Above Suspicion

Well, let's examine the body shall we?

No, no, I don't want you going in there, the less contamination the better.

Get moving setting up the incident room. (Coughs)

Never seen anything like it. Beggars belief. She's been sliced in two.

Her skin is like a white China doll. (Coughs) My chest hurts.

Well, whoever killed her placed her body so she'd be found quickly.

I want details of all cars, vans, trucks parked in the area.

Search all skips and bins for handbags, clothes, shoes, anything.

I've never worked this side of the river. I had to catch two buses.

Do we know any details yet? Not yet. Morgan's giving uniform their orders.

My god, that does not look real.

This is the worst part. Look at this.

Barbara, Barbara, look at the board.

It's a blow-up doll, isn't it? But it's in two parts.

Attention, everybody.

We have a female victim aged between 20 and 30.

Naked, but with nothing to identify her.

So that will be our priority.

Find out who the poor soul is.

Have we got anything in from pathology? We're working blind.

It's hard to see what she looked like because of that slash to her mouth.

Dci Morgan's been at the lab all afternoon. He looked terrible.

He should be in bed. As it is, he's spreading his germs.

I've walked miles. 100 door-to-doors and no-one's seen anything apparently.

Have we got anything from the post-mortem yet? No.

There's no-one fitting her description from this area reported missing.

Anyone tried to contact dci Morgan? Not recently. I'll do it.

Tea, anybody?

Somebody must have really hated her to do something like that.

Well, I don't think we're looking at domestic violence.

Oh, really, Barbara? Very incisive.

What do you think we're looking for, then?

It would take some kind of a psychopath with a chainsaw in his bathroom.

Yeah. What?

Ok, thank you.

Dci Morgan's been taken to hospital with pneumonia.

I told you he was sick.

Right, listen up, everybody. What, picnic time, is it?

For those of you who don't know me,

I'm detective chief inspector James Langton.

I will now be heading up this enquiry,

due to the inability of dci Morgan to continue running the show.

This is di Mike Lewis. Some of you have worked with him before.

So... do we have her identified yet?

Oh, my...

By now, Travis, you should be used to post-mortem procedure.

Yes, sir, I've worked three cases now.

Good, because we don't want you crashing out and vomiting. (Snigger)

Got anything to say?

No, sir.

Have you ever come across anything like this before, Mike?

No.

I want a tight lid on this one. Complete press embargo.

No need to go on up, I'm ahead of you.

I'm going to need a bit more time for finer details.

Her injuries are extensive.

Are you taking over? Correct, Veronica.

Poor dci Morgan was in a bad way, I had him shipped off to hospital before -

yeah, yeah. Let's get cracking, enough time's been wasted already.

Not on my part.

Your victim was between 24 and 30 years old,

5'5" tall and 56 kilograms.

The mutilation was done very professionally,

perhaps by someone with surgical experience.

Slicing through her body, cutting through muscle tissue

and then the spinal cord,

not only takes time but these incisions are very neat.

The body was drained of blood before being severed.

There are incisions to the femoral artery and the right jugular vein.

Again, no easy feat. One would require a pump and tubes.

The cuts to her face were made with a scalpel.

They are deep, slicing through the cheek to give the impression -

that she's smiling. Yeah.

There's extensive bruising to sections

of the head, forehead and midline.

Some of the hair's been shaved off.

Her hair, dyed, by the way, she's a natural blonde,

you can see a little bit of regrowth in the parting.

There's further bruising to her arms and thighs

and restraint marks on her wrists and ankles.

Now all of this would have taken some considerable time.

Judging by the marks on her body, she would have had to have been tied down.

Badly bitten fingernails, by the way.

Did you get any fibres or anything that might help us?

No, her body was scrubbed clean with a stiff brush.

Leaving nothing on her skin bar the abrasions.

And the time of death?

Within the last 36 hours.

We're still working on her internal organs and toxicology have samples,

but without her blood we won't turn up anything satisfactory.

I've taken hair and tissue samples for her DNA profile.

Dci Morgan asked if we could help provide a photograph

for identification of her face without the injuries.

Somebody somewhere must know who she is.

She was lovely.

I don't know. Look how many girls we checked out,

she don't match any one of them.

We're maintaining a complete press blackout

on what has been done to the victim.

But an identical picture went out in this morning's papers appealing for information.

Because until we know who she was, we'll get nowhere fast.

Good of you to join us, Travis.

This is a possible sir. Sounds as if she recognises our victim.

Female? Yeah. Travis, take it.

Hello, it's DC Travis. Can I have your name, please?

We're not giving out information at the moment, I'm afraid.

What's the problem, Mick?

Journo from the telegraph, Richard Reynolds. Tell him to piss off.

Yes, Joan? Another caller, says it could be his sister.

Cut through the dross. Ask about colouring, height, age,

and if it's a match we'll bring them in. Ok.

What is it, Travis? Hold the line, please.

A Sharon bilkin says the missing girl is her flatmate.

When did she last see her? Three days ago. Do we have a name?

Louise pennel. Get her address, go and see her.

Sharon bilkin? Hi. I've not got very long.

I've got an audition this afternoon in the west end.

What kind of sick bastard would do all this?

I'm still working but I think you should know

that your victim is missing a number of lower internal organs.

What with this and the blood draining,

it's more likely your killer has surgical experience.

This is Louise. She's trying to break into modelling, like me.

She had these done a few months back.

It's her, isn't it, from the paper?

I'm going to have to ask you some questions, ok?

Can I take this? Yeah.

What's she done? Has she done something?

When was the last time you saw her? Er, Friday, we went to a club.

I left her there and she didn't come back

but that's not unusual, sometimes she stays out for days.

Does she work? Yeah, part-time dental nurse.

She's paid peanuts cos they're doing her teeth, putting on caps.

What has she done? I'm sorry to tell you this,

but it's possible your friend may have been murdered.

Yes.

We need a positive ID, so bring her in.

Yeah, we'll be here.

We've maybe got her identified.

Travis is bringing in the flatmate. No immediate family, as yet.

Veronica, is there any way you could uh... Clean her face up a bit?

So, I need you to look at this girl and tell me if you recognise her.

But I did from the photograph, I said it was her.

I know, but we need to be sure and er... With no next of kin. Right.

Are you ready? Yeah.

What's been done to her? Her face, what's the matter with her face?

Is this Louise pennel? Why's she look like that? What's happened to her?

Now we go to work.

That's the landlady, she owns the house.

A lot of dirty laundry but not many new clothes.

Found some evening gear that looks expensive.

Ah, look at this, very nice. Cashmere.

And some, uh, new, hardly worn, compared with uh -

do you reckon she was on the game?

You tell me. You don't get this kind of gear

working part-time as a dental nurse.

I'm going to go talk to the landlady.

When was the last time you saw miss pennel?

They used to get back late.

Waking me up. But it would be...

Probably be last Friday. I saw her leave with Sharon.

She had a flower in her hair, I remember that.

Did you ever see anyone with her, anyone come visit?

No. Well... One night there was a ring on my doorbell,

and there was this man there, said he wanted her.

Then he walked across the road to wait in his car.

Now we know who she is, Mike, what else have we got?

She worked for a dentist but got fired three weeks ago.

His alibi checks out, says she was always late. Paul, anything?

Not a lot, no letters or diary.

Missing is a red coat with velvet collar and matching buttons.

She was wearing it when - no friends, no boyfriends?

No boyfriends. There was an older guy she was seeing.

The flatmate told Travis that Louise answered an advert somewhere.

The times or could it have been time out? And?

She thinks she got the job but she doesn't know what it was.

But she was asking about getting a passport.

Check it out!

She used to go out and meet him

and come back with a lot of clothes and stuff,

and one time she looked really done in, she had a bruise on her face.

Said she'd fallen down the stairs. Did you see him?

Listen, sweetheart, we've got no time to waste.

Tell me about this man she was seeing.

He was tall, dark haired. He wore a long black coat.

This is dci Langton. He was giving her presents, right, money?

Yeah, and perfume. It was an old-fashioned one, it smelt of lilac

and she started wearing odd makeup.

Very pale with lots of black eyeliner and red lipstick.

Like a goth or something out of the Adams family.

And when she went out, she started to pin a red Rose in her hair.

Travis, I want you to go back to the landlady, jog her memory,

see if she can come up with anything about this older bloke

that was seeing the victim, and question the neighbours again.

Have we got anything on this new job the victim was supposed to have?

Only a possible time re the advert but I'm checking with time out -

remember it required a passport.

Well, that's not much to go on. Right now it's all we've bloody got!

Keep at it! Sharon said that Louise went to local cafes

to get free meals off the men there.