Lynda La Plante: The Red Dahlia

Anna put up her hand. 'By the way the body was displayed, knowing it would be visible from the road and therefore would be found quickly, do you think the killer could be local?'

'Possibly,' Morgan said, as he crunched his tablet. He stared ahead, as if trying to think of what he should say next, and then shrugged. 'Let's start with missing persons in this area.'

The victim was eased into a thick plastic body bag and removed from the site at one-fifteen. A team of uniformed officers had already been assigned a fingertip search of the area. Due to the good weather and early-morning frost, the ground was hard, so any footprints were few and far between.

Morgan had also asked for a house-to-house to be started on the properties overlooking the river. He knew this murder had been carefully planned, but they still might get lucky if someone had seen a car in or around the area during either the night or early morning.

Photographs of the victim were pinned up in the Incident Room to an uneasy silence from the team. In the past few years, such photographs had been kept in files rather than displayed: it was felt that the investigating detectives were not helped in their work by the emotional impact of constantly seeing death staring down at them. There was also the possibility that a relative or someone being questioned might see them and become distressed; however, Morgan insisted the photographs should be on view. He felt it was necessary for each and every one of his team to understand the gravity of the case. The murder was going to create a media frenzy. Until the killer was arrested, there would be no weekend leave.

By six o'clock that evening, their 'Jane Doe' was still unidentified.

The lists of missing persons in the Richmond area yielded nothing, so the net was spread wider. None of the residents of the riverside houses had seen anything suspicious, not even a parked car. The area was not well lit, so their killer would have been able to come and go undetected at night. What they were able to ascertain, however, was that a resident walking his dog at two in the morning passed the murder site and saw nothing. Therefore their killer had deposited the body between the hours of two and six.

Day three and they were ready at the mortuary. Morgan asked Anna and another detective to join him for the preliminary report. Time of death was now estimated at three days prior to discovery. They had not as yet been able to take a rectal temperature as there seemed to be some kind of blockage, but they would have more details after the full postmortem. The pathologist also confirmed what the doctor had suspected: the incision was professionally done, using a surgical saw, and the blood had been drained before the dissection. There were four lesions where drainage tubes might have been inserted; the amount of blood would have been considerable. He suggested their killer would have needed a place to perform the 'operation'.

'She has severe bruising to her back, buttocks, arms and thighs. It would appear she suffered numerous blows from some kind of blunt instrument. The cuts to either side of her mouth could very well have been done with a sharp scalpel. They are deep, clean and precise.'

Anna looked to where the pathologist indicated. The victim's cheeks now gaped open, exposing her teeth.

'I will need a lot more time, but I understand the need to give you as much as possible at this stage. In all my years, I have never seen such horrific injuries. The pubic area and the skin around the vagina have been sliced numerous times. You can see the slash marks like crosses, up to five inches in length.'

His lengthy report continued as Anna made copious notes, not allowing herself any emotional connection. The constant crunching sound of Morgan chewing his tablets was becoming annoying. The pathologist then removed his mask and rubbed his eyes.

'She must have suffered an awfully slow death and she must have been in excruciating pain as these injuries were forced on her. She has marks to her wrists which I would say were from some kind of wire, so she would have been held down for the brutality to occur. The wire has cut the skin quite badly on her right wrist.'

He slipped his mask up again as he moved around the body, and then gently brushed back her thick auburn hair. His hand still resting on her head, he paused before speaking softly.

'There's more,' he said.

As he continued, Morgan stopped chewing. Anna couldn't write a note. What was described next was so horrific that she felt her own blood draining. It was beyond all their comprehension that someone could have subjected the victim to such atrocities whilst she was still alive.

Anna sat in the rear passenger seat, Morgan up front. He had not said a word for the past ten minutes. Anna turned the pages of her notes and began adding more.

'Back to the station sir?' their driver asked.

Morgan nodded.

'You all right back there?' Morgan asked, as they slowly pulled out of the mortuary car park.

Anna nodded, closing her notebook. 'I won't sleep well tonight,' she murmured.

Back at the Incident Room, Morgan repeated what they had been told at the mortuary. Again Anna noted that strange uneasy silence. The team looked at the dead woman's photograph and then back to Morgan as he took a deep breath.

'And that's not all. Our victim was tortured and humiliated and forced to endure a sickening, perverted sexual assault. We have not as yet had all the details, as they are still working on her.'

Anna glanced furtively around the room; the detectives' expressions said it all. Two female officers were in obvious distress.

Day four and they still had not identified their victim. No witness had come forward. The fingertip search had found nothing incriminating in the immediate vicinity, so the search area was now being widened. Moreover, the forensic report had brought disappointing news: their girl had been thoroughly cleaned up. They had no fibres or hairs; her nails had been scrubbed so vigorously, the tips of her fingers were raw. They had been able to determine that her hair was dyed auburn and her natural colour was dirty blonde, but the make of the dye would take time to identify, as they had so many brands to test. Fingerprints yielded no clue to her identity, as there was nothing on any police record. However, it seemed that she had recently had some dental work done: there was a certain amount of decay to her teeth and two caps were missing, but her fillings were intact. It was possible, therefore, that they might get a result from her dental records. The team also now knew she had been dead for seven days: three days before the body was discovered and the four days they had been investigating her murder.

The team had been waiting for a photograph that was being worked on to remove the clown cuts before being issued alongside the press release. They gathered round as a computer printout was posted up on the board. Her face had been recreated with no imperfections.

'She was beautiful,' Anna said.

Morgan sucked on another tablet. He shrugged. 'Let's hope to God this gets us a result, because we've been going fucking nowhere fast!'

The Evening Standard's late issue carried the picture and a request for anyone with information to ring the Incident Room. The article did not give any mention of the body being dismembered, or any details of the way it had been discovered: just the location.

The phones soon started ringing nonstop, all the team busy fending off the crank calls and listening to the possibles. It was at seven minutes past eight in the evening that Anna received a call from a Sharon Bilkin. Hesitantly, she gave her name and address before saying she was sure that the photograph was of her flatmate, Louise Pennel. The last time Sharon had seen Louise was three days prior to the murder.