Necessary as Blood

by Deborah Crombie

  “Hey,” Duncan protested, flicking a tea towel at her. “I’ve made an omelet. I can scramble eggs, and grill things, and, God forbid, order pizza.”

  “Lame, very lame,” said Kit cheekily.

  But when the first omelet was bubbling in the pan, Kit’s courage failed. “We only have just enough eggs,” he said, frowning. “Maybe I’ll just turn them with a spatula.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Gemma agreed, not wanting him to dent his pride or donate someone’s omelet to the dogs. “We’ll buy extra eggs next time so that you can practice.”

  While Kit whisked eggs and swirled them in the omelet pan, Duncan laid the table, tossed the salad, and corralled and scrubbed Toby. As everyone sat down, Gemma still held Charlotte on her knee, but loosely. The child was sitting up, gazing from one boy to the other as if they were the most fascinating creatures she’d ever seen, but she still hadn’t spoken.

  Then, when Gemma made the first cut into her golden, cheese-oozing omelet, Charlotte reached out and said clearly, precisely, “I want ’shrooms.”

  Gemma fed Charlotte bites of her omelet, talking softly to her as the boys chattered. When they’d finished-Toby having eaten his mushrooms with a great show of fortitude-Duncan cleared the plates. “Let’s leave the washing up for later, when it’s cooler, and take Charlotte into the garden while there’s still light,” he suggested. “Maybe she’d like to swing.”

  The house had its own garden, separated from the communal garden behind it by only an iron fence and gate. The communal garden, a long park with a terrace of houses on either side and high fences at the ends, was one of the great blessings of the house, and it had afforded both children and dogs many happy hours. A weathered wooden swing, courtesy of some previous neighbor, hung from one of the large trees near their patio garden.

  Toby banged out through the gate, followed by the dogs, who were riotous with freedom. While Toby climbed into the swing, the dogs chased madly round in a circle. The sun had dropped behind the houses on the far side of the garden and the light filtering through the trees was a soft, hazy gold. The air had cooled, and a breeze carried the scent of the night-blooming jasmine Gemma had planted in a pot on the patio.

  Duncan came out through the dining room doors, carrying two glasses of chilled white wine. “You left your phone in the kitchen. Betty just rang. She said she’d be a bit later than she thought. I told her not to worry.”

  Gingerly, Gemma lowered Charlotte to the patio, and when she sat down, Charlotte didn’t climb back into her lap. Bob, her green plush elephant, had been left behind in the kitchen.

  Watching Toby and the dogs intently, Charlotte whispered, “Georgy. Teth.”

  Kit came out, tucking his phone in his jeans pocket with one hand. In the other, he held a plastic tube filled with the dogs’ favorite squeaky tennis balls. Squatting by Charlotte, he took a ball out and squeaked it for her in demonstration. She giggled. “Would you like to throw the ball for the dogs?” he asked.

  Charlotte looked up at Gemma, who nodded encouragement. “You go on, lovey.”

  When Kit held out a hand, Charlotte took it, and together they went through the gate. She was hesitant at first, but Kit helped her toss the ball, and soon she was running with the boys and the dogs, squealing with glee. Her brown legs were still toddler chubby beneath her pink shorts.

  Lights began to come on in the houses across the garden as Duncan sank down in the chair beside Gemma’s and picked up his wine. “My God,” he said, watching the children. “She is lovely, isn’t she?” There was a hint of apology in his tone. “You were right, you know,” he added softly. “I’d hate to see her go to someone who didn’t care for her properly.”

  “I went to see Roy Blakely today,” said Gemma, seeing her opening.

  “Blakely?”

  “Sandra’s friend on Columbia Road. The one she left Charlotte with that day.” She glanced at him. “You didn’t tell me I couldn’t.”

  “Cheeky.” He gave her knee a gentle pinch. “So what did you find out?”

  “Gail Gilles was a lousy mother.”

  “And you’re surprised?”

  Gemma shrugged. “Roy Blakely has known her since they were children. He wouldn’t be very comfortable testifying against her in family court, but he’s not happy with the idea of her taking Charlotte, either.”

  “Did he give you anything specific about the brothers?”

  “No,” Gemma said, not disguising her disappointment. “But he told me that Sandra hadn’t been getting on with her former dealer”-seeing Duncan’s startled glance, she clarified-“art dealer, I mean. And so I, um, went to see her, too.”

  “Unofficially?” Kincaid asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Gemma sipped her wine. “Unofficially.”

  “And?”

  “Her name is Pippa Nightingale, and she’s…interesting. She seemed genuinely distressed by Naz’s death, because she seems to think it means Sandra really isn’t coming back. Guilty conscience over her falling-out with Sandra, it sounds like, although she still couldn’t help sounding bitter over their disagreement. She felt Sandra didn’t take her art seriously enough-more or less accused her of being an interior designer rather than an artist. And she heard the news about Naz from Lucas Ritchie. It seems they were all three mates from art college days, although I think Pippa is a bit older.”

  “Ah, Lucas Ritchie,” Duncan said meditatively. “Interesting bloke.”

  Gemma turned towards him. “What? You met him? What’s he like?”

  “Very polished. Very credible. Sandra’s art prominently displayed in his very posh club that seems, on the surface, to be aboveboard. And he seems, at least on first pass, to have an alibi for the day of Naz’s death. As does Ahmed Azad, by the way.”

  “Azad could have hired goons,” Gemma suggested.

  “So could Ritchie, I think. But I haven’t come up with a really good reason why either of them would have done so. Lucas Ritchie says he and Sandra were longtime friends, and even if they had been having an affair, I can’t see why he would have harmed her. It still looks like Sandra’s brothers are topping the charts.”

  “You talked to them?” The children looked up from their play, and Gemma made an effort to lower her voice. “What did they say?”

  Duncan swirled the dregs of his wine. “Ah, well. That’s problematical. I didn’t talk to them. And I’m not going to, at least any time soon,” he added, tipping up his glass to empty it. “I had a visit this afternoon from the guv’nor, who’d had a visit from a high-up muckety-muck in Narcotics. Apparently, Narcotics have been running an undercover op in the area for a couple of years.

  “Major drug smuggling from Europe, a couple of homicides involved. And while the Gilles brothers may be very small fry, things are at a critical enough stage that they don’t want anything to rock the boat.”

  “So they are into drugs.” Gemma didn’t know whether to feel vindicated or horrified.

  “Minor players, but yes. And Narcotics think if we talk to them, it might put the wind up bigger fish. And that means I can’t talk to Gail Gilles either.”

  The children had interrupted them, trailing back up to the patio and demanding drinks. Toby had taken Charlotte by the hand and was bossing her about quite insufferably, but as Charlotte seemed happy, Gemma didn’t correct him.

  After fetching them chilled, bottled water from the kitchen fridge, she’d gone back inside to do the washing up. Duncan had offered, but she’d needed some time to think over the events of the day, and she’d wanted to give him the opportunity to be on his own with Charlotte and the boys.

  What sense could it possibly make to a child, she wondered, to have mummy gone, then daddy, then to be taken from home and nanny and all things familiar to a strange house with a new family, then left again in a different house with a different family. Although Betty had, of course, told Charlotte she would be coming back for her, Gemma wasn’t sure Charlotte was old enough to understand that. O
r whether she would believe it, given the capriciousness of the blows life had recently dealt her.

  It was she, Gemma realized as she turned off the tap and began to dry the plates, who had been the only constant in Charlotte’s life since the afternoon of her father’s disappearance. The thought made her feel both frightened and possessive.

  Voices drifted in through the open doors in the dining and sitting room; Duncan’s low chuckle, the high-pitched tones of the little ones, and Kit’s still unreliable shift between tenor and baritone, with an occasional canine yip as counterpoint.

  But by the time she’d finished up in the kitchen, it had grown quiet, and when she entered the sitting room she saw that they had all migrated inside. A pool of lamplight fell on Kit, who was draped sideways over the armchair, cocooned with his iPod and earbuds.

  Toby sat cross-legged on the floor a few feet from the television, the sound off, watching mesmerized as Cathy Rigby swooped and swaggered across the screen. The dogs were stretched out, panting, beside him, and Sid had taken up a safe vantage point on the bookcase.

  And Duncan…Duncan sat on the sofa with Charlotte cradled in his arms. She was fast asleep, her curly head tucked under his chin, and on his face was an expression of surprised and wondering tenderness.

  When Betty had collected the still-sleeping Charlotte-and it seemed to Gemma that Duncan had lowered her into her car seat with some reluctance-and the boys were in bed, Gemma and Duncan lay side by side, the sheet thrown back to catch a breeze from the open window.

  Drowsily, she shifted towards him until their thighs touched, wondering if the warm, humid air would stick their limbs together like glue. “So, what are you going to do about Gail Gilles and her sons?” she asked. He’d told her that the plainclothes officers he’d put on watch had seen Kevin and Terry Gilles moving some of their belongings from their mother’s council flat to their sister Donna’s flat nearby. “Have you let Janice Silverman know Kevin and Terry are under investigation?”

  “I’m not to contact her. They don’t want any chance of a leak. But…” He trailed his fingers over her thigh, raising goose bumps. “I thought-since you’ve already established that you’re interested in Charlotte’s welfare-I thought you might have a word with Gail Gilles after all. To express your condolences, and your concern for Charlotte.”

  “Unofficially?” Gemma shivered and moved closer. Although she certainly wanted to meet Gail Gilles, she wasn’t sure who was taking advantage of whom in this little arrangement.

  He touched a finger to her lips. “You never heard it from me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Fears are entertained that the locality is being taken over, with Bethnal Green becoming Bangla Green.

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

  Gemma went into work on Wednesday morning knowing she was going to have to have a word with her boss, Mark Lamb. She couldn’t take any more time off work unless she discussed it with him. And as much as she hated using her mother’s health as an excuse, she couldn’t see another option. It wouldn’t be politic for her to say she was helping Kincaid with an investigation, and especially not when she was looking into something that he’d been warned against.

  Superintendent Lamb’s expression of concern made her feel even guiltier, but the guilt did nothing to dampen the sense of urgency she felt about Charlotte. After she’d left Lamb’s office she plowed through work, trying to clear as much as she could of her caseload, then she called her parents’ house in Leyton to check on her mum. By late morning, she was able to leave her desk with her conscience at least a little clearer.

  This time, she took her car to the East End. Although the address Kincaid had given her was not far from the Bethnal Green tube station, she was not keen on the idea of wandering round an unfamiliar-and probably not particularly safe-East London housing estate on foot. And she was still a bit sunburned from yesterday afternoon’s excursion.

  She found the estate easily, just south of Old Bethnal Green Road, and it was worse than she’d expected. A gray monument to late-sixties concrete-block architecture, its five stories squatted incongruously on a patch of green lawn. Every inch of concrete within human reach had been tagged with ugly, leering, giant-size faces and symbols. On the upper-level balconies, ragged laundry hung limply, as if wilting in the heat, and Indian pop music blared from an open window.

  Finding a place to park, Gemma got out and gazed up at the building, shading her eyes. If Sandra had grown up here, how had she survived with the urge to make beautiful things intact? Or had the desire to create beauty grown out of desperation? Leyton had by no means been beautiful, but this…She thought of the Fournier Street house, with its comfortable and quirky elegance, and felt a new understanding of Sandra’s need to make a welcoming home. Sandra must have wanted to give her daughter what she had never had.

  Gemma didn’t bother trying the lift. Even if it worked, which was unlikely, she didn’t want to be trapped within its hot and undoubtedly smelly confines.

  The urine-saturated stairwell was bad enough. She climbed to the fifth floor, trying to remember to breathe through her mouth, and being careful not to touch the walls or handrail. Halfway up, she saw a broken tricycle on the landing. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that a child had fallen with it.

  When she reached the top floor, sweating and a bit queasy, she saw from the door numbers that Gail Gilles’s flat must be near the end of the long corridor. The concrete floor was awash with plastic bags, empty soda bottles and beer cans, cigarette ends, and against one wall, the shriveled husk of a used condom.

  As she approached the peeling blue door at the corridor’s end, she suddenly realized that she had no idea what she was going to say. Having a distant claim of friendship with Naz was not likely to cut any ice with Sandra’s mother, but she’d have to do her best. There was no buzzer, so she knocked. After a moment, the strident shouting of a telly advert coming from inside the flat went quiet, and Gemma was sure she was being scanned through the peephole in the door. Resisting the temptation to knock again, she made an effort to relax her posture and paste a pleasant expression on her face. She imagined her lime green linen jacket looked as bedraggled as the washing she’d seen hanging outside, but she doubted whether a starched wardrobe, like her connection with Naz Malik, would earn her any points here. At least she probably didn’t look like a bill collector.

  The door swung open, and Gemma stared at the woman who must be Sandra Gilles’s mother. She saw a busty figure gone to plumpness, blond hair, perhaps once the same burnished straw color as Sandra’s, but now bleached to platinum and piled high on her head. On her bare feet, Gail Gilles sported gold toenails, a fitting accompaniment to the tight black Capri trousers, the clingy leopard-print top, the overabundant makeup, and the immediately apparent attitude.

  Hand on hip, she said, “I told you already. They’ve gone. You got no call to come back like the frigging police.”

  “Mrs. Gilles?” Gemma hoped her baffled expression was good enough to hide her jolt of shock at the word police. It had taken her a second to realize she hadn’t given herself away-Gail Gilles obviously thought she was a social worker, checking on her sons’ removal.

  “Whose business is it?” Gail asked, still sounding hostile but not quite so certain of her ground.

  “Um, my name’s Gemma. I thought you must be Charlotte’s grandmother, but you don’t look old enough…”

  Gail’s expression softened at the bald-faced flattery. “I might be. Not old enough to be anyone’s grandma, but I was just a baby myself, wasn’t I, when I ’ad my daughter.” She looked more closely at Gemma and frowned. At least Gemma thought it was a frown-her mouth turned down but her brow didn’t wrinkle. “But I don’t know you, do I?”

  Gemma rushed into an explanation, babbling a bit, but thinking that if nerves made her sound like a nitwit, all the better. “I’m so sorry about your son-in-law. It must be a terrible shock. I’m a frien
d of your son-in-law’s-your late son-in-law’s-friend, the one who reported him missing. I helped out with Charlotte until social services came. I don’t know why they didn’t call you straightaway. She’s a cute kid, and I thought, well, she should be with her family, shouldn’t she? And I thought, well, I happened to be in the neighborhood, and I wanted to say I was sorry for your loss, and ask if there was anything I could do, but…” She trailed off, as if unsure of what came next, which was certainly the case, and praying Gail didn’t ask how she’d come by the address.

  But Gail Gilles seemed unable to resist the temptation of a sympathetic ear, however unlikely its appearance on her doorstep. Pulling the door wide, she said, “That’s the truth, innit? I always say as kids should be with family. It hain’t natural otherwise. Why don’t you come in and ’ave a cuppa? What did you say your name was?”

  “The kettle just boiled,” said Gail. “Should still be ’ot enough. Have a seat and I’ll bring something in.” Glancing in the kitchen, Gemma saw on the work top an open takeaway pizza box, a shiny new espresso machine, and beyond that, an old plastic electric kettle. The flat smelled faintly of bad drains, or perhaps rotting garbage.

  As directed, she sat down gingerly on the edge of a new, overstuffed, cream-colored leather sofa, taking advantage of the opportunity to check out her surroundings. Her first impression was that the flat was the center of an ongoing jumble sale. The sofa had both matching chair and loveseat, all squeezed together like puffy cream mushrooms, and every bit of space left in the room seemed to be crammed with something. Odd bits of furniture, some of it broken. Children’s toys. Piles of clothing. Even a rug, rolled up and stood on end in a corner.

  The yellowed walls held a motley collection of cheap prints, Princess Diana portraits, and a few family photos depicting two chunky boys and a girl who slightly resembled Sandra. Her face was prettier than Sandra’s, but less interesting and intelligent. Sandra’s younger sister, Donna? In another photo, the same young woman appeared older, with three unnaturally stiff-looking little boys clustered round her. There were no photos that Gemma could see of Sandra-or of Charlotte.