'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 haemorrhage and shock due to concussion of the brain from massive blows to the head.'
'These small abrasions?' Langton said, nodding towards the lower part of the corpse.
'Could be a penknife, a scalpel: something sharp.'
'But there are so many.'
'This criss-cross 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 towards 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 brutalised 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 towards 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 cars. 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 per cent 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 were 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 realised 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.'
