The Red Dahlia (Anna Travis Mysteries Book 2)

by Lynda La Plante

  “But she helped you around the bar and in the kitchens?”

  “Yeah, that’s right; it’s just me running the show. We serve full breakfast, no other meals, and then open the bar at night.”

  “So who else works here?”

  Joe gave a deep sigh. “A cleaner and an old guy that helps me with the crates and stuff; we pay him in beer.”

  “So you would have got to know Louise.”

  Joe straightened up and smoothed back his hair. “I am engaged to my girlfriend!”

  “Really? Does that mean you and Louise were never…” She wafted her hand.

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, and she could see the sweat on his forehead.

  “Did you have sex with Louise?”

  He gave a sigh. “Yeah, kind of; I’d sometimes give her a few quid for a blow job, but it meant nothing. Like I said, I’m engaged; it was just that it was there and she was needy, you know what I mean?”

  Anna said nothing; he looked at his watch.

  “I got to go back to work.”

  “If there is anything that you think of that might help my inquiry, this is my card and contact number.” She passed over her card. He took it and ran his thumb over the edge.

  “I’m sorry. She was kind of sad, but she could be fun sometimes.”

  Anna gave a prim smile. She disliked him intensely. “Thank you for your help. Oh, there is just one thing—could I see her room?”

  “What?”

  “The room Louise Pennel stayed in while she was here, could I see it?”

  Joe hesitated, and then shrugged. “Sure; it’s being used by the cleaner. It’s not a regular hotel room.” They headed up three flights of stairs; the carpet was threadbare and the air reeked of stale cooking fat.

  “It’s from the Chinese restaurant next door,” Joe said as they passed a fire door and a bathroom before stopping at the end of the corridor. He opened the door and stepped back.

  It was hardly large enough to be described as a room; a single bed and a dresser fought for space in the dank air. A torn net curtain covered the tiny window. The lino on the floor was filthy, as was what had once been a fluffy yellow bath mat. A picture of Christ on the Cross hung crooked, the frame chipped.

  Anna drove back to the station, desperate for a shower, but there was no way she would have the time to take one until she went home that evening. She distracted herself with the thought that they now had the date when Louise went for her job interview, which would narrow down when the advert could have been placed. That Louise was selling herself to buy new clothes for the interview showed that she was desperate to make a good impression; Joe had described what sounded like Louise’s missing maroon coat. Louise had moved into Sharon’s flat after the job interview, but had continued working for the dental practice. She sighed, hating that all this might turn out to be a wild goose chase.

  Anna joined Barolli at his desk. “We have any luck with the advert Louise may have answered?”

  “We’re checking out a postal box; the number listed for applicants to call, we’ve drawn a blank on. It was a pay-as-you-go mobile number, so we can’t trace any contract details.”

  “Where was the postal box?”

  Barolli passed over his report. The postal box and the mobile phone number had both been paid for with postal orders, purchased at different post offices: one in Slough and the other in Charing Cross. “If it is our man, he covered his tracks. BT are checking out the line, but he could have used it for incoming calls only. Thousands of those phones are sold; using a very busy post office means there’s little hope that anyone would remember who bought a cash order over eight months ago.”

  Anna scanned through Barolli’s report and then passed it back. “One step forward, two steps back. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder if it was a red herring, but we know Louise went for a job interview sometime in June.”

  Anna told Barolli what she had learned that morning.

  “Terrific; what do we do? Hang out at Paddington station and question every possible punter using the station!”

  Anna pursed her lips; she got the feeling that Barolli felt he had wasted hours of his time. “No, but if BT can trace calls made to that mobile number, we might find someone else who answered the advert.”

  Barolli grinned and pointed. “Good thinking. I’ll crack on.”

  Anna typed up her report of the morning’s interviews. She then returned to Barolli’s desk. “We found no checkbook or bank account in Louise Pennel’s name, right?”

  “Yep. But she might have had one under a different name; we’ve found nothing to indicate that she had an account or credit card.”

  “Do we know how her salary was paid?”

  Barolli pulled at his pug nose and then checked his file. “They paid her in cash. She was on thirteen thousand a year! By the time tax, national insurance, etcetera had been deducted, she was taking home hardly enough to live on.”

  Anna frowned and leaned closer. “If she paid tax on a cash wage! What was the rent at Sharon’s?”

  Barolli shrugged. “I don’t know. No one asked me to check.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find out. Thanks.”

  Anna returned to her desk and rang Sharon; she left a message. Next, she called Mrs. Hughes at Florence Pennel’s house, trying to ascertain the exact dates of Louise’s movements before she moved in at Sharon’s.

  Mrs. Hughes was evasive to begin with, saying that she had done nothing wrong.

  “Mrs. Hughes, I am sure there will be no repercussions for you, but I need to know exactly what you gave to Louise.”

  “Well, they were just some things that her grandmother had given me. I never needed them, and I felt sorry for the poor girl; she looked dreadful.”

  “That was very kind of you. Could you tell me what the items were?”

  As well as the clutch bag with the suede flower motif, there was a nightdress, a dressing gown, and some slippers.

  “As I said, they were just things that Mrs. Pennel had given to me. They were not worth anything, and I didn’t want them.”

  “Did you give her any makeup?”

  “No.”

  “Did you give her any money at all?”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Anna put the phone down. She’d hoped for more items that might have been traceable. The date of Louise’s visit to her grandmother coincided with her returning to the B&B with the suitcase. Anna tried Sharon again but there was still no answer, so, impatient to find out what rent was being charged, she called the landlady direct.

  Mrs. Jenkins was very guarded, saying that she paid income tax on her rentals. Anna gave her the same reassuring treatment as Mrs. Hughes and eventually discovered that the rental for the top-floor flat in Balcombe Street was one hundred and fifty pounds a week, with a deposit of a thousand pounds.

  Astonished, Anna returned to Barolli’s desk. He was hanging on the line for information from BT. He looked to Anna and gestured that it was all right for her to talk.

  “Louise Pennel was paying half of a hundred and fifty quid a week rent, so that’s seventy-five pounds a week on her wages. It would have been impossible to even buy a cup of coffee.” Barolli nodded. “So where did she get the cash?”

  Barolli covered the mouthpiece. “Turning tricks?”

  Anna shook her head. “If Louise had been working as a prostitute, Sharon would have known; so would Mrs. Jenkins.”

  “She had to have been getting money from somewhere; she moved out of the B&B after the job interview so the two must be linked.”

  Just then, Lewis came steaming into the incident room. He held up a plastic bag. “Two more, we’ve got two more.”

  Anna turned to face him. “Two more what?”

  Lewis’s face was flushed. “Sent to the incident room, been downstairs since they arrived this morning. You won’t bloody believe what they say. Where’s the gov?”

  In fron
t of everyone, Langton put on rubber gloves and unzipped the protective forensic bag.

  The first note read:

  Dahlia’s Killer CraCkin. Wants terms?

  The second:

  To DCI James Langton. I will give up in Red Dahlia killing if I get ten years. DON’T TRY TO FIND ME.

  Both notes were written in letters cut from newspapers. The constant ringing of telephones was the only sound in the room as Langton carefully replaced the notes, not wanting to contaminate them. He then crossed to the notice board.

  “He’s a day out on the Black Dahlia time frame. The LA Examiner received almost identical letters to these on January the twenty-seventh.”

  “So he is copycatting,” Anna said.

  “That’s pretty obvious,” snapped Langton. He looked to Barolli. “Let’s get over to the lab and see if these have anything. Like a fucking fingerprint would be useful!”

  Langton and Barolli left the station. Anna was pouring a coffee for herself when Lewis joined her.

  “If this nutter is copycatting the original Black Dahlia case, you know what comes next?”

  “Yes, we get sent a photograph of a white male with a stocking pulled so tight over his face, he’s unrecognizable.”

  “Called him the Werewolf Killer,” Lewis said, pointing to the listings of the contacts made by the Black Dahlia killer in 1947.

  Anna sipped her coffee; it was stale, and she pulled a face.

  “This is getting hairy, isn’t it?” Lewis remarked.

  Anna nodded. “On the old inquiry, they reckoned their killer was obsessed with Jack the Ripper; ours is obsessed with the Black Dahlia killer. Either way, they are both playing sick games. I doubt we’ll get anything from the notes.”

  Lewis nodded and returned to his desk. Anna was passing Barolli’s when Bridget raised her hand.

  “Excuse me, Anna, but I’ve got someone from BT on the line for Detective Sergeant Barolli; do you want to talk to him?”

  Anna nodded and picked up Barolli’s phone. She identified herself and then listened as an engineer gave her details of two calls answering the advert. They were made on land lines and so had been traceable; any call made using a mobile, however, they had no record of.

  Anna could feel her heart pumping. If those two callers had responded to the same advert as Louise Pennel, this might be the first major step forward in tracing the tall, dark-haired man.

  Langton sat in a hard-backed chair at the lab at Lambeth. Around his feet were cigarette ends, above his head the NO SMOKING sign. He looked at his watch impatiently. Barolli came out of the gents’ toilet.

  “Still waiting?”

  “What does it look like? I’ve never sat around like this on any other case. But I want these lab reports.”

  Langton took out a rolled-up Evening Standard from his pocket and started to read.

  “Do you think he’s going to go all the way with this copycat scenario?”

  “Maybe,” Langton muttered.

  “So you think this sick bastard’s going to grab some innocent kid, truss him up, put a stocking over his head, and send in his photograph?”

  “I don’t think all that crap with the boy and stocking mask was from the killer; just some other sick fuck wanting publicity.”

  “You think those notes are from him, though?” Barolli asked.

  “I don’t know; if they are, let’s hope we get something off them.”

  “Think we should we go to LA, Gov?”

  Langton folded his paper and stuffed it back into his pocket. “No, I fucking don’t! This guy is here, not in LA. He’s in London somewhere and we will find him. I am getting sick to death of this Black or Red Dahlia shit. We have a twisted killer with a sadistic mind, and someone somewhere knows who he is.”

  At that moment, the swing doors opened. The technicians had finished their tests on the latest notes.

  8

  Now that she and Lewis had two names to check out, Anna felt really energized. The women lived on different sides of London: one in Hampstead, the other in Putney. They had no luck in contacting Nicola Formby but they left an urgent message on her answering machine; however, Valerie Davis was at home and agreed rather nervously to see them. She asked if it was to do with a parking offense. Lewis said it was nothing for her to worry about; they simply needed to question her about something they would prefer to discuss personally.

  Valerie lived in a basement flat close to Hampstead Heath. She was attractive, with shoulder-length blonde hair and the aristocratic tones of a debutante. She was wearing a wide baggy sweater over a very small miniskirt and big furry boots.

  “Hi, do come in,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed pink.

  It looked as if each of the untidy rooms in the flat was let out to someone or other.

  “Sorry about the mess; we’ve got some friends staying, over from Australia.”

  “How many of you live here?” Anna asked pleasantly.

  “Four girls and one boy. Tea or coffee?”

  They both refused either and sat in the equally untidy kitchen.

  “Did you answer this advert?” Lewis went straight in. Anna would have taken more time.

  Valerie glanced at the wording of the advert, which had been typed out onto a sheet of paper. “Yes; well, I think it was the same one, about eight months ago.”

  Anna’s stomach clenched. “Could you tell us exactly what happened?”

  “How do you mean?” Valerie crossed her endless legs. Such a short skirt didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  “Well, did you write a letter in response?”

  “Yes, I sent in my CV, for what it’s worth. I don’t actually have shorthand, but it sounded like a great opportunity.”

  “You sent in a photograph?”

  “Yes, though not a very good one: I had to cut off people either side of me, because I didn’t really have one that wasn’t me fooling about. I was going to go to one of those passport thingies, but I didn’t get a chance.”

  “When was this?”

  Valerie scrunched up her face, and then rubbed her nose with the cuff of her sweater. “Oh gosh, let me think. Be about…early June?”

  “Did you get a reply?”

  “Not a letter; I got a phone call.”

  Anna leaned forward. “To here?”

  “No, I gave my mobile number and this man asked if I would come for an interview. He wanted to see me straightaway. But it was granny’s birthday, so I told him I was going to the country and he asked something like when would I be available. I wasn’t sure, so I said I’d call him when I got back to London, which I did.”

  Anna was itching to direct the conversation, but Lewis was the more experienced officer.

  “And you arranged to meet him?” Lewis continued.

  Valerie nodded as Lewis made a note and then looked back to her. “Where was this?”

  “At Kensington Park Hotel, just next to Hyde Park Gardens.”

  “What date was this?”

  Valerie looked up to the ceiling as she wound a strand of her hair around her finger. “It was a Tuesday, about the fourteenth of June. I was to be there at two fifteen.”

  Lewis carefully wrote down the information. “Can you describe the person you went to meet?”

  Valerie shook her head. “No, because he never showed up. There’s a large, well, it’s a massive long room, with the hotel reception, a coffee bar, and lots of seating areas. I was late; not too much, ’bout ten minutes. I went to the reception desk and asked if anyone had left a message for me, but no one had. I sat on a sofa for a while and then went and had a coffee.”

  “So you never met up with the man you had made the appointment with?”

  “No.”

  Lewis leaned back, frustrated.

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “Yes, he said his name was John Edwards.”

  He turned to an equally disappointed Anna, who asked if Valerie had seen anyone that might have been Mr. Edwards. Valerie
said she didn’t know what he looked like. She was shown the drawing of their suspect, but she did not remember seeing anyone who resembled him.

  Lewis stood up, but Anna was not ready to go. She asked Valerie if she could describe Mr. Edwards’s voice.

  “Describe the way he spoke, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he sounded a bit like my father: quite pompous, upper-crust, but nice at the same time.”

  “Could you repeat the conversation you had with him?”

  “Well, we didn’t really have much of a conversation; he just asked me what previous work I had been doing, and if I had a CV he could check. He wanted to know if he could contact anyone to check me out, I suppose. He asked me about my shorthand speed and I said it was a bit rusty, but that I’d worked in a film production office as a runner.”

  “Did you ask him what the job entailed?”

  Valerie nodded. “He said it would be transcribing his novel. He said that it would also involve a lot of travel, because it was a book set all over the world, and that it was really very much a personal assistant requirement rather than a straight secretary. He asked if I had a passport and if I was married, as he needed someone that could travel at a moment’s notice.”

  Anna smiled. “It must have sounded like a really interesting job.”

  Valerie nodded and then swung her foot in the big furry boot. “There was something odd, though, which is I suppose why you are asking me about him.”

  “What was odd?” Anna said quickly.

  “Well, he asked if I had a boyfriend and did I look like my photograph. When I told my dad about it, he said it all sounded a bit iffy to him.”

  “Did you try and make contact with Mr. Edwards again?”

  Valerie shook her head. “I couldn’t be bothered.”

  On their way to Putney, Anna and Lewis stopped off at the Kensington Park Hotel. The vestibule was as Valerie had described it: very large, with many guests passing to and fro.

  “He could have been watching from any of these sofas or at the coffee bar. You can see anyone coming in or out of the hotel.”