The Red Dahlia (3 page)

‘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.’