The Red Dahlia

'The new Mrs Wickenham gave birth to two daughters, Justine and Emily. As soon as Mrs Hedges began to talk about the girls, her manner changed and she became very distressed. She referred to the suicide of Edward's wife as being a tragic cry for help: she had been detested by her father-in-law and scared of what she knew was going on. Mrs Hedges said she was constantly bedridden and became very frail; she could easily have been describing Gail Harrington!'

Anna took a sip of her water. Everyone was focused on her again.

'Mrs Hedges knew that Charles Wickenham was molesting both girls, and from a very early age. She said that Dominique had to be aware of what was going on, but did nothing; to quote Mrs Hedges, "the detestable woman was too busy doing dirty things with all these house guests, even her stepson": the sex sessions were taking place virtually every weekend. I asked about the abuse, and if she had ever witnessed the girls being sexually used by their own father. She was very tearful and shook her head, saying that she did not need to see, it was obvious, especially with the youngest child. I asked if she knew if Emily Wickenham had been pregnant. She refused to answer, and then began to cry. When I persisted, asking her again, she still refused to answer and kept on telling me how much she loved the girls. Just as I was thinking about calling it quits, she said, "Justine was tougher: she could handle him; she was like her mother, but little Emily was too young. He did a terrible thing and when she tried to make him stop, they sectioned her.'" Anna closed her notebook. 'That's it.'

She frowned. 'Sorry, not quite. Just as I was leaving, I asked Mrs Hedges if Charles Wickenham had ever had a secretary. This goes back to the advert we think Louise Pennel answered and therefore how she came to meet him. She said there had been a number of girls that came and went; none stayed long. He was a hard taskmaster and they were always too young and inexperienced. But if Wickenham is a serial killer, as Professor Marshe suggested, he would probably have killed before the Red Dahlia, so perhaps this is something we should follow up.'

The room was quiet as Anna returned to sit down. Lewis got up next and gave them the details from the stable boy. When he told them that he had seen Louise Pennel lying naked in the barn on 8 January, the room erupted — they all knew that was the day before she was murdered.

Langton then stepped back up. First, he moved to Louise Pennel's photograph. 'He lied about Louise.' He moved to Sharon Bilkin. 'We can assume he also lied about Sharon. It is quite possible she came to see him; if we question Gail Harrington further, we can find out if she had been at the house as one of those weekend guests. We have one guest identified but I'd like to press on to get more ID on the other men.'

Langton paused, frowning; then sighed. 'Do we have enough to bring him in? Without doubt, yes we have, but we still do not have any DNA evidence that links him directly to the murders. The fact that they had visited at his property does not mean he killed them: we know he had a truckload of tarts down most weekends, so these two girls could have just been there and left. Our killer could also be one or other of his house guests — it could even be his own son, Edward — but Wickenham is our prime suspect. The fact that this piece of scum had sexual intercourse with his own daughters has already been brought to the attention of the police and the case dismissed. He can prove that Emily is mentally unstable; what we have to prove without doubt is that Charles Wickenham is the Red Dahlia killer. Although it might look as if we have a shedload of damning evidence against him, it's still circumstantial. We have no weapon, no bloodstains, nothing that pinpoints Charles Wickenham as our killer. We do not know if he and his son are in this together. We do not know if the house guests also played a part in the torture and murder of our two victims.'

Langton took a deep breath. 'What we do have are warrants. We now have enough to gain access and search their properties: that's the barn, the main house, the stables, the thatched cottage and the cars. I intend going in with a fucking army. If there is a torture chamber in the old cellar, we'll find it. There may have been other victims, but we can't at this point in time open up more enquiries: we concentrate on our Red Dahlia. We also keep in mind that the original killer of the Black Dahlia was never brought to justice. Wickenham will have covered his tracks, but we'll derail him!'

Barolli wafted his hand and Langton smiled over at him.

'The taped call made to the journalist: can we still use it?'

'We can try, but even if he is the voice on tape, sick thing is, he could claim to be a pervert getting kicks out of wasting police time; we get enough calls every day from the sickos.'

Langton glanced at Lewis, who held up a small tape recorder. 'I taped him today, so we'll get a match or not anyway.'

Langton chuckled and wiped his shirt front. 'No flies on me!'

Lewis and Langton were closeted in his office, working on 'the hit', when they would search Wickenham's estate. It had to be carefully orchestrated, and they needed a lot of extra hands to ensure nothing was overlooked.

Anna spent the rest of the afternoon writing up her official report and when it came to just after six, she decided to call it quits for the day. She had just packed up when Barolli called over to ask if she was going to interview Emily Wickenham as per the duty list for that day. Anna sighed.

'I can do it on my way home, I suppose.'

Anna called Emily Wickenham twice and hung up when her answerphone clicked on. She decided to do some grocery shopping and try again afterwards, so she packed up her briefcase and left.

She was driving out of the station car park when the call came in to the Incident Room from the forensic team. They had discovered blood spatterings in the bathroom of Justine Wickenham's flat. They were taking the samples to the lab, but wanted one of the team over at the flat. As soon as Langton was told the update, he was eager to get over there himself; this was possibly the big break they had been waiting for.

Langton and Barolli arrived at Justine Wickenham's flat which was owned by the woman who ran the riding school. Justine paid her a monthly rent for the small, rather scruffy flat on the middle floor of a house that backed onto the stable yard. By the time Langton and Barolli walked in, the forensic team had packed up, apart from Ken Gardner who was sitting on the stairs having a quick cigarette.

'What you got for me?' Langton said.

'Not a lot, but it took a long time to find; the place may look like a tip, but somebody did a big cleaning job. We went through every room with a fine-tooth comb, as they say, and didn't think we'd get a result.'

He stubbed out his cigarette under his shoe and pocketed the stub. They followed him up the creaking narrow staircase, which was carpeted in hemp. Ken nodded to it. 'This is a bugger: it's rough and we had to go inch by inch; leaves a lot of fibres, but all we got was a face full of dust.'

He led them into a small, untidy sitting room and pointed. 'Lot of stale food left around which is unpleasant; the young lady is not very hygienic. The bedroom sheets look as if they've not been changed for months; we've taken them in.'

Langton said nothing as they looked into a dirty kitchen with a stack of pans piled in the sink.

'We had a real stinky time in here; something's wrong with the plumbing so, just in case, we took out the U-pipe — it was clogged with tea leaves and crap, but no body parts.'