The Red Dahlia Read Free

days prior to the murder.
     
    DAY FIVE
     
    Sharon Bilkin came to the station at nine o’clock. She was twenty-six years old, a baby-faced blonde wearing too much make-up. She had brought numerous photographs of Louise with her. The team knew immediately Louise was their victim. Sharon was able to tell them that she had last seen Louise at Stringfellow’s nightclub; Louise had stayed on after Sharon left, which was just after midnight on 9 January. Louise had not returned home. When asked why she hadn’t reported this, Sharon said that Louise often stayed away for two or three nights at a time.
    Sharon told them that Louise worked as a dental receptionist. When the surgery was contacted, they said that they also had not seen her since the 9th. They had not raised the alarm either: Louise’s frequent absences from work meant they were not surprised or suspicious when she didn’t turn up. Moreover, they had given her notice to quit the week before.
    Louise, they also discovered from Sharon, was an orphan; her parents had died when she was a young teenager. There were no close relatives, so Sharon was asked if she would be prepared to formally identify Louise.
    Sharon was shaking with nerves; when the green cover was drawn back, she let out a gasp. ‘What’s the matter with her face? Her mouth?’
    ‘Is this Louise Pennel?’ Anna asked.
    ‘Yes, but what’s happened to her mouth?’
    ‘It has been cut,’ Anna said, giving the nod to the mortuary assistant to recover Louise’s face.
     
    Sharon spent two hours with Anna and Morgan answering their questions. She gave them a few names, but was sure Louise had no steady boyfriend. She also said that Louise wanted to get into modelling like her, which was why she had so many photographs. One in particular that Sharon showed them was heartbreaking. Louise was wearing a red, glitter-sequinned minidress, a glass of champagne in one hand and a red rose caught in her hair. She had the sweetest of smiles, her lipstick a dark plum. Her large, dark brown eyes were heavily made up and she had a small uptilted nose. She had been a very pretty young woman.
    The Incident Room was buzzing with the news that they had an identification, giving the whole team an adrenalin rush. They had been so frustrated, waiting for their first break. Now she was identified, they could kick-start their hunt for her killer.
     
    DAY SIX
     
    Morgan was back at his desk the following morning at seven-fifteen. A priority was to interview the dental surgeon Louise had worked for. Morgan was busy listing everyone he wanted to see that morning when Anna walked into his office with a copy of the Mirror.
    ‘Excuse me, sir; have you seen this?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Second page.’
    Morgan reached across to take the paper. He sat down heavily. ‘Fuck. How did they get this?’
    ‘Must have got it from Sharon; she had enough photographs. We put out so many requests for help in identifying Louise, no one would have thought to ask Sharon not to go to the press.’
    Morgan sucked in his breath in a fury. The article said little: just that the victim the police were trying to name was Louise Pennel. There were a few sentences about how Sharon, her flatmate, had identified Louise. There was a picture of a scantily dressed Sharon, but the main photograph was of Louise with the red rose in her hair.
     
    Roses are red, violets are blue, who killed Louise and slit her mouth in two?
     
    Jack Douglas, the Mirror journalist who had printed Sharon’s story, looked at the single sheet of typed writing that had been sent anonymously to the crime desk.
    ‘Sick fuckers,’ he muttered. He screwed it up and tossed it into the waste bin.
     
    DCI Morgan held up the newspaper to the team in the Incident Room. ‘We’re gonna get a lot of crap aimed at us over—’ Before he could finish his sentence, he buckled over in agony, clutching his stomach. There was a flurry of activity around him. He was helped into his office in