Necessary as Blood

face coffee again.

Melody had brought her a plain latte, her favorite coffee drink, and the salad was a colorful mix of beetroot, carrot, chickpeas, and hard-cooked egg on greens. “How did you know about this place?” Gemma asked, finding as she tasted the salad that she was hungry after all. And the coffee was deliciously strong and mellow.

“Oh, I like to come to the Saturday market.” Melody shrugged offhandedly, displaying her usual reluctance to discuss her personal life. “It’s mostly touristy tat now, but there are still some good stalls. So, is this about the Malik case?” Melody asked, changing the subject before Gemma could question her further.

Gemma finished a bite of salad, considering. She badly wanted someone to confide in-but how much could she say without betraying Kincaid’s confidence?

And she was Melody’s boss, which made it even trickier to admit that she’d skived off work and lied about going to visit her ill mum, especially when the one thing she absolutely could not say was that she’d done it at Kincaid’s instigation. But then, Melody was so solidly dependable, and had never let her down. If there was anyone she could talk to…

“I went to see Gail Gilles,” she blurted out. “Sandra’s mother. I wasn’t supposed to, and I can’t talk about it. I can’t have been there, do you see?”

“Okay,” Melody said thoughtfully. “You weren’t there. I get that. So what didn’t you see when you weren’t there?”

Gemma pushed her salad away, her appetite suddenly gone. “Oh, Melody, she’s horrible. She doesn’t care anything about Charlotte-in fact, I’d say she actively dislikes her, or at least the idea of her. I don’t think she actually knows her at all. And I can’t imagine her looking after a child, although her own children seem to have grown up by hook or by crook. Crook being more like it.”

“The sons?”

Gemma nodded. “And I cannot talk to Janice Silverman about the things I saw that will probably be tidied up before social services make their first home visit, or about the things she said to me that she would probably never say to a social worker.”

“Eat,” Melody ordered, scooting the salad back in Gemma’s direction. “And let’s think about what else you can do. If she doesn’t want Charlotte out of grandmotherly concern, then why is she willing to take on a child?”

Picking obediently at the shredded beetroot, which had stained the hard-cooked egg a lovely pink, Gemma said, “It’s got to be money. If the house is unencumbered, it’s worth a lot. And Sandra’s unsold artwork-it may be valuable, too.” She thought of the prices she’d seen on the works in Pippa’s gallery. “I should have thought to ask Pippa Nightingale.”

“Nightingale?” Melody looked bemused, but waved her fork. “Never mind. Go on.”

“Duncan said Naz’s law partner is the executor of his will, but Naz and Sandra didn’t name a guardian for Charlotte.”

“But the estate will have to make provision for her care, so maybe Grandma thinks if she gets the kid, she’ll get a piece of it, or at least a regular allowance,” suggested Melody. “But I would think that the mother’s disappearance would complicate matters. Can you talk to the lawyer?”

“I don’t see why not,” Gemma said slowly. “As long as I don’t mention anything about…where I didn’t go.”

“That’s one avenue, then. So who’s this Pippa person? That’s a posh name if I ever heard one. Could she add anything you could repeat about Gail Gilles?”

“Pippa is-was-Sandra’s art dealer. Roy Blakely told me they’d had a falling-out, but Pippa says it was a disagreement over the way Sandra was marketing her art. She says she didn’t know Sandra’s family, and that Sandra never talked about them.”

“I’m beginning to see why,” said Melody.

Gemma grimaced. “That’s an understatement. But the odd thing was, Pippa said she and Sandra and Lucas Ritchie were all three friends.”

“Lucas Ritchie was the guy Naz Malik told Tim Sandra was rumored to have had an affair with-well, that’s a bit garbled, but you know what I mean.” Melody waved her fork dismissively. “Did you ask Pippa about the alleged affair?”

“No.” Gemma drank some of her latte, savoring it. “I was there as a friend, because of Charlotte, and Pippa seemed so upset about Naz’s death, and about Sandra…it just seemed…inappropriate. Duncan asked Lucas Ritchie, though, and he said he and Sandra had been friends since art college, and that Naz would never have believed such a rumor.” She went on to recount Kincaid’s description of the club. “It’s just round the corner here, in Widegate Street. And the interesting thing is that when Duncan asked Ritchie who started the rumor, he said it might have been a former employee, who is now conveniently missing.”

“So.” Melody tossed both their salad containers in the nearby rubbish bin and came back wiping her fingers with the paper napkin. “Is there any reason you can’t talk to Lucas Ritchie, as a friend of Naz’s?”

“I’d have to have got the information about the club from the police-”

“Tell him you got it from Pippa Nightingale.”

“But-”

“Or tell him you want to know if you can hire his posh club for your hen party. Ask him if he’ll allow a male stripper.” Melody grinned impishly.

Gemma groaned. “Don’t be absurd. And I don’t want to have a hen party. Why would you think I did?”

“Because some of the girls at the station have been talking about it.” Melody grew serious. “They think they’re being snubbed. That they’re not good enough for the boss.”

“Snubbed? But I haven’t even made plans for the wedding,” Gemma protested.

Melody hesitated, then said, “And I’m not usually one to repeat gossip or to pry, but tongues are starting to wag about that, too. Boss, are you and the super not getting along?”

Gemma gaped at her. She’d had no idea people were talking. “Of course we’re getting along. We’re fine. It’s just-it’s just that I don’t want a wedding.” There, she’d said it, and the world hadn’t fallen in. At least, not yet. “It’s turned out to be something for everyone except us, and I just hate the whole idea.” She thought of the way things had been the previous evening, with Duncan and the boys and Charlotte, and it was that…that intimacy she’d wanted to celebrate.

“Well, post banns and go to the register office, then,” Melody suggested. “I’ll be your witness.”

Touched, Gemma said, “Thanks, Melody.” Then she shook her head. “But my mum really wants this for me, and right now-I just don’t think I can disappoint her.”

Melody gave her a searching look, then shrugged. “It seems to me that you can either disappoint your mother or disappoint Duncan.” She stood. “So Duncan said this Ritchie guy is good looking? Come on, let’s go see for ourselves. I’ll be your partner in crime.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The latest arrivals in Brick Lane, the ‘haircuts’ (as some of the locals like to call them), are the ones buying up old warehouses and turning them into vintage-clothing stores or dot.com companies…As the City moves further towards territory traditionally belonging to immigrant groups tensions are increasing.

– Rachel Lichtenstein, On Brick Lane

To Gemma the street seemed like a canyon, a last bastion of the old London, close and crowded, steeped in the bustle of centuries, while beyond it the great towers of the modern City advanced inexorably, like armies of jagged glass shards. “I wonder why it was called Widegate?” she said aloud.

Melody, who was scanning the frontages as she walked beside her, answered absently. “These are eighteenth-century silk merchants’ houses, most of them. Maybe there was a gate into Spitalfields-literally into the fields, I mean. Look, this must be the club. It’s a new building, but very cleverly done.”

The building matched the description that Kincaid had given Gemma. She rang the bell, and after a moment, the door clicked open.

The girl who met them in the elegant reception area, however, was not the girl Kincaid had described. This