redialed.
It was picked up on the first ring. “Mr. Naz?” The voice was young, female, and rising with distress.
“No. Alia? It’s Dr. Cavendish here.”
Alia was Naz’s part-time nanny, a Bangladeshi girl who minded Charlotte during the day and took college classes at night. She wanted, Naz had told Tim, to be a lawyer.
“Is Mr. Naz with you, then?” asked Alia. “He was supposed to be home two hours ago and he’s not answering his phone. My parents are expecting me and I can’t leave Charlotte. I don’t know what to do.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No. And he’s never late. You know how he is. If I take Char out for an ice cream or something and we’re even five minutes late, he’s, like, ballistic.”
With good reason, thought Tim. “Is there anyone else you can call?”
“I tried the office, but no one answered. I don’t have numbers for Charlotte’s mum’s family. Mr. Naz won’t have nothing to do with them.” She said “nuffink” in the strong Estuary accent adopted by many young second- generation immigrants to the East End. “And I don’t know how to reach Ms. Phillips at home.
“He always answers his phone if he sees it’s me,” Alia went on. “Unless he’s in court, and then he tells me ahead of time. He knows I don’t call unless it’s important.”
Louise Phillips was Naz’s partner in his law firm, and Tim didn’t have her home number, either.
“I could take Char home with me,” said Alia, “but I don’t like to without his permission. I can’t think why he wouldn’t ring me if he was going to be late.” She sounded near tears.
Nor could Tim imagine a circumstance in which Naz Malik would miss an appointment without notice or fail to respond to his daughter’s nanny, and his anxiety spiked into fear. “Okay, Alia, let me think.”
He could leave Holly with his neighbors and be in Fournier Street within half an hour. “You stay there,” he told her, “and I’ll come straight over.”
But once there, he thought as he rang off, what could he do other than send Alia home?
He was going to have to find Naz Malik, and he was going to need help.
CHAPTER THREE
– Tarquin Hall,
Hazel drove the secondhand Volkswagen Golf she had brought down from Scotland.
“I see you’ve joined the Sloane Rangers,” teased Gemma, the Golf having become the car of choice among the trendy in Chelsea. Having appointed herself navigator, she pulled her pocket-size A to Zed from her bag.
“They’re only Sloanie if they’re new and a gift from indulgent parents who don’t want their children to appear elitist,” said Hazel. “And this one has certainly seen better days.” She patted the dash as if consoling the car. “I was going to leave it behind, but then I considered the logistics of getting Holly from Battersea to Islington and vice versa with no tube stop on the Battersea end.”
They had crossed the Battersea Bridge and were driving east along the Embankment. Gemma glanced at Cheney Walk, then away. Her London seemed to be ever more populated by ghosts, and there were some she was more willing to allow real estate than others.
“Tell me what you know about this friend of Tim’s,” she said. Tim had rung just as Hazel announced it was time to open a bottle of wine, which seemed rather fortuitous timing on his part.
Hazel had listened, then put the bottle back in the fridge as she rang off, her brow creased. “Tim wants us both to meet him at a house near Brick Lane,” she’d explained. “If you can, that is. A friend who’s a single father hasn’t come home, and Tim’s worried about him and the child.”
Gemma had agreed willingly enough, but now she added, “Do you think Tim’s overreacting? Surely it’s a miscommunication of some sort.”
“I used to tell Tim his pulse wouldn’t go up in an earthquake. I
Gemma glanced at Hazel, taken aback by the bitter tone, but Hazel went on, “I’m really not sure why he rang, except that he knew you were visiting and he wanted your advice.”
Afraid any comment would open a conversational minefield, Gemma went back to her map. “When you reach Whitechapel, you’d better take Commercial Street. I think Brick Lane is one way in the other direction.”
The Saturday traffic was light and they made good time, turning away from the river at Tower Hill. Soon the stark spire of Christ Church Spitalfields rose before them, and opposite, the dark brick facade of the old Spitalfields Market, surmounted by its new glass arcade.
Gemma had come to Spitalfields and to Petticoat Lane Market with her parents a few times as a child, and she had once been to Brick Lane on a Sunday with Rob, her ex-husband. She’d been a newly minted detective constable then, and Rob had bought cheap cigarettes and liquor that she’d been sure were smuggled or stolen. The street had smelled of rotting garbage, the buildings had struck her as dirty and squalid, and even by the standards of her Leyton upbringing the crowd had seemed raucous and unfriendly. She and Rob had ended up having a row and he’d called her-not for the first time-a self-righteous cow and she’d called him, well, she didn’t like to think about it. All in all, it had not been an experience she had wanted to repeat.
“Turn right just after the church,” she told Hazel.
“Hawksmoor, isn’t it?” Hazel glanced up through the windscreen. “Impressive, but not exactly your warm and fuzzy neighborhood sanctuary.”
Gemma had to admit that the angular silhouette of the church seemed a bit forbidding, and the proportions a bit odd, as if the spire carried too much weight.
As they turned right, she saw the short stretch of Fournier Street, its darkly severe houses anchored by the church and the crumbling facade of a pub at the top end, while the bottom end provided a perfect frame for the Bangla City supermarket on the opposite side of Brick Lane.
“There’s Tim’s car,” Hazel said tightly, as if her ill feelings extended to the battered Volvo. She found a small space nearby for the Golf, and when she had maneuvered into it, she and Gemma got out, checking the house numbers against the scribbled address.
“It’s this one.” Gemma looked up at a house set in the terrace on the north side of the street. Although adjoining, each house was set off from its neighbors by slight differences in the architectural detailing and the state of repair. This house looked well tended, its brown brick contrasting with trim work and wrought-iron railings painted a soft green.
The front door was offset, so that the ground floor had only two windows to one side, while the first and second floors had three windows across. The top floor was recessed, so that Gemma just glimpsed light glinting from what looked like loft or studio windows. The front door sported a hooded canopy supported by ornate brackets, also painted pale green, and the arched shape of the canopy was echoed in the slightly arched brickwork above the windows.
Before they could ring the bell, the door opened and Tim bounded down the steps, taking Gemma’s hand and giving her a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for coming.” He was tall, with unruly hair and a beard that had always seemed to Gemma to add to his air of rather puppyish awkwardness. But he had an endearing earnestness about him as well, and Gemma wondered if it was this that generated confidence in his patients.
“Hazel-” He turned to his wife, belatedly, for she had already mounted the steps. “Thanks. I-”
“Any word from your friend?” Hazel asked.
“No. I’ve kept Alia until you arrived. I thought Gemma would want to talk to her. Alia is Charlotte’s nanny,” he hastened to explain, ushering them into the entrance hall.
