Necessary as Blood

by Deborah Crombie

  “Because Sandra Gilles’s husband seems to have disappeared this afternoon.” Gemma gave her the details. “I know it’s early for an official alert, but under the circumstances I think you can make an exception.”

  “I’ll pass it along.” All levity had disappeared from Singh’s voice. “What about the little girl? Do we need to contact social services?”

  “She’s with a family friend for tonight.” Gemma passed on Tim’s address and phone number, added her own contact information, then said, “Listen, could you leave a message with your Inspector Weller, just in case he checks in? Ask him to ring me at his earliest convenience.”

  She hung up, knowing she’d taken all reasonable steps, but feeling restless and dissatisfied. Checking the notes she’d made while talking to Tim, she rang directory inquiries, trying to track down a personal number for Louise Phillips, Naz Malik’s partner. But although it was a common name, she got no matches. Louise Phillips might be ex-directory, or might have only a mobile, as was so often the case nowadays.

  A computer search might yield better results, however, and Gemma knew no one more able to follow threads on the Internet than her colleague at Notting Hill, DC Melody Talbot.

  But when she rang Melody’s mobile, it went to voice mail. Gemma left a brief message, apologizing for disturbing her on a Saturday night. As she hung up, she chided herself for having assumed Melody would be available. Melody was, after all, young and attractive, and the fact that she didn’t share details of her personal life with Gemma didn’t mean she didn’t have one.

  Still, Gemma was curious. Most of her colleagues were only too willing to share their off-duty exploits in excruciating detail. Why not Melody?

  “She’ll have the sautéed foie gras.”

  “No, she won’t.” Melody Talbot gave her father a tight smile. “You know I can’t stand foie gras.”

  “The foie gras is one of the Ivy’s specialities,” Ivan Talbot announced, although Melody wasn’t sure if the comment was directed towards the attentive waiter, who certainly bloody well knew, or their dinner guest. “Let’s make that four,” her father added, steamrolling over her protest, as usual. “I should think Quentin is game for a little adventure.”

  The Quentin in question was the latest victim of Melody’s father’s campaign to find her a suitable husband. A junior employee of her father’s, Quentin Frobisher was tall, sandy haired, freckled, and not actually bad looking in the very English way that Melody didn’t particularly fancy. Not that she would for a moment admit she found him even passable.

  She had met her parents and their guest just outside the Ivy, and on the short trip through the restaurant’s foyer, she had hissed at her father, “You said he was an ‘ordinary chap.’ No one named Quentin is an ordinary chap.”

  Now, she huddled back against the banquette, wishing she were anywhere else on earth. Why had she let her father bully her into this? And what if someone from work saw her?

  Not that any common or garden-variety coppers were likely to be found in one of London’s most famous and exclusive restaurants on a Saturday night. But although the Ivy reserved a good two-thirds of its bookings for “regulars,” it was not particularly expensive, and anyone with a bit of time and determination could theoretically get a table.

  She herself had been seduced by it tonight. Her parents had brought her here for special occasions since her teens, and she loved it-the distinctive diamonds of multicolored stained glass over the door, the streetlamp shining through the blue crescent moon, the paintings, the grand mural in the dining room, the crisp-starched white tablecloths. And most of all, the sense of the well-oiled machine ticking away above the unseen chaos of the kitchen below, creating a perfection she seldom experienced in her workaday life.

  That reminder was enough to snap her back to reality. She tugged at the décolleté of her dress and gave another nervous glance around the room. Work-at least her work-and this sort of play didn’t mix. God forbid she should run across some emaciated celeb wannabe snorting coke in the ladies’ loo and have to choose between duty and exposure. She shuddered. At least no one would have the nerve to use a camera in the sacred precincts of the Ivy-she was very careful not to be caught in photos with her father.

  He had picked the intermediate sitting, between the pre-theatre and post-theatre crush. Unusual for him, as he liked to see and be seen, but perhaps he’d thought it was the only way he would get her to accept the invitation. He was looking quite pleased with himself, in fact. Although it was against the Ivy’s policy to give favored clients special tables, tonight they had got a four top at the back of the room, perfectly positioned to observe the other diners.

  “Do sit still, darling, and stop picking at your dress,” her mother whispered. Her mum had bought the dress from a new designer she was patronizing in Knightsbridge, and her eye had been, as usual, sharp enough to guarantee a perfect fit. The dress was black, snug as a glove, with an off-the-shoulder plunging neckline that made Melody acutely uncomfortable. She’d always been self-conscious about her broad shoulders and rather generous bust.

  “Nonsense,” her mother had told her that afternoon when she’d dropped by Melody’s flat, bearing her gift in a scented, tissue-stuffed, beribboned bag. “You really must learn to maximize your assets, darling.” She zipped Melody into the dress, then stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Very fetching. And you do have legs. One would never know it with those dreadful off-the-rack trouser suits you wear.”

  Melody had a runner’s calves, a legacy of her public-school days and the jogs she still managed round Hyde Park when work allowed, but she thought the muscles just made her look chunkier and did her best to cover them up.

  “And for heaven’s sake, do something with your hair,” her mother had added, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m sure Bobby can squeeze you in.”

  And so Melody had slunk into one of the toniest salons in Kensington on a Saturday afternoon, emerging an hour later freshly shorn, but feeling she’d won a small victory by having refused even the most discreet of highlights. Her thick, glossy brown hair, kept in a chin-length bob, was one of her few vanities.

  Now she gave another defiant tug at the neckline of her dress and scowled at her mother. But her mum merely twinkled back at her, and Melody felt her mouth relax into an unwilling smile. It was almost impossible to stay irritated with the Lady Athena Talbot, née Hobbs. Since childhood she had been known simply as Attie, and Melody doubted she’d ever encountered anyone, male or female, who had not been instantly smitten.

  Willow slender, Attie Talbot moved like a girl, and could still turn the heads of men half her age. The unfortunate Quentin was, in fact, ogling her, and Melody was tempted to kick him under the table.

  Her father, however, was as adept at reading signals as Melody. He reached over and patted her mother’s hand, in the process flashing Quentin a smile with just a hint of shark beneath its avuncular surface.

  Quentin flushed and looked away. Point for the old man, Melody thought-territory duly marked, peon put in his place. Her father did subtlety very well.

  As a teenager, she’d enjoyed the fantasy that her father had married her mother for her money, but even then she’d known it for a lie, concocted to salve her own jealousy. You had only to see the way they looked at each other still-stomach turning, really. Her mother’s money and title had simply been a bonus. Her father, a grammar school boy from a Newcastle council estate, had possessed the intelligence, the drive, and, above all, the ambition to succeed on his own merits.

  And succeed he had, the single thorn in his life his uncooperative only daughter.

  “Melody’s in police work,” he said now, having chosen the wine.

  “File clerk,” Melody countered hurriedly, manufacturing what she was sure was a ghastly smirk. “Toiling in the basement and all that.”

  “Notting Hill,” her mother put in helpfully. “And of course you don’t toil in the basement, darling. Don’t be silly. She has quite a
nice flat there,” she added for Quentin’s benefit.

  “Really?” Quentin eyed her with a bit more interest. “Some nice clubs round there. I-Um-” He seemed to realize that admitting to clubbing might not be the most appropriate way to impress the boss. “Pubs,” he amended. “I had drinks at the Prince Albert the other day. With some mates.”

  Melody wasn’t about to tell him that she lived just down the road, but she had to say something to forestall her mother. “Bit nauseatingly yuppie, don’t you think, the Prince Albert?”

  “I-Um. Yes, a bit, I suppose. But didn’t like to refuse an invitation, you know.” The more Quentin floundered, the more he sounded like something out of a Wodehouse novel, and his eyes were taking on a deer-in-the-headlamps glaze.

  Melody actually found herself feeling a bit sorry for him. He might not be all that bad, but then, knowing her father’s methods, she put aside any kind thoughts and probed a bit. “Frobisher. Would that be the Derbyshire Frobishers?” she asked, having no idea if there were any Derbyshire Frobishers.

  “No. Hampshire,” said Quentin.

  “Quentin’s father publishes several county magazines,” explained her father. “Quentin is getting a bit of work experience in London.”

  Ah, Melody thought. That explained it. Two birds with one stone. Solve problem of daughter while buttering up heir to possible future acquisition. And if Quentin was indeed sharper than he seemed, she would have to be very, very careful.

  Her phone rang, making her jump. Cursing herself for having forgotten to turn it off, she fumbled in her handbag, all eyes on her. When she’d fished the offending instrument from the bottom of her bag, she glanced at the caller ID and froze. Gemma. She felt a moment of unreasoning panic. She couldn’t answer. Not here. Not now. She could not gracefully explain to her boss where she was and who she was with, nor could she lie with an audience.

  Swallowing, she pushed Ignore, then switched the phone off. “I think I’d like a glass of champagne for starters, Daddy,” she said, smiling brightly.

  Gemma went back through the house once more, checking that the lights were off, shutting doors. As she returned to the hall, the emptiness of the house seemed to close in behind her. Hurriedly, she let herself out and locked the dead bolt with the key. The thought of home, warm and light and cluttered from the boys’ Saturday activities, was suddenly almost irresistible, but first she had to return Naz Malik’s keys.

  She stood on the pavement, feeling the thick, damp evening air, slick as butter, slip round her bare arms and legs. If she got the tube from Old Street, it was only one stop on the Northern Line to the Angel in Islington, and from there a ten-minute walk to Tim’s.

  She turned left, then left again, deciding to walk up Brick Lane rather than Commercial Street. At the corner, the smell of curry was enticingly strong, but even if she’d had the time, the Brick Lane curry houses didn’t seem places a woman would comfortably go in for a meal on her own.

  But as she walked northwards, the curry palaces quickly gave way to small shops and businesses-textiles, barbers, hairdressers, travel agents, moneylenders-all catering to the Bangladeshi community, and all closed except for the newsagents or grocers. From the open door of a newsagent’s came the wailing chant of Asian music, monotonous but oddly appealing to her unaccustomed ear. The street signs were in English and Bengali, and the streetlamps, their delicate tracery in red and green metal inspired by Indian design, festively framed the narrow street.

  Gemma stopped, puzzling for a moment, then realized she’d seen that same design in some of Sandra Gilles’s work.

  By the time she reached Hanbury Street, notorious in Whitechapel lore as the site of the grisly death of Jack the Ripper’s second victim, Annie Chapman, the Banglatown part of Brick Lane had begun to recede. Here, the walls of the old Truman Brewery made a canyon of the narrow street, the smokestack a darker shadow against the night sky. But at street level, music boomed from the Vibe bar, and the pedestrians who jostled past her were young and for the most part white, clubbers dressed for a Saturday night on the town. This once-disreputable part of the East End had become a destination spot, a mecca for the hip and affluent. There was still enough of an edge, she thought as she passed a DJ setting up turntables in a makeshift stall on the pavement, for the West End patrons to feel they were living a bit dangerously.

  More shops were open here, now offering vintage clothing, records, books, coffee and Wi-Fi, and as she neared the old Bishopsgate railway line, the graffiti became more visible.

  Then she caught the scent of freshly baked bread and her steps quickened. She saw two bagel bakeries ahead on the left, both with lights on and doors open. As she drew closer, her mouth watered and she felt a bit light-headed. Warmed-over pizza at home seemed light-years away. She would need something to get by on.

  Gemma chose the second bakery, Beigel Bake, simply because the queue was longer-usually a good sign that the food was worth the wait. But the service was friendly and efficient and the queue moved quickly, just giving Gemma time to take in the no-nonsense interior, the huge steel ovens in the back, and the two Royalty Protection Command officers in full gear ahead of her. They were enormous, like nightclub bouncers on steroids. She’d have expected some of the pierced and tattooed clubbers, or the obviously homeless man on the pavement, to give them a wide berth, but Beigel Bake’s cheerful atmosphere seemed to erase boundaries.

  With a cup of stewed tea in one hand, and a salt-beef bagel with mustard in the other, she came out again into the street, munching as she walked. She thought she had never tasted anything quite so good.

  The sandwich lasted her almost to Old Street Station, and as she neared the tube stop, she tossed her empty polystyrene cup in a rubbish bin. She stopped for a moment to look at the Banksy painting high on the side of a commercial building on the far side of the Old Street roundabout. It was called Ozone Angel, she knew, and was a tribute by the anonymous street artist to a friend who had been killed by a train. But she’d never before quite realized how haunting the androgynous child was, with its angel wings and safety armor, a death’s-head, a memento mori, held in its outstretched hand.

  She thought suddenly of Charlotte Malik, with both her parents missing, and shivered.

  Hazel sat curled in a corner of her rose-printed sofa, arms wrapped tight round her chest even though the bungalow windows were still open to the warm evening air. She hadn’t bothered turning on the lights, or eating, although she knew she should do both.

  Her irritation with Gemma for having so patently wanted rid of her at Naz Malik’s house had lasted her the first half of the way home. Her smoldering resentment towards Tim for having searched out an old friend because it was thought his wife might have betrayed him had fueled the remainder of her drive.

  But by the time she’d reached the bungalow-she still couldn’t think of it as home, in spite of the enthusiasm she had manufactured for Gemma-even that had flickered out. Hazel was self-analytical enough by training and by nature to see her anger for what it was-a transference of her own guilt. How could she blame Tim for seeking out someone with whom he could sympathize?

  Now she felt shocked and more than a little sickened by her behavior that afternoon. A family in the midst of trauma, a child in distress, and rather than doing what she could to help, as Gemma and Tim had done, she had sniped at them both.

  What sort of person had she become? She seemed to have lost her compass, and with it, any confidence in her ability to make the right decisions. She’d convinced herself that coming back to London was the best thing, convinced herself that she and Tim could work together to do what was best for Holly, but now she doubted her resolve.

  Hazel thought of the house in Islington, of Tim tucking in Holly and the little girl, Charlotte, as she used to tuck in Holly and Toby, and she trembled with longing. It was her place, and she had forfeited it. She could see no way back. Despair rose in her, black, bitter as bile.

  A woman’s voice came clearly from
beyond the wall of the darkened garden. The words were unfathomable, the intonation so familiar it struck to the bone. She was calling her child in for the night.

  He heard the sound of water falling. It came and went in rhythmic susurrations, like the curtains of rain that had swished across the rice fields of his childhood. His mind wove in and out of memory-smells of cooking combined with the warm, ripe scent of farmyards; the light, green filtered, always; the air thick as syrup. Air so thick it pressed on his chest…He opened his mouth in a gasp, trying to expand his lungs, and the movement brought him close to consciousness once more.

  The faint recollection of pain made him keep his eyes shut tight, and he began to drift again.

  Then there was movement. Hands pulling at him, the grunt of someone else’s effort. Space spun and he flailed out as arms gripped him, lifting. He forced his eyes open but the movement made him queasy, and he saw only shifting, tilting shadows he couldn’t grasp. His glasses-what had happened to his glasses?

  He groped at his face, but a vaguely familiar voice was urging him forwards. He stumbled-his feet seemed disconnected from his brain-but the hands and voice kept him moving.

  There was a click, and the feel of the air changed-fresher, damper-and he suddenly knew he was outside, although he hadn’t realized before that he’d been inside.

  The sharp scent of petrol exhaust tickled his nose. He heard the muted sound of traffic, saw moving flashes of light. Then the hand shoved him down, his forehead cracked against something hard, and blackness descended.

  When he woke once more, he was moving, propelled by an arm round his shoulder, his unwilling feet tangling with each other. It was dark, truly dark. Rough things caught and scraped at his face, and when he lifted a hand to his cheek it was wet. Then he was falling, falling, and the scent of warm earth rose up to meet him.