The Red Dahlia

by Lynda La Plante

  Langton was already at the mortuary the next morning when Anna and Lewis arrived. He looked dreadful. Everything about him was crumpled; he was unshaven, his tie was loose, and his coat was even covered in dog hairs.

  All three went into the lab. Lewis gave a sidelong glance at his gov.

  “Not got home last night, then?”

  Langton ignored him, banging through the double doors and heading directly toward the body, draped in its green cover. Bill Smart was waiting, clipboard in his hand. He bellowed for them all to put on masks and paper suits before he would begin.

  “We’re not likely to contaminate anything at this stage,” Langton mumbled, irritated. “It’s not as if we haven’t been here before!”

  “Maybe so, but it’s house rules.”

  Langton, in his paper overshoes, shuffled closer to the body. Bill Smart, satisfied they were all now appropriately dressed, drew back the green cover to reveal Louise Pennel’s face and torso.

  “Since my last report we’ve done a lot of tests, so today I can give you the full monty, so to speak. It’s not very pleasant.”

  Anna was still taken aback by the gaping slash to Louise’s mouth. Even though she had seen the photographs many times, to see the reality of the appalling injury the killer had inflicted was shocking.

  “Right. We have multiple lacerations to the forehead and the top of the head. There are also multiple tiny abrasions on the right side of her face and forehead. There are further lacerations, a quarter inch deep, at the side of her nose. There is another laceration, a deep one, from the right corner of her mouth and the same on the left: these cuts opened the cheeks. There are numerous new caps to the front teeth, but at the back there is quite an advanced state of decay. Multiple fractures of the skull are visible. There is a depressed ridge on both sides and on the anterior portion of the neck. There is no evidence of trauma to the hyoid bone, thyroid or carotid cartilage, or tracheal rings. There is no obstruction in the laryngotracheal passage.”

  Smart peered at Langton. “You asked if she had been suffocated or strangled, so the answer is no. Her upper chest shows an irregular laceration with superficial loss of skin to her right breast. The tissue loss is more or less square and measures three and a half inches transversely. There are further superficial lacerations to the chest and an elliptical opening in the skin near to the left nipple.”

  Anna stared at the body as the pathologist’s voice droned on. Louise Pennel had been slashed and stabbed; part of her breast had been sliced off. But all Anna could see was that terrible gaping smile.

  Next, the pathologist focused on the severing of the body. The trunk had been completely severed by an incision straight through the soft tissues of the abdomen, severing the intestine and the duodenum, passing through the intervertebral disc between the second and third lumbar vertebrae.

  “There are multiple lacerations on both sides of the torso and, as you can see, multiple crisscross lacerations in the suprapubic area that extend through the skin and soft tissue.”

  “Jesus Christ, it looks like he was carving out a game of naughts and crosses,” Langton said darkly.

  Smart covered up Louise’s head and torso before drawing the green cloth back to reveal the lower half of her body.

  “The labia majora are intact; within the vagina, we found a large piece of skin, which was from the upper torso. The anal opening is dilated and with multiple abrasions. Her missing nipple had been forced into her anal passage.”

  Langton shook his head in disgust. Anna kept ramrod straight; she noticed that Lewis had quietly moved away.

  Langton looked at Anna. “This must never be released.”

  Smart continued. “There was nothing to suggest what she might have ingested as a meal or when she last ate something, so I have run further tests. Not only did we discover fecal matter in her stomach, but it had been introduced into her mouth. She had ingested it before death.”

  Langton drew down the corners of his mouth in distaste. “Is it her own?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you: your killer removed a number of organs, including the small intestine.”

  “Was she alive when these wounds were inflicted?”

  “I’m afraid so. This poor little creature must have gone through untold agony; the causes of death were hemorrhage and shock due to concussion of the brain from massive blows to the head.”

  “These small abrasions?” Langton said, nodding toward the lower part of the corpse.

  “Could be a penknife, a scalpel: something sharp.”

  “But there are so many.”

  “This crisscross cutting around her vagina must have been excruciating: the cuts are deep.”

  “Okay, thank you.” Langton shuffled out of the lab in his paper overshoes.

  Anna watched the two lab assistants prepare to wheel Louise Pennel’s body back to the cold room.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” she asked Smart.

  “No, thankfully, I haven’t. I think this is one of the worst cases I have ever had to deal with.”

  “And you can’t tell if she was raped?”

  “The body was scrubbed clean and the internal organs were bleached, but I would say her killer subjected her to a vicious sexual attack: both her rectum and vagina have cuts and abrasions. Whether these were caused by a penis, I couldn’t tell you. The parts of her breast were stuffed very high up inside her vagina, so it’s likely that he would have used some kind of blunt instrument to force them there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anna left the lab, discarding her paper suit in the bin provided. She reached the car park to find an irate Langton arguing with Lewis, whose face was red with anger as Langton jabbed him in the chest with his index finger.

  “This is not to be released. We keep the lid on all this, including the fact that human shit had been forced into her mouth before she was killed.”

  “All I am saying is, it’s so disgusting that if someone was shielding the killer, this might just make them—”

  “It will be between us and him: when we get him, and we will get him—”

  Now it was Langton’s turn to be interrupted.

  “You so sure? Right now we have fucking bugger all and we need something to help us. Someone has to know this bastard!”

  Anna stepped between them. “Come on, guys, this isn’t the place!”

  Langton turned angrily to Anna. “I do not want this released to the press! Full stop!” He turned and walked off toward their waiting patrol car.

  Lewis shrugged and sighed. “All I said was—”

  She touched his arm. “I can guess, but if he doesn’t want it to be released, then he’s the gov, and we go along with what he says.”

  They rode back to the station in silence.

  Fifteen minutes after they had returned to the incident room, there was a call from the commander. The naked body of a white female had been discovered dumped in a field off the A3, her beaten and brutalized body covered with a maroon wool coat.

  Anna was in the same speeding patrol car as Langton and she noticed he used his hip flask during the drive. Lewis and Barolli were in the car behind. By the time they reached the murder site, it was well after midday. All four grouped together in a lay-by and then walked toward a group of uniformed officers, who as they approached parted to reveal the body. Langton nodded for them to remove the coat.

  Anna drew in her breath sharply. Sharon Bilkin’s naked body was covered in abrasions, and scrawled in large letters across her belly in red lipstick was “FUCK YOU.”

  “It’s Sharon Bilkin,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, I know.” Langton took a deep breath. Sharon’s mouth too had been slashed. The wound was not as deep or as violent as Louise Pennel’s, but nevertheless it mirrored her hideous clown smile.

  The uniformed officers told them that a farmer had discovered the body. They waited for the forensic team and the ambulance before they made their way back to their c
ars. It was a silent foursome that returned to the incident room. It was almost certain the killer was the same man they hunted, but until they had the postmortem and forensic experts in, they could not be one hundred percent sure. They had no weapon and no witnesses; the body had to have been dumped near the busy road under cover of night.

  They would have to wait for the postmortem to be completed to obtain a time of death. Anna returned to her desk and began making copious notes. She detailed Louise’s autopsy report and the discovery of Sharon’s body, then sat with her notebook open, tapping her pen. She had been trying unsuccessfully to contact Sharon for the past twenty-four hours; was she already dead, or did she die during that time? The team was frustrated that they were still no closer to identifying their one and only suspect. All Anna could think of was whether she could have prevented Sharon’s death.

  It was just after seven when Anna let herself into her flat. Ten minutes later, she received a call from Dick Reynolds, wondering if they could have dinner.

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  “What if I brought over some Cantonese duck and pancakes with plum sauce?”

  She laughed and said maybe it would be a good idea.

  Reynolds insisted he get everything ready. He had brought two bottles of very good merlot and she sat curled up on the sofa with a glass, watching TV, as he busied himself in the kitchen. They ate sitting side by side at her small breakfast bar. As they pasted on the plum sauce and rolled the shredded meat and crisp green spring onions inside the pancakes, Anna realized that she hadn’t eaten all day. It was just a takeaway, but was nevertheless delicious. The food and wine, and Reynolds’s easy conversation, made Anna relax, taking her mind off the Red Dahlia case for a while.

  They were halfway down the second bottle when he asked her how the case was going. It was like a floodgate had opened: Anna couldn’t stop talking, first about the discovery of Sharon’s body and then the awful autopsy report. It might have been down to the wine, but in any event, Anna became very upset when she described what had been forced on Louise. She repeated a couple of times that Louise had been alive when it happened and then she knew she had said too much.

  “Listen, none of this is going to be released, Dick; I shouldn’t have told you any of it, so promise me this is all off the record.”

  “You don’t have to make me promise,” he said, drawing her close. His arm around her felt comforting.

  He asked about their suspects; Anna told him they had questioned several men who had insisted they had killed Louise Pennel and currently had one young soldier in custody, but it was believed that he was yet another time waster.

  “Why are you holding him, then?” Reynolds asked.

  “Well, he was a medical student, then joined the army and was chucked out a few months ago; he has mental problems. We have to go down every avenue to make sure he isn’t our killer before he’s released.”

  “But you don’t think it’s him?”

  “No, none of us do, but we have to check him out.”

  “How do you think the real killer would feel if he read about you having a suspect in custody?”

  “He’d hate it; anything that takes the spotlight off him.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much of that; there was hardly any press last week.”

  “Because we can’t trace this monster! We have no weapons, no DNA, nothing. He sends in these notes and we still have nothing; even with all the scientific skills we have these days, we can’t get a result. He’s ahead of us, playing with us: no saliva on the envelopes, postmarks from all over England, and if anyone saw him posting the letters to my gov, no one has come forward.”

  “How can you make them?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve said too much. I’m drunk.”

  He tilted her chin up and kissed her. “Okay if I stay tonight?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Anna had had too much to drink. If Reynolds had, it didn’t show; far from it. He was gentle and caring and very affectionate. Afterward, she slept in the crook of his arm: a deep, dreamless sleep. He, however, was wide awake. What he had learned had appalled and disgusted him, and made him angry. Anna didn’t stir when he gently eased her out of his arms and went into the bathroom. He washed his face and was fully intending to go back to bed, until he saw her notebook in her open briefcase on the lounge table.

  DAY NINETEEN

  Showered and wrapped in a robe, Anna had made some breakfast while Reynolds took a shower. His hair still wet, he nuzzled her neck as she ate her toast. She offered him more coffee but he needed to get going, as he wanted to go home to get a clean shirt.

  “Nope, I’m on my way.” He put his cup and plate neatly into the sink, kissed her, and was heading into the hall as the intercom went.

  “It might be the postman!” she called out as he lifted the intercom handset. It was seven thirty.

  Reynolds stood at the front door as Langton headed up the stairs. “Morning.”

  Langton stared at him, then nodded his head. “Morning. Is she up?”

  “Yes, she’s in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks.”

  Langton watched Reynolds head down the stairs before shutting the door behind him.

  “Boyfriend’s gone,” he said, leaning against the kitchen door frame, looking smart and clean-shaven in a pinstriped suit.

  Anna blushed. “Is something up?” she asked.

  “I put pressure on the lab; they said they would talk to me first thing, so here I am. You can drive us in.”

  “Do you want a coffee?”

  “You go get dressed. I know where everything is.”

  “Give me a few minutes,” she said as she squeezed past him.

  By the time Anna came back, he had made himself some toast and was sitting on a high stool at her small breakfast bar, mug in hand, reading his newspaper: very much at home.

  “Ready when you are,” she said, trying to sound light. She ran a glass of water and took two aspirin; she had drunk far too much last night.

  “Headache?” Langton asked, folding his paper.

  “Yes, bit of one.” Actually, her head felt terrible.

  “Reynolds a regular visitor, is he?”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  “Pumping you for information, I’ll bet.”

  “We do have other things on our minds,” she said tetchily. He grinned, slapped his thigh with his rolled-up newspaper, and then they were on their way, their dirty crockery abandoned on the breakfast bar.

  They drove over to the mortuary. Langton fiddled with the radio, then leaned back against the headrest. Anna’s headache had got worse; she drove carefully. He had put the news channel on, but there was nothing about Sharon’s murder.

  “No press release on Sharon yet?”

  “Nope. You still feel guilty about not going round there sooner?”

  “Yes, but then I don’t know if it would have done any good: we have no time of death as yet.”

  She swerved to avoid a cyclist.

  “I hate those bastards; that dewdrop hat makes him look like some sort of demented insect!” He turned to see the cyclist giving them a V sign and laughed.

  “You seem to be in a good mood this morning.”

  “Yeah, well, I crashed out last night early and had a good eight hours’ sleep. You look as if you could do with a bit more.”

  “Thank you,” she said flatly.

  “So, this thing with the journalist is serious, is it?”

  She hesitated, not wanting to discuss her private life with him.

  “Sorry, don’t mean to pry,” he said, smiling.

  She could feel him watching her and it made her nervous; she shot a set of traffic lights, but he said nothing. In fact, they did not speak until they arrived at the mortuary.

  They were gowned up and ready to view the corpse. Anna’s head was throbbing; the small vein at the side of her temple felt ready to explode. Seeing Sharon with the hideous slashes to her lips
, the bruises to her torso, and the red lipstick scrawled across her belly didn’t help.

  The pair stood in silence as Smart told them that he had not had time to perform a full autopsy, but could confirm that Sharon had been dead for approximately forty-eight hours before she was discovered. Anna’s guilt was somewhat eased; it meant that when she was trying to contact Sharon, she was already dead.

  Two hours later, they were in the incident room. Langton told the team that it was almost a hundred percent certain that Sharon Bilkin had been killed by the same man as Louise Pennel. Even the lipstick lettering matched the handwriting on the numerous cards and notes sent to Langton. The mutilations were not as horrific, but nevertheless Sharon had been subjected to torture and pain before she died.

  The fact that she had been dead for forty-eight hours meant that, like Louise, Sharon had to have been killed somewhere else before being dumped in the field where she was found. The team was waiting for an update from forensics on whether they had managed to get anything from the maroon coat or the crime scene. Langton gave orders that, in the meantime, Sharon’s flat should be reexamined and her phone calls double-checked: it was imperative to find out where Sharon had been before she was abducted. She might have accompanied her killer of her own free will, so they also needed to trace anyone who had seen her before she disappeared.

  Langton broke up the briefing, as he had a meeting with the commander. He was hoping to retain control of both murder inquiries. So that’s what the suit was all about, Anna thought.

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and neither Anna nor Barolli wanted to be at Sharon Bilkin’s flat, nor did the forensic team that arrived to dust for prints: they had already done a sweep of the flat for the Louise Pennel case and now they had to do everything again. Barolli was in a particularly bad mood, as his local football team was playing. He and Anna were forced out of one small room and into the next to make way for the paper-suited scientists. In the kitchen, Anna found Sharon’s diary, her childish writing giving details of her auditions and, far more frequent, her appointments for hair extensions, manicures, and massages. She had had an appointment at a hair salon earlier that week to check over her hair extensions and replace those that had fallen out. The salon’s receptionist told Anna that Sharon had not turned up. Next, Anna called an advertising company that Sharon was meant to be auditioning for; she had not turned up there either, so they had given the commercial to someone else.