The Red Dahlia

by Lynda La Plante

  Anna sat down. The list was endless. McDonald, in his clipped, bored tone, continued to elaborate on the amount of drugs, from cocaine to heroin via speed and two hundred tabs of ecstasy; he even joked about the large quantity of Viagra.

  Langton was the next one to take a seat, as McDonald said they had positive results from only half the blood samples taken. He continued checking off his list. “White gowns, masks, and white rubber Wellington boots, three pairs!” Blood samples had been traced on the heel and sole of two pairs.

  It had been a very unpleasant task for his officers, he said. Blood had blocked the drainage system from the cellar to the main sewer pipe, so they had been squelching around in human feces and coagulated blood.

  Lewis parked himself on the arm of the wingback chair that Charles Wickenham had sat in to smoke his cigar.

  One arm of the sofa had a bloodstain where Ed Harris, the officer guarding Wickenham, had fallen. He had been struck with a solid silver candlestick; the edge of the base had left a deep laceration to the right side of his skull and he had required eight stitches. He had, however, been released from hospital. When he was questioned about what exactly had happened, he could hardly recall how he had been attacked. Wickenham had asked for a drink of water; when Harris turned to pick up the jug, he was knocked unconscious. Harris swore that he had only turned away from Wickenham for a few seconds. How many was immaterial: he had allowed their killer to walk out and escape.

  McDonald continued, listing the clothes they had removed to test for fiber matches: shoes, slippers, sweaters, suits, riding habits, riding boots. Every item had to be checked and signed out in the event it would be used as evidence at a trial.

  Finally, McDonald turned over his last sheet, and then tapped his board with his pen. “Well, I’d say you’ve got enough to put your man away for a very long time. We’ll be working at the lab for weeks to come. Maybe in that time, you’ll have picked him up!”

  McDonald checked his watch, then walked over to the fireplace. He gestured expansively to the brick overlay and the massive slab of wood that acted as a mantel. “The SOCO teams were busy; we had, as you know, the plans of the house, barn, stables, outhouses, and the thatched cottage. They checked over the two listed hiding holes and they found a third one, behind some paneling in the dining room: quite a find, and historically very interesting. The families would hold secret masses; if it was discovered their priests were holding services, they would be hung, drawn and quartered for an act of treason, not to mention losing their property. These hiding places were very well disguised and, I have to say, very intriguing.”

  For the first time since they had arrived, McDonald was energized. The discovery of the extra hidden chamber had created a lot of interest; it would be examined by the local historical society.

  “You think that Wickenham could have hidden out in one of these chambers?” Langton asked.

  “To be honest, we considered it, but they are not in this section of the house; this wing is part of an extension built a couple of hundred years after the original house.” McDonald checked his watch, then suggested they follow him down to the cellar. “Just to clarify what I think this monster got up to.”

  They went from the lounge into the hallway; passing the suit of armor, Lewis flicked up its visor and grinned. “Just checking!”

  It clanged back into place.

  “That’s a fake,” McDonald said rather disgustedly.

  They went into the laundry room. All the machines had been removed and were stacked outside the small room. The partition was open, and as they moved down the steps, McDonald pointed out how well soundproofed the chamber would have been. “We reckon these walls must be about a foot and a half in width, with hardboard casing that was covered in two inches of thick cement.”

  The stripped cellar smelled of disinfectant. Some of the stone flags had been raised, others removed. There were empty hooks where the various equipment had been hung up. “Down here he could do his dirty tricks; he was even filming himself: there was a very good camera and video equipment. We’ve literally hundreds of videos; you need a very strong stomach to watch them.”

  They were shown the dismantled sink and drainpipes, and McDonald described how the forensic team had unclogged the drains. “Poor chaps were masked up for hours; it was obviously where he had drained your victims’ body fluids. We know now from the DNA results that much of the blood was Louise Pennel’s.”

  They stood silently as McDonald lifted a grid to show them the ventilation shaft. It felt like they had been down there for a very long time; as they returned into the hallway, Anna checked her watch. It had only been twenty minutes, but it was such a sickening monologue that they were all desperate to get out into the fresh air.

  McDonald spent some time with Langton, checking over the lists as Anna and Lewis walked around to the front of the house. She looked up at the gables and the latticed windows and stepped back onto the grass verge. The disgusting nature of what had been carried out inside this elegant Tudor house made Anna shudder.

  Lewis was standing on one of the steps, staring at the manicured lawns and flower beds, the clipped hedges and statues. “How the hell did he do it? I mean, for Christ’s sake, the place was swarming with SOCO teams, forensics teams, and he just fucking walks out and disappears? How could they not have noticed?”

  “I suppose with what was going on, you never know, he could have picked up one of their white paper suits, pulled a hood up and he was just one of them.”

  “Yeah, I guess so; they did leave a big box of them at the front door.”

  Langton came out to join them and they went over to the barn and the stables, McDonald giving yet another lengthy monologue on what they had removed. The sewer pipes had been dug up and were visible in some areas. It would take a lot of work to make sure everything was returned to how it had been found.

  It was after five when McDonald left them to return to London. He had become enthusiastic again when he had shown them the priest holes; they were, as he said, only in the oldest section of the house. One was behind a large chimney; it must have been hideous, as it was such a small airless space. The second was at one end of what was now used as an extra dining room. The paneling slid back to reveal the hidden room: it had been filled with old boxes and broken picture frames. The third one that had not been listed was at the opposite end, close to the gabled windows.

  Langton spent some considerable time making sure he had all the details and then he thanked McDonald, who took off in an old Range Rover that was caked in mud.

  Anna was standing by their patrol car when Justine rounded the driveway from the stables. She was wearing jodhpurs and carrying a riding hat. She glanced toward Anna, raising her crop in acknowledgment. “Do you know how long it will be before they all clear out and get the place back into order?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s dangerous, you know, leaving those pipes and trenches. If we get a heavy rain, it’ll be a bloody river of mud and sewage.”

  “Have you moved back in?”

  “Yes, I’m taking over the stables. We may go and live in the cottage: we’ve been told that has been cleared, but there’s a whole load of areas we are not allowed to go into.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, my sister’s here.”

  “How is she?”

  “Well, still very dodgy upstairs, but she’ll be okay; she’s started to eat, thank God!”

  Justine went into the house after scraping her boots on the iron grid. Anna waited a few moments and then followed.

  As she walked down the hall, she heard gales of laughter. She paused, listening, then continued into the kitchen.

  Mrs. Hedges was at the Aga with a pan of soup; the long pine table was set for three people. Above the Aga there was an old pulley with rope attached to wooden slats, where some clothes were drying. Emily was trying to haul them up and fasten the rope to a hook on the wall; she laughed as she tried to disentangle herself f
rom a pillowcase that had fallen from the slats onto her head. Mrs. Hedges made a grab at the rope to help Emily, who was fooling around as one item after another dropped from the rails.

  “I said let me do it, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look, we’ve got a pair of knickers in the soup!”

  Justine tickled Emily, who collapsed into a chair as Mrs. Hedges hauled up the pulley and tied the rope.

  They all froze as Anna appeared in the doorway. “Just to say we’re about to leave.”

  Mrs. Hedges returned to her soup, and Emily curled up in a big old moth-eaten easy chair close to the fireplace.

  “How are you, Emily?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  Justine washed her hands at the sink and then turned, drying them on an old tea towel. She gave a sly glance to Emily and then tossed the towel aside. “Well, I was right, wasn’t I? You never did get him. I told you, didn’t I?”

  Emily lowered her head and put one hand over her mouth. Anna thought she was about to cry.

  “Good-bye, then,” Anna said. As she turned, she caught Justine giving an admonishing look to her sister.

  “Not funny, Em. It’s not funny at all!”

  Langton was sitting in the front seat of the car, impatient to leave. Lewis was in the back, the passenger door open for Anna to get in beside him.

  “I’ve just been in the kitchen. Emily’s there.”

  Langton grunted as she slammed the door shut. They drove around the horseshoe drive and headed down the path toward the overhanging trees.

  “They were laughing and joking; well, Emily was laughing.”

  They fell silent as they continued the drive. Suddenly Langton hit the dashboard. “Stop the car!” He turned back to Anna. “Say that again?”

  “Say what?”

  “You said they were laughing and joking, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, Justine said that she had told me we would never catch him, and Emily started to giggle.”

  Langton took out a cigarette and tapped it on the dashboard. “Now, I may be nuts, but that bastard scared the hell out of those girls, right?”

  “Yes; well, Emily more so than Justine.”

  “And Justine brings Emily back knowing that their father has escaped, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brings her back to the place it all happened.”

  “Well, it’s her home.”

  “No: she hadn’t been living there; she said she would never live there, that she hated him, yes? Yes?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay: one, they don’t know where he is, right? I mean, he could walk back in.”

  “Yes, but the consensus is he’s long gone.”

  “But they found his passport, so that means he could still be in the UK, that he intends to use the girls to help get him abroad, whatever, yes?”

  Anna shrugged. “I suppose so, but he also could have had other passports, and we know he’s rich as Croesus.”

  Langton swiveled around to face them both. “You said they were laughing. Emily, a child he molested, tortured, and Christ knows what else when he operated on her?”

  Lewis was staring out of the car window.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me; does it make sense to you?”

  “What exactly?” Lewis said, yawning.

  “That they are sitting in that house, cooking up dinner, laughing and joking!”

  Anna glanced at the bemused Lewis and back to Langton. “They have to fucking know something we don’t!”

  “Like where he is?” Lewis asked.

  “Exactly; he has to have made contact.”

  “You think he might have done a deal with Justine? She’s taken over the place, and she’s running the stables. I mean, she told me that was what she had always wanted, to run her own stables.” Anna was picking up on Langton’s energy. “She was also asking me about when all the clearing-up would be done. Do we still have the place under surveillance?”

  “No, we pulled it off. Christ, we had how many SOCO officers, not to mention the bloody Territorial Support Group, but we’ll start it up again.”

  Anna was still not one hundred percent sure. She looked to see if Lewis was agreeing with Langton.

  “And he’s somewhere that they feel safe enough about moving back into the house? Is that what you think?” Lewis asked.

  Langton took a deep breath. “Exactly; now, we can go back in and put the frighteners on them, or we wait for him to make contact. If I was in his position, with the amount of press circulating…He’s not going to hang around or make himself obvious, is he?” Langton patted their driver’s shoulder. “Let’s go back; this time, I’ll talk to them.”

  The patrol car pulled a U-turn around the graveled horseshoe drive.

  Langton opened his car door. “In the meantime, get onto the incident room; I want the surveillance team back in place round the clock. I want their phone tapped; book us into the hotel the forensic guys were staying at.”

  “For tonight?” Lewis asked.

  “For as long as this is going to take.” He slammed the door hard and headed toward the front door of the house. They saw him pull the old bell rope and also ring the doorbell.

  “You think he’s right, Anna?” Lewis asked.

  “I don’t know, but anything is worth a try.”

  Justine opened the front door.

  “Hi, just to say we’re out of here.” Langton smiled.

  “I thought you’d already gone.”

  “Nope, we just finished up in the barn.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll be getting people back to make sure any damage done to the property is repaired. Could be a couple of days. I’m sorry for any inconvenience; the equipment left in the barn will be collected sometime tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.”

  Langton stepped closer. “If your father should make contact…”

  “If he does, I’ll make sure you know about it.”

  “Has he tried to?”

  “Tried to what?” Justine asked.

  “If you know where he is, if you have any idea where he is, then you can call me on this number.” He handed her his card.

  She took it and glanced down, then back to him. “Thank you. Good night.”

  Langton returned to the car. “Well, now we wait.”

  “It will take at least two hours for a surveillance team to get hooked up again,” said Lewis. “We already had a phone tap, so that’s organized. The hotel have two vacancies only: two double rooms.”

  “I’m in with you, am I?” Langton shot a sly glance at Anna.

  She was about to blush when Lewis laughed and did a mincing lisp. “Yeah, just the two of us, Gov, but we’ve got an en suite!”

  The hotel was small but very accommodating, probably because they had not had so many customers in such quick succession for a long time. As they had no luggage, Langton suggested they have a quick wash and brush-up, then go and grab something to eat.

  There was a communal bathroom on Anna’s floor and she decided to have a shower. The door was rapped; Lewis said impatiently that they were across the road at the pub and for her to join them there.

  By the time Anna got dressed again, she didn’t feel like going over to the pub. She asked the landlady if she could make her a sandwich and a pot of tea. She took out her laptop and began to write up her report. It had been three days and three nights since Wickenham had escaped. If he had, as they suspected, merely picked up one of the white forensic suits and walked out undetected, that would have given him no time to make plans for leaving the country. Had he simply disappeared, like Lord Lucan, or had he been helped by one or more of his close friends?

  Anna brought up the plans of the Wickenham estate on her laptop. She tried to place herself in his shoes. She stared at the small screen: to walk from the drawing room into the hall and take a left turn to the front door meant that he would have had to pass a lot of people. If
he then walked outside and stopped to pick up a paper suit, where did he put it on? Wouldn’t someone have seen him? If he had taken the other route, that would mean taking a right turn at the suit of armor, past the dining hall and then out into the corridor leading to the kitchen. If Wickenham had gone that way, he would have had to pass the narrow servants’ staircase that was next to the laundry room. This area would have been heaving with officers. How could he have bypassed them all to enter the kitchen and escape via the back door? Anna was certain that this was impossible, so if he walked out it would have had to be via the front door.

  She was interrupted by the landlady, who had, as requested, made some ham sandwiches and a pot of tea. She placed the tray down, and Anna thanked her profusely. The landlady was about to walk out when she paused at the door.

  “Everyone has been talking about what has been going on. It’s been hard not to, especially here with every room taken by…forensic officers, I think they were.”

  “Yes, they stayed here.”

  “I don’t usually serve meals, but a few times I made up a stew, as they were working such late hours and the restaurants around here don’t stay open after ten, well, not in the week. There’s a chip shop but that closes early as well.”

  Anna didn’t respond; she wanted to get back to her work.

  “I never knew him; he never came here, well, this wouldn’t be a place for him, but everyone knew about that family. His daughters rode with my niece, she was quite friendly with them; she used to muck out and help groom their horses, but then something happened, and she said that Emily, the youngest, was sick. ’Course, they went off to boarding school and she went to the local comprehensive, so she hasn’t seen them for years, She works in the local library.”

  “Thank you very much for the tea.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Their house is historically well-known; the National Trust did some work there. It would have been very good for the locals if it had been opened to the public. The family who had owned it for generations before the Wickenhams lost their only son in the last war. They had a little daughter; she climbed into one of those priest holes and I think she died, but this was all before I even came here. They sold it to Charles Wickenham’s father in the sixties, I think. In the old days, they would open up the gardens for a summer fete. When Wickenham took it over, he let it go badly. It was a shame, because it really was a very beautiful example of Tudor architecture; we all knew when his son inherited the place he was doing extensions and conversions that he shouldn’t have been allowed to do; God forbid, if you put up a greenhouse without the council’s permission here, but he used to get away with murder.”