Necessary as Blood

“Roy Blakely told me that Sandra and Pippa hadn’t been getting on. When I asked Pippa, she said they’d disagreed over the way Sandra was marketing her work, and that Pippa was no longer representing her. But she seemed very upset over Naz.”

“Put it down to a guilty conscience over being a bitch,” said Ritchie, with such unexpected bite that Melody, who had been watching a newcomer get into the lift, looked round, as startled as Gemma.

Seeing their faces, Ritchie shrugged and set his empty cup down on the tray. “You have to take anything Pippa tells you with a grain of salt. She disapproved of Sandra’s commissions for me, and for my clients. Those who can’t do have to find some way to criticize those who can.”

“Pippa was jealous of Sandra?” asked Gemma, thinking back over their conversation.

“Pippa would have killed for Sandra’s talent. Oh, I don’t mean that literally, of course,” he amended, seeming to realize what he’d said. “And to give Pippa credit, she does have a gift for recognizing talent. But her own work was always derivative, all about following the latest trend rather than expressing any personal vision. Not that I was much better.” His smile was rueful. “But Pippa…Pippa couldn’t give up gracefully. If she couldn’t create art, she wanted to control it, and Sandra wouldn’t play. Sandra just wanted to do what she loved and make a decent living at it. Most of us should be so fortunate.” His eyes went to the collage hanging over the reception desk, and the emotion drained from his face. He stood. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got a club to run.”

Karen had been fielding a steady influx of members and had begun to cast harried glances Ritchie’s way.

Having obviously been dismissed, Gemma and Melody followed suit, and he walked them to the front door. As he opened it, he said, “Surely there’s someone looking out for Charlotte Malik’s interests.”

“Social services, Mr. Ritchie,” said Gemma, now more certain than ever that that wasn’t good enough. “And me.”

“What’s his game, do you think?” asked Melody as they walked back towards Spitalfields. “He never actually answered when you asked him if he and Sandra were lovers.”

“No, he didn’t, did he?” answered Gemma. “And I’m not quite sure why he would evade one way or the other. What does he have to lose? But I do get the sense that he and Pippa Nightingale aren’t on the best of terms.”

“Really?” Melody grinned at her. “So do you think this Pippa has the unrequited hots for him, and held a grudge against Sandra because he preferred her?”

Gemma considered as she walked. They passed the old nut-roasting warehouse, the lettering on the brick facade faded against the deep August blue of the sky. “Pippa’s a strange one. A bit fey…and I think Ritchie’s right about the controlling issue. She likes being the center of the drama. And maybe there was more to her falling-out with Sandra than art.”

“Could she have been jealous enough to kill Sandra?” asked Melody.

“You’re assuming that Sandra is dead.” Gemma kept her voice even, and didn’t look at Melody.

“Aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to think so.” But Gemma recalled the short walk from Columbia Road Market to Pippa Nightingale’s studio, and she couldn’t shake the image of the monochrome paintings with the brilliant splashes of red pigment. What if Sandra had gone there that day to talk to Pippa, and they had argued? Gemma had sensed a ruthlessness beneath Pippa’s elfin looks, and Lucas Ritchie had confirmed it-if he was telling the truth.

They had reached Brushfield Street, and the permanent canopy erected over the west end of the Spitalfields Market looked jaunty, like a sail. A busker in bright African costume played the steel drums, and families congregated in the awning’s shade, talking and laughing and eating ice cream. Surely, Sandra and Naz had brought Charlotte here, Gemma thought, and she had had ice cream, too.

“I might want to have another chat with Pippa Nightingale,” she said to Melody. “But just now I want to go home, check on the boys, call Betty, see how Charlotte’s doing today. What about you? Can I give you a lift?”

Melody seemed to hesitate. “There was something…no, never mind.” She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll get the tube. I have an…errand…to do before I go back to Notting Hill.”

Melody got off the train at High Street Kensington, and walked-or rather shoved-her way down Kensington High Street the short distance to the Whole Foods Market, for it had just gone six o’clock and the pavements were teeming with shoppers and commuters.

The enormous natural foods store offered a respite from the heat as well as the crowds. It was an American chain, and Americans seemed to consider air-conditioning a religion, a quirk of national character for which Melody at the moment was profoundly grateful. She doubted there was a dry spot left on the once-crisp blouse beneath her suit jacket.

Having had much practice, she made a beeline for the ready-meals case at the rear of the store. After a moment’s consideration, she chose a carton of carrot and coriander soup, and a small plastic tub of pomegranate salad-and on second thought, she went on to the wine section and picked up a bottle of pinot grigio.

After her late lunch with Gemma, that should be supper enough, and her shopping was a delaying tactic as much as a necessity. As she walked back through the store, she passed the oyster bar and the champagne bar, and tried to imagine a life in which she would waltz up to either and order without guilt. Maybe the next time she came in, she would live a bit more dangerously.

The DJ at the mixing station near the front entrance looked up as she passed and smiled at her, cueing Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On.”

She smiled back, an indulgence she usually didn’t allow herself, and tried not to bounce to the beat.

But her temporary buoyancy evaporated quickly when she reached the street. She walked on, her purchases heavy in one hand, still mulling over what she had seen that afternoon in Lucas Ritchie’s club.

She’d thought she recognized a man who had come in, not as someone she’d met, but from a photo she’d seen in a newspaper, and fairly recently.

Well, she had an archive at her fingertips, almost literally, and this evening she couldn’t resist the temptation to take advantage of it, in spite of the attendant risks.

Turning the corner, she looked up at the great Art Deco building that housed one of the country’s most blatant purveyors of tabloid news, the Chronicle. Then she used her pass card in the door.

“Evening, Miss Melody,” said the guard at the main desk as she crossed the lobby towards the lifts. “Your dad’s just left.”

“Just as well, George.” Melody stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the top floor.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was in January 1978 that Margaret Thatcher had famously spoken on television about the fear of white people that they were being ‘swamped by people with a different culture’. White panic had already been triggered and was not allayed. Bangladeshi tenants had been encountering increasing harassment, and violence had already started to boil over on the streets.

– Geoff Dench, Kate Gavron, Michael Young, The New East End

Melody had to skirt the editorial room. She passed by quickly, nodding at a few familiar faces but not stopping to chat, and hoping that she wouldn’t have the bad luck to encounter her erstwhile blind date Quentin.

She slipped into her father’s glass-fronted office suite, glad to see that his uber-efficient personal assistant, Maeve, had gone as well.

There must not be any major breaking news-or a juicy scandal-to keep the Chronicle’s owner late at his desk.

No one had questioned her right to be here-no one would dare question Ivan Talbot’s only child. This had been her world through childhood, the humming heart of the great newspaper, with its adrenaline yo-yo of breaking stories and frantic deadlines, countered by the desperate tedium of filling space on dead-news days.

This could be her world still if she chose, and her father had never given up hoping that she would give up this silly policing idea and put her talents to proper use. But even if she started as a junior reporter, she would always be the boss’s daughter, and she would never believe she stood on her own merits.

The skills she’d absorbed by osmosis, however, often proved extremely useful. Availing herself of Maeve’s