'I think she's a bullshitter. I mean, she started off telling us what we all knew and continued rabbiting on.'
Anna tapped his shoulder. 'Listen, if she is right, and it is someone we have interviewed, what about Sharon Bilkin?'
'What about her?' Lewis said, looking at his watch.
'Well, we got some more details today from the nightclub: it looks like Sharon lied about what exactly happened at the club between her and Louise, so maybe she's lied about other things.'
Barolli yawned. 'So we talk to her again?'
'I've been trying to contact her, but I've had no reply. Now her answermachine sounds like it's full. I've also tried to contact her landlady, but no answer.'
'Let's haul her in tomorrow,' Lewis said, yet again looking at his watch.
'But I've not been able to get in touch with her!' Anna persisted. Barolli hesitated.
'You want to go over there?'
Anna nodded.
'Okay, I'll get a car arranged; you okay it with the Gov.'
Anna returned to her desk, packed up her briefcase and then went towards Langton's office. As she approached, she could hear raised voices.
'It is still just your submission; you don't have anything that will help me catch the fucker. We sat there listening to most of what you said, having known it before you even came onto the bloody case! If you think we haven't taken seriously these letters from this lunatic, then…'
'I never said you had not taken them seriously; what I did say was you have to take them as a real threat.'
'We have, but without a clue as to this fucker's identity and with no DNA, nothing from the letters, nothing from the package he sent, there's not a lot we can do. Right now, I've got the team sifting through every statement we've taken, because you think we've missed something. Well, it would be a bloody good move if you had something that would help; so far, all you've done is hamper the enquiry by gossiping to that editor.'
The door was flung open and an irate Professor Marshe almost bumped into Anna. She turned back into the room to look at Langton. 'I have apologised for that, but I am not staying here another second for you to swear at me!'
'I am almost begging you to give us something we can work on.'
'I have; I did; and that is as much as I can do,' she said, as she stormed past Anna.
Anna hovered a moment before she edged into the open doorway. 'I want to go and talk to Sharon Bilkin,' she said quietly.
Langton lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the ashtray.
'I have been trying to contact her all afternoon.'
'Fine, if you think she has the clue we have missed all the better.' He took out a hip flask and poured a measure, a very large one, into a coffee beaker. Anna closed the door, leaving him to drink alone. She suspected he was doing a lot more of the tippling; he had been, to her mind, very unlike himself during Professor Marshe's presentation. Whatever he might think, he usually was able to keep his temper under control, but he had been rude, and pointedly so. Perhaps he wasn't having an affair with her after all.
In the patrol car, she asked Barolli if there was anything going on between Langton and Marshe.
Barolli shrugged. 'She talked to us as if we were all fresh out of training school, and she's a bloody Yank! I don't know why he brought her to see us in the first place, I think she's been ruddy useless. Maybe he is getting the leg over. I wouldn't, frosty bitch.'
Anna gave a sidelong glance at the plump, sweaty detective; chance would be a fine thing. She gave a sigh as she looked out of the window: that was the difference between men and women; a woman would always have a clear assessment of who she could or couldn't pull, but men! As her father had once said to her, every actor thinks he should play Hamlet. She sighed again.
'You're doing a lot of sighing,' Barolli said.
'Am I? Maybe I'm just tired out; it's been a long day.'
'Yeah, for all of us, and another without a result. We carry on like this and old Langton will be replaced. I heard that the DCI he replaced is out of hospital, so they could bring him back; that'll be a smack in the face.'
'Yes,' she said, and sighed again, more quietly this time.
They pulled up outside Sharon Bilkin's flat and left the driver to wait as they rang the doorbell. No reply. Anna stepped back and looked up; there were no lights on. She rang Mrs Jenkins's bell. After a moment, her voice came through on the intercom.
'Mrs Jenkins, this is DI Anna Travis.'
The door buzzed open before she could say that Detective Sergeant Barolli was also with her. Mrs Jenkins hovered at her front door, wearing a towelling dressing gown.
'I was just going to have a bath; this is very late.'
'I'm sorry, but there is no reply from Sharon's flat.'
'I doubt she's in; I've not seen her for days.'
'Did she say she was going away?'
'No, I hardly ever speak to her; I go out to work every day, so I wouldn't really know what she's doing.'
'But doesn't she have another tenant?'
'No. She did have one, but she moved out; they didn't get along.'
'I see, well thank you very much.'
Anna turned to Barolli, who was checking his watch. It was getting late. 'What do you want to do?' she asked.
'Go home; we'll try again in the morning.'
Anna jotted down a note on her card and left it on a small side table in the narrow hallway. Like Barolli, she was ready to get home. Without a search warrant or any real reason to ask Mrs Jenkins to open Sharon's front door, there was not much more they could do. Mrs Jenkins hovered by her own door watching them leave.
Anna decided not to return to the station to pick up her car but get a tube home. Barolli left her walking along the road towards Baker Street station. Midway, something made her stop and turn back to Sharon's house. She rang Mrs Jenkins's bell again and had to wait for some considerable time before her voice answered on the intercom.
Mrs Jenkins was not best pleased and took some persuading to let Anna into Sharon's flat. 'Is it still about the murder?' Mrs Jenkins asked, gasping for breath, as they climbed the stairs.
'Yes.'
'So nobody's been arrested then?'
'No, not as yet.'
'I would have thought you'd have got him by now; it's been quite a while, hasn't it?'
'Yes, yes, it has.'
Anna looked into one small room after another to the soundtrack of Mrs Jenkins's heavy breathing. Louise Pennel's old room was extremely untidy and smelt stuffy; the bed was unmade, and a bag of laundry had been left in the middle of the floor with dirty sheets dumped beside it. Anna looked into the bathroom. Discarded underwear lay on the floor next to the half-full bath; when Anna tested the water, it was cold. In Sharon's bedroom, too, the bed was unmade; clothes were strewn across the chair and the bed, and the tops were off the make-up bottles on the dressing table. In the kitchen, Anna found half a cup of cold coffee and a slice of toast; a bite had been taken out of the crust.
'Looks like she left in a hurry,' Mrs Jenkins said, peering over Anna's shoulder. 'Mind you, these young girls are so untidy. I don't think she's ever used the Hoover, you know, let alone dusted.'
Last, Anna checked the answerphone; as she had suspected, the message box was full. She took her handkerchief and pressed Play to listen to the calls that had been left. There were two calls from herself, a few from friends, and two girls answering the new advert Sharon must have put in to rent Louise Pennel's room.
'Well, my bath will be cold,' Mrs Jenkins said as she locked Sharon's front door. They headed down the stairs, and after thanking Mrs Jenkins again, Anna started to walk back to the tube station.
Relaxed after taking a long hot soak herself, and wrapped in a big bath towel, Anna made some Horlicks. She jumped when her phone rang; it was by now eleven-thirty.
'What did you get from the blonde bimbo?' Langton said.
'Nothing, she wasn't home, but I had a look over her flat and it looked like she had
left in a hurry.' Anna added that the landlady hadn't seen her for a few days, but that wasn't unusual.
'Right okay, I want you and Lewis with me at the lab for the full details. Maybe he's got something, maybe not.'
'What?'
His voice was slurring, and she asked if he was still at the station. He said he was working over the statements.
He continued talking without really making any sense and it was Anna who ended the call, having to repeat twice that she was going to bed. Unable to sleep, she lay there with her eyes open. The Professor had said that their killer had made threats and they must take them very seriously because someone they had interviewed might know something that connected to him. She wondered what Sharon had not told her about the night at the club; did she know something? Had someone contacted her? The clothes strewn across her bedroom made Anna think that Sharon had been making up her mind what to wear. If she had run a bath and not got into it, made a coffee and toast but not consumed them, something had to have happened to make her leave. She sighed; thinking about what it might have been gave her a very uneasy feeling.
Chapter Nine
DAY EIGHTEEN
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 towards 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 criss-cross lacerations in the suprapubic area which extend through the skin and soft tissue.'
'Jesus Christ, it looks like he was carving out a game of noughts 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 maiora 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 faecal 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 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?'
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