“Is there any news?” Pippa asked when Gemma had reached the top.
“No. I’m sorry. But I was hoping you could help me with something.”
The same surreal monochrome works were on display in the long upper room, the scenes of snow and forest and nightmarish, enchanted creatures, all in blacks and whites except for the occasional shocking splash of red. Today Pippa wore red as well, a long, deep crimson dress, as though she dressed only to complement the art. She didn’t invite Gemma into her office.
“Lucas said you went to see him.” Pippa’s voice was neutral, and Gemma couldn’t tell if she approved or disapproved.
“Yes. He was very helpful,” she answered carefully.
Pippa shrugged. “When it suits him. I wouldn’t expect him to put himself out too much over Sandra’s daughter, by the way. And I’m afraid I don’t know anything that I haven’t already told you.”
“This is something else entirely.” Gemma had realized on the way to the gallery that she couldn’t very well show Pippa the entire list, not without more explanation than she was willing to give, considering Pippa’s connection with Lucas Ritchie. “Do you know if Sandra ever sold works to a man named John Truman, a veterinary surgeon?”
“Truman? If Truman bought Sandra’s work, it wasn’t through me. That little snake. He used to be one of my regular customers.”
Gemma thought she saw a hint of color in Pippa’s pale cheeks.
“But he is a collector?”
“In a small way. Nothing too expensive.” She frowned. “Although I had the impression that he liked to inflate the prices of the pieces to his wife. Maybe he needed to impress her.”
Or cover up what he was spending on something else, Gemma thought. “Did he know Sandra?”
“He might have met her at an opening…” Pippa’s eyes widened, and what Gemma saw in their ice-blue depths made her think that Pippa Nightingale’s unusual physical poise was a mask for suppressed rage. Pippa walked to the window and looked out. “That bastard,” she breathed, her back to Gemma.
“Truman?” Gemma asked.
“No. Bloody Lucas. Truman met Lucas here, at more than one opening. Of course Lucas would have recruited him for his club. It’s just the sort of secret thing that would appeal to a little snot like Truman, and if Truman bought Sandra’s work, it will be because Lucas displayed it in the club. John Truman never had any confidence in his own taste-he only bought things if someone he considered important had got in first.”
“Do you think Naz would have known Truman?”
“Not socially, if that’s what you mean. If he bought work from Sandra, he might have met Naz at some point, although Sandra did her best to keep her work separate from her personal life.” Pippa turned, and the flash of anger Gemma had seen had been replaced with amusement. “You could ask Lucas.”
Gemma knew there was something she was missing, some game between Pippa and Lucas Ritchie that she didn’t understand, but she thought it revolved around Sandra. “I think I’d do better to ask John Truman,” she said. “Do you know where I could find him?”
“Hoxton. His surgery’s not far from the square, and he lives above it.” She walked back to her office, checked a file, and wrote an address down on a note card stamped with the gallery name.
Gemma took the card and studied it, replaying her mental geography. “It’s quite near, then.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pippa. “A Georgian house, like Sandra’s, but butchered. I doubt Truman was inspired by the thought of the Huguenot silk weavers.”
Gemma thanked her and turned to go, but as she reached the top of the stairs she turned back. “You and Lucas. You seemed quite angry with him. Will you stay friends?”
Pippa smiled. “If you want to call it that. He always comes back to me.”
Gemma stood on the pavement just outside the gallery door as she pulled out her phone to ring Kincaid. He would need to pay an official call on this John Truman. Gemma had done as much as she dared. Any further action on her own and she would be seriously trespassing on a Scotland Yard investigation.
But she stopped, finger hovering over the keypad, as she thought about the implications of her conversation with Pippa. Had Sandra and Pippa become estranged, not because Pippa disapproved of how Sandra was marketing her work, but because a long-standing jealousy over Lucas Ritchie had come to a head?
Could Sandra have come here that day, from Columbia Road? Could Pippa have told her something, out of spite, that had made her run away? Or what if they had argued, and Pippa had killed Sandra?
Although Gemma could have sworn, on her first visit, that Pippa’s grief over Sandra’s disappearance had been genuine, theirs had obviously been a complicated relationship, and love and jealousy had brought about stranger things. But even if the slender Pippa had been able to kill Sandra, could she have disposed of her body-and so efficiently that it had not been found? And then killed Naz Malik? For Gemma was now utterly convinced that Sandra’s disappearance and Naz’s murder were connected.
She shook her head, staring absently at the front of the Rivington Street Health Clinic a few doors down. No, she was spinning theories out of air, and they wouldn’t wash. Pippa’s little display of spitefulness had been directed at Lucas, not Sandra. Truman, the vet, who was more than likely to have known Sandra, and who had easy access to the ketamine that had been found in Naz’s system, seemed a more likely prospect. Maybe-
Gemma’s speculations came to an abrupt halt. A young woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair pulled up in a haphazard ponytail, had stopped in front of the clinic, glancing up and down the street before slipping inside. The profile had been familiar, although recognition took Gemma a moment, because the last time she had seen the young woman, she’d been wearing a head scarf. It was Alia Hakim, Charlotte’s nanny.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
– Jennifer Worth,
Doug Cullen yanked the copy of Melody’s e-mail from the printer tray on Kincaid’s desk and stared at it. “Where the hell did she get this?”
“Let me see.” Kincaid got up and took the pages from him. When he had read through the list of names, he said, “I’m not sure I want to know. It’s called deniability, Doug. But this could prove very useful.”
For all their digging, they had not been able to come up with anything dodgy on Lucas Ritchie or his club, and they had been warned off interviewing him again by powers higher than Kincaid’s guv’nor.
“What I
Cullen did an Internet search and read off an address. “I would guess it’s this one, in Hoxton. You’re thinking a vet would have had access to ketamine? But did he have any connection with Naz Malik?”
“Worth talking to him.” The staff at Bethnal Green was keeping a phone line available for calls from the public notice board. But as no new information had come in, there had been little else for them to do, and Kincaid had returned to the Yard. He was still thoroughly blocked from pursuing the one lead into Naz Malik’s murder that had looked most promising: Kevin and Terry Gilles.
Now he grabbed his jacket, adding, “We’ve got eff-all else to go on with, and this case is getting colder by the minute.”
Gemma’s first response on seeing Alia’s furtive entrance into the clinic was that the girl was in some kind of trouble. Needing contraceptives, or worse, pregnant. She didn’t like to think how Alia’s father would respond to either alternative, but she was certainly going to have a word with the girl and see if she could help.
Slipping her phone back into her bag, she walked the few yards to the clinic and pushed the entry buzzer. But
