ. I thought the beatings she'd taken were bad enough, along with the slashes to her mouth, but this is sick, fucking sick.'

Barolli nodded; the report had turned his stomach. 'Beggars belief, doesn't it? And they haven't finished the autopsy yet! What kind of animal would do that?'

Lewis took a deep breath. 'One we'd better bloody catch.'

Anna was sitting in Louise's cramped bedroom. The single bed, with its pink candlewick bedspread, had not been made up. She had asked if Louise ever brought any guests back to the flat. Sharon had shaken her head: that was one of the house rules and, to her knowledge, Louise had never broken it.

'The landlady lives on the ground floor and she'd have a fit.'

'But Louise often stayed away for nights?'

'Yes, so did I; neither of us had got a steady bloke though, so it didn't really matter not being able to bring anyone back.'

Anna had to move her knees aside so that Sharon could open the wardrobe doors.

'I don't know what's missing. Like I said, she hadn't lived here too long. Oh, hang on!'

Sharon walked out of the room. Anna got up to look at the clothes herself. They were hung in two sections: what looked like work clothes — white shirts and straight dark skirts, a couple of jackets — and clothes for going out, some very expensive, others just high-street glitter.

Sharon appeared in the doorway. 'Her coat: she had a nice maroon coat with a black velvet collar and matching buttons; that's not in here, or in the cupboard in the hall.'

Anna nodded and looked to the bed. 'Did she usually make her bed?'

'No. She was a bit untidy. I was told not to touch it in case they wanted to take away the sheets and things.'

Anna looked at a dress on a hanger: low cut, tight-waisted, with a layered skirt.

'She wanted to be a model. She was always asking me about agents and what she should do to try and break into it. She had a very good figure, but sometimes she wore too much make-up, which made her look older than she was; then she started wearing the dark red lipstick.'

The doorbell made Sharon jump; for all her chattiness, she was actually quite strung out. She went to answer the door, leaving Anna to carry on looking over the clothes. She checked the labels of two cashmere sweaters in the chest of drawers. They were both very expensive and one had never even been worn: it was still folded in tissue paper.

Anna heard Sharon calling to someone to keep on coming up the stairs. She checked over an underwear drawer. Some of the knickers were expensive lace, others well-worn cotton. Anna flushed and shut the drawer when she heard Langton's voice asking Sharon for directions to the bedroom.

Sharon stood behind him as he appeared in the doorway. 'Not a lot of room,' she said.

Langton gave Anna a brief nod.

'You do your own laundry?' he asked Sharon.

'We've got a washing machine but it doesn't work that well, so we use the local launderette.'

'You still have Louise's dirty washing then?'

'Yes, it's in the corner in that basket.' She pointed. 'I don't know what's in there; I haven't looked.'

Langton's eyes roamed slowly around the room and then back to Anna as she gestured to the wardrobe.

'Sharon thinks Louise's coat is missing.'

Langton nodded. His gaze swept the room once more before he turned to Sharon. 'Is there somewhere we can talk?'

'The kitchen?'

He said quietly to Anna that he would leave her to it, and followed Sharon out of the room.

Anna did a thorough search, noting the hairbrush with dark red strands of hair still caught in it. They would take that. She did not find any personal notes or letters; there were very few knickknacks and no photographs. Louise's cosmetics and toiletries were a mishmash of cheap products. There were a few bottles of perfume, some expensive, two of which were unopened. Anna took the stopper off the cheap-looking Tudor Rose, which was half empty, and sniffed: it was sharp and synthetic. In a rather grubby old floral silk makeup bag, she discovered several used lipsticks in various shades of pink and orange.

Anna found nothing under the bed apart from dust-balls. She looked into the laundry basket: it was full of white shirts, knickers and bras. She shut the lid and then went back to the chest of drawers. She found two empty handbags: one quite good leather but old-fashioned, the other a small, cheap-looking clutch bag. No handbag had been found. Anna made a note to ask Sharon what kind Louise was likely to have been last seen with. Anna found no chequebooks, no diary and no address book. Leaving the room, she frowned as she heard a sound from the kitchen. She could not hear what was being said, but it sounded as if Sharon was crying. Langton's low soft voice talked on.

Anna went into the narrow bathroom; there was just room for a bath and toilet. A glass cabinet held aspirins and some prescription drugs, but the tablets were in Sharon's name and were only for migraines. Anna moved into the hallway and opened the cupboard by the front door to find raincoats and old shoes. Looking up, she saw two stacked suitcases on a shelf. Standing on tiptoe, she read a label: Louise Pennel, and the address of the flat. Anna quietly eased the case down and carried it to the bedroom.

The old suitcase was cheap and plastic, with a mock silk lining. Inside, there were two photo albums and a worn address book with various names and addresses listed in no particular order. Sifting through the photo albums, Anna was able to get a better idea of who Louise was. There were some black-and-white snaps of a couple; the woman looked very like Louise and, in a number of pictures, even had a flower in her hair. The man was very good-looking but with a laconic, almost bored air about him: he rarely smiled. There were a lot of baby pictures, then Louise in school uniform and as a camera-shy teenager. The more recent photographs were in the second album. There were some of Louise at parties and others of her standing by the Regent's Park zoo's chimp enclosure, shading her eyes and laughing into the camera. A few innocent-looking snapshots pictured her with various young men, always smiling and hanging onto their arm. Anna jumped as Langton appeared in the doorway.

'I need to get back. You want a lift?'

'Yes please. I'd like to take these with me.'

He glanced at the albums and then walked out.

They sat in silence in the patrol car, Langton up front, Anna in the back. As they drew away, the white forensic van was just parking up outside Sharon's flat.

'Louise was not a whore, but close,' he said, as if to himself.

'I wondered about that. She had some very expensive clothes; lot of cheap ones as well, but a few designer labels and some very exclusive perfume.'

'Sharon, I'd say, is on the game; not that she would admit it. Total denial, but she started to blubber when I asked her if Louise was. They would pick up men from clubs, sometimes together, sometimes not; on the night Louise went missing, Sharon scored herself a rock singer and spent the night at the Dorchester. Louise was often out every night. Sharon said Louise wouldn't cook or eat anything if she didn't have a date, so I guess the one-nighters were literally meal tickets! She described Louise as being very secretive, sometimes annoyingly so. She would be very coy about where she had been.'

Anna chewed her lip. Sharon hadn't told her any of this.

'This tall dark older guy is the one we need to trace.'

'Sharon said she thought he might be married, which was why Louise was so secretive about him,' Anna said quietly.

Langton nodded. 'There was also something a bit kinky going on. Couple of times, she'd come back from being with him with bruises on her face and arms, very withdrawn, often crying in her room. She never said what was bothering her; just that she didn't like doing certain things, whatever that means.'

Anna stared out of the window. Langton had got so much detail and quickly.

'The autopsy said there were no drugs.'

'Yes,' Anna said, lamely.

'But she did take cocaine. Sharon said they had an argument about it. After one of the dates with this older man, Louise brought some back and offered it to Sharon. She was pretty sure that Louise was into some serious sex games with this guy. It'd sometimes be a couple of days before she'd return home, looking really knackered.'

'She had some very expensive underwear.'

Langton swivelled round in his seat to face her. 'I think they went a bit further than sexy knickers!'

'Oh.' Anna tried not to blush.

He gave her one of his lopsided smiles. 'Oh? We'll know more when they complete the autopsy; certainly taking their time. What we know already is pretty sickening.' He turned to face forwards again. There was a long pause. 'So, how's life been?' he asked without looking at her.

'Fine, thank you.'

'Found yourself a nice chap, have you?'

'I've been working too hard.'

He snorted. 'I wish the case looked as if you had; bloody nothing. To lose that amount of time before you got her identified was not good, not good at all, but then old Morgan was never what I'd call a fast thinker.'

Before Anna could reply, they pulled into the station car park. Langton was out and heading directly into the station ahead of her as if she didn't exist. She hurried after him and almost caught a clip from the door as he banged through. It was a repeat performance of the last time they had worked together.

'I'm right behind you,' she said curtly, but he just ran up the stairs two at a time before slamming into the Incident Room.

Langton stood in front of the team looking at his watch, impatiently waiting for silence. It was just after six-thirty. He held up the two photo albums brought from Sharon's flat.

'I want these gone over with a fine-tooth comb: the boyfriends, the friends, anyone that can give us more clues to our victim's lifestyle. Also, importantly, hit the clubs she used. Talk to anyone that knew her or might have seen her on the last night her flatmate saw her alive. We know she was missing for three days before her body was found. Where did she go? Who with? What we do know is that she was sexually permissive and took cocaine and ecstasy; that we found no trace of drugs is down to the fact her body had been drained of blood. Big clue, because any young lad screwing her isn't likely to be able to not only drain her blood, but also chop her in two. The toxicology results might give us more details, but they're going to need at least three to four weeks. The initial autopsy report gave us a lot of unpleasant details and I suspect there are more to come. Whoever carved this young girl up has to have a house or apartment that could facilitate such carnage. The suspect also has to have a car, as he transported the body to the murder site.'

Lewis interjected. 'Maybe the killer could have borrowed a vehicle, even hired one.'

Langton suggested that he immediately check out hire cars for the relevant time and location.

Lewis grimaced; it would be a very long and boring job, and he muttered to Barolli that he should have kept his mouth shut.

'We have found no clothes or other personal items belonging to the victim, so I am sorry if I am going over old ground, but we need to check out skips, bins, the local tip, household waste collections, and someone will have to ascertain when the bins in that area were emptied.'

He turned to the board and pointed. 'Take a look: the saw used to dissect her body did a very professional job, so it was more than likely used by someone who has medical or surgical experience. This narrows the suspects down, so eliminate eliminate until we get some perspective on the killer. We need to track down a tall dark-haired man, driving a…' He gestured in exasperation. 'Black car, expensive looking. This man was known to be dating our victim. This man was very secretive; this man used drugs, this man also encouraged Louise into perverted sexual games. Our suspect is possibly married. To start with, concentrate in this area. Any doctor or surgeon struck off for medical malpractice, any doctor or surgeon with a police record. When we have exhausted that area, we widen the net, but I want this man traced!'

Langton dug his hands into his pockets. 'I want a very closed shop on this one: keep your mouths shut about what was done to her. The press get hold of this horror and we'll have a Fred West scenario which we do not want. As it is, I will have the big boys breathing down my neck for a result, never mind some of the heavy-duty females skiing up the ranks.'

Anna felt this jibe was directed at her own promotion, but if it was, Langton never even glanced in her direction.

'I have asked for more officers to be drafted in to help us out.'

Langton continued his briefing for over an hour. Hardly anyone interrupted, even when he said some very derogatory things about the way they had been handling the case to date. He was determined that no more time would be wasted; they had to get results, and fast. When he finished, Lewis and Barolli handed the lists of duties that Langton had ordered to the Operations Manager. There would be no overtime; if needs be, they would have to work around the clock. Langton returned to his office. It was like a whirlwind had passed through.

Anna went over to find out what Lewis had discovered at Louise's place of work: not much. She was always late, bit of a shoddy worker; a very likeable girl, just lazy. The dentist confirmed that he had given her notice to quit. He also confirmed that she was paid a low wage, as he had been doing a lot of free dental work on her. The other girls working at the clinic got on quite well with her but she kept very much to herself and rarely, if ever, mixed with any of them socially. The dentist was married with four children, and on the night Louise was at Stringfellow's, he was at a family dinner. He did not socialise with Louise and knew little or nothing about her private life; however, one of the dental nurses recalled that Louise had wanted to leave early one day, about a month before she disappeared. She had said she had an important date. The nurse had seen a black car, possibly a Rover, parked opposite the surgery, but she could not describe the man sitting inside. She said that the following day, Louise was very late for work and had showed them a bottle of perfume and a cashmere sweater she had been given by her 'friend'.

It had stuck in the nurse's mind because, mid-afternoon, Louise became very sick and had to leave the surgery, so she had to cover for her. She said that Louise often came to work very hung over. A couple of times, she had also looked as if she had been in some kind of fight: her face was bruised, and once she had deep scratches on her arms. Louise had claimed she had been tipsy and fallen down the stairs of her flat.

Langton rocked back in his chair, flipping a pen up and down as he listened to Barolli going over the wording of the press statements. Langton was being cagey about what they should release: too much information would result in a slew of sickos calling in. The most important thing to get across was that the police wished to contact the tall dark middle-aged man in order to eliminate him from their enquiries. They also needed to know if anyone had seen Louise during those three days she was missing. Langton okayed the use of that same photograph with the red rose in her hair. He then called it quits for himself and went home.

Anna did not get home until late either. She felt too tired to cook, so had bought a pizza on her way home. She had a bottle of wine already open and poured herself a glass. The pizza was cold now, but she ate it anyway as she opened the copy of tomorrow's Sun she'd picked up from the tube station. She knew the press release would be coming out the following morning, so it was a surprise when the now-familiar photograph of Louise stared back at her from page two.

The accompanying headline read POLICE HUNT KILLER OF RED DAHLIA. Anna frowned; it was not a dahlia, but a rose in Louise's hair. The article likened the case to a very brutal murder that had made history in Los Angeles in the mid-forties, that of Elizabeth Short: a beautiful girl who was nicknamed the Black Dahlia because of the flower she wore in her raven hair.

The journalist on the Sun crime desk had cobbled the story together, but his editor liked it; the catchphrase of the Black and Red Dahlias looked good in print, as did the two colour photographs of the dead girls. Though they lacked any real detail about the Louise Pennel case, they could hang the article on the fact that the killer of the Black Dahlia was never traced, just as the killer of Louise Pennel, the Red Dahlia, remained at large after ten days.

The journalist kept quiet about the fact that he had received an anonymous letter pointing this out. The second contact from the killer lay crumpled in a ball in his office bin.