gave Gemma a sudden fierce glare. “It hain’t your friend who told that social worker lady those bad things about my Kev and my Terry?”
“Oh, no. It can’t have been,” said Gemma, thinking it wasn’t an outright lie, as
“Well, they can stay with their sister until we get this sorted. Not that she ’as room, mind you, but she wouldn’t turn ’em away. She’s a good sister, our Donna, not like some who think they’re too good for their own.” Gail kicked her gold sandals off under the coffee table, wiggling her toes, and as Gemma glanced down at one toppled shoe she saw that the label read Jimmy Choo.
She had to stop herself whistling through her teeth and put on a baffled look instead. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand…Who-”
“Sandra.” Gail’s tone was venomous. “Always thought she was too good for us, from the time she was no bigger than that daughter of hers. And then she married that Paki, and he turned her. Bad enough we have to live here with ’em. God knows what ’e’s done to that little girl, but we’ll soon see about that. It won’t take me long to sort ’er out.”
The scummy instant coffee Gemma had been forced to taste for politeness’s sake came back up in her throat. She thought the fury coursing through her veins must be visible, throbbing in her face. Swallowing hard, she said, “I didn’t know your daughter, Mrs. Gilles-Gail-do you mind if I call you Gail?” Not waiting for an answer, she prattled on, “About your daughter-I never really heard-what was it happened to your daughter?”
“She run off.” It was aggravation, not grief, that colored Gail’s voice. “Just upped and run off. Probably to get away from that Paki husband of ’ers. How she could leave that baby, I don’t know. It’s unnatural, innit?”
“Oh, I-” Gemma stood up so quickly that the coffee she’d set on the table sloshed from the mug. Her anger boiled up, and she felt she might be physically sick. “Oh, I am so sorry,” she managed to mumble. She fished a tissue from her handbag, grateful that for a moment her hair fell forward to hide her face. Mopping at the brown liquid, she said, “I-I’m afraid all of a sudden I’m not feeling too well.”
“Not catching, is it?” Gail looked at her suspiciously.
“No, no, I’m sure it’s not. It’s just the heat. Listen, ta ever so much for the coffee. I hope things work out for you. And for little Charlotte.” She flashed Gail a sickly smile and headed towards the door, dodging round the packing boxes.
“You,” Gail called after her. “What did you say your name was? Gemma?”
She turned back, her heart thudding. “Gemma. That’s right.” She had blown it, and now she was going to have to bail herself out, somehow, and without blowing the narcotics op as well.
“You said you helped look after Charlotte before the social worker lady took her.” To Gemma’s surprise, Gail’s voice had taken on a wheedling tone. “So you know that Silverman woman. Any way you could put in a good word for me?”
Gemma clattered down the stairs, barely missing the tricycle, and cannoned out onto the patch of green lawn. She was breathing as if she’d been running a sprint, and it was only when she reached her car and pushed her hair back from her face as she fished for her keys that she saw them.
Two young men, one more heavyset than the other, both with heads shaved to a dark stubble, watched her from near the bottom of the stairwell. Although they were older than they had been in the photos, she recognized them from the family portraits in Sandra Gilles’s flat. Kevin and Terry Gilles, undoubtedly. Had she gone right past them? Did they know she’d come from their mother’s flat? If not, they would soon enough.
She glanced away, keeping her face deliberately blank, just as her searching fingers found her keys. Casually, she inserted the key in the lock, opened the door, and climbed into the Escort. The driver’s seat scorched the backs of her thighs even through her trousers, and the steering wheel felt molten, but she switched the blower on high and drove slowly, cautiously away, without lowering the windows, and without looking back.
Crossing Bethnal Green Road, she made the first right turn she saw and pulled the car over near a quiet churchyard. It seemed miles from the council estate. With the car idling, she lifted her shaking hands from the wheel and lowered the windows.
What had she been thinking, going into that flat as unprepared as a lamb? What if the sons had come in?
And what had she accomplished for the risk?
She thought it through. She now knew that although Gail Gilles seemed to have no means of support, her sons, who had menial jobs at best, kept her well supplied with high-priced merchandise, and God knew what else that was not so visible. That made it pretty certain that Kevin and Terry had undocumented-and probably illegal- income.
And they had seen her. She hadn’t identified herself, hadn’t given her last name, but would it be enough to make them, or their hypothetical bosses, suspicious?
And what if Gail hadn’t been fooled by her dithery act? What if Gail had been playing her, having marked her as an undercover cop? And a lousy undercover cop, at that.
Bloody hell. The worst thing was that she could not-absolutely could not-repeat anything she’d learned to Janice Silverman. Gail Gilles was vain, grasping, callous, bigoted, and still seemed to hold a vicious grudge against her missing daughter. Nor did she seem to feel an iota of genuine concern for her granddaughter. The thought of Charlotte being abandoned to the woman’s care-if you could call it that-made her feel ill again.
As she wiped her sweaty face with a handkerchief, trying to work out what to do next, her phone rang, and she saw with relief that it was Melody and not Kincaid. She wasn’t ready to tell Kincaid that she just might have made a balls-up of things.
“Boss.” Melody sound reassuringly crisp and cheerful. “You said to call if anything came in, so I am. There’s been a burglary, a hairdresser’s shop down the bottom of Ladbroke Grove. Last night, but they just now got round to reporting it. Manager apparently waited until the owner came in. Want me to put Talley’s team on it?”
“What?” It took Gemma a moment to make sense of what Melody had said. In the last two weeks, they’d had a string of nighttime burglaries of small shops, although the culprits usually didn’t manage to get much more than a little merchandise and some petty cash. “Oh, right,” she said, recovering. “Yes, Talley should take it. He’s been working the others.” A thought occurred to her. “Look, Melody, could you get away for a bit? I’m in Bethnal Green.”
Melody had suggested they meet at the Spitalfields Market. “There’s a good salad place there. I haven’t had lunch, and I’m watching my calories.” If she was curious as to why Gemma was in Bethnal Green when she’d said she was going to Leyton to visit her mum, she kept it to herself.
Although Gemma hadn’t far to drive, it took her so long to find a place to park that Melody, having come on the tube to Liverpool Street, was there before her.
On this Wednesday afternoon, the vendors’ tables in the main arcade of the old market were stacked and folded, and the empty trading space seemed to echo a little wistfully under the great glass vault. She found the salad kiosk round the corner, across the arcade from some of the trendier cafes. It had a buffet line on the inside, and a few tables with umbrellas out in the arcade, as if it were a sidewalk cafe.
“I finally parked in the Bangla City carpark,” Gemma said when she reached Melody. “I hope I don’t get towed.” The Asian supermarket was at the Brick Lane end of Fournier Street, and she had walked past Naz and Sandra’s house on her way to the market. The house seemed to her to have taken on an indefinable air of desertion in the few days since she had seen it.
“What are you doing here?” Melody asked. “I thought your mum had been sent home.”
“She has. I-It’s…complicated.”
Melody looked at her critically. “Well, I’m starved, and you look positively knackered. Have you eaten?”
“No, but-”
“We’ll get something. And then you can tell me about it.” When Gemma started to protest, Melody overrode her. “You have a seat and I’ll choose. I know what’s good here, and I know what you like.”
Gemma sat down at one of the little round tables, willing enough to be managed for the moment. The shade and the drafts of air moving through the arcade were welcomingly cool, and by the time Melody came out, with plastic boxes of salad and cups of coffee, she had begun to feel a bit more collected.
The prospect of coffee made her quail, but then she thought perhaps she should approach it as if she were getting back on a horse-if she didn’t erase the taste of Gail Gilles’s horrible brew now, she might never be able to
